THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 55

 Today's menu consists of two pre-codes, a B-movie starring a blog favorite, and a short best watched with the sound muted. Time to binge!

AFRAID TO TALK (1932): Just when you think pre-codes couldn't get more cynical, up pops Afraid to Talk. Bellboy Eddie Martin witnesses the murder of gangster Jake Stransky by fellow criminal Jig Skelli. What appears to be open and shut case becomes dead and buried, since Skelli has proof that the city's mayor, police commissioner, judges and the D.A.'s office were on Stranksy's payroll. Ergo, the bellboy has to take the fall. After hours of mental and physical torture, Eddie signs a confession. The Mayor and Judge, happy to collect kickbacks as long as mobsters are killing each other, want no part of this, and risk their own careers in order to free Martin. District Attorney John Wade, on the other hand, decides to arrange Martin's jailhouse murder to make it look like suicide. Your tax dollars at work!

Even for a misanthrope like me, Afraid to Talk was a disquieting 75 minutes. Not even the previously-discussed Vice Squad presents lawmakers in such a tawdry light. So much so that where it takes place is never made clear, since references are made to cities like Chicago, Detroit, and New York. (Pay no attention to Times Square's electric headline tickertape that's often seen.) Too, constant reference is made to protecting "the party" at all costs -- just don't ask which party. No wonder some Depression-hit jobless characters hope for a red revolution. The latter is due to Afraid to Talk's writer, Albert Maltz, being a real-life member of the Communist party. And we all know that lawmakers in Stalin's Russia were the most integrous of people.

Forget about the leads playing the bellboy and his bride; it's the bad guys (some pretending to be good) who own Afraid to Talk. Master character actor Edward Arnold, who could play nice guys when he wanted to, chews up the joint as Jig Skelli, the jolly gangster who enjoys bantering with the D.A. as much as he does killing off rivals. And speaking of the D.A., the underrated Louis Calhern is oilier than a tin of mackerel as John Wade, who marks the innocent Eddie Martin for death with the ease of ordering one of the countless cigars smoked here. And it won't be the last time you'll find yourself saying, "Oh my God!" either.

Yup, Afraid to Talk swings for the disreputable fences time after time. The only problems are its current so-so condition (yet another obscure Paramount oldie in need of a good scrubbing), and that it lacks the more downbeat alternate ending allegedly filmed for its European release. Even in its current state, though, Afraid to Talk puts to lie any talk about the "innocent days" of movies and how the studios were afraid to confront audiences with the hard truth about what their government leaders were (and still are) capable of. 

BONUS POINT: The corrupt cops giving poor Eddie the third-degree. Not that they're doing it, but how it's photographed in one take, the camera slowly tracking closer as the harsh overhead light swings lazily back and forth. We're spared seeing the subsequent torture, having to be content with hearing Eddie's agonized off-camera screams.

EAST OF FITH AVENUE (1933):  Sure, that "Grand Hotel of a New York boarding house" hype on the East of Fifth Avenue one-sheet is accurate. But it also feels like Columbia's answer to Sam Goldwyn's Street Scene, right down to the Gershwinesque opening theme. Both movies focus on the denizens of lower-middle class New York neighborhoods in a compressed timeline. Characters have money and family problems. But while Street Scene was a big budget adaptation of an acclaimed Broadway drama, East of Fifth Avenue is... well, like I said, a Columbia picture. 

No need to give the names of most of the characters or the actors. And while there are a lot of them -- the layabout poet, the elderly couple, the snake oil salesman among others -- two carry much of the movie. Kitty (Dorothy Tree) eagerly awaits the return of Vic (Wallace Ford), the fast-talking gambler who unknowingly knocked her up. And Vic does indeed show up -- with his wife Edna, a cracked Southern belle. It doesn't take long for Edna to get tired of the boarding house life, leading Vic to desperately find a thousand bucks to bet on a surefire 10-1 nag at the track. Kitty, still in love with him, borrows from the elderly couple, which sets into motion the climactic events that affect most of the boarders in different, shocking ways.

While most of the characters are more like caricatures, Dorothy Tree brings Kitty to life in East of Fifth Avenue's most believable performance, holding the story together during the goofy first half before it gets increasingly dramatic. Familiar utility actor Wallace Ford gives his typical wiseguy flair, only less grating than usual. Even better, he often gives hints of his better dramatic style that would dominate his future supporting roles. I came close to turning off East of Fifth Avenue (118 East 56th, to be exact) in the first half hour but was glad to stick with it, as it didn't necessarily play out as expected, especially with the elderly couple. It might not be a grand hotel but it's pretty good.

