Tag: Joan Blondell

Night Nurse (1931, William A. Wellman)

For most of Night Nurse’s seventy-two minute runtime, lead Barbara Stanwyck is able to keep the film going just through her intensity. She’s a new nurse on her first assignment after the hospital, caring for a couple of anemic kids in their mansion, condo apartments, or just studio apartment set. The hospital set in Night Nurse is solid. The ritzy rich place, not so much. They need the separate apartments because the kids—vaguely annoying but not entirely unlikable Betty Jane Graham and Marcia Mae Jones—need to be kept away from their mother, Charlotte Merriam, who’s busy getting drunk while they get worse.

The family is under the care of creepy doctor who doesn’t have a license Ralf Harolde. You know Harolde’s creepy because he winks a lot. It’s a weak, unsure performance. Some of it’s the script, some of it’s Harolde, some of it’s Wellman’s direction. Screenwriters Oliver H.P. Garrett and Charles Kenyon can’t seem to crack the dialogue, Harolde’s not bringing anything of substance, and Wellman’s relying on the gimmicks. Wellman has a handful of good sequences in Night Nurse, but they’re relatively short and never when the film really needs them. And nothing he does with the actors ever works. When an actor succeeds, it’s not thanks to Wellman (or the editor, Edward M. McDermott, who’s always at least a half second off in his cuts). Meanwhile, Garrett and Kenyon try a few things themselves—repetitive dialogue for Stanwyck, which doesn’t land the first time and doesn’t land the next four times they use it as a touchstone; they have a little more success with the callbacks mocking mean head nurse Vera Lewis.

Lewis initially doesn’t want to hire Stanwyck because she doesn’t have a high school diploma, but after Stanwyck literally bumps into hospital head of staff Charles Winninger and they make eyes at each other–and potentially Winninger at Stanwyck’s ankles—he makes sure she gets the job. Winninger and Stanwyck having any kind of horizontal interest (one assumes it’s more Winninger’s interest) in one another doesn’t make it through the first ten minutes, much less first act. After one lewd implication from Stanwyck’s roommate (it’s room and board for nurses) Joan Blondell, Winninger’s forgotten until they need a real doctor to tell Stanwyck no one’s going to believe some woman about the weird goings on at the Merriam house whether she’s a nurse or not.

The first third of Nurse is Stanwyck and Blondell’s antics while in training, which includes Stanwyck patching up a shot bootlegger—Ben Lyon—who then supports her career ambitions from afar. The rest is Stanwyck and Blondell on assignment—Blondell’s the day nurse and Stanywck is the night—with the sick kids. The house has a suspicious housekeeper (Blanche Friderici, who’s alternately fine and miscast, just not actually peculiar enough for the household), drunk mom Merriam’s drunk, rapey boyfriend Walter McGrail (who’s a great minor villain), and then brute chauffeur Clark Gable. Gable’s fairly terrifying for most of his scenes, which is a high light as the last third of Night Nurse just gets talkier and talkier. The movie only runs seventy minutes but they’ve only got story for maybe sixty. There’s so much padding, which gets particularly frustrating thanks to Wellman’s tedious composition and pacing.

Night Nurse isn’t just slow, it’s repetitive. No one can figure out how to stretch the scenes so they just keep saying the same things over and over again until the script can gin up some coincidence. There are also so many dead end tangents, including major characters. The film follows the tangent for a scene, dragging it out, then drops it and never mentions it again. If these moves were successful, the film would be narratively efficient. Since they’re not, it’s just floundering.

Stanwyck’s a good lead—which is different than giving a good performance; she’s fine, but she can only sell so much because she’s the only one interested in selling it. The script and Wellman are indifferent at best. Blondell’s good. Lyon’s really likable. Gable’s solid. Winninger’s disappointing, but a bunch of it could be the script not giving him anything to really do. But not all of it.

I somehow managed to forget to mention a large portion of Night Nurse is dedicated to getting Stanwyck and Blondell into various stages of undress. Wellman’s not particularly interested in those sequences either, which is good and all, but the way he shows his disinterest is to be just as disinterested in everything else. And if the screenwriters were as inventive with the mystery aspects as they were getting Blondell and Stanywck to change their clothes… Night Nurse might work out.

As is, Stanwyck keeps it engaging until the third act when the dramatics take over and then the movie fizzles when leveraging those.

The ending’s a bit of a trip, morality-wise, but not in a way it helps (or even hurts) at all.

