The Sunday Intertitle: Three to Get Ready

So, didn’t make it in for STEAMBOAT BILL, JR but rocked up in time for Frank Lloyd’s OLIVER TWIST, with Neil Brand on piano — great stuff, actually a revelation on the big screen and with proper accompaniment. Our second remember of the Standing theatrical family appeared, Joan Standing, a Standing by marriage (Herbert Standing was in JUST AROUND THE CORNER way back on Friday was it?). John Standing, perhaps the last of the line, is still with us. I said this to friends and Mark immediately volunteered “I’m Still Standing” while Steph offered “Last Man Standing.”

My programme notes for this one are here.

Next up was OUR DANCING DAUGHTERS, a glossy MGM se-and-morality fable. You get not only Joan Crawford but also Anita Page and Nils Aster and Johnny Mack Brown and Dorothy Sebastian and Edward Nugent — all very sleek and elegant. Much as I enjoyed the funhouse visage of Ernest Torrence in MANTRAP, his facial contours a slalom for the eyeballs, there was much to be said for this panoply of male and female loveliness, surrounded by Cedric Gibbons’ moderne sets and aglow with studio moonlight. Maude Nelissen wrenched such heartache from the piano it had to get an emergency retuning in the interval.

Final film would have been THE ORGANIST OF ST VITUS (Martin Fric) but if I’d stayed for that one I wouldn’t have made it home, so the actual last film was THE RACKET, my man Lewis Milestone, and livelier than I’d remembered it, aided by more thugs with ugly mugs than you could shake Percy Marmont at — Louis Wolheim leading the mob with his impacted fender of a fizzog, and George “the Runt” E. Stone playing his equally lovely son. It’s a Howard Hughes production so some of the subsidiary goons may have been picked up from the real rackers, as was purportedly done on SCARFACE. Marie Prevost was ace, and director Milestone himself cameo’d as a speakeasy doorman (“Swordfish!”) ~

“Skeets” Gallagher played a drunken journo with a marked air of Frank McHugh avant la lettre. I googled the play to see whether McHugh had perchance originated the role and sleepy-eyed Gallagher mimicked his perf, but no. (But my research reminded me that John Cromwell starred in the play, and got to direct the remake.) Perhaps McHugh patterned his schtick on Gallagher, or perhaps the McHugh archetype was haunting the Jungian unconch for some time before manifesting — for Milestone! — in THE FRONT PAGE a few scant years later? (There are a few earlier McHugh appearances, but his role in TFP — as “McCue” — seems to set the seal on his persona.)

Mike Nolan (piano) and Frank Bockius (percussion) enhanced this one considerable. I had a ringside seat for the drum kit — RACKET is right! — no sleeping through that one. A riotous jazz-age end to the evening.

More tomorrow!

Newshounds

“Whatever made Eddie Buzzell think he could direct?” mused Groucho Marx, a thought captured by the eager pen of Steve Stoliar in his essential memoir Raised Eyebrows. Like it had been bothering Groucho for thirty-plus years since making AT THE CIRCUS and GO WEST and he finally had to give voice to it.

I’ve been more inclined to give Mr. Buzzell a pass — he did some OK films with some nice shots in them. But looking at the original LIBELED LADY, which Buzzell remade as EASY TO WED, does make me feel a bit less charitable. Neither film is great, both have enjoyable moments, but Buzzell’s tends to miss the joke a lot of the time.

(You can expect a lot of late-thirties / forties stuff for a while as James Harvey’s book Romantic Comedy causes me to look up films that have passed me by.)

Sleeves by Dolly Tree.

Of course, Jack Conway doesn’t have a huge directorial reputation either, but he knew his business, I reckon. And he has the unbeatable William Powell and Myrna Loy to work with instead of Esther Williams and Van Johnson, and Jean Harlow and Spencer Tracy in place of Lucille Ball and Keenan Wynn. And best of all, he doesn’t have Ben Blue anywhere his version. Hate is a very tiring emotion, so somebody please name a film in which Ben Blue wasn’t a repulsive, unfunny bore so I can let go of this hate for him which is eating my soul.

