THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 47

You've got to get up mighty early to find two movies directed by people better known (and more talented) as actors; one of those actors starring in another picture; and a Magnacolor short starring a one-time Shakesperean actor now slumming in stoogeville. Aren't you glad you stayed in bed while I did the heavy lifting?

UNUSUAL OCCUPATIONS (#23) (1940): Running for 12 years, Paramount's short subject series Unusual Occupations seems to have picked up where Warners' Ripley's Believe it or Not! left off. Not that anything is impossible to believe, since everything is fully documented in almost-glorious Magnacolor. 

Yet a glance at the entire series takes a rather liberal interpretation of the word "occupations". The Dionne Quintuplets? Cylinder records? Clams that look like ducks? None of these are jobs. Still, some of what we see in this chapter certainly count as side hustles. Painting miniature portraits (Jesus, FDR, and Hitler among other subjects), creating art out of flowers, or growing pumpkins in the shape of human skulls could earn folks a buck or two. But what of the gas station attendant who built a hand-cranked machine to kick yourself in the ass when you've done something stupid -- no charge!

The longest section belongs to John Barrymore, whose occupation on his tax return was "Actor" but in Unusual Occupations appears to be "Collector of Dead Things". As he leads radio announcer Ken Carpenter around his mansion, Barrymore shows off the collection of fish he's caught, animals he's shot, stuffed heads, and a dinosaur tooth, and, not surprisingly, lots of guns. Comfortably ensconced in his self-parody stage of life, Barrymore's deliberately hammy delivery (you have no idea how someone can roll his r's with such ease) and double-takes entertained moviegoers who avoided his classy productions years earlier. Whatever pays the hunting bills, I guess. Although I wonder if Barrymore thought he deserved a round or two with the ass-kicking machine for allowing booze to destroy his career.

BONUS POINTS: A still of Barrymore from this particular Unusual Occupations appeared in a book about film restoration which I owned as an adolescent. It took over 50 years before discovering the movie online. Too bad its current owner plastered a timer and FOOTAGE FILE watermark over the entire movie.

MY TRUE STORY (1951): Columbia Pictures must have run out of radio series to adapt before giving True Story magazine the movie treatment. My True Story appears to have been a one-shot entry into the non-genre, perhaps as a bone tossed to down-on-his-luck Mickey Rooney to direct. A true story about his life would have been a lot more interesting.

Femme convict Ann Martin is sprung from the slammer with the promise of a job from a kindly confectioner claiming to have been a friend of her mother. He is, in fact, part of her three-man pre-prison jewel robbery gang. Ann is set up as the caretaker for dowager Mme. Rousseau in order to steal the secret ingredient for the perfume her late husband created: oil of myrrh.  While Ann starts having second thoughts, the gang is willing to kill the guy who runs the perfume factory, and, if necessary, Ann's bf, and Mme. Rousseau herself. Beware of three wiseguys carrying myrrh!

All due credit to My True Story for coming up with oil of myrrh rather than jewels or money as the criminals' target. But a B-picture starring no one of importance rises or falls on the script and direction. Neither are particularly special -- the dialogue is run-of-the-mill, while Rooney's directorial style seems to be holding the end of each scene for several seconds after the last line is spoken before fading out. Aldo Ray (billed as Aldo DaRae) is featured in his first movie role as Rousseau's chauffeur who's also part of the criminal gang. As for the rest of the cast, Wilton Graff (as the gang leader) seems to be imitating Vincent Price, while character actor Ben Weldon is the only familiar face. Strictly for B-movie fans, My True Story makes for a somewhat interesting if long 67 minutes. 

BONUS POINTS: The ridiculous finale tries to convince you that Ann's change of heart means she'll never serve a day in prison for taking part in a criminal act that wound up with two people dead. 

THE BIG OPERATOR (1959): Any '50s crime picture  beginning with a guy getting knocked on the noggin and tossed into the back of a cement truck definitely gets my attention -- especially when followed by credits accompanied by a brass & drums-heavy theme common in the late '50s. Welcome to the world of corrupt union leader "Little Joe" Braun, who will stop at nothing from preventing honest union guys from testifying against him in a federal investigation -- like torture, murder, and when that's not enough, the threat of torture and murder to be inflicted on a kidnapped child. A guy's gotta keep his job, y'know.

