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.

It Happened in Hollywood (1937, Harry Lachman)

It Happened in Hollywood is very nearly a success, which is surprising since most of the film is entirely mediocre. There’s a great lead performance from Richard Dix, as a silent movie cowboy who can’t make it in talkies (though, to be fair, the one bombed screen-test scene was more used to comment on the industry’s problematic transition to sound), and it’s nice whenever Fay Wray shows up as his regular onscreen love interest and off-screen possible love interest, but she’s not in it much. And the script doesn’t start getting inventive until well into the second half of the film, which only runs sixty-seven minutes. The direction, which has all sorts of opportunities to comment on sound storytelling versus silent storytelling, misses them all. Then in the second half, when Kid Melodrama starts kicking in (more on him in a moment), director Lachman misses the most perfect opportunity, one where it’s hard to forgive him.

Because Lachman isn’t a lazy director by any means. Hollywood is on a budget for sure, but Lachman and cinematographer Joseph Walker have a lot of big establishing shots (and small ones) and the one fight scene is good. Even if the production values are a little slim. It’s just Lachman isn’t interested in the story and Hollywood needs someone interested in it. Dix seems pretty interested in it, Wray seems pretty interested in it (when she’s around); the entire supporting cast, with the sole exception of Kid Melodrama, is solid. And they need to be really solid for what the script does with them in the second half. Hollywood doesn’t necessarily start with a lot of potential, but it builds up steadily throughout. Only to choke in the finale and not even because of Kid Melodrama. So let’s get to Kid Melodrama.

Kid Melodrama is Bill Burrud. He’s in the hospital at the start of the film, which is where we meet Dix. He’s on a children’s hospital tour, showing his latest silent Western with Fay Wray as his damsel. He’s the biggest Western star in Hollywood, beloved by children nationwide. Both boys and girls based on the hospital audience, which makes it weird when Dix gives a speech ignoring the girls. Something similar happens again even worse at the end, but it’s not the finale choke so it’s just, you know, 1937.

Anyway. Burrud. Burrud is the sickest kid on the ward. He’s going in for surgery and it doesn’t look good, but Dix promises the kid he can visit Dix and his horse in Hollywood if he gets better. Sadly, Burrud gets better. And he sends Dix letters throughout the first half, which chronicles Dix’s immediate and catastrophic fall from stardom in the first few months of the talkies. While he fails, Wray succeeds. For a short while it seems like the film might be about them, even though Wray’s in the film less and less. When Dix gets a chance in talkies again thanks to the aforementioned fight scene, it’s in one of Wray’s pictures, but only barely returns to Hollywood. She’s around for a second, then disappears again, including from Dix’s disaster. Because Dix is scared of her.

Basically Hollywood is forty-four year old Dix acting like a bashful teenager. Wray’s not much better, but she’s a little better. Dix pulls it off, sure, but eventually it gets a little tiresome, which coincides nicely with Dix deciding to abandon Hollywood forever.

Luckily for him, Kid Melodrama Burrud shows up. He got better just to come out and see Dix and he’s an orphan and the foster care guy makes fun of Dix all the time and Hollywood too. Even though Burrud’s annoying as hell, Dix’s concern for him works. Out of nowhere, It Happened in Hollywood all of a sudden gets to do something different. For a while, it gets rather inventive.

So the utterly pointless finish, which actually manages to interrupt a rather nice scene for Dix and Wray where it seems like at least the script understands how things echo throughout the picture… it’s disappointing. And silly. The film all of a sudden stops taking itself seriously just so it can wrap up. Nicely, Dix and Wray have enough charm to get through.

The Palm Beach Story (1942, Preston Sturges)

The Palm Beach Story is a narrative. Director Sturges opens with a rapidly cut prologue showing stars Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea getting married, where he inserts clues for what will eventually be the film’s utterly pointless deus ex machina. Sure, Palm Beach runs less than ninety minutes so it’s possible the viewer be sitting around focusing on the prologue’s unanswered questions, but unlikely. Sturges is betting a lot on no one paying too much attention.

The film’s first act has Colbert paying off she and McCrea’s debt, so she then leaves him. She’d been waiting to do it until they were even with the grocer. Besides an awkward scene where she and McCrea get drunk, there’s almost no character development between them. It’s not just with one another–since the second act requires them both to be dishonest, there’s rarely any sincere scenes between their characters and anyone else in the film.

One has to wonder if Sturges intended the deus ex machina to have more importance, since it deals entirely with Colbert and McCrea and he’s spent most of Palm Beach concentrating on the people they meet. Rudy Vallee and Mary Astor eventually show up to provide romantic interests for the married leads, which ought to be funnier but Sturges spends more time with jokes at Sig Arno’s expense.

Astor is fantastic, Vallee is fine, Colbert is too mercenary and McCrea looks lost.

Sturges never finds the right tone for the film. It’s off from that first scene.

Hail the Conquering Hero (1944, Preston Sturges)

Well.

I’m trying to think about how to talk about Hail the Conquering Hero. It shouldn’t so difficult. The film is great, better than I remembered it, but it’s never easy to talk about great films. I mean, how many words can you pull out of your ass for something you love? You want to share things you love and defecate on the things that deserve it. Hail the Conquering Hero deserves reverence.

Still, there are a few specifics I can comment on. And not Sturges so much. Yes, he constructed an almost perfect film in 96 or so minutes. The structure of a film’s interesting and helps you talk about it if you have to think about how the film succeeds or fails. I’m not doing that here. Yes, there are the great moments of comedy, the wonderful small character relationships between supporting characters that’s seemingly a lost art, there’s lots of stuff….

But, I noticed two things in particular, watching Hail the Conquering Hero today. First, William Demarest is amazing in this film. I know the name and the face, but he’s never stuck out before. For the first hour or so of the film, you can just watch Demarest. Sturges also does a great job directing group scenes. Anyway, the other big particular is Ella Raines. She’s great in this film. I’m a fan of hers anyway, but I don’t remember any of her other performances being quite this good. Maybe they are, maybe I’m just forgetting… Eddie Bracken, as the lead, is good too, but he’s ideal for the role. He doesn’t do any work. There are some good supporting performances that I’m not going to look up on IMDb too. Raines just has a few really good scenes in this one and it pissed me off that I was so surprised.