Classic Movie Picks: August 2016

by Lani

Each month, I scour the Turner Classic Movies schedule for upcoming films that I can't miss. The highlights are posted here for your reading and viewing pleasure! (All listed times are Eastern Standard, check your local listings or TCM.com for actual air times in your area. Each day's schedule begins at 6:00 a.m.; if a film airs between midnight and 6 a.m. it is listed on the previous day's programming schedule.)

It is August, a.k.a. "Summer Under the Stars" time on TCM, and each day of the month is devoted to one actor or actress. For my movie picks this month, I'm feeling the girl-power and featuring four classic Hollywood era actresses whom I always enjoy watching.

8/2: Lucille Ball
8 PM - The Dark Corner (1946)
10 PM - Yours, Mine, and Ours (1968)
Lucille Ball had an interesting career which took on many personas, from glamor-puss ingenue to everyone's favorite wife & mother to worldwide comedy icon. For her line-up today, I've picked out two films, made before and after she achieved stardom as a TV comedienne. In Dark Corner, an atmospheric noir directed by Henry Hathaway, Ball is given top billing as a secretary who sets out to clear her private eye boss (Mark Stevens) when he's framed for murder. At the time, Ball was an MGM contract player and unhappy with the roles assigned to her. She reportedly hated her experience on this film and clashed with Hathaway (though it doesn't show on screen). No surprise then that soon after she would search out opportunities on other platforms and she found success on radio with My Favorite Husband (1947-51) and then on television in her groundbreaking sitcom I Love Lucy (1951-57). The show made her a hugely popular star, and it still endures today -- I recently stumbled upon an episode airing on a major network in primetime!

Yours, Mine, and Ours finds Ball at a very different point in her career, in between her second and third successful sitcoms, and one of the biggest stars in America who developed her own projects. This family comedy about a widow and mother of 8 (Ball) who marries a widower (Henry Fonda) with 10 children of his own was United Artists' top grossing film for the year. I always enjoy this film and can't help but get sucked in whenever it comes on. I especially love the scene in which Fonda's children trick Ball into getting drunk at their first dinner together; it goes from hilarious to really heartbreaking as Ball's character knows she's not in control of her behavior, but cannot figure out why, and shows the range and ability of Ball the actress.
BONUS: See Ball and Fonda in their first on screen pairing in 1942's The Big Street at 1 PM.

8/10: Hedy Lamarr
10 AM - H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941)
12:15 PM - Crossroads (1942)
Lamarr was one of the most beautiful, magnetic, and glamorous actresses ever to grace film screens, but she was often accused of having wooden acting style. She also had notoriously poor instincts for choosing projects, reportedly refusing roles inCasablanca, Gaslight, and Laura, and often ending up in less interesting pictures as an exotic "woman of mystery." These roles probably weren't well-written to begin with and typically only required her to, well, be glamorous...or in her words, "stand still and look stupid." However, the two films I've selected today earned Hedy some of her best notices and gave her more of an acting challenge than usual. In Crossroads, she shines as the resourceful young bride of William Powell's French diplomat afflicted with amnesia (or is he?) and blackmailed by criminals. And in H.M. Pulham, Esq., Lamarr is convincing as an independent and ambitious career-woman (though perhaps not quite as believable as a former Iowa farm girl), who reconnects in middle age with a former boyfriend (Robert Young). Both roles proved that Lamarr could deliver if given good material; and history has proved that she wasn't just a pretty face, as a frequency-hopping invention developed by Lamarr and composer George Antheil was a pre-cursor to the wireless technology we use today.

8/12: Janet Gaynor
2 PM - A Star is Born (1937)
4:15 PM - State Fair (1933)
8 PM - Lucky Star (1929)
10 PM - Street Angel (1928)
I've come to regard Janet Gaynor's presence in a film as a signal of quality. Her film career spanned only a little over a decade, but in that time she worked with some of the best directors of the silent and sound eras, was one half of an indelible screen couple, created an iconic role in a classic Hollywood story, and won the first Best Actress Academy Award. I'm sure that I would enjoy all the movies scheduled today, but here are four I don't want to miss. 
Lucky Star and Street Angel both star Gaynor and Charles Farrell and were directed by Frank Borzage. Gaynor and Farrell made 12 movies together, but I think the silent films made with Borzage are a step above the rest. In Street Angel, Gaynor is a poor girl hiding from the police with a traveling circus who falls for an artist (Farrell). This was among the performances for which she was awarded the Oscar, along with Sunrise and 7th Heaven (back then they didn't have to pick just one role). In Lucky Star, made the following year, Gaynor is the sweetheart of wounded WWI vet Farrell, but the two are kept a part by her controlling mother. The plots in which love conquers all are not groundbreaking, but the films have an ethereal, romantic beauty. Lucky Star was filmed as both a talkie and a silent, but only the silent version has survived; so ironically, what was Gaynor and Farrell's first talkie is now their final silent film.
Gaynor also found success when not teamed with Farrell. State Fair is a delightful story of a family -- father, mother, son, and daughter -- who each have their own adventure at the Iowa State Fair. The film was nominated for Best Picture and remade twice; however, this version is not available on DVD, so this is your rare chance to catch it! A Star is Born has also been remade twice (so far), but the 1937 original is my favorite version of this iconic Hollywood story of an up and coming actress (Gaynor) married to a director (Fredric March) whose career is in decline. Off screen, the two stars' situations were somewhat reversed. While March's greatest successes were yet to come, Gaynor would soon retire from acting.