Millie (1931, John Francis Dillon)

Even with some first and third act problems and a peculiar present action–Millie’s a solid melodrama. It works up actual suspense, actual danger, and finds true villainy amid the pat shittiness of men. In addition to passing Bechdel—briefly but definitely—the film ends up fully confronting all the things it seems like it’d be safer to avoid, especially since it shifts the protagonist role from the title character—played by Helen Twelvetrees—to the aforementioned villain. It’s a successful move, even if it does mean Twelvetrees loses the third act.

To be fair, of course, the better movie for Twelvetrees is potential Millie 2, as she spends this film floundering for seventeen or eighteen years (the aforementioned peculiar present action).

The film starts with Twelvetrees a rambunctious, but marriage age, teen, who lets businessman James Hall talk her into marrying him so she can move to New York. Of course, before she can go to New York, they need to stop off at a motel so Hall can check the tires (at least they elope first). It’s a disquieting scene, with Twelvetrees playing it a little too histrionic but at least they’re trying, as the film makes all sorts of implications about Hall’s expectations of her and her questionable willingness.

Then the film skips ahead three years to Twelvetrees a miserable wealthy housewife who isn’t even allowed to bathe her own kid. Hall is always going out on business and never wants to paw her anymore; at least mother-in-law Charlotte Walker is nice to her (better than her own mom, who threw her to wolf Hall without a thought), but Twelvetrees needs friends. So when childhood pal Joan Blondell calls up looking for a loan from a rich friend, Twelvetrees is more than happy to hang out.

Blondell and her roommate, Lilyan Tashman, are professional lady friends to rich, sometimes married men who travel the country looking for the best time. We don’t get a lot of specifics, but it’ll turn out acerbic Tashman is the soulful one whereas Blondell is always the ditz. They’re both really good, but Tashman’s fantastic when she gets to play it earnest.

Unfortunately, they take Twelvetrees to a place she’s never frequented—a lunchtime cabaret for businessmen and their girlfriends—and she’s in for a rude awakening.

The next time jump is two to four years (I think it starts at two, then skips ahead another two to hit four total; sometimes there are title cards, sometimes not) and Twelvetrees is now on her own, trying to make her own way. She’s still good friends with Tashman and Blondell, but isn’t interested in finding men to pay for her upkeep. Instead she works at a hotel cigarette stand, charming various men, most importantly businessman John Halliday and newspaper reporter Robert Ames, but never getting serious (or horizontal) with them.

This middle section of the film, which has Twelvetrees’s anti-romance resolve breaking and coming to another rude awakening, has her best acting in the film. She’s no longer reduced to either giddiness or despair and there’s a lot of character development before she gives in to temptation.

The last act has another jump ahead—this time seven or eight years (I should remember, there’s a title card)—and at that point the film shifts from Twelvetrees being the protagonist to her being the subject. Most of the supporting cast doesn’t get old age makeup, but Twelvetrees gets very tired late thirties eyeshadow and maybe Rock gets a little. Frank McHugh, as Rock’s fellow reporter and amiable sidekick, however, gets none. And Halliday finally seems to be playing his age (late forties).

Though the film’s very timey-wimey with the present action. If it starts in 1931 and ends in the late forties, obviously there’s no World War II because they didn’t know but there’s also no change in the world in those seventeen years. If it starts in 1914 and ends in 1931 or whatever… I mean, they missed the Great War. Also the technology appears identical.

The third act has all the suspense and the most dramatic melodrama—not really soapy though—and while the resolution sets up a far better potential story for the cast, it’s still a reasonable success. Just a bummer they weren’t able to center Twelvetrees through it—though then you couldn’t do the third act in fifteen or twenty minutes; it would’ve been nice for her to get to keep her movie in the finish.

Acting-wise, Twelvetrees, Halliday, and Tashman are the best. Ames is a little flat, though some of it’s the script (some of it’s just everyone else having more personality). Hall’s probably the only complete whiff. Solid support from Anita Louise as well.

Millie’s a lot better than it should be, with the filmmakers actually sticking by a scandalous but also not at all story until they get it told. And when Twelvetrees gets to be the star (and have some agency), she’s excellent.

Lawyer Man (1932, William Dieterle)

Lawyer Man is a tad too streamlined. It runs around seventy minutes, charting neighborhood attorney–meaning he works with ethnic types and not blue bloods–William Powell’s rise and fall from grace. At the end, he says something about the events taking place over two years, which the film accomplishes through a variety of narrative shortcuts, usually newspaper headlines. The second half of the film is a little too truncated; it plays like the budget ran out around the forty-five minute mark.