“I didn’t think Spencer Tracy could do this kind of fast-talking newspaper thing,” said Fiona early on.

“Well, he can talk fast. I don’t know how funny he’s going to be,” I pondered.

“Oh he’s not FUNNY,” clarified Fiona.

But he’s not too bad. Outclassed by Wm. Powell, of course.

“I*am* too funny!”

Buzzell got the help of Buster Keaton for his main bit of visual comedy in EASY TO WED, as he had done for GO WEST. Conway and Powell work it out alone, and their gags aren’t as smart but Powell’s playing is a joy. The main fun in this, though, apart from Dolly Tree’s outlandish costumes (she mainly runs amuck on Harlow) is Loy, introduced with her back to the camera but instantly recognizable, and instantly FUN. Esther Williams could certainly be fun, but being a swimmer rather than an actress, she wasn’t as resourceful at finding the fun.

On paper, everyone in this story is kind of awful. Spencer Tracy stands Harlow up at the altar then makes her marry Powell for business purposes. Powell is trying to frame Loy on an adultery rap to kill off her libel suit against his newspaper. Loy ought to be sympathetic, but she and dad Walter Connolly (Cecil Kellaway in the remake) are terribly rude to Powell, BEFORE they know what a rat he is.

As you’ve never seen them before

What we have is the offspring of the hardboiled newspaper comedy and the screwball — unlike in THE FRONT PAGE and its offspring, nothing is really at stake here (the wellbeing of a muckraking newspaper doesn’t count) but the abrasiveness owes more to Hecht & McCarthy’s acerbic spirit than to the usual romantic comedy. In fact, Maurine Dallas Watkins, one of the writers, wrote CHICAGO — she has a bigger claim to inventing the newspaper comedy than anyone else. As the movie gets away from the newsroom and into the haunts of the wealthy, it does introduce a little more sweetness, but as the rich folks have been introduced as pretty tough, deceitful and boorish, we carry a lot of that sour feeling with us.

In both versions, the jilted bride is harshly treated and seems the most blameless figure. There are the usual dumb blonde jokes — when Powell marries Loy while still married to Harlow, her keen legal mind pounces: “That’s arson!” But her being dumb or common doesn’t justify any of the loutish treatment she gets from Tracy and Powell. It’s a colossal relief when Myrna is nice to her (as Harvey points out, Loy is always sympathetic to other women, always projects a sense of companionship rather than judgement). Sympathy may be the enemy of drama, as Alexander Mackendrick warned, but if you build a drama without any bonds of sympathy between the characters… you’re David Mamet.

Loy – instantly recognizable ESPECIALLY when incognito.

What I’m saying is that this is a rare case where I disagree with James Harvey, who likes this film more than we did. But the good news is, the original CHICAGO is playing at Bo’ness. THAT one I like!

It All Ties Together

In James Whale’s THE KISS BEFORE THE MIRROR, Nancy Carroll is an unfaithful wife named Maria living in fear of her murderously jealous husband, Paul (Frank Morgan).

In Jean Epstein’s COEUR FIDELE. Gina Manes is an unfaithful wife named Maria living in fear of her murderously jealous husband, Paul (Edmond Van Daele).

In James Whale’s REMEMBER LAST NIGHT?, Gustaf Von Seyffertitz is a German psychoanalyst shot while attempting to reconstruct a crime.

In Lewis Milestone’s THE FRONT PAGE, Gustaf Von Seyffertitz is a German psychoanalyst shot while attempting to reconstruct a crime.

In THE MYSTERY OF THE LEAPING FISH, Douglas Fairbanks snorts coke.

In TOUCHEZ-PAS AU GRISBI, Jeanne Moreau snorts coke.

In ONE-EYED JACKS, Marlon Brando is tormented by a corrupt sheriff.

In THE HALF-BREED, Douglas Fairbanks is persecuted by a corrupt sheriff.

In KING OF JAZZ, a man plunges his hands into a tank of goldfish.

In Louis Lumiere’s LA PECHE AU POISSONS ROUGES, a baby plunges his hands into a bowl of goldfish.

All these films played the day before yesterday in Bologna. Cinema is imploding into a kind of primal atom.