8/19: Ruby Keeler
8 PM - 42nd Street (1933)
11:30 PM - Dames (1934)
4 AM - The Phynx (1970)
Ruby Keeler said of herself, "I was all personality and no talent." Now she wasn't the greatest actress or singer, or even dancer; however, her sincerity and spirit certainly struck a chord with 1930s audiences -- who flocked to the musical extravaganzas starring Keeler as a working class kid trying to catch a break. Her film debut was in 42nd Street, the definitive backstage musical featuring virtuosic production numbers designed by Busby Berkeley. Much like her character, a chorus girl who must replace the show's leading lady, Keeler went out there a youngster, and came back a star (to paraphrase the film's most famous line). She was teamed again with her 42nd Street co-star Dick Powell in the equally entertaining and eye-popping Dames, another story of some plucky hoofers putting on a Broadway show featuring more number by Berkeley.
The last movie of the night is a weird little film about a rock band of super secret agents sent to rescue numerous American celebrities kidnapped by the leader of communist Albania. Among the bizarre collection of of hostages are Keeler, Dorothy Lamour, Johnny Weissmuller, Maureen O'Sullivan, Xavier Cugat, James Brown, Louis Hayward, Patsy Kelly, Pat O'Brien, the Bowery Boys, Butterfly McQueen, and Colonel Sanders. The film was deemed too awful for a theatrical release, which may have been a blessing as it was the final picture for many of the Golden Age stars, including Keeler. However, classic film film fans may enjoy this oddity.

Best Pictures #23: 1928-29 Academy Awards, My Pick for Outstanding Picture

by A.J.

Best Pictures #23: 1928-29 Academy Awards
My Pick for Outstanding Picture

No film won more than one award at the 2^nd Academy Awards for films released between August 1^st 1928 and July 31^st 1929. The ceremony was held on April 3^rd, 1930. It was broadcast over the radio and every Academy Awards ceremony to follow would be broadcast on either radio or television. Like the rest of the film industry, it seems that the Academy didn’t quite know what to do about talking pictures. According to 85 Years of Oscar by Robert Osborne by Robert Osborne, the official history of the Academy Awards, there was serious debate about having separate categories for sound and silent movies. Ultimately there would not be separate categories and no nominations were publicly announced. The films and persons listed as nominees for the 2^nd Academy Awards have been determined by historians using in house records.

It is clear that the Academy still acknowledged the quality work being done in silent films but they overwhelmingly favored the talkies with nominations and wins. Many theaters at this time were still only equipped to show silent films, so there was still a demand for silent movies. Many films at this time, The Broadway Melody included, had a silent version made simultaneously as the sound version.  Movie posters advertised “100% ALL TALKING” and “HEAR WHAT YOU SEE!” to distinguish them from silent movies with some bits of sound added in like The Patriot and the previous year’s Unique and Artistic Picture winner, Sunrise. That demand however would drastically wane and by the time of the 3^rd Academy Awards silent movies would be a thing of the past.

The language of cinema would now contain an audio element, but this new tool would take time to master. The technical sophistication achieved by cinema thus far would be set back dramatically. Noisy cameras had to be housed in giant immobile metal boxes so their sound wouldn’t be recorded by the microphones. Those microphones had to be hidden in the set and actors could not be too far away from that area of the set. Cinema would bounce back and continue to grow and mature thematically and technically but not for a few years. It would be many years before the camera once again had the freedom of movement as it did during the silent era. Just a year before the 2^nd Academy Awards there was no such thing as the “silent era,” there was only “the movies.” Now, a distinct new era of cinema had begun.

My Pick for Outstanding Picture 1928-29: The Broadway Melody

For the 2nd Academy Awards there was only one Best Picture category, still called Outstanding Picture. The selection board of judges, still made up of only 5 people, chose the MGM musical The Broadway Melody for Outstanding Picture, and I once again agree with the Academy. The musical is a type of movie that could not exist before the advent of sound. Though the musical had by this time achieved a maturity on stage, it would take years to mature on screen. The Broadway Melody is a good start for the genre. I can’t give a full and complete judgement of the nominees since The Patriot is sadly lost, but of the films I was able to see the most entertaining and enjoyable was The Broadway Melody, though it is an uneven film.

