Tag: Frank McHugh

The Hoodlum Saint (1946, Norman Taurog)

The Hoodlum Saint is a surprisingly long ninety-four minutes, though since it takes place over eleven years (at least), I suppose some plodding is to be expected. There’s plenty not to be expected about Hoodlum Saint, starting with the time period. It begins in 1919, with a fifty-four-year-old William Powell returning from the Great War to discover, well, son, if it was up to me….

He was a newspaperman, which for a bit seems like Saint is going to be a newspaper picture. It’s not.

Once he doesn’t get his job back—an uncredited Will Wright plays the editor, establishing Saint’s going to reunite Powell with a half dozen (at least) MGM or Thin Man costars—but once he doesn’t get his job back, we find out Powell’s friends with the local hoods. The film starts in Baltimore. James Gleason, Rags Ragland, Frank McHugh, and Slim Summerville play the hoods. Gleason’s the boss and has something of a story arc (directly related to the title, no less), while the rest are just comic relief. McHugh disappears for a large portion of the second act… then Ragland disappears for a large part of the third act. They’re all fine. Nothing wrong with Saint is any of the actors’ faults.

So then it seems like it’s going to be some kind of crime picture; Powell heads with the hoods down to the local Catholic Church, where he tells off the priest; he’s in it for number one now. Only then it’s this strange business comedy where Powell enlists the hoods’ help in… getting him into a wedding party so he can hobnob with the wealthy and beg a job off one.

Except before he can meet a rich guy, he meets Esther Williams. He’s crashing the party and kisses her to throw off suspicion. Williams is twenty-five. Not in the movie; they never discuss the pronounced age difference, but Powell’s at least supposed to be in his thirties, possibly forties, given how they old age make-up him by the end. It’s so obvious you think they’re going to comment on it.

They never comment on it. It’s also not going to be a romantic comedy about coworkers—Williams works at the paper where Powell gets a job after meeting her. He’s really just interested in it so he can go off and become a millionaire in New York City. That ambition works out for Powell, except the hoods all come along because Baltimore’s no fun without him (bailing them out of jail); Williams stays. Their relationship is so chaste at this point, it’s not even for sure she’s the romantic interest.

In New York City, Powell catches the eye of the even more inappropriately aged Angela Lansbury; she’s a club singer. Lansbury’s twenty-one. I guess she also ages a decade throughout, though she disappears for long stretches because Powell’s love interests aren’t crucial to the main plot. The main plot—at what must be halfway through the movie because Powell’s already a wealthy businessman—involves St. Dismas, the Good Thief from the crucifixion, who is, you guessed it, the hoodlum’s Saint. Powell wants to prank Gleason instead of just bailing him out, so he has the other hoods pretend they’ve been converted, then Lansbury’s going to bail him out with the name Dismas.

Gleason will become a changed man over the next few years, dedicating himself to charity work.

And then the stock market. Because by 1929, double millionaire Powell convinces all the working stiffs to play the stock market. Also, he’s given up on Williams, who couldn’t wait forever for him.

So, the stock market crash will cause Powell severe emotional distress, and it’s going to get him into the third act, where Hoodlum Saint becomes an “atheist sees the light” movie. With Hays Code constraints.

It’s a very, very weird movie. And never anywhere near as good as it ought to be with the cast. While Powell and Williams can banter, both comedically and dramatically, director Taurog’s shockingly bad at directing their scenes. Hoodlum Saint ought to be easy studio fodder; instead, it’s clunky and meandering. The parts are too thin, but the acting’s universally solid. Powell, Williams, Gleason, Lansbury. The script—from James Hill and Frank Wead—does them no favors.

Terrible, silly music from Nathaniel Shilkret (like slide whistle sounds) does a lot of damage, but Ray June’s photography is good. Unfortunately, Ferris Webster’s editing is not, but it appears to be more lack of good footage from Taurog.