The film opens on the crowded streets of the East Side of Manhattan; Powell’s office is amid the Jewish theaters, the street markets, the hustle and bustle of the working folk. He’s got an admiring secretary (Joan Blondell) but he’s a skirt-chaser, which contributes to his eventual downfall. Something Blondell warns him about frequently.

By the second half of the film, when Powell’s made it, there’s no more exterior street scenes. It’s one office to another, usually with the same handful of cast members. After some wonderfully efficient setup, the plot proper kicks off with society lawyer Alan Dinehart offering Powell a partnership. Whenever Powell beats someone in court, they always want to be pals–he’s such a good lawyer they can’t help it. Unfortunately, part of the film’s efficiency is never showing any of the courtroom lawyering. Even when it’s Powell on trial.

Anyway. Powell and Blondell go uptown to a skyscraper office and a better class of clients. Powell’s still skirt-chasing, Blondell’s still obviously mooning over him (Powell’s unbelievable obliviousness to it is one of Lawyer Man’s failings), but they’re more successful. And then in walks Helen Vinson as Dinehart’s sister and a suitable marriage prospect for Powell. So the film’s now got Powell, Blondell, Vinson, and Dinehart in the mix as far as characters.

Immediately after Powell runs afoul of political fixer David Landau, Claire Dodd comes into the film. She’s a showgirl just jilted by society doctor (and Landau flunky) Kenneth Thomson. Since Lawyer Man is so streamlined, it only takes her about five minutes to have Powell wrapped around her finger. And about ten minutes until she’s helped get him into a bunch of hot water.

Powell’s got to scrap to stay afloat and he becomes a dirty opportunist, with only Blondell sticking by him. At this point, the film sheds pretty much everyone except Powell and Blondell–and shaves Blondell’s subplot off her–as Powell fights to regain his good name. Landau becomes a much bigger player, until he’s pretty much the only other billed actor who interacts with Powell by the final third.

Instead of character development, there’s a lot of summary and speeches from Powell. It’s masterfully done summary, sure, but it’s still just summary. The speeches are a little much. Dieterle sort of zones out during them. He’s really involved when it’s about Powell’s skirt-chasing (there are some great examples of pre-Code visual euphemisms in Lawyer Man too) and Dieterle does really well with the bigger sets. When it’s just the static offices and melodrama… he checks out. Not on the actors, however. Blondell and Powell maintain their charm throughout, even as their characters thin. Blondell’s not the only one who loses her subplots as things progress; Powell goes from a Tex Avery wolf to a practical monk by the end.

The supporting cast is all fine. Landau’s got the only significant part throughout. He’s good.

Lawyer Man’s a little too short, a little too slight. It needs just a little more time to bring its threads together. And to keep its threads in play.

But for a seventy-ish minute programmer? It’s pretty darn good. Great photography from Robert Kurrle and the film’s general sense of humor help.

2.5/4★★½

CREDITS

Directed by William Dieterle; screenplay by Rian James and James Seymour, based on the novel by Max Trell; director of photography, Robert Kurrle; edited by Thomas Pratt; music by Bernhard Kaun; produced by Hal B. Wallis; released by Warner Bros.

Starring William Powell (Anton Adam), Joan Blondell (Olga Michaels), David Landau (John Gilmurry), Helen Vinson (Barbara Bentley), Claire Dodd (Virginia St. Johns), Kenneth Thomson (Dr. Frank Gresham), Allen Jenkins (Izzy Levine), Ann Brody (Mrs. Levine), and Alan Dinehart (Granville Bentley).

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Desk Set (1957, Walter Lang)

Despite being an adaptation of a stage play and having one main set, Desk Set shouldn’t be stagy. The single main location–and its importance–ought to be able to outweigh the staginess. Desk Set does not, however, succeed in not being stagy. It puts off being stagy for quite a while, but not forever, which is too bad.

The fault lies with director Lang. He moves between three camera setups on the main set–the research department for a television network (FBC but in NBC’s building). When it comes time to change everything up in the third act, Lang doesn’t change his camera defaults and it really does knock the film down for its finale. Desk Set was already going a tad long–not good considering it runs just over 100 minutes–and the film needed a strong finish. A really strong finish.

