Best Pictures #27: 1929-30 (3rd) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee, The Big House (1930)

by A.J.

Best Pictures #27: 1929-30 (3^rd) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee

The Big House (1930)

The Big House, released in 1930, is considered by classic film fans and film historians to be the first realistic prison movie produced by Hollywood. MGM production chief Irving Thalberg sent screenwriter Francis Marion to San Quentin State Prison to observe real prisoners, guards, and conditions inside prison walls. She interviewed inmates and prison staff alike. The result was a screenplay that won Marion the Oscar for Best Writing, making her the first woman to win a non-acting Academy Award.

The Big House stars Chester Morris, Robert Montgomery (who also appeared together in The Divorcee), and Wallace Beery as cellmates. Each handles prison life in a different way. Robert Montgomery plays Kent, who has just begun a 10-year sentence for killing someone while driving drunk. He is put in a cell with Morgan (Chester Morris), a thief on the verge of parole, and Machine Gun Butch (Wallace Beery), a ruthless multiple murderer that runs the cellblock. Beery had been out of work for more than a year when cast in The Big House. Though Beery had been a successful character actor during the silent era and done a successful sound test, his contract was dropped by Paramount when the studio converted to sound. Beery’s performance earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor and his career rebounded.

Directed by Francis Marion’s husband, George Hill, The Big House is well paced and well shot. The lighting design of certain scenes with low light and harsh shadows is reminiscent of Film Noir, a subgenre that is defined in part by its use of shadows and antiheroes that wouldn’t be fully developed until the mid-1940’s. As Morgan is marched from the cell block down to the dungeon for solitary confinement, the light fades and shadows envelope the frame. Morgan and Butch, also in solitary, call out to each other over the shouts, screams, and singing of the other inmates. All we see is the empty, dark hallway as the scene slowly fades out.

There is a brief respite from the bleak drudgery of prison life when Morgan escapes after losing his parole. He visits Kent’s sister, Anne, with whom he has been infatuated since seeing her picture. Anne goes from being suspicious of Morgan to falling in love with him rather quickly. It is his brief time with her that convinces him to go straight after he’s captured and taken back to prison. When Morgan won’t go along with Butch’s big escape plan, Butch thinks that Morgan has turned into an informer. The climax of The Big House is a full-blown riot and shootout between guards and prisoners. Each side has pistols, rifles, and Tommy guns. At one point army tanks roll into the fray.

The performances all around are pretty good. The first character we meet is Kent as he is being processed into the prison. As he unravels and buddies up to the prison’s main informer, Morgan emerges as our sympathetic hero. Montgomery is great playing a character that is not cut out for prison, scared, and just trying to get by and get out, misguided as he might be. Chester Morris is quite good as Morgan; when he decides to go straight we believe his change. The warden, played by Lewis Stone, is also an interesting character. Neither cruel nor corrupt, he is a reasonable, benevolent man. He sees clearly the problems of his prison and the prison system as a whole, but is powerless to make any changes to better the situation. He tells a guard that the prison was built to hold 1,800 men but has 3,000 prisoners. They want to lock them up, he says, but don’t want to provide for them after they’re locked up. The guard replies, “The whole prison system is cock-eyed.” The flaws of the prison system that Francis Marion observed and wrote into her screenplay in 1930 still remain unfortunately accurate.

Douglas Shearer, Norma Shearer’s brother, won the first Academy Award for Sound Recording for his work in The Big House, and the sound design is very good and effective indeed. The first thing we hear is the sound of marching footsteps of prisoners. That sound is repeated throughout the film, and it is also the last thing we hear over the “The End” card instead of closing music. The footsteps on hard floors and gravel, food slopping on plates, and crowd noises are all pronounced and important to the effectiveness of the images. The sound cues in The Big House do more than just match what happens on screen, they underline and emphasize it. The shots of dozens upon dozens of prisoners marching in line, often from the shoulder down, or filling the mess hall, sitting at the same time, being served at the same time, all wearing the same uniform and making the same sounds suggests that humanity and individuality have been stripped away from these men.

I think The Big House is as realistic as a film of this time could be, even during the Pre-Code era. The Big House probably would not hold up to more recent prison dramas, but it is still an entertaining film. It has good performances from all the main players, great cinematography, a great screenplay, and even a dark sense of humor. Morgan warns Butch against including a certain violent prisoner in the escape, but Butch replies, “sure, Hawk cut his mother’s throat, but he was sorry about it.”