Hoodlum Saint is a tedious movie with an excellent cast reduced to middling performances thanks to the script and direction.

This post is part of the Third Esther Williams Blogathon hosted by Michaela of Love Letters to Old Hollywood.

Professional Sweetheart (1933, William A. Seiter)

There are a handful of Pre-Code elements in Professional Sweetheart it doesn’t seem like the Code broke so much as saved movies from. For instance, when Ginger Rogers needs to break out of her Stepford Wives mindset—Kentucky cracker Norman Foster has beaten her into it—all the city boys need to do is put her former maid, Black woman Theresa Harris, on the radio in her singing spot and they know it’ll get Rogers upset enough to return to New York and her job. Mind you, Harris was a pal to Rogers, though given Harris’s singing can get through Foster’s layers of whitebread and make him feel funny in his hips in a way Rogers can’t… I mean, it’s gross.

Also gross? Having Zasu Pitts playing a vaguely Hispanic character so they can simultaneously make fun of her name and her being a ditzy woman.

There are probably some other things but those two and a half are the big standouts. The half being all Rogers needs to get her sinful thoughts of out her head—she wants to dress sexy, smoke cigarettes, and go to the clubs in Harlem—is for a red-blooded dipshit cracker like Foster to bop her one when she shows too much agency after being kidnapped.

Most of those elements—not Pitts, the movie craps on her from the start and she’s entirely complicit in the characterization—come in the third act, though Foster’s never a good character. He’s okay when Rogers is making eyes at him for a scene; otherwise he’s a hick punchline, literally hired to be her boyfriend because he’s the whitest guy they can find.

The “They” is wash cloth manufacturer Gregory Ratoff and his gang of cronies. There’s press agent (and former newspaperman) Frank McHugh, designer Franklin Pangborn (he makes all Rogers’s dresses and decorates her apartment and might be what 1933 codes as gay, but there’s a final twist on that subtext), and then lawyer Frank Darien. Rogers is their radio personality, their “Purity Girl.” They plucked her out of an orphanage and made her a star in New York City, but she just wants to get smoking, drinking, and dancing. Not to mention getting a fellow or two.

Hence the boys tracking down Foster to try to create a wholesome romance narrative.

Professional Sweetheart’s big problem is the script. Director Seiter’s able to get some good energy going for the comedy—Ratoff and his sidekicks are bickering goons—but the film doesn’t have anything to do with Rogers. Except occasionally parade her around in underwear. But for a movie where she’s top-billed and the titular character… the first bit of agency she gets to show is her misogynoir.

McHugh’s pretty funny and has good timing. Ratoff’s maybe the best performance overall, even though he’s playing a vague European ethnic caricature—there’s this whole subtext about melting pot Americans trying to sell to stupid middle Americans, which is just Hollywood at that point. Pangborn’s good too, though it takes a while and there are caveats. Darien has the absolute least of any character but somehow provides the most stability to scenes.

Allen Jenkins is good as the dish cloth salesman out to steal Rogers away and Lucien Littlefield’s reliable as the radio announcer. It’s weird how reliability and stability are in so short supply in the film’s performances but there’s only so much anyone can do with the script.

Seiter’s direction is low middling. He shows some energy whenever he gets to do outside scenes, but is more often lethargic. It’s a bummer since he at least seems to be trying in the first scene, as the action pans from Rogers and Littlefield on air to Ratoff freaking out his nightly lingerie bribe for Rogers won’t come in time and she’ll presumably tell the audience to frack off.

Professional Sweetheart never gets near living up to the cast’s potential—it’s impossible to say whether or not Foster’s good or bad in the picture just because of the script–but the third act such a perfunctory, easy, icky conclusion, it drags the film down for the finish. It’s particularly odd how the first act is based around the idea Rogers is a star only to continuously demote her importance the rest of the picture.

Needs a rewrite. And maybe a new director.

And not to be so bigot-y in its progressiveness.

