THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 23

Two silent movies, two gangster pictures -- it's a good day to be alive.

FOR HIS SON (1912): A year after tackling the  question What Shall We Do with Our Old?, D.W. Griffith was back dealing with social issues that still resonate -- in this case, drug addiction. A physician decides the best way to keep his layabout son in money is to develop a soda with a special ingredient -- cocaine -- and marketed as Dopokoke. Before you can say "strung out", the whole town is going Dopokoke-crazy -- including the physician's son, who starts adding pure cocaine to his own soda stash. When his fiancée breaks things off with him, the son elopes with his father's secretary, another cokehead. Now shooting up the stuff, it doesn't take long before he overdoses, leaving his father bereft of both his son and, presumably, a thriving cocaine business.

There's nothing funny about drug addiction. But there are few things unintentionally amusing, or at least baffling, about the 15-minute long For His Son. A soda called Dopokoke sounds like a mock commercial from the first season of Saturday Night Live. People of all ages knock back glass after glass of the stuff at the local ice cream parlor, yet despite its effect -- and a promotional sign boasting FOR THAT TIRED FEELING -- nobody is aware that it's essentially liquid cocaine, despite being called, duh, Dopokoke. At least the son figures it out, giving him the chance to get the real deal without having it watered down. Too bad that once he and his bride start holing up in their drug den, they appear to age about 40 years in four seconds.

As with D.W. Griffith's other shorts at the time, For His Son was filmed at Biograph Studios in the Bronx; from the looks of it, it probably could have been in the can by the end of the first day of shooting. Simple sets, one exterior locale, a hand-cranked camera standing rigidly in one place. The actors ratchet up the melodrama to make sure we can feel their emotions coming through the screen. At times, they really do seem coked out -- not that I would know, of course. Sure, For His Son goes over the top -- what do you expect from a movie more than a century old? -- but can be seen as an interesting piece of American culture that can take modern audiences by surprise. Almost as much as Dopokoke does to its consumers.

BONUS POINTS: Blanche Sweet (the fiancée) is, as far as I know, the only person from D.W. Griffith's troupe of players who appeared on an episode of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.

MENILMONTANT (1926): Dimitri Kirsanoff's Menilmontant, a 37-minute French silent movie, is likely considered "experimental" or "avant-garde". And by 1926 standards, perhaps it is. But unlike other movies with those two sometimes-dreaded adjectives, 

Menilmontant actually has an understandable throughline. Two nameless sisters, having discovered their murdered parents' bodies, move to the city (Paris), where they work at an artificial flower factory. The younger of the two eventually spends the night with a disreputable young man. Nine months later, having given birth, the young woman, now homeless, walks the streets looking for food and shelter. Before the day is over, she discovers her sister, having been "ruined" by the same disreputable young man, is now a hooker. Both women find their salvation in each other: the younger one gives her sister the baby, which presumably will set both of them on the right track. Meanwhile, the young man is murdered by another woman he presumably ruined. C'est la vie, mon ami!

From Menilmontant's first shocking frames -- the violent ax murder of the parents -- to the fade out, you know you're watching something unusual. Quick cuts, dissolves, double exposures, and tight close-ups set it apart from your average 1926 release. Much of Menilmontant has the feel of a dream; the performances of Nadia Sibirskaia, Yolande Beaulieu, and Guy Belmont (as the sisters and the young man) add to this quality. They are neither completely realistic nor artificial, occupying a strange in-between stage one finds only in the most unusual of silent cinema.

Not that I don't have some questions. The sisters were sharing a humble but perfectly nice apartment, so why is the younger one suddenly homeless? How did doing the dirty turn the older sister into a hooker? Will the baby really survive better with a hooker than her real mother? And why do the sisters go their separate ways at the end? I figured the now-impure sisters, along with the baby, would continue sharing an apartment and nobody would bat an eye, considering the French are tres sophistique. Funny how Menilmontant resembles an American movie in that respect.

BONUS POINTS: Plenty of location shots of the Paris neighborhood of Menilmontant (now you know what the title means).

THE SECRET SIX (1931): M-G-M must have noticed the kind of dough that gangster pictures were raking in for Warner Brothers, seeing that The Secret Six follows roughly the same formula as The Public Enemy: a newcomer brought into the bootlegging game quickly goes up the ladder of the criminal underworld, challenging and eventually bringing down his immediate superior, before meeting his own inevitable end.