As in Quicksand and Drive a Crooked Road, Mickey Rooney is superlative as Braun. No need for him to give his character any complexity, either -- he's a just an extraordinarily violent, angry guy towered over by the world yet terrifies all who come in contact with him. (You can't tell me the 5'1" Rooney didn't carry around a tremendous grudge -- his onscreen anger is too convincing not to be real.) And as long as he's onscreen, The Big Operator makes for a riveting good show. Unfortunately, unlike his other two movies mentioned above, there's way too much time devoted to the supporting characters, one of whom is set on fire. (Just to set things straight, the hitman did it on his own accord, forcing Braun to admonish him, "Look, you don't set anybody on fire without my permission!")

That supporting cast, though, is dizzying. Jackie Coogan (The Addams Family)! Jim Backus (Gilligan's Island)! Jay North (Dennis the Menace)! Mel Torme (The Fearmakers)! Vampira, Charles Chaplin, Jr, Mamie van Doren, Joey Foreman, Ray Danton, Steve Cochran -- all in Cinemascope! Their presence alone threaten to overshadow Rooney from time to time. But for my money, you can keep the star of jolly MGM musicals and heartwarming Andy Hardy pictures -- I'll take his angry little chumps, doormats, and criminals any time.

BONUS POINTS: Jackie Coogan -- oddly also receiving a "Dialogue Coach" credit -- played opposite Charles Chaplin, Jr.'s dad in The Kid in 1921. 

GANGSTER STORY (1959): There must have been something in the air in the 1950s for
actors wanting to spread their unsteady wings. For not only did Mickey Rooney direct My True Story, Walter Matthau stepped behind the camera for the crime picture Gangster Story. And, as with Rooney's movie, the poster claims (meaning lies) it's a true story. The main difference is that My True Story at least looks professional, while Gangster Story is probably the worst B-movie starring an actor who was already established -- if, admittedly, not exactly famous yet. 

Gangster Story is the usual, uh, story about a gangster. Jack Martin, on the run from the police, robs a bank -- by making it look like he's rehearsing a movie! -- before being found by the yeggs on the payroll of criminal ringleader Earl Dawson, who hires him to join the gang. Martin's first job is to rob the safe from a country club. While Dawson intends to keep his new employee on the payroll, Martin wants to run away to Mexico with Carol, a librarian who has fallen in love with him for no damn good reason. A subsequent shootout with Dawson and the cops puts everybody's plan to bed for good.

OK, not exactly original but serviceable for a 65-minute quickie. The problem is Matthau the director. Working with a penny-ante budget and non-union crew, he appeared to deliberately make sure that Gangster Story looked strictly amateur hour. Camera shots consistently off-center and occasionally out of focus, dialogue looped in during post-production, ham-fisted editing, and a score that sounds like needle drops -- everything leaves you asking yourself questions. Was this Matthau's attempt at a calling card to break out of supporting roles into leads? Did he surround himself with terrible actors to make himself look that much better? And how the hell did his career survive this piece of junk? If Matthau the actor wasn't as good as he was, Gangster Story could be mistaken for an Ed Wood production. Definitely a must-see. (Google the title and see just how many fly-by-night video companies have released it with covers featuring photos of 1970s Matthau.)

BONUS POINTS: The only name I recognized in the credits, Radley Metzger (the editor), would later become famous as the auteur of artsy softcore epics. When that's a step up in a career, you know you started at the dregs.

                                                        *************

MOVIE OF THE DAY: "COUNSELLOR-AT-LAW" (1933)

Your honor, I state under oath that Counsellor-At-Law is Universal Pictures' greatest 1930s non-horror release. It's also one of the best pre-code pictures, with an interesting story, snappy dialogue spoken at breakneck speed, a camera that never stops moving, and a dozen or so fascinating supporting actors, all under the able direction of director William Wyler. And it offers what is likely John Barrymore's greatest screen performance as well. So why doesn't it make any "Best Of" lists? 

Cora is shocked to discover that her husband's
mother isn't Protestant.