The Big House has every prison movie cliché you would expect to see in a prison movie: escape plans, stool pigeons, riots, cruel guards, bad food. However, like many genre films from this time period, it is the source of those clichés. All of the beats and plotlines still work and are still effective and entertaining.

Nominee: Cosmopolitan, MGM

Producer: Irving Thalberg (uncredited)

Director: George W. Hill

Screenplay: story and dialogue by Frances Marion, additional dialogue by Joe Farnham and Martin Flavin

Cast: Chester Morris, Wallace Beery, Robert Montgomery, Lewis Stone, Leila Hyams

Release Date: June 24^th, 1930

Total Nominations: 4, including Outstanding Production

Win(s): Writing-Frances Marion, Sound Recording-Douglas Shearer

Other Nominations: Actor-Wallace Beery

Best Pictures #26: 1929-30 (3rd) Academy Awards Outstanding Production Nominee, The Divorcee (1930)

by A.J.

Best Pictures #26: 1929-30 (3^rd) Academy Awards Outstanding Production Nominee

The Divorcee (1930)

The Divorcee’s nomination for Outstanding Production shows that the Academy’s interest in controversial but popular films existed since its early years. This film is based novel The Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott, which was also popular and controversial when it was released. The controversy of the novel and film stems from its subject matter: marital infidelity and divorce. MGM was hesitant to be associated with the racy novel, so the title of the film adaptation was changed to The Divorcee, a classier way to say “ex-wife” I suppose. This would not be a racy or controversial film today, but it remains quite entertaining. The Divorcee has interesting characters, good performances, and a good sense of humor and drama. The Divorcee was released on DVD in the TCM Archives Forbidden Hollywood Collection Volume 2, but this set has since gone out of print making tracking down a copy slightly difficult and expensive (it currently sells on Amazon.com for $130). However, it airs occasionally on TCM, and I very much recommend watching it should it be on the schedule.  

MGM may have acted like they did not want to court controversy, but is seems as though they didn’t put great effort into making The Divorcee any less controversial. The Divorcee may be tame and even conservative by 21^st century standards, but modern viewers should keep in mind that this was a time when the subject of divorce, let alone female sexuality, made for impolite and improper conversation. This movie pushed boundaries, addressed the double standards of male vs. female infidelity, and, most of all, it had a good, well-developed, strong, and interesting female character as the lead.

I had been looking forward to watching The Divorcee since I haven’t seen many Pre-Code movies. Pre-Code Hollywood refers to the brief time period after the advent of sound films until the strict enforcement of the Hays Code in 1934. At this time films were not protected under the First Amendment because of a Supreme Court ruling in 1915, which declared films were purely commercial and not art. That unfortunate and idiotic decision would be overturned in 1952. The Hays, or Production Code, was actually created in 1930, but it was not enforced until the summer of 1934 when every film was required to have a Production Code seal of approval before it could be released. The Production Code severely regulated and limited a film’s content and subject matter. Before then movies were free to contain violence, risqué subject matter (like infidelity and divorce), and, most notable of all, highly suggestive innuendo.

The coveted title role of The Divorcee went to Norma Shearer, but it did not come easy to her even though she was married to MGM production chief Irving Thalberg. He originally wanted to cast Joan Crawford. At that time, Shearer was known for playing “lady-like” characters, so Thalberg thought she lacked the sensuality the role would require. To prove her husband wrong, Shearer had a series of photos taken of her posing provocatively in a revealing dress. Her plan worked. Thalberg cast her and she won Best Actress at the next Oscars. Shearer’s nomination, however, was for The Divorcee and her performance in another film, Their Own Desire (1929). When she was announced as the winner, only The Divorcee was specified and the reason for this remains unknown even to Academy historians.

The film begins with a group of friends having a getaway party at a country house. Jerry (Norma Shearer) announces her engagement to Ted, played by Chester Morris, much to the poorly hidden disappointment of her other suitors, Paul (Conrad Nagel) and Don (Robert Montgomery). Paul gets very drunk but still drives a car full of people, including Jerry’s sister, Dorothy, down a winding road. The car crashes and Dorothy is disfigured. As Jerry marries Ted in a pretty ceremony in a church, Paul marries Dorothy out of pity in a hospital room. After three happy years, Jerry discovers that Ted has been unfaithful and responds by having an affair of her own, with Don. Jerry and Ted divorce, and then Jerry decides to live it up.