Mighty Joe Young (1949, Ernest B. Schoedsack)

From the first scene, Mighty Joe Young is concerning. There’s a nice establishing shot of an Africa plantation, with some great matte work, then little White girl on the plantation Lora Lee Michel sees a couple African men passing with a basket. She wants what’s in the basket, so there’s a nice lengthy barter sequence where you try to figure out not if it’s racist, but in how many ways it’s racist. Michel’s supposed to be adorable but is annoying and bad, which is more than Mighty Joe can handle. It’s going to be bad way too frequently; annoying and bad is just too much. Michel gets the basket and the baby gorilla it carries. When dad (a completely checked out Regis Toomey) gets home, he says she can’t keep the gorilla but of course she can because she’s precocious and mom’s dead.

Toomey’s foreshadowing for the supporting performances in the rest of the movie, which is familiar faces giving—at best—checked out performances and, in the case of Nestor Paiva, annoying ones. Though maybe it’s not Paiva’s fault; he’s playing the part like you want to see him get eaten by lions but Mighty Joe Young is a cloying kids’ movie and there’s not going to be any great feline feasting. Worse, there’s going to be lots of lions thrown around for stunts.

The film skips ahead twelve years and 8,000 miles west to New York City, where promoter Robert Armstrong is gearing up for an African expedient. He’s opening a new safari-themed Hollywood night club, even though sidekick Frank McHugh thinks it’s a bad idea. You know who doesn’t think it’s a bad idea? Out of work rodeo cowboy Ben Johnson, who’s character’s last name is Johnson and you feel like it’s because Johnson would forget anything else. Johnson’s not unlikable or annoying—actually quite the feat—but he’s beyond amateurish. Director Schoedsack does nothing for his actors.

So off Armstrong and Johnson go to Africa, joined by one of the aforementioned checked-out supporting performers, Denis Green (really, it’s hard to fault any of the actors when Ruth Rose’s script has the blandest dialogue and Schoedsack’s got zero interest in directing the cast). They’re just about to come home with all the tigers Johnson and his fellow cowboys have lassoed when Mighty Joe Young comes a-knocking–previewing the film’s impressive composite shots, where stop motion Joe will interact with the live action—and Armstrong, feeling his Carl Denham coming on, decides they’re going to rope it and bring it back with them.

Only after Joe beats up a bunch of cowboys—the cowboy thing, which goes away for most of the movie after this sequence, seems the most desperate bit of quadrant hunting—does Terry Moore appear and calm the the mighty ape. Moore is playing Michel grown-up; though, in the weirdest, definitely ickiest while not for sure being intentionally gross quadrant hunting, she’s not yet legal age, which means the contract she signs with Armstrong to do a night club act isn’t legal and also it means when thirty-year old Johnson is her love interest, he was going to have to take Moore back to Oklahoma to marry her because even in 1948 it seems like California wasn’t okay with literal dudes taking child brides. Oklahoma was, of course.

Anyway.

Things go terribly wrong and there’s a long Joe wrecking Safari-themed night club scene and fighting lions. The strange thing about the action is what the film’s willing to do stop motion and what it’s not. It uses stop motion lions sparingly, instead cutting in the real ones, usually just when a thrown lion hits something, giving the aforementioned air of animal abuse. With the horses too, in the Joe vs. cowboys scene. It also seems like the kind of movie where they’d hurt animals, while the main plot is about how you shouldn’t hurt an animal. After the night club, Johnson and Moore have to get Joe out of town—the cops want to shoot him dead—so Armstrong helps them get out.

The climax isn’t even about Joe vs. the cops or Joe escaping, it’s this out-of-nowhere orphanage fire, where Johnson, Moore, and the ape have to save children. That sequence is pretty good. The lasso thing comes back and is dumb, but it’s at last suspenseful. Most of it, anyway. They push it, which isn’t a surprise.