It gets a tepid one instead. Worse, it gets multiple tepid finishes. It’s a shame because the film’s often a lot of fun. Spencer Tracy is a mysterious efficency expert sent to Katharine Hepburn’s research department to do… something. Desk Set takes its time revealing Tracy’s assignment, not even providing clues while he’s rooting around the department, often crawling around on the floor. It’s a quirky part; Tracy’s socially awkward, absentminded, and entirely lovable. At least to the audience. The viewer isn’t worried about getting fired.

In addition to Hepburn, there’s her staff who’s got to worry about getting the pink slip. Joan Blondell, Sue Randall, and Dina Merrill. Randall and Merrill don’t get particularly good parts. They get stuff to do, they get a lot of scenes–the film’s mostly set in the workplace after all–but there’s nothing to them. Randall opens the movie trying to get a better price on a dress and it’s more than she gets to do than in the rest of the picture. Merrill doesn’t get anywhere near as much to do. It’s too bad, they’re both extremely likable.

Though likable is what Desk Set is always going for. Take Gig Young, for instance. He’s Hepburn’s boss and her consistently–but not constantly–frisky paramour. Even though he’s an absolute jerk, he’s fairly likable. I mean, he gets everyone Christmas presents; he didn’t need to get everyone Christmas presents.

Blondell gets the best part in the supporting cast. She’s Hepburn’s confidant, although only sporadically and less after the first act. The first act is a very long day at the network, starting with Tracy arriving, then meeting Hepburn, then the focus moves to Hepburn and her strange encounters with Tracy. The ingrained momentum of the day doesn’t keep up after the first act. Desk Set moves over to summary and slowing down for big sequences.

There are some lovely big sequences, like Tracy and Hepburn getting caught in the rain and having an impromptu dinner date. All of their scenes one-on-one are good–at least, until the third act–with Tracy playing somewhat coy. He’s incredibly impressed with Hepburn and doesn’t seem to know what to do with that admiration. If the third act were stronger, it’d become a problem when Tracy’s crappy to his own employee (Neva Patterson). But it’s not because by that time, Desk Set is about ten minutes overdue for an ending.

Phoebe and Henry Ephron’s script is fine. Leon Shamroy’s photography is decent. Robert L. Simpson’s editing is too jumpy but it seems like director Lang didn’t give him enough to work with. Again, makes no sense since there’s basically just the one location. It’s inexplicable how Lang can’t get enough coverage for it.

Tracy’s great, Hepburn’s better. She energetically embraces her part’s particularities–like reciting full poems or elaborating on her memory shortcuts. She does a lot with those moments. And Lang seems to get it because he just lets the camera watch her deliver the impossibly wordy lines.

It’s just a shame Hepburn’s character becomes a complete moron whenever Young shows up. She does his work for him–her abject deference to such a tool is a big disconnect. Though it does give Blondell some good lines when she’s chiding Hepburn about it.

Tracy and Hepburn make Desk Set, but not even their ability and charm can make up for director Lang. He’s too concerned with making it feel wide–it’s Cinemascope–and fitting as many actors in frame as possible. The third act in the script is problematic too, but better direction might have gotten it through.

This post is part of the Spencer Tracy & Katharine Hepburn Blogathon hosted by Crystal of In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood.

Lizzie (1957, Hugo Haas)

Lizzie is about lead Eleanor Parker’s struggle with multiple personality disorder. More accurately perhaps, Lizzie is about Parker’s multiple personality disorder. As a protagonist, Parker disappears fairly quickly into the film’s eighty minute runtime. She doesn’t even get to open the film; it introduces her through other characters’ expository conversation.

Screenwriter Mel Dinelli, quite unfortunately, often relies on expository conversation.

When Parker is the lead, however, Lizzie is in pretty good shape. Even though Parker’s alternate personalities are a little shallow as far as characterization goes, Parker’s performance is strong. Even she can’t do anything with the hallucination sequences though. Lizzie is a technical mess. Director Haas (who gives himself a supporting acting role, which I’ll get to in a bit) has three directorial modes. Some of Lizzie, when the film is just watching Parker act, feels experimental and edgy. Unfortunately, it contrasts with Haas’s inept handling of regular sequences. Lizzie doesn’t have much of a budget and the sets are bad, something Haas and cinematographer Paul Ivano aggravate. But then Haas and Ivano also go for foreboding mood, with the inept assistance of composer Leith Stevens, and Lizzie feels even more uneven.