I was worried that The Divorcee would be tonally uneven with the first half being light and romantic and the second half being mostly dramatic, such as with The Crowd (1928) and The Love Parade (1929). Like those films, it does begin as a light romance, then becomes a drama but never becomes too heavy to be entertaining. Though the second half of the film is where all of the drama and tension lies, it is not devoid of comedy. The Divorcee has a good sense of humor and delivers laughs at a steady, consistent pace. In a scene late in the movie, Don runs into Ted in New York. Ted is a mess from the divorce. The scene grows tense as Ted describes to Don what he’d do if he ever found the man with whom Jerry had her affair. It’s an awkwardly funny and tense scene that is capped with a good visual punchline from Montgomery.

The tagline for The Divorcee asked the scandalous question: If the world permits the husband to philander, why not the wife? When Jerry and Ted become engaged they agree that their marriage will be a partnership and they would be equals. The film takes subtle steps to suggest that Jerry is the equal of her male counterparts. In the novel, the main character’s name is Patricia, but— according to the DVD commentary by film historians Jeffrey Vance and Tony Maietta— was changed to Jerry for the film to represent gender equality. Vance and Maietta cite other elements like Jerry wearing masculine clothing (trousers) in the opening scene and her turning down Don with a polite handshake as aspects showing that Jerry would treat people and situations the way a man would, not the way society dictated a woman of the time would. I concur with their assertions. When Jerry confesses her infidelity to Ted, which she feels very guilty about, she begs him to remember what he told her about his own affair: it didn’t mean anything. As Jerry confronts Ted with this role reversal, the movie confronts the audience with the double standard towards female infidelity. Ted does not take it well. Jerry’s indiscretion is done in part as an act of revenge, but also an act of equality.

I can see why Shearer want to play the part of Jerry; it’s an interesting, well-developed, and challenging role for any actress to play. The great thing about Jerry is that even while “living it up” she is never indecent or immoral. The film’s climax is a test for her character: she runs into Paul who tells her that he still is and always has been in love with her and is ready to leave his wife, her sister, for her.

The Divorcee has everything I’d hoped to see in a scandalous Pre-Code movie. The parties the characters attend throughout the movie are big, glamourous, and ornate with balloons and streamers, and lots of alcohol, even though the movie was made during Prohibition. The parties are what you think of when you imagine parties of that era. It is interesting to see how films of the Pre-Code era managed to be risqué without being crude or crass. The Divorcee, like all Pre-Code films, implies more than it shows which ends up making certain scenes more provocative and effective. The movie shows us Jerry sitting close to Don in a taxi with a devious look on her face. The next thing we see is a shot of a window and curtains closing.

The Divorcee has a fair share of visually interesting moments beginning with a shot of everyone at the country house standing in the doorway watching Jerry and Ted. The scene of a drunken Paul driving a speeding car down a winding road is already tense enough, but the POV shots of the road speeding toward the screen intensifies the danger and suspense. Perhaps the most memorable sequence is a brief montage of Jerry meeting men after her divorce. She is dressed glamorously and her hair is done up gorgeously. The film shows us each man’s hand holding her hand. She accepts jewelry from one of the gentlemen saying, “I’ve heard of platonic love but I didn’t know there was such a as thing as platonic jewelry.” The movie leaves it up to the audience to decide what happens before or after each shot.

I found The Divorcee quite entertaining as both an attempt at social commentary and as a romance film. By addressing the real and stressful moments that often do rear their ugly head on a happy couple, The Divorcee becomes a film of substance and emotion. While its ultimate conclusion seems old fashioned or “traditional” by today’s standards, it also ends with a happy couple, which fits the tone of the movie. It’s clear to any modern viewer that the film treats divorce as something that is detrimental to everyone and seems more forgiving of male infidelity, however, The Divorce as a whole should not be disregarded because of these dated aspects. I hope that modern viewers won’t dismiss it as a quaint but unsuccessful attempt at a feminist movie. It is a glimpse at what a particular era thought of marriage, infidelity, and sexuality. It is also enjoyable to see a strong female character as the lead in a film from the 1930’s—something that remains unfortunately infrequent in films of today.

Nominee: MGM

Producer: Robert Z. Leonard

Director: Robert Z. Leonard

Screenplay: continuity and dialogue by John Meehan, Treatment by Zelda Sears and Nick Grinde, based on the novel Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott

Cast: Norma Shearer, Robert Montgomery, Chester Morris, Conrad Nagel

Release Date: April 30^th, 1930

Total Nominations: 4, including Outstanding Production

Win: Actress-Norma Shearer

Other Nominations: Director-Robert Z. Leonard, Writing-John Meehan

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 #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