Did I say "interesting story"? Actually, there are several running currently in Counsellor-At-Law, but only two create most of the drama. George Simon, of the 5th Avenue law firm Simon & Tedesco, discovers that he's being considered for disbarment for having helped create an alibi for a client many years earlier -- a client who has since gone on to be a good citizen and family man. Simon's wife, Cora, a member of the "Newport 400", is more concerned about her social standing than her husband's potential career-ending dilemma. 

The only time Barrymore gave a woman the
fisheye.

Simon, you see, is not only Jewish but surrounds himself, and takes up the cases of, people from the old neighborhood -- other Jews, Italians, Irish -- as well as handling well-paying scandalous divorces which his snooty wife finds distasteful. Cora's "good friend" Roy Darwin -- who has borrowed $2,000 from Simon -- is more than happy to, er, fill in for her increasingly-"ungentlemanly" husband. Only Simon's loyal, lovestruck secretary Rexy Gordon appears to have Simon's best interests at heart -- and will ultimately to save his life.

I'd hire him -- if I could afford it.

Anyone associating John Barrymore exclusively with Shakespeare and
flamboyant costume dramas will be knocked out by Counsellor-At-Law. Despite taking a suspension of disbelief the length of the Mackinac Bridge to accept him as Jewish -- it's amusing on many levels when he refers to his younger brother as a gonnif -- Barrymore is nothing less than brilliant. Nervously drumming his fingers on his desk, binging on chocolate candies three at a time, pacing the halls like a nervous racehorse, barking out orders at 150-mph, his portrayal of George Simon must have been literally breathtaking. (As in Night Flight in the same year, a lifetime of heavy cigarette smoking had made his voice deeper than the Mariana Trench.) Thank the movie gods that Paul Muni, who originated the role on Broadway a year earlier, refused to repeat it on film.

While supporting players including Bebe Daniels as Rexy and Isabel Jewell's  hilarious singsong phone operator/receptionist are entertaining, only Vincent Sherman, as the stereotypical Jewish radical Harry Becker, gives Barrymore a run for his money. Becker, whose mother is an old family of friend of Simon's, had been beat up by the cops and arrested for giving a pro-Communist speech at Union Square.

"What else is Union Square good for besides 
commie speeches?"

Instead of being grateful for Simon offering to take up his case without charge, Becker lays into him, hitting every Commie bullet point: "How did you get where you are? I'll tell you. By betraying your own class, that's how. By climbing on the backs of the working class, that's how. Getting in right with bourgeois politicians and crooked corporations, that feed on the blood and the sweat of the workers... A cheap prostitute, that's what you are. You and your cars and your country estate and your kept parasite of a wife!" 

Wow. Again, this is not a speech modern audiences expect from a nearly century-old movie. Becker even has to be restrained from beating up Simon's bratty, entitled stepchildren (who, frankly, deserve a smack upside the head.)

"How do I keep all these characters straight?"

With its multitudes of storylines and characters, Counsellor-At-Law nevertheless gallops along at a brisk 82 minutes. As with many Universal movies of its time that don't star Boris Karloff or Bela Lugosi, it doesn't turn up very often even on TCM. Perhaps as with The Sin of Nora Man, a forthcoming Blu-ray release will help Counsellor-At-Law take its place as one of the best pre-codes and a superb showcase for John Barrymore. If not... well, there oughta be a law.

                                                          *******************

To read about The Sin of Nora Moran, click here.

To read about Night Flight, click here.

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.

                                                    ******************

MOVIE OF THE DAY: "A BILL OF DIVORCEMENT" (1932)

Christmas day -- all is calm, all is bright in the Fairfield home. Divorcee Margaret Fairfield is looking forward to her marriage to Gray Meredith. Meanwhile, her daughter Sydney is planning her marriage to Kit Pumphery. 

Then Margaret's ex-husband (and Sydney's father) Hilary drops by after escaping from the local lunatic asylum. And you think your holiday reunions are a pain.

Remembered solely as Katharine Hepburn's movie debut, A Bill of Divorcement is one of those rarely-screened "classics" that had a high pedigree back in the day, but is now creakier than a door that hasn't been oiled in 400 years.