The Broadway Melody is not without its share of flaws, including a less than likable leading male character, flimsy character motivations, and a mostly stationary camera. It feels a bit unfair to criticize the immobile camera of early sound films given the technical limitations of sound recording, but it is difficult not to compare the cinematography of these early sound movies to the limitless movement of camera in the silent movies from the previous year. That is still only a minor complaint for me. I’d rather watch a still camera shot with entertaining content than visually interesting but meaningless camerawork. This movie moved along at a steady pace since scenes did not drag on just for the sake of hearing the actors speak as they did with In Old Arizona. The Broadway Melody is filled with great songs, written by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed, that have since become classics. However, my favorite thing about The Broadway Melody is that with Hank, played wonderfully well by Bessie Love, it has the most competent, interesting, and quasi-independent female character I’ve seen in any early Best Picture nominee thus far.

While watching The Broadway Melody, you are aware that you are watching the root of the movie musical. It has a simple story, but this movie is really about the musical numbers. If its plot and set pieces seem clichéd now, it is only because they have been repeated, reworked, and improved in musical after musical. I would recommend ignoring the unfairly low score on RottenTomatoes.com and seeking this film out, especially if you are a fan of musicals.

Classic Movie Picks: July 2016

by Lani

Each month, I scour the Turner Classic Movies schedule for upcoming films that I can't miss. The highlights are posted here for your reading and viewing pleasure! (All listed times are Eastern Standard, check your local listings or TCM.com for actual air times in your area. Each day's schedule begins at 6:00 a.m.; if a film airs between midnight and 6 a.m. it is listed on the previous day's programming schedule.)

7/7, 8 PM - All the President's Men (1976)
This film is showing as part of a series on Thursday nights: America in the 70s - The Films that Defined a Decade. All the President's Men certainly fits the bill since it deals with the Watergate scandal, one of the defining events of the 70s which led to the first and only time in history that a sitting President resigned from office. The plot follows Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) as they look into the Watergate break-in and uncover the shocking details -- shocking not only because it went to the highest levels of the executive branch, but also because of the unbelievable stupidity and ineptitude of some of the players. Dramatic and suspenseful, but also surprisingly funny, I think it's pretty close to perfect. The film received Academy Awards for art direction, sound, screenplay, and supporting actor Jason Robards. What beat it out for best picture? Another decade-defining film: Rocky.

7/15: Starring Olivia de Havilland 
8 PM - The Snake Pit (1948)
10 PM - The Heiress (1949)
12:15 AM - To Each His Own (1946)
Olivia de Havilland, one of the last surviving stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood, is the Star of the Month for July in honor of her 100th birthday this year. As an ingenue in the 30s, her beauty was undeniable and she was paired with the equally attractive Errol Flynn in nine films. But she wanted to be more than a pretty love interest and desired to gain respect for her acting ability by taking on more challenging roles. Eventually de Havilland received five Oscar nominations, winning Best Actress twice, and three of those performances are featured tonight. 
In The Snake Pit, a "social issues" picture about the state of mental hospitals, Olivia plays a young woman who is institutionalized. With greasy hair and no makeup, this character is a far cry from her more glamorous roles, but she does a good job portraying someone whose sense of reality is at odds with the world around her. As the title character in The Heiress, Olivia is once again de-glamorized to play a plain, lonely woman who longs to escape from her overbearing father and falls for a handsome fortune-hunter (as played by Montgomery Clift one can hardly blame the girl). In To Each His Own, our leading lady finally gets to wear some lipstick to play an unwed mother who must give up her son, then encounters him later in life. The combination of her natural beauty, expressive face, and ethereal manner make de Havilland a wonderful screen presence. I'm looking forward to seeing many more of her films on Friday nights this month.

Walter Matthau: Man of Action
7/16, 10 PM - Charley Varrick (1973)
7/21, 8 PM - The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) 
Walter Matthau's most familiar roles tend to be in comedies as an irascible slob, seedy fast-talker, or grumpy old man. However, in his long and varied career Matthau was also an unlikely romantic lead several times, as well as the star of several crime/caper films in which he played both the heavy and the hero. 
As the title character in Charley Varrick, Matthau is an anti-hero, "the last of the independents." After his gang of small time bank robbers accidentally steals the mob's money, Matthau must use all his wits to outrun a mob hit man (played with hammy glee by Joe Don Baker) and get away clean. Though he won a Best Actor BAFTA (the British Academy Award equivalent) for this role, Matthau was very vocal about not liking the film because he thought it wasn't understandable. There are definitely some twists, but whether you can anticipate the plot or not, it is still a fun ride.