But while The Public Enemy relied on newcomer James Cagney, The Secret Six stars Metro's longtime dependable character actor Wallace Beery in the lead as Louie "Slaughterhouse" Scorpio. Beery is quite good here as the bootlegger who never touches alcohol -- he always orders "a glass of cow" at speakeasies. Go ahead and laugh (if you haven't already) but he reminds me at times of Marlon Brando, using subtle physical and verbal "tricks" to seem believable as the guy who can never quite shake his days as a slaughterhouse worker no matter how fancy his clothes or plentiful his money. (Watch how he spits out his chewing tobacco. Disgusting.) Showing strong support is Lewis Stone as alcoholic lawyer Richard Newton, who also leads Scorpio's gang. Stone, better known for his paterfamilias roles, is startling as the soulless mouthpiece who has no problem turning one of his gunsels over to the cops for a murder Scorpio committed. It's just business, you see.

What makes The Secret Six  fascinating today is that it also acted as a launchpad for three new Metro contract players: Ralph Bellamy as Newton's second lieutenant, who makes the mistake of turning his back on Scorpio before the end of the second reel; Jean Harlow as a worker at a high-class speakeasy; and Clark Gable as the wiseass reporter who's doubling as an undercover spy for "The Secret Six", a group of businessmen out to destroy the underworld's grip on the unnamed city. It's always interesting to see Gable in his early, pre-stardom days; only Beery rivals him sheer charisma. Although billed seventh in the credits here, Gable runs every scene he's in, especially those with good ol' boy John Mack Brown (as a rival reporter), and even Jean Harlow -- only 20, and still in her awkward stage. Sporting an obviously higher budget than the Warners' crime movies, The Secret Six is great to look at in all respects and is worthy of any 1930s gangster film festivals.

BONUS POINTS: The titular Secret Six wear domino masks to disguise themselves from outsiders, giving them an unintendedly creepy look. 

LARCENY (1948): Any movie where Dan Duryea plays the heavy is 90 minutes well spent, especially in Larceny, where he helps to push things to the film noir goal line, even if it doesn't quite make the score. Duryea plays Silky Randall, the well-dressed leader of a pack of conmen. Silky sends his ace bunco Rick Maxon to a small town in order to swindle Deborah Clark by helping to set up a youth center in honor of her late husband killed in the War. Things are going well, although the scam gets mucked up by the arrival of Silky's trashy girlfriend Tory, who's been seeing Rick on the sly. And even as Rick finds it hard to shake Tory, he starts getting the guilts over lifting Deborah's hundred-grand contribution for the youth center. Will he pull out of the scheme? Not if Silky has any say in it -- even if it means framing Deborah for Tory's murder.

Yes, there's plenty of noir ingredients in Larceny, but we're supposed to root for the antihero, which is difficult to do when he's fleecing a war veteran's widow. Perhaps that's why John Payne is the perfect for the role of Rick. Unlike Duryea's characterization of Silky, you can tell almost from the get-go that Payne's Rick has something resembling a soul residing deep inside his otherwise steel-cold shell. And it's appropriate that Deborah is played by someone named Joan Caulfield, since she's one step removed from Joan of Arc. I don't want to feel bad for the sucker in movies like this! Every time Dan Duryea popped back onscreen, I breathed a little easier. Not only does he knock his slimy delivery out of the park, his fantastic late-'40s wardrobe is something I would con Deborah for.

The real surprise in Larceny is Shelly Winters as the tawdry Tory. Never one of my favorite actresses, she's fabulous as the hot hoochie playing Silky for a sap while riding Rick on the side, chewing on hardboiled dialogue like she hadn't eaten in weeks. "Stop twisting my arm!" she shrieks at Rick during a violent moment, "people will think we're married!" Payne can give as good as he gets: "You might have a brain, but you must've rented it out to a medical student!" As I think about it, Larceny is better than I initially thought it. I just wish that damn war widow didn't get in the way.

BONUS POINTS: Two years after appearing in The Chase, Don Wilson returns to the land of noir, auctioning off the Rose Bowl football for a good cause before returning to more familiar climes of The Jack Benny Program. 

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THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 6

What would I do without YouTube and TCM? Well, have a more meaningful life with time for charity and volunteer work. But who needs that when there's so much celluloid and kinescope history to discover? I'm approaching the last chapter of my life, and I'm going to have fun!