It didn't have to be this way. Having been locked up in the cracker factory for 15 years, John Barrymore (as Hilary) makes his entrance to his former home with a look of confusion, excitement and wonder, without any dialogue to telegraph his thoughts. It's quite a moving moment. And, with few exceptions, it's also one of the last times anybody in the picture appears to be on speaking terms with the word "subtlety."

They look like they'd have
crazy kids even without
the insanity gene.

The story is actually fairly interesting. Sydney, having never met her father, is under the belief that Hilary's mind was destroyed by shell shock during World War I. She eventually learns that dad carried the insanity gene all along -- as does she. (Take a number, kid.)

Faster than you say "lithium," Sydney breaks up with Kit (because who wants crazy offspring?) before urging Margaret and Gray to elope. Sydney and Hilary will live together in happy insanity. 

Oh, and did I mention nothing makes sense in A Bill of Divorcement? Forty-seven year-old Billie Burke plays 34 year-old Margaret. Hepburn, 25, is supposed to be 19. Everyone speaks with American accents (since they're all American actors), only it isn't until about 20 minutes before the climax that we learn we're in a London suburb. 

And while we're at it, what's with the wacky names? Hilary and Sydney are usually associated with the opposite sex. Gray Meredith sounds like the title of an 19th-century Gothic romance novel.  And Kit freaking Pumphrey? They all sound nuts.

Barrymore wins the battle of the profiles.

Still, nothing is weirder than the climax. After throwing everyone else out of the house, Sydney and her dad sit down at the piano to finish a sonata he started composing before the War, looking less like father and daughter than a married couple looking forward to some hot times together. Interestingly, it's the only time that Hepburn -- who, as usual, possesses all the warmth of a woolly mammoth preserved in an iceberg -- shows any real emotion.

While A Bill of Divorcement's script is problematic, the ultimate blame must go to director George Cukor, whose instruction to every actor seems to have been, "More histrionics!" The leading stars ratchet up the melodrama as if they're playing to the back row in a theater for the hard of hearing (not to mention hard of thinking). Only David Manners, as Sydney's fiance Kit, skips the ham. 

"You don't mind if I have a better
look, do you?"

The low point, without doubt, is Hilary falling to his his knees, weeping, while emotionally blackmailing Margaret to take him back now that he's allegedly "cured." I have a feeling Barrymore knew the claptrap he was involved in, and decided to roll with it. 

There must have been a big audience for A Bill of Divorcement. Originally a 1921 Broadway play, it was produced as a silent movie a year later. Following the 1932 release, it was remade in 1940. A live television version aired on Kraft Theater in 1949. 

That's fewer bills of divorcements than you'd find in one Hollywood family. But far more Bill of Divorcement's than anybody really needs.

                                                         ***************

MOVIE OF THE DAY: "PLAYMATES" (1941)

Few, if any, great actors had such a spectacular, sorrowful fall as John Barrymore. From preeminent actor to public buffoon, Barrymore allowed his addictions -- alcohol and sex, among others -- drive him to financial and artistic ruin. 

By the time of his death in 1942, he had been reduced to playing Rudy Vallee's radio stooge, indulging in self-abasement for the pleasure of the American audience. So far gone was his health that, unlike his co-stars, he had to read his lines sitting from a chair -- there was no way he could stand for the duration of the show.

Barrymore's movie career, too, had taken a similar path. The titles alone -- Hold that Co-Ed, The Invisible Woman, The Great Profile -- tell you that his glory days were long gone. His final movie, Playmates, made a year before his death, sends shudders through Barrymore fans even today. Playing, as with Vallee's radio show, a parody of himself, the once-greatest Hamlet of his generation was a willing participant in yet another chapter of his long, public suicide.

Before

After

Or... You can look at Playmates another way: a low-rent comedy with a rollicking performance by an actor trying to make a legitimate living. Until it starts to falter, due partly to the headache-inducing appearance of Lupe Velez, Playmates allows John Barrymore one, final chance at playing comedy like nobody else.



Taking advantage of his public persona, Playmates presents Barrymore as a washed-up ham taking part in a publicity stunt to revive his career. In giving bandleader Kay Kyser lessons in Shakespeare, the once-great star hopes to get a radio contract and start paying off his debts. Barrymore is appalled to be working with the Southern-born Kyser, calling him, among other things, "that syncopated cotton-picker" and "that nursemaid to a bass tuba." (I don't understand what it means, either.) 