In Pelham, Matthau is on the right side of the law as a NYC transit police lieutenant up against Robert Shaw as the leader of a criminal gang who holds a subway train hostage. As the hilariously over-the-top poster tells us, the gang will kill a passenger a minute until they get the $1 million ransom -- but even if they get the money, how will they possibly get away? This one also has it's share of surprises and sets the bar for clever crime thrillers. 
These two picks are great examples of a type of crime film which had a bit of a renaissance in the mid-70s. These films featured intelligent criminals and, though violent, kept the action on a human scale. They are filled with the mundane locations of everyday life - subways, trailer parks, modest apartments - and everyone, from cop to criminal, looks like a regular guy off the street. Just contrast this with a film in the same genre from the 1980s, Die Hard (which is also great, by the way). Instead of the likes of Matthau, Robert Shaw, and Martin Balsam, you have the dapper Alan Rickman and his crew of body builders pulling off a heist in a fancy LA high-rise. It's still a good movie, but one with an entirely different aesthetic which favors spectacle over realism.

Best Pictures #22: 1928-29 (2nd) Academy Awards Outstanding Picture Winner, The Broadway Melody (1929)

by A.J.

Best Pictures #22: 1928-29 (2^nd) Academy Awards Outstanding Picture Winner

The Broadway Melody (1929)

In the first scene of The Broadway Melody, also known as The Broadway Melody of 1929 (there would be two sequels), there is a bevy of sounds for the ears: musicians tuning up various instruments, singers practicing, chatter here and there. We are in a music publishing office in New York City and eventually the din dies down so a young songwriter can sing his new song, “The Broadway Melody.” This isn’t just a talkie, it is a musical, and there will be a lot of the audience to hear. The Broadway Melody was the first musical and first sound picture to win Best Picture (then called Outstanding Picture). It is also the first movie to win only Best Picture. Reviews at the time were generally favorable, but reviews by modern critics and online reviewers are not as positive. As of 2016, The Broadway Melody is the lowest rated Best Picture winner on the website RottenTomatoes.com with an average score of 35%. I think that rating is a bit unfair since modern viewers can’t help but measure this movie by the decades of musicals that have been made since. While The Broadway Melody is undeniably dated, it is still not without some entertainment value.

The story is pretty basic for a backstage musical—a musical about making a musical—and will no doubt seem familiar to fans of the genre. Eddie Kearns (Charles King) has written a song, “The Broadway Melody,” for big shot producer Francis Zanfield’s new review and he wants to get the Mahoney sisters cast in the production. He’s dating one sister, Hank, but is in love with the other, Queenie, who is dating rival producer Jock Warriner (a play on the name of the Warner Bros. boss Jack Warner, just as Francis Zenfield is a reference to real life producer Florenz Ziegfeld). As you might imagine, the backstage lives of Eddie, Hank, and Queenie become complicated. Queenie, played by Anita Page, is chosen to be the star of the show, but her dancing consists of little more than just slightly moving her body around while standing in place on stage. Despite this, everyone thinks Queenie is great and it seems that the movie wants us to feel the same.

The story is thin but there is enough of it to fill out the film’s runtime so no one scene feels too stretched. Bessie Love plays Hank, the older and more business minded sister, and gives what is easily the best acting performance of the movie. Love was under consideration for the Best Actress award that year. The other acting performances were not especially noteworthy but are good enough to keep the movie entertaining. The characters themselves feel basic and thin. Queenie’s main character trait is being beautiful and desirable. Her other trait is that she doesn’t want to be thought of as a child anymore by her sister. Eddie, like every other man in the movie, seems to be in love with Queenie just because of her looks and, overall, does not come across as a likable character. The girls’ Uncle Joe is a stock comic relief character with a stutter like Porky Pig. Hank is by far The Broadway Melody’s most interesting character since her motivations give Bessie Love more to work with allowing her to give Hank some sense of personality and depth.

The Broadway Melody has many scenes and plot points that would become tropes and clichés in backstage musicals to follow. There are several scenes rehearsal scenes, most of which are comedic. The Mahoney sisters perform their number for Zanfeild on their first day on stage and, through no fault of their own, many, many things go comically wrong. We see chorus girls exchange quips with the choreographer. A stagehand literally throws the spotlight at an actor who asks for more light. The sister act reaches a breaking point, and Mr. Warriner’s intentions toward Queenie become more and more lascivious. What dates the film more than its checklist of musical plot points, is its normal for the time but now out dated values. The female characters in this movie all face the same dilemma: career or marriage, not both.