The stop motion’s good, but underutilized. While nothing about Joe is interesting—it feels like budget King Kong, especially the model design on Joe; the movement is great, the model itself is eh—some of the other effects, particularly with the occasional person, clicks. There’s some potential to it.

About halfway through it seems like the film’s greatest tragedy is wasting Armstrong, who’s sort of spoofing himself, sort of just doing a broad comedy performance. It rarely all comes together—Rose’s script and Schoedsack’s direction work actively against it—but, again, the obvious potential is visible. Armstrong and McHugh really ought to have been a lot more fun together.

Moore’s awful. She’s not unlikable but she’s tiring. Johnson’s at least not tiring, but it might be because he’s so unmoving you forget he’s not scenery.

A distressingly bad score from Roy Webb doesn’t help either.

From go—well, okay, from the first scene with actors—Mighty Joe Young is clearly in dire straits. The special effects sequences are technically engaging but rarely dramatically. Who knows what better writing and better direction might’ve wrought. Perhaps something entertaining, but at least the great performance Armstrong can so obviously deliver, if only someone were interested in him doing so.

Mighty Joe Young (1949, Ernest B. Schoedsack)

From the first scene, Mighty Joe Young is concerning. There’s a nice establishing shot of an Africa plantation, with some great matte work, then little white girl on the plantation Lora Lee Michel sees a couple African men passing with a basket. She wants what’s in the basket, so there’s a nice lengthy barter sequence where you try to figure out not if it’s racist, but in how many ways it’s racist. Michel’s supposed to be adorable but is annoying and bad, which is more than Mighty Joe can handle. It’s going to be bad way too frequently; annoying and bad is just too much. Michel gets the basket and the baby gorilla it carries. When dad (a completely checked out Regis Toomey) gets home, he says she can’t keep the gorilla but of course she can because she’s precocious and mom’s dead.

Toomey’s foreshadowing for the supporting performances in the rest of the movie, which is familiar faces giving—at best—checked out performances and, in the case of Nestor Paiva, annoying ones. Though maybe it’s not Paiva’s fault; he’s playing the part like you want to see him get eaten by lions but Mighty Joe Young is a cloying kids’ movie and there’s not going to be any great feline feasting. Worse, there’s going to be lots of lions thrown around for stunts.

The film skips ahead twelve years and 8,000 miles west to New York City, where promoter Robert Armstrong is gearing up for an African expedient. He’s opening a new safari-themed Hollywood night club, even though sidekick Frank McHugh thinks it’s a bad idea. You know who doesn’t think it’s a bad idea? Out of work rodeo cowboy Ben Johnson, who’s character’s last name is Johnson and you feel like it’s because Johnson would forget anything else. Johnson’s not unlikable or annoying—actually quite the feat—but he’s beyond amateurish. Director Schoedsack does nothing for his actors.

So off Armstrong and Johnson go to Africa, joined by one of the aforementioned checked-out supporting performers, Denis Green (really, it’s hard to fault any of the actors when Ruth Rose’s script has the blandest dialogue and Schoedsack’s got zero interest in directing the cast). They’re just about to come home with all the tigers Johnson and his fellow cowboys have lassoed when Mighty Joe Young comes a-knocking–previewing the film’s impressive composite shots, where stop motion Joe will interact with the live action—and Armstrong, feeling his Carl Denham coming on, decides they’re going to rope it and bring it back with them.

Only after Joe beats up a bunch of cowboys—the cowboy thing, which goes away for most of the movie after this sequence, seems the most desperate bit of quadrant hunting—does Terry Moore appear and calm the the mighty ape. Moore is playing Michel grown-up; though, in the weirdest, definitely ickiest while not for sure being intentionally gross quadrant hunting, she’s not yet legal age, which means the contract she signs with Armstrong to do a night club act isn’t legal and also it means when thirty-year old Johnson is her love interest, he was going to have to take Moore back to Oklahoma to marry her because even in 1948 it seems like California wasn’t okay with literal dudes taking child brides. Oklahoma was, of course.