 

ANY NUMBER CAN PLAY (1949): Charley Enley Kyng (yes, that's how his name is spelled), the  owner of a high-class gambling joint, has problems. He's losing the respect of his college-age son Paul; his wife Lon is on the verge of leaving him; one of his employees is in debt to a couple of low-rent gunmen; and his heart is ready to give out. Otherwise, things are going great. On the night one craps player is about to break the bank, the gunmen make a move to rob the joint.  Paul and the gamblers put their lives on the line to force the crooks to flee. Deciding to cash in his chips, Charley sells the casino to his employees in order to spend his remaining years with his family instead of slot jockeys and card sharks.

Nothing particularly outstanding about that outline, I admit. But thanks to director Mervyn LeRoy, Any Number Can Play feels like a preview of the more adult dramas that would come along in the 1950s. Even the fluid cinematography and occasional long takes separates it from other studio releases of its time. Clark Gable seems to enjoy his interesting dialogue, while the women in his life -- played by Alexis Smith, Audrey Totter, Mary Astor, and Marjorie Rambeau -- are all strong and smart. 

Best of all are enough familiar faces to fill a card deck. Some, like Wendell Corey as the crooked dealer, and William Conrad -- brilliant as a sleazy, sociopathic hoodlum with the annoying habit of addressing everyone as George -- were fairly new to movies in 1949. Yet the old timers stand out, too, many of them playing against type. It's the closest that they or Gable came to film noir. If you're tired of Mutiny on the Bounty or It Happened One Night, put your chips on Any Number Can Play some evening. (That's the final gambling pun you'll be reading here.)

BONUS POINTS: Imagining Louis B. Mayer having a fit in the screening room as he watched MGM's longtime loveable actors Frank Morgan and Lewis Stone playing, respectively, a nasty craps shooter, and an alcoholic, suicidal degenerate poker player. 

GANGS OF NEW YORK (1938): No, this is isn't the original version of the Martin Scorsese movie. It isn't even based on the 1927 book of the same name. What it is, is one of Republic Pictures' rare non-Westerns. When gangster John Sullivan is preparing for parole from prison, he's put into a cell behind a wall in the warden's office. (Sure, every prison has one of them!). Undercover cop Rocky Thorpe, a dead ringer for Sullivan, takes his place as a gang boss, gathering evidence to pass along to authorities. But not everyone in his gang believes he's the real deal -- not even his dog or girlfriend... especially when he starts falling for Connie Benson, the sweet sister of one of the gang member's wannabes. Good thing  the real John Sullivan breaks out of his one-man cell to set things straight for all involved!

Absurdities abound in Gangs of New York, which doesn't negate its entertainment value for a moment. It just might be one of the best B-movies of its genre even as you're thinking I don't believe a second of this from the first scene right through its happily-ever-after climax 67 minutes later. 

Charles Bickford puts his rough manner to good use as Thorpe/Sullivan, although at times you get the feeling he realizes how nutty the script is. It's always nice to see the classy Ann Dvorak (as Connie) even as she's slumming in poverty row epics like this. Former boxer "Slapsie" Maxie Rosenbloom plays it serious for probably the first and last time of his movie career. And the should-be-better-known Harold Huber hits his usual home run as Bickford's sidekick Panatella. He's smokin' good!

BONUS POINTS: Gangs of New York was written by the eventually-legendary Sam Fuller. See, even the greats have to start somewhere.

PAGLICACCI (1936): My problem with operas is that they never stop with the
singing. And it's always in a foreign language! So props to the producers of Pagliacci, because this version from the UK is a drama with half a dozen songs from the opera sung in English!

 A traveling opera troupe is performing Punchinello, in which a sad-sack clown discovers his wife cavorting with a handsome young man and her former lover. Lead actor Canio has no idea that his wife, Nedda, is doing the same thing offstage. (Pagliacci was meta before people knew what it meant). Finally discovering life imitating art, Canio exacts deadly revenge on Nedda and her bf during a performance in front of a shocked audience. Yeah! That's what we wanna see!

Pagliacci, then, is like an RKO noir with a higher pedigree. The songs roared by star Richard Tauber (a big noise in the opera world back in the day) are often difficult to understand due to his Austrian accent. But the story itself is so clear that Tauber could be singing in Mandarin and you'd know what was going on -- unlike that shmuck Canino not knowing what's going with his cheating wife. If nothing else, by watching Pagliacci you can pass yourself off as an opera buff at your next party. 

BONUS POINTS: Pagliacci's prologue and climatic opera scene were filmed in the German film process Agfacolor under the name British Chemicolor. I guess the Brits were expecting Germany to become the enemy any day. 