The show being produced in The Broadway Melody is a revue so there are several different themed songs, sets, and costumes. At times his movie feels like a play since most of the action takes place in a series of rooms with people entering and exiting. The camera moves very little, a problem with all early sound pictures, but the costumes and songs keep the static shots from being dull. There are enough peculiarities in The Broadway Melody to make it a curio for musical fans and film buffs in general. The song “Broadway Melody” is sung four times. The song “You Were Meant for Me” is sung by Eddie to Queenie. He says he wrote it for her, his girlfriend’s sister, making that song’s film debut unfortunately creepy. Most curious of all is the use of title cards in place of exterior establishing shots. This is no doubt a holdover from silent movies. This was MGM’s first musical, and for a studio that would become synonymous with the genre, it was a good start. If you decided to check out The Broadway Melody, I recommend watching the DVD, readily available, which includes in the special features Dogway Melody, a loose remake short of The Broadway Melody but with dogs. It is quite entertaining to say the least.

Nominee: MGM

Producer: Irving Thalberg, Lawrence Weingarten, Harry Rapf

Director: Harry Beaumont

Screenplay: Story by Edmund Goulding, Dialogue by Norman Houston and James Gleason, Continuity by Sarah Y. Mason

Cast: Charles King, Anita Page, Bessie Love

Release Date: February 1^st, 1929

Total Nominations: 3, including Outstanding Picture

Win(s): Outstanding Picture

Other Nominations: Actress-Bessie Love, Director-Harry Beaumont

Best Pictures #21: 1928-29 (2nd) Academy Awards Outstanding Picture Nominee, The Patriot (1928)

by A.J.

Best Pictures #21: 1928-29 (2nd) Academy Awards Outstanding Picture Nominee

The Patriot (1928)

Ernst Lubitsch’s 1928 film, The Patriot, was the only silent nominee for Best Picture at the 2^nd Academy Awards and it was the last silent Best Picture nominee until The Artist in 2011. The Patriot also has the most unfortunate distinction of being the only Best Picture nominee that is a lost film: no full length print of the film exists. So, it is technically impossible to watch every Best Picture nominee, though this point can be argued since The Patriot is not an official nominee as no nominations were publicly announced for this year. The films and people listed as nominees for the 2^nd Academy Awards were determined later from in-house records by Academy researchers. I have read in numerous sources that the vast majority of silent films are lost to history. The Library of Congress estimates that 75% of all silent films are lost. This is a very dismal statistic for movie lovers.

I certainly cannot review a film I haven’t seen, so instead I will share some of the information I was able to find on The Patriot. Set in 18^th century Russia, the film is about the mad Czar Paul and the plot kill him and save the nation. Czar Paul is played by the first Best Actor Oscar winner, Emil Jannings. The planned assassination is led by the Czar’s closest and most trusted friend, Count Pahlen, played by Lewis Stone, who attempts to enlist the Czar Paul’s mistress, Countess Ostermann, played by Florence Vidor, in the plot. Count Pahlen is naturally conflicted because he wants be a good and loyal friend but knows that the Czar must be removed from power.

The most valuable resource for information on The Patriot I could find is the glowing review from the New York Times, written by Mordaunt Hall, published on August 18^th, 1928. Hall lauds the film with praise like: “This motion picture is indeed a credit to the screen… There is, as a matter of fact, hardly a flaw to be found in the whole picture… It is a gripping piece of work with subtle touches….” The only minor criticisms all concern the film’s synchronized soundtrack. Hall writes that the synchronized music score is too loud for certain scenes. A scene in which Paul cries out for Count Pahlen, with synchronized dialogue (appartently the only scene of synch speech in the film), would have been more effective in silence, and the sound of the Czar’s laughter “might better have been left to the imagination.”  Hall has heaps of praise for Jannings' performance as the mad Czar: “Jannings gives the addle-brained despot all the moods one could hope for, and in the last moments of fear Mr. Jannings brings to the screen something that is unrivaled.” The rest of the cast also receives high praise, especially Stone who is “capital” as Pahlen and also credits Lubitsch for his “skillful guidance” with Stone’s performance. Stone was under consideration for the Best Actor award that year, as was Lubitsch for Best Director.

Some segments of The Patriot have survived the degradation of time. Certain crowd scenes were reused for the 1934 film The Scarlet Empress and one reel of the film is preserved at the Portuguese Film Archive. A few clips and the complete trailer are preserved by the UCLA Film Archive. In the trailer, which is available to watch online, Emil Jannings looks like he does a good job performing Czar Paul’s mad, manic fits and his cowardly paranoia. The ornate sets and costumes look impressive and give the impression that The Patriot was an epic period piece; The Patriot’s art direction also received an unofficial nomination. There is a melancholic irony in watching an advertisement for a film that you can never see, especially since, from the trailer, The Patriot looks like it might be a good movie. There is no way to know for sure or make your own judgement. I can only wonder how The Patriot would hold up today. Good or bad, a part of film history is forever lost, which is an incredible shame because every film, good or bad, deserves to be able to be seen.