Anyway.

Things go terribly wrong and there’s a long Joe wrecking Safari-themed night club scene and fighting lions. The strange thing about the action is what the film’s willing to do stop motion and what it’s not. It uses stop motion lions sparingly, instead cutting in the real ones, usually just when a thrown lion hits something, giving the aforementioned air of animal abuse. With the horses too, in the Joe vs. cowboys scene. It also seems like the kind of movie where they’d hurt animals, while the main plot is about how you shouldn’t hurt an animal. After the night club, Johnson and Moore have to get Joe out of town—the cops want to shoot him dead—so Armstrong helps them get out.

The climax isn’t even about Joe vs. the cops or Joe escaping, it’s this out-of-nowhere orphanage fire, where Johnson, Moore, and the ape have to save children. That sequence is pretty good. The lasso thing comes back and is dumb, but it’s at last suspenseful. Most of it, anyway. They push it, which isn’t a surprise.

The stop motion’s good, but underutilized. While nothing about Joe is interesting—it feels like budget King Kong, especially the model design on Joe; the movement is great, the model itself is eh—some of the other effects, particularly with the occasional person, clicks. There’s some potential to it.

About halfway through it seems like the film’s greatest tragedy is wasting Armstrong, who’s sort of spoofing himself, sort of just doing a broad comedy performance. It rarely all comes together—Rose’s script and Schoedsack’s direction work actively against it—but, again, the obvious potential is visible. Armstrong and McHugh really ought to have been a lot more fun together.

Moore’s awful. She’s not unlikable but she’s tiring. Johnson’s at least not tiring, but it might be because he’s so unmoving you forget he’s not scenery.

A distressingly bad score from Roy Webb doesn’t help either.

From go—well, okay, from the first scene with actors—Mighty Joe Young is clearly in dire straits. The special effects sequences are technically engaging but rarely dramatically. Who knows what better writing and better direction might’ve wrought. Perhaps something entertaining, but at least the great performance Armstrong can so obviously deliver, if only someone were interested in him doing so.

I Love You Again (1940, W.S. Van Dyke)

I Love You Again is such a confident success–the whole thing rests on William Powell and everything he does in the entire picture is fantastic–it’s hard to think of anything wrong with it. It moves beautifully, its ninety-nine minutes sailing by, the supporting cast is all excellent and every one of its big comic scenes work.

The film’s premise–Powell as a teetotaler who, following a hit on the head, discovers he’s really a con artist–is well-suited as a vehicle for he and Myrna Loy. Loy plays the divorcing wife–bored with the teetotaler–who finds him a changed and intriguing man. I Love You Again comes about seven years after their first pairing and the two work in absolute unison, allowing the narrative to do without added exposition.

Watching Powell pursue Loy–and run afoul of her new beau, played by Donald Douglas (in one of the film’s only weak performances)–is delightful, with their pre-existing film partnership part of the agreed upon amusement. And it’s their filmic relationship, the one playing out in I Love You Again, where the film gets overconfident. It assumes the viewer will take that relationship for granted to a degree; the romance, which becomes the film’s driving force, isn’t the biggest plot foil.

Instead, there’s an elaborate con going on. The con’s good and beautifully handled–it’s a shame Edmund Lowe doesn’t have more scenes, but Frank McHugh’s great as Powell’s sidekick–but it confuses the film’s effectiveness. Loy’s hardly in the film’s last third, just because there’s an elaborate and hilarious set-up for the con involving Powell dressed up as a Boy Scout. Because the sequence is so good–and because Loy and Powell do have a nice scene dealing with the romance plot following it–as the film plays, it isn’t clear how much time Loy’s been off-screen.