SMOOTH AS SILK  (1946): Broadway actress Paula Marlowe two-times her boyfriend Mark Fenton and drunk rich kid Don Elliot in order to star in a play written by Don's uncle Stephen. (If she's two-timing two guys, does that make her a four-timer?) Mark gets his revenge by murdering Stephen and pinning it on Paula. When that ruse starts to fall apart, he convinces Don he did it while blackout drunk. But you don't think ace District Attorney John Kimble won't see through that, do you?

Even with Smooth as Silk running 64 minutes, the above synopsis sounds a little thin. That's because I've left out a few subplots that are introduced before going nowhere. Early on, it seems like Paula's kid sister Susan is going to be John Kimball's love interest, but that never happens. A guy shows up to warn Paula being accused of murder isn't going to help her career, then disappears before we find out exactly who he is. Paula herself vanishes from the movie 10 minutes before the climax, so we never find out if that mystery man's prediction is correct. At one point, it even seems like kid sis Susan is going to hook up with Don Elliot before that, too, fizzles out. Now that I think of it, you could take Susan out of the story and it wouldn't affect the story one bit.

Ahh, who cares? It's Smooth as Silk's fast pace and host of B-movie actors that make for fun viewing. Virginia Grey makes Paula Marlowe as hideous a creature as one could find -- you kind of wish she goes to the chair for a crime she didn't commit. As Mark Fenton, Kent Taylor -- a two-bit version of the similarly-named Robert Taylor -- oozes anti-charm from every pore. Familiar character actors John Litel, Charles Towbridge, and Milburn Stone round out the cast, helping to make Smooth as Silk live up to its title.

BONUS POINTS:  John Litel and Kent Taylor light up their cigars at a smoke shop with a gas-powered lighter, something that today is likely quite illegal. 

THE STEVE ALLEN SHOW (12/30/53): A year before originating the Tonight show, Steve Allen hosted a similar live series local to New York, airing from 11:20 p.m. to midnight, sponsored by Ruppert Knickerbocker Beer (100% starch free, as Steve repeatedly reminds us during the live commercials where he actually drinks the stuff).

The Steve Allen Show, then, provided the template for the original Tonight. Steve comes out, adlibs some comments, answers some audience questions, and plays a number on the piano before getting the show rolling.

 Other music segments feature Steve Lawrence (singing a torch song on a set made to look like a tavern) and, later, his wife Eydie Gorme. In between, Allen interviews humorist Roger Price ("humorist" meaning he's unfunny), someone with the honorific American Campus Queen, and the astonishingly dull members of the audience. At some point, Father Knickerbocker (the sponsor's logo come to life) talks about the Brooklyn Children's Museum in excruciating detail.

Obviously, The Steve Allen Show is absolutely nothing like today's counterparts, where everyone involved appears to have been shot up with amphetamines. The whole idea of Steve's show seems to be lulling you to sleep with very gentle humor and easy-listening music. It makes more sense than Jimmy Fallon playing Charades while giggling like a maniac.

BONUS POINTS:  The Steve Allen Show (and the original Tonight) originated from the Hudson Theater, where my wife and I saw Plaza Suite earlier this year. Considering tickets to the TV show were free, Steve's audience got the better deal.

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MOVIE OF THE DAY: "STRANGE INTERLUDE" (1932)

Strange Interlude is another of those Eugene O'Neill dramas where self-destructive people do stupid things while avoiding the truth about themselves. As if real life doesn't give us enough of an opportunity. The difference here is that we get to hear what everyone's really thinking as they lie their way to misery. It's double the fun!

These kids sure know how to have a good time.

Classy but slutty Nina Leeds(Norma Shearer), still in love with her late lover Gordon, marries the immature Sam Evans (Alexander Kirkland) despite having the hots for the cold Ned Darrell (Clark Gable). Learning that insanity runs in Sam's family, Nina gets knocked-up by Ned in order to pass it off as Sam's. Watching all of this is mama's boy Charlie Mardsen (Ralph Morgan), who has always been too spineless to tell Nina that he's madly in love with her. 

Pretend you're Norma Shearer -- which
one of these guy's kids would you
prefer to pup?

Question for the court: Would you be friends with any of these wackos? Of course not. That's why they have no one to hang out with but each other.

Ned and Charlie drift in and out of Nina's life for the next two decades, solely to torture themselves and each other. Oh, and to get rich, thanks to Sam's smart investing skills. Nina's son Gordon (yes, named after her dead boyfriend) has always hated "Uncle" Ned, because he can sense something other than friendship in their relationship. Had he really been Sam's son, Gordon wouldn't have been this smart.