As Parker’s psychiatrist, Richard Boone doesn’t have much to do but he’s sincere in the performance. There’s even a scene where Parker tries to draw him out a little, allow him room for personality and Boone demurs. Like I said before, Dinelli’s script is a mess.

As Parker’s suffering aunt, Joan Blondell is good. She starts out as a shrill harpy, but eventually Blondell is able to do something with the part. Haas, as an actor, is her mooning sidekick.

Lizzie has some great acting from Parker, who unfortunately proves no matter how fine a performance, when something is dramatically inert, there’s no way to get it moving.

Miss Pinkerton (1932, Lloyd Bacon)

It’s not difficult to assign blame for Miss Pinkerton‘s failings, it’s difficult to identify anything good about it.

I suppose Joan Blondell isn’t bad in the lead, but she isn’t good. She’s just doing a persona. Wait, George Brent’s good. He’s the police inspector who–quite unrealistically–enlists nurse Blondell to investigate a wacky family for him. He doesn’t believe a murder is a suicide. Or vice versa.

But Blondell just walking around wide-eyed and a little flirty isn’t enough to make a movie. Pinkerton needs some kind of mystery, right?

One mystery might be why the filmmakers use the exteriors to a large house–not a mansion or estate–as the film’s central location. It’s endlessly large in the interiors, which don’t match the exteriors at all.

The supporting cast is atrocious, except C. Henry Gordon. Particularly bad are John Wray and Ruth Hall. Wray acts like he’s in a farce and Hall’s laughable as the victim’s fiancée.

The real problem with Pinkerton is director Bacon. He can’t get good performances from his cast and he can’t make the film’s weak mystery engaging. He also doesn’t seem to understand head room. People are constantly bumping their heads in Pinkerton.

Bacon’s problems directing aren’t immediately apparent because Ray Curtiss’s editing is so awful. It actually distracts from the direction until the head room issues get too obvious.

Barney McGill’s photography, while no great shakes, is competent at least.

Pinkerton‘s greatest success is being really short but still exceptionally boring.

Nightmare Alley (1947, Edmund Goulding)

Nightmare Alley is–or should be–a cautionary tale about the dangers of foreshadowing and being really cute about it. The end of the movie is forecast in the opening scene, then again in the third or fourth scene–hammered in for those who weren’t paying enough attention the first time. The second time key phrases are dropped to make the scene stick in memory, so it all comes up again towards the middle of the film–the inevitable conclusion. I was going to say the worst was how long it took for the film to get to that conclusion (and it takes forever), but the bad pacing isn’t the worst. The worst is what happens at the end, the surprise. The whole movie, which had been cheapening itself for the entire third act, goes all the way with the ending.

Had the film continued as well as it started, it’d be more unfortunate, but the late second act and severe third act sink make the failure a lot more palatable. The beginning–and the rest of the film really–is beautifully directed. Goulding works wonders with group shots, two shots, everything. His composition is an incredibly impressive feast for the eyes. Even the script, on the dialogue level, isn’t bad. The plot just gets more and more ludicrous. After a certain point, it begins to strain credibility as familiar characters disappear and it just gets to be scenes with Tyrone Power and Helen Walker. When it brings Coleen Gray back (she’s fantastic as Power’s suffering and supportive wife), it’s only to get the disastrous conclusion going.

Power–in what could have been his best performance, if only the character hadn’t fallen apart along with the plot–is great, as is Joan Blondell. Ian Keith is also excellent. The beginning mostly just gives the actors dialogue, plot, and room to act really well. Combined with Goudling’s direction, it makes Nightmare Alley seem as though its potential is limitless, but then the plot starts closing off possibilities, boxing in the characters and restricting the actors. Maybe it is a severe mishap after all–especially since it’s probably Gray’s biggest role and she’s so good until the script fails her.

1.5/4★½

CREDITS

Directed by Edmund Goulding; screenplay by Jules Furthman, based on the novel by William Lindsay Gresham; director of photography, Lee Garmes; edited by Barbara McLean; music by Cyril J. Mockridge; produced by George Jessel; released by 20th Century Fox.

Starring Tyrone Power (Stan Carlisle), Joan Blondell (Zeena Krumbein), Coleen Gray (Molly Carlisle), Helen Walker (Lilith Ritter), Taylor Holmes (Ezra Grindle), Mike Mazurki (Bruno) and Ian Keith (Pete Krumbein).

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