BONUS POINTS: By the end of the movie, you will have learned a dozen or so pre-code ways to say a woman is pregnant without really saying it. Best example: when Kitty is kicked out of a chorus line, one of the dancers sneers, "Say, I thought you had a lot of experience." To which Kitty replies, "Yeah, too much!"

THE SIX DAY GRIND (1935): Some not-so-good pictures are worth seeing just once
because they're short. Others, because they have historical significance. Still others because they're proof that what was once considered witty has aged like camembert sitting on the windowsill for a year. 

The Six Day Grind is all three. It's a one-reeler; it features genuine newsreel footage of the six-day bicycle race held in Madison Square Garden in 1935, an event at once fascinating and boring beyond human standards; and it stars the married comedy team of Goodman and Jane Ace, known on their radio sitcom as the Easy Aces. The couple were similar to Burns & Allen, with the long-suffering straightman playing off his scatterbrained wife. But while George Burns clearly adored Gracie and her "illogical logic", Goodman seems to have married the incredibly stupid Jane just to have someone to insult on a regular basis.

The "Ace High" shorts made for the Van Buren Studios in New York anticipate Science Fiction Theater 2000. In all of them, The Aces are at a movie theater, where Jane reads the opening credits in her Southern drawl, before commenting about the newsreel onscreen. Goodman needs to correct her throughout, eventually using his catchphrase, "Isn't that awful?" Well yes, it is, but not in the way he's implying. If these two were sitting near you in a real movie theater, you'd demand the usher throw them out on their unfunny butts. Comedians and writers alike held Goodman Ace in high regard back in the day, so either he was funnier writing for other people, or his style doesn't hold up.

But you know what? The bicycle race footage is fun to watch for 10 minutes. These guys zip around track at a lot of miles per hour, with the teams trading off riders in order to sleep and eat. Watch The Six Day Grind with a friend, turn off the volume, and make your own wisecracks. It'll be funnier than what the Easy Aces have to say. 

BONUS POINTS: During a break, biking champ Alfred LeTourneau sleeps in an "oxygen therapy service tent," allowing Jane to complain, "Oh, why can't he breathe the same air as the rest of us?" It's the closest thing to a funny remark she makes here. 

BETRAYAL FROM THE EAST (1945): Lee Tracy was nearing the end of his movie career and spending more time on stage when he made this patriotic drama based on the non-fiction book of the same name. In pre-Pearl Harbor Los Angeles, carnival barker Eddie Carter is approached by his old army buddy Kato -- you can guess his ancestry -- for information regarding U.S. military plans on the Panama Canal. When Carter approaches U.S. Naval Intelligence with his suspicions that Kato is up to no good, he eagerly accepts Uncle Sam's request to go undercover in the Japanese spy ring operating on the West Coast. Sure, it's dangerous, but's more exciting than bringing customers inside a tent at two bits per rube.

Hollywood was churning out anti-Japanese movies like ramen noodles during the War, usually making the "Japs" out to be barely one step above apes. Betrayal From the East goes in a slightly different direction. The spies are -- or at least pretend to be --respectful and well-mannered. And unlike the usual "ah so" characters of the time, Carter's friend Kato speaks perfect English without a trace of an accent. And while you might not recognize the names of the "enemy" character actors -- Richard Loo, Philip Ahn, Victor Sen Yung, Abner Bieberman (who wasn't even Japanese but could pass in a pinch) -- they fall into the "oh, that guy" category. Regis Toomey's eight-minute role as an American spy might disappoint his fans, but how many of them are there, anyway?

It wouldn't be a '40s spy drama without a little romance, so Eddie falls hard for fellow undercover agent Peggy Harrison -- who, as played Nancy Kelly, is about a quarter-century his junior. Her apparent death -- and later reappearance hanging out with German spies -- gives the movie an unexpected Vertigo-ish twist. (Her character's real death is genuinely unsettling.) 

No longer the motormouth from his pre-code days, Lee Tracy is now a little slower and paunchier. Still, his B-pictures like Betrayal From the East offer a welcoming presence for fans like me who wonder when he's going to get the look-who-we-discovered treatment by johnny-come-latelys like the New York Times and the Film Forum.

BONUS POINTS: Betrayal From the East is introduced by Drew Pearson, the muckraking political journalist whose newspaper column, "Washington Merry-Go-Round", was the talk of Washington. Over a decade earlier, his book of the same name was the basis of a great movie starring Lee Tracy. 

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