Nominee: Paramount Famous Lasky

Producer: Ernst Lubitsch

Director: Ernst Lubitsch

Screenplay: Hans Kraly, from the play by Ashely Dukes, and the play “Der Patriot” by Alfred Neumann, Paul Iby, and Dmitri Merezhkovsky

Cast: Emil Jannings, Florence Vidor, Lewis Stone

Release Date: August 17^th, 1928

Total Nominations: 5, including Outstanding Picture

Win: Writing-Hanns Kraly

Other Nominations: Actor-Lewis Stone, Director-Ernst Lubitsch, Art Direction-Hans Dreier

Best Pictures #20: 1928-29 Academy Awards Outstanding Picture Nominee, The Hollywood Revue (1929)

by A.J.

Best Pictures #20: 1928-29 Academy Awards Outstanding Picture Nominee

The Hollywood Revue (1929)

I’m not sure how one goes about reviewing a revue… The numbers are entertaining and with Jack Benny as one of the masters of ceremonies, Conrad Nagel being the other, it is hard to go wrong. The Hollywood Revue was put together by MGM to showcase its major stars making their talkie debut with this collection of comedy skits and musical numbers. The cast includes, Jack Benny, Conrad Nagel, Charles King, Anita Page, Bessie Love, Joan Crawford, Marion Davies, William Haines, Lionel Barrymore, Norma Shearer, John Gilbert, Marie Dressler, Laurel & Hardy ,and more. However, MGM’s biggest star, Greta Garbo, is noticeably absent from the star studded cast because she decided that Anna Christie would be her speaking debut.

The stars of MGM’s other big musical from 1929, The Broadway Melody, all make an appearance in The Hollywood Revue. Charles King sings and banters with Conrad Nagel, who then serenades Anita Page, King’s love interest in The Broadway Melody, with “You Were Meant for Me,” a droll reference to a scene from that musical. Bessie Love, the other co-star of The Broadway Melody, takes part in a special effects bit with Jack Benny. She appears in miniature size and sets up punchlines for Jack Benny who holds her in the palm of his hand. When he sets her down on stage she grows to normal size and performs a delightful number called “I Never Knew I Could Do a Thing Like That.” Bessie Love is also quite delightful herself in her banter with Benny and musical performance. She sings but doesn’t dance so much as she is literally tossed around by the male chorus line. It’s fun to watch, especially when they flip her completely over from one chorus line to the next, but I can’t imagine how disorienting that all must have felt for her.

The Hollywood Revue is the film debut of Jack Benny who, as you might imagine, is very entertaining and funny as the master of ceremonies. There’s a running gag of him being slapped by women he thinks he "recognizes." One of the several humorous interludes he has is with actor William Haines in which Haines tears a piece of Benny’s suit for every city where he has seen Benny on the stage. The next time we see Benny he is wearing a suit of armor. This is one of a few skits in which stage and screen actors take playful jibes at each other and have fun with the rivalry between stage and screen actors. What an actor could do on stage versus on screen had a clear and distinct delineation during the silent era but with the advent of sound that line was gone. Jack Benny’s one-liners and violin could now be heard on film the same way they could only previously have been experienced by attending a stage performance.

The screen could now be filled with elaborate musical numbers like “Tommy Atkins on Parade” performed by Marion Davies. A full marching band and dancers take up the entire screen. Davies does a tap number and dances with a line of men dressed like palace guards. Many people today, myself included, think of Marion Davies primarily as the mistress of publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst, the inspiration for Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane. This was the first time I had seen any of Davies’ work and I’m glad to put a real face and voice to her name. Laurel and Hardy showcase their comedy in a skit in which they play inept magicians. Buster Keaton has a comical dance number, but he does not sing or speak. In the final musical number in which every cast member gathers on stage to sing “Singin’ in the Rain,” Buster Keaton is the only one not singing.