By distracting Kyser with with the sexy Carmen del Toro (Lupe Velez) and dousing Kyser's throat with a liquid to close his vocal cords on opening night, Barrymore tries to take over their Shakespeare festival himself. Kyser eventually catches on and turns the tables on him, making for what director David Butler thought was a funny sight of the two actors talking as if they just sucked on lemons.

Barrymore wonders how he went from
Shakespeare to Kay Kyser and Lupe Velez.

No, Playmates doesn't wander very near the "classic" territory. The script, as with many 1940s comedies, is both hamfisted and lightweight. (What happened to the sophisticated wits of the 1930s? They couldn't have all been drafted). Kay Kyser has the personality of a pair of loafers. Make that half a pair. (He does, however, feature in a genuinely bizarre nightmare sequence both funny and discomforting.) Patsy Kelly, as Barrymore's sarcastic agent Lulu, is grating enough to shave a wedge of Parmesan into dust. 

Kay Kyser's band is the '40s version of Herman's Hermits -- borderline novelty, nothing to make you forget Benny Goodman. When Barrymore says, "Some things are too low for even me to stoop to," you know it's a lie -- after all, he's in Playmates, his name below the title and Kay Kyser's above in letters that fill the screen.

Steadying himself on Kyser while the
 studio hairdresser goes to work.

But from his first appearance, you know who the real star is. Barrymore is breathtakingly, hilariously over the top. Eyebrows wagging more than Groucho's, bellowing his lines like a bull elephant, he commands the screen the way few actors of his time (outside of his brother Lionel) could. His outraged reaction to Kyser attempting the "Friends, Romans, countrymen" speech alone is gut-bustingly funny. If only he was working with a script as great as he was.

True, he looks terrible, the bags under his eyes more like steamer trunks. His hair is greasy enough to saute a herd of cows. The face and body are bloated from an overdose of the alleged good life. And you could pass out from playing a drinking game every time he reads from his cue cards.

"It's come to this -- being groped by
Patsy Kelly?"

And yes, the insults to Barrymore pile up like snowflakes in a blizzard. A young autograph hound mistakes him for Adolphe Menjou. His own agent denigrates him to others. He has to act with a musician named Ish Kabibble! The famous RKO Radio tower that opens Playmates might just as well be signaling a desperate SOS.

But by God, John Barrymore can still act. He knows what's expected of him, giving the audience its money's worth every second he's onscreen. Watch his classic 1934 farce Twentieth Century back to back with Playmates and you'll see very little stylistic difference. The former's script (by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur) and leading lady (Carole Lombard) are admittedly superior by a country mile -- no, ten miles, a million miles. But to the benefit of both movies, Barrymore ignores the meaning of the word "nuance." 

Except for one scene, that is, the most famous in Playmates. Barrymore has been brought over to Kyser's hotel room to give him the lowdown on reciting Shakespeare. As an example, he offers to recite Hamlet's famous soliliquy. Taking a seat, Barrymore transforms himself into... himself. Using his real speaking voice for the first time, he poignantly muses, "It's been a long time" -- no doubt reflecting on when he was the toast of Broadway. The transformation is as electrifying as that of his starring role in Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde two decades earlier. 


Shot in mid-close-up, the all-too-brief scene proves that Barrymore still had it in him to move audiences, making them feel they understood the archaic language even if they really didn't. Tears roll down his face -- is he acting, or remembering what once was? -- as he reaches the graceful, quiet climax of a moment as moving as almost any in film history. 

Whereupon, he slaps the tears from his eyes and reverts to playing the 1941 model of John Barrymore. That he can give two diametrically opposite interpretations of himself  within seconds of each other is proof positive of a talent almost unmatched. It makes one yearn to see him in a modern-dress version of Hamlet.

At least he got billing
over Ginny Simms.

Alas and alack, it was not to be. Playmates was his final movie, an ignoble end to what was once the most illustrious of careers. There are far better Barrymore pictures -- Counsellor-at-Law, Twentieth Century and True