"If  my son is named after my boyfriend,
that means I can sleep with him, right?"

Nina has transferred her love for her dead ex to her son -- so much so that when Gordon announces his engagement, she intends to tell his fiancée that he comes from a long line of maniacs. (Frankly, they all seem nuts to me.) Ned stops her, just before Sam has a stroke, perhaps from all the bombastic dialogue everyone's been declaiming. 

"Why spoil our misery by
being happy for once in our
lives?"

After Sam's funeral, Gordon's anger dissipates as he accepts the fact his mother and Ned were always in love -- but she still refuses to tell him the truth about who his father really is, allowing him to live stupidly happy like Sam did. 

Now Nina and Ned are free to marry! Unless Eugene O'Neill is calling the shots. Instead, she winds up with the still-timorous Charlie, because who wants happy when depressing is so much more interesting?

Let's recap. Three of the lead characters spend half their lifetimes lying to each other in order to make the fourth happy -- and to keep him from going crazy (remember that genetic trait?) if he knew the truth. All of them hang out together in order to continue to be miserable. Except for the clueless husband. He's happy as a clam at high tide. Now imagine seeing the original 1929 stage version of Strange Interlude when it was five hours long. Shoot me now.

All-talking! All-thinking!
All-depressing!

Audiences in 1932 unfamiliar with the stage play must have found it rather shocking that people didn't always say what they really think. The flip side is that several seconds have to elapse between lines of dialogue in order for the characters' thoughts to be heard. While people often say one thing while thinking another, they usually don't pause and look sadly to one side as they do. And because this is Eugene O'Neill (even if he didn't write the screenplay), the characters' emotions usually spill out like a tea kettle that's been on high for too long.

"Excuse me while I think
out loud."

But I blame director Robert Z. Leonard for making the cast going all histrionic with a capital H. Anyone familiar with Norma Shearer's early pre-code performances -- slick, natural, and often astonishingly sexy -- will find only artificiality here, her voice stuck on vibrato, and eyes always on the verge of tears. Clark Gable, on the cusp of superstardom, had done far better supporting work before Strange Interlude. In real life, he likely would have had no patience for this passel of weaselly dingbats.

 

 

Sam's smiling because he's the only
one stupid enough not to realize
what's really going on.

Poor Ralph Morgan (brother of Frank, a/k/a the Wizard of Oz) has nothing to do but moon over Shearer while babbling about his mother and berating himself in voice-overs. Alex Kirkland is actually quite good as Sam, but his character is so clueless that when he finally keels over in the 10th reel, it's a relief.

 

The Brits preferred their interludes
as intervals.

Despite my snark, one has to commend M-G-M for releasing what was for them both a daring and experimental movie. Daring in that sex, insanity, and depression are the driving forces in Strange Interlude (and my own life, come to think of it). Experimental by having its characters all acting as a jumbo Greek chorus. 

But braver still --or foolhardy -- on the studio's part was that Groucho Marx had already parodied Strange Interlude in Animal Crackers two years earlier. You can't expect people to take a drama seriously when it's already been made fun of so easily.

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The only pop song inspired by Eugene O'Neill: Rudy Vallee & His Connecticut Yankees perform "Strange Interlude"

MOVIE OF THE DAY: "NIGHT FLIGHT" (1933)

This poster would have been even better if the
artist knew what John Barrymore and
Helen Hayes really looked like.

Here's Night Flight in one sentence: While the managing director of an airline stops at nothing to create an overnight flight service, a pilot flies through a dangerous storm to deliver the mail.

OK, sounds like the makings of a fine dramatic two-reeler. Unfortunately, the real result -- an 84-minute feature trying to be an epic -- was such that the author of the book on which it was based eventually pulled it from circulation. But more on that later.

Ridiculously promoted as "Grand Hotel of the air!" in 1933, Night Flight seems to be the movie that the phrase "interesting failure" was created for. It anticipates the Airport movies of the 1970s: Get a bunch of famous actors, throw them into some airborne danger, and see what happens. 

Gable focuses on the bottle of bourbon
promised him if he gets this in one take.

In Night Flight's case, it's really very little. Having seen it twice, I actually marveled how a half-dozen A-list stars, surrounded by fine character actors, are unable to lift a thin story off the runway. Clark Gable, in particular, has what was either the most thankless role of his career or the easiest gig ever. 