The Hollywood Revue might be most known, by those that know it at all, for the Romeo and Juliet balcony scene with John Gilbert and Norma Shearer. This sequence is thought by some to be the catalyst for the decline of Gilbert’s career after audiences heard his high pitched voice. Further rumors say that this sequence was the inspiration for the plot of the 1952 Gene Kelly musical, Singin’ in the Rain. It is thought that audiences felt Gilbert's voice did not match the onscreen persona he had cultivated in the silent era. There are other likelihoods for the decline of Gilbert’s career that have nothing to do with his voice, but this is the narrative that has persisted. The sequence itself is one of the more enjoyable ones in The Hollywood Revue. Gilbert and Shearer play themselves playing Romeo and Juliet and are being directed by Lionel Barrymore, also playing himself. Barrymore tells them he received studio notes to make the dialogue snappier and modern. Their performance of the updated balcony scene loaded with peppy slang of the era is pretty amusing. As for Gilbert’s voice, though he is certainly not a baritone, the phrase “high pitched” does not accurately describe his voice either. I think he sounds very contemporary and casual, and maybe that is not the tone of voice you would expect to hear from someone in a period costume. This scene is one of two that was shot in technicolor which I’m sure impressed audiences of the day, however, on the DVD, available through Warner Archive, it is the only scene in technicolor.

The Hollywood Revue is certainly a curio of the early sound era. It does a good job of giving the viewer the feeling that they are an audience member for a stage show. The camera is mostly stationary. There are some close ups and medium shots and an occasional pan, but the static shots of the actors and performances actually works for this particular movie. The camera is your POV from your seat in the theater watching this impressive all-star revue. The Hollywood Revue is pretty entertaining though it runs a bit long for a film of its era, nearly a full two hours. There isn’t much to The Hollywood Revue, but that is not necessarily something negative for this particular musical movie. It is certainly an interesting viewing experience for a modern moviegoer.

Nominee: MGM

Producer: Irving Thalberg, Harry Rapf

Director: Charles Reisner

Screenplay: Al Boasberg and Robert E. Hopkins

Cast: Conrad Nagel, Jack Benny

Release Date: June 20^th, 1929

Total Nominations: 1, including Outstanding Picture
Win(s): N/A

Classic Film Picks: June 2016

by Lani

Each month, I scour the Turner Classic Movies schedule for upcoming films that I can't miss. The highlights are posted here for your reading and viewing pleasure! (All listed times are Eastern Standard, check your local listings or TCM.com for actual air times in your area. Each day's schedule begins at 6:00 a.m.; if a film airs between midnight and 6 a.m. it is listed on the previous day's programming schedule.)

6/3: Early Billy Wilder
10 PM - Five Graves to Cairo (1943)
12 AM - Double Indemnity (1944)
On Fridays this month, TCM is spotlighting one of my favorite filmmakers: Billy Wilder. Wilder made his Hollywood directing debut with 1942's The Major and the Minor (showing this evening at 8 PM). I'm not a huge fan of this comedy because the plot is just a bit icky -- basically grown-up woman Ginger Rogers pretends to be a child and grown-up man Ray Milland falls in love with her. However, it's not a bad movie and Paramount Studios was impressed enough to let Wilder and his writing partner Charles Brackett produce their next film, which ended up being Five Graves to Cairo. Wilder's second Hollywood film was a departure from his first, Cairo is a WWII spy adventure set in North Africa. Though Franchot Tone was the nominal star of the film, as you can see by the poster, Erich von Stroheim as Field Marshall Rommel came to dominate the film; however, Tone and the rest of the cast, including Anne Baxter and Akim Tamiroff, are all first-rate and make this a fun, engaging adventure. Wilder would soon follow these successes with a definitive film noir, and one of the best movies ever made, Double Indemnity. The story, about an insurance salesman who plots with a femme fatale to bump off her husband, is based on a novel by James M. Cain, but Wilder and Raymond Chandler, author of many a classic crime novel himself, are credited with the superb screenplay. Beautiful black and white cinematography contrasts the sunny California setting with the shadowy realms the characters inhabit. The banter, the look, plus excellent performances by Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, and Edward G. Robinson, all combine to make this a classic noir thriller.


Best of '73 or the Importance of Casting
6/14, 4:15 AM - The Last Detail (1973)
6/25, 8 PM - The Sting (1973)
In researching my picks for the month, I read that Jack Nicholson turned down the Robert Redford role in The Sting in order to make The Last Detail. It got me thinking about the importance of casting the right actor in the right role and how changes in casting can change the entire film. In The Last Detail, two Navy lifers, Buddusky (Nicholson) and Mulhall (Otis Young), transport a young sailor (Randy Quaid) to a military prison in another state and along the way befriend their prisoner and try to show him a good time before he gets locked up. Nicholson had originally envisioned that his good friend Rupert Crosse would play Mulhall; however, Crosse became ill and had to back out of the film. Crosse was a higher profile actor than Young, having received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for 1969's The Reivers. While Young does a fine job, I wonder if Nicholson and Crosse's real-life friendship would have brought a different sort of chemistry to their characters'  relationship and given the film more of a buddy-picture vibe. As it is, Nicholson dominates the film and he received his second Best Actor Oscar nomination. The film's profanity-laden script also brought notice for writer Robert Towne, who would collaborate with Nicholson again on 1974's Chinatown, which is considered a career-high for almost everyone involved.
 