The first half of the film, filled with some of its best comic scenes–there’s a great dinner scene with Powell, Loy and Douglas, another scene with Powell and Loy shopping–is heavy on Loy. She’s an integral part of the experience and to put her off-screen because it’s workable is bothersome (I know I’m harping on it, but Loy doesn’t get a very good close).

In some ways, this pairing is more convenient than collaborative. Powell gets to do physical comedy, play two wildly different parts (the teetotaler being completely against type for him) and gets to work with McHugh. He and Powell have a great chemistry and McHugh gets most of the film’s best lines; his character is the only one free of a real narrative.

But the film viewing experience itself is so joyful, it’s hard to identify the shortcuts the filmmakers are taking while watching. The film’s a superior diversion and the slightly less than filling feeling takes a few minutes to set in. During, there are a few moments where it’s clear Van Dyke’s not really giving the direction his all. Some of the camera set-ups are identical–even if they frequently do have some excellent cuts–and he’s not really trying. He doesn’t have to, not with the material, not with the cast, but it’d have been something if he had.

The Runaround (1946, Charles Lamont)

It takes a while for The Runaround to get started… actually, I suppose it’d more accurate to say it stalls out after the first fifteen minutes, then takes another twenty or so to get started again. The film starts out strong with Frank McHugh in a sidekick role–McHugh’s perfect in that role–and lead Rod Cameron is appealing (even if he’s not the most emotive actor). The first fifteen minutes are a comedic chase between Cameron and opponent (they’re private detectives competing–whoever brings home the missing heiress wins) Broderick Crawford. Crawford’s really broad in this role, so broad it got me thinking about the use of the term to describe performances. It doesn’t hurt the film much (though, obviously, a really good performance would have been nice), but it is a surprise coming from Crawford. There’s not much in the script, but it’s open enough he could have done something with it.

Then Ella Raines shows up (as the missing heiress) and the movie stalls out. The script tries to force her in to the existing chance and competition sequences already going and it starts getting tiresome around the forty minute mark. The characters had been moving east–from California–for a few minutes with the same gags going on, then there’s a wonderfully choreographed chase scene involving a dozen taxis and… the movie changes. A lot has to do with Raines’s character developing, but it also changes tone. The Runaround changes, almost immediately, in to a great road movie. There’s still the competition and chase elements, but they become third and fourth, behind the romance and the road movie.

Lamont is a particularly good fight scene director–I’m pretty sure the scene where Crawford knocks the door shut with a jump kick is really him–and he has some other nice sequences. Most of them are on the road… It’s nice how the movie can skirt taking too long to get where it’s going and putting in some substandard minutes and not call attention to the obvious quality shift (oddly, the less McHugh is in the story, the better the movie). It plays like it needed a rewrite, like the writers figured out certain aspects of the story when writing the script, then never went back to tighten up the scenes.

There are also quite a few good more traditional comedy moments (particularly the hotel with the annoyingly friendly employees or the husband and wife who are supposed to be acting like newlyweds, but after six years and three kids, find the idea repugnant) and they contribute to The Runaround’s success. But most of the credit belongs to Cameron and Raines’s chemistry, even if she’s done far better work in other films (though, like I said before, the script works against her for her first fifteen minutes or so).

3/4★★★

CREDITS

Directed by Charles Lamont; screenplay by Sam Hellman and Arthur T. Horman, based on a story by Horman and Walter Wise; director of photography, George Robinson; edited by Ted J. Kent; music by Frank Skinner; produced by Joseph Gershenson; released by Universal Pictures.

Starring Ella Raines (Penelope), Rod Cameron (Kildane), Broderick Crawford (Louis Prentiss), Frank McHugh (Wally Quayle), George Cleveland (Feenan the cabbie), Joan Shawlee (Baby Willis), Samuel S. Hinds (Norman Hampton), Joe Sawyer (Hutchins), Nana Bryant (Mrs. Mildred Hampton), Dave Willock (Willis), Charles Coleman (Butler) and Jack Overman (Cusack).

RELATED