Speaking no more than a dozen lines of dialogue throughout the picture, he spends all his time in the open cockpit of his plane. The most action he gets is scribbling notes to the radio operator in the seat behind him. The whole shebang probably took one day's work. I mean, the close-up of Gable's hand writing notes probably belonged to a stand-in (or is it write-in?).

Hayes demands airline boss John
Barrymore get her on the first
flight back to Broadway.

Speaking of Gable, the concept of Helen Hayes as his wife is too much to swallow. Even at 32, she already had the demeanor of a middle-aged housewife who only wishes she was married to Clark Gable. And the closest she gets to him in Night Flight is gazing at his photo! It  seems like Louis B. Mayer's big fat joke at her expense. Alright Miss Famous Broadway star! Try to make something of this claptrap!

Yet despite Hayes's reputation as a great stage actress, there's something consistently off about her early film appearances, especially in Night Flight. Either she never learned to act for movies, or can't successfully lower herself to their standards.

Loy tries desperately to
push Gargan away.

Not even Myrna Loy, a first-rate screen presence, can rescue her brief, teary role -- like that of Helen Hayes -- as a pilot's wife. Now Loy, I can easily imagine getting it on with Gable. But married to middling supporting actor William Gargan? Not a chance. She and Hayes must have spent their off-hours commiserating about playing the weeping little ladies stuck on earth while their flyboys are up in the air.

That is, if they even saw each other. For all Night Flight's great cast, there's almost no interaction between anybody. Helen Hayes, for instance, is the only one other than Lionel Barrymore to share a scene with John Barrymore. Robert Montgomery gets about three minutes with Lionel, which probably took a day to shoot. 

"How's it feel to play a role on the same level of
Myrna Loy and Helen Hayes -- meaning,
worthless?"

Montgomery, by the way, is another pilot whose existence seems to be just provide further star power. At least he has a character, even if it isn't very deep: a devil-may-care pilot who shows up to work in a tuxedo having been out drinking all night with his latest floozie -- and nobody at the airport thinks it dangerous. 

However, he provides the movie's pre-code moment near the end, pointing out an overnight airplane to the hooker in his bed. It's not much, but compared to what's come before, it's gold.

John and Lionel play a round of Can You Top This?

As usual, it's up to the Brothers Barrymore to provide Night Flight's best moments. As Riviere, the hard-headed managing director of the airline, John gradually gives unexpected depth to a role that could have been one-note. 

Yes, Riviere is aware he's pushing his pilots to the limit, but he knows that night flights are the future of aviation -- and that a vital polio serum needs to be delivered to a hospital the following morning.

Apparently, the Barrymores weren't
hot stuff in Sweden.

In his entire career, Lionel Barrymore never missed an opportunity to steal a scene, particularly when  opposite his younger brother. Playing Riviere's eczema-suffering stooge Robineau, Lionel is constantly upstaging John by scratching himself silly, even going so far as reaching down the back of his pants. John, no stranger to overplaying a role himself, lets Lionel own their every scene. As if he had a choice.

Aside: If you ever wondered what an overflowing ashtray would sound like if it could talk, listen to John Barrymore in Night Flight. His lungs must have been the color and texture of licorice. And you have to wonder if he burned his fingers the way he smokes cigarettes down to their stubs.

Hope you like this, because you're going
to see a lot of it.

Director Clarence Brown probably realized Night Flight didn't quite reach the heights of M-G-M's two other all-star releases of the time, Grand Hotel and Dinner at Eight, each of which runs a full half hour longer. Likely in order to get Night Flight closer the 90-minute mark, endless shots of a mail plane flying over the Andes pad out its running time. 

Not that they aren't genuinely dramatic. But when accompanied by an utterly unmemorable score, their reason for being is less artistic and more practical -- otherwise, Night Flight would probably run roughly 77 minutes, laughable for an all-star cast even in 1933.

"Ah oui! And zen after I get ze Hollywood money,
I will pull it from release! I am ze clever one, no?"

Night Flight, the credits inform us, was "based upon the 1931 Prix Femina novel", as if to convince Americans it sounded important. Its author, Antoine de Saint-Expuery, probably sounds familiar if, like me, you were forced to slog through his most famous novel, The Little Prince, in high school French class. Saint-Expuery hated Night Flight's transfer to screen, and refused to renew the screen rights after his agreement expired in 1942.

Thus, Night Flight became that most mouthwatering example of a movie: lost. Doubling the legend was its all-star cast. Fans cried, If only we could see it! When it was finally made available 79 years after its original release, those same fans muttered, If only it was good. That's the way these things usually work.

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