The Sting is notable for the chemistry between the two stars, Robert Redford and Paul Newman. It was a re-teaming of the two actors with their Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid director George Roy Hill; and though the story of Depression-era con men bears little similarity to the former film, The Sting feels like an unofficial sequel to Butch. If Nicholson had been cast as Johnny Hooker, we can be certain that Paul Newman would not have taken the role of Henry Gondorff -- originally a much smaller part which was beefed up to capitalize on the Redford/Newman pairing. Yes, the script is excellent...but without Redford and Newman, would The Sting have been so well-received by critics and audiences? The film was named Best Picture at the Academy Awards and it garnered Redford his first, and only, Best Actor nomination. (Which, by the way, is crazy because he was amazing in All is Lost.)

Going further down the rabbit hole...I have to wonder if the success of The Sting influenced Nicholson's decision to make 1975's The Fortune, a now-forgotten film in which Nicholson and Warren Beatty play Jazz-age con men. Despite Nicholson and Beatty's star-power, The Fortune was a million-dollar flop.

One last thought on casting...while watching The Last Detail for the first time, I could not stop thinking that Sam Rockwell would be perfect for the Nicholson role if the film were ever remade. Are you listening, Hollywood? You can have that one for free because I just really want to see a remake of The Last Detail starring Sam Rockwell.


6/18: Adapting Jane Austen
8 PM - Pride and Prejudice (1940)
10:15 PM - Persuasion (1995)
I recently saw Love & Friendship, the latest film by writer-director Whit Stillman, which is adapted from the Jane Austen short story Lady Susan. It's delightful and very funny -- a wonderful confluence of one of my favorite contemporary filmmakers and one of my favorite classic authors -- and it has put me in the mood for more Austen adaptations. The 1940 version of Pride and Prejudice isn't strictly faithful to the novel; however, Greer Garson is lovely and spirited as Lizzie Bennet and Laurence Olivier is appropriately smoldering as Mr. Darcy. Though the novel is set in Regency England (late 1700s-early 1800s), the time period in the film has been moved forward to the Victorian 1830s, possibly so that the women could wear big, flouncy gowns rather than the nightgown-like Regency dresses. (I read one article which claimed that MGM didn't want to spend a lot of money on this film, so they repurposed costumes from Gone with the Wind for the background players.) Even more anachronistic (and barely accurate) is the film's promotional tagline: Bachelors Beware! Five Gorgeous Beauties are on a Madcap Manhunt!
Persuasion has not been adapted as frequently as Pride, so while I have read the novel I have not seen a screen version. The story centers on Anne Elliot, played by Amanda Root, who in age and character may be Austen's most mature heroine. Resigned to a life as an old maid in her late twenties, Anne gets a second chance at love when an old flame re-enters her life. The love interest is played by Ciaran Hinds who audiences may recognize for his more recent roles in the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Game of Thrones, and Rome.

6/28: Disney Vault Treasures
8 PM - The Parent Trap (1961)
11 PM - Waking Sleeping Beauty (2009)
1:15 AM - An Adventure in Color/Donald in Mathmagic Land (1961)
This is the seventh installment of TCM's series "Treasures from the Disney Vault" including feature films, cartoons, and documentaries. I always enjoy these periodic dips into the extensive Disney library of films and TV shows, but this month feels especially like a trip back to my childhood. The Parent Trap was made twenty years before I was born, but it seemed ubiquitous when I was growing up and its continued popularity spawned two tv-movie sequels in the 80s. Of course I was surprised to learn that twins Sharon and Susan were both played by one actress (I was a kid, ok!). The trick camera work used to show both twins side by side holds up pretty well, and Hayley Mills does a great job of giving each girl a distinct personality. It's pretty hard not to be charmed by this film.
Waking Sleeping Beauty is a documentary about Disney's animation studio which went from the brink of shutting down in the early 80s to producing a string of hits over the decade between 1984 and 1994, now known as the "Disney Renaissance." I grew up on classics like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King, so it's fun for me to see the stories behind the scenes. If you are a fan of animation or like showbiz documentaries, this one is a must-see.
The real treasures of this bunch are the two cartoons Adventure in Color and Donald in Mathmagic Land, which were shown together on the first episode of the TV show Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color. As the name of the show implies, these were the first Disney cartoons to be shown on television in color (of course you had to have a color television to appreciate it). New character Ludwig von Drake explains color then Donald Duck learns the ways that math affects everything from making music to playing pool. As the comments on its entry in the unofficial Encyclopedia of Disney Animated Shorts reflect, this cartoon has been an essential educational tool for many a youngster. It should be required viewing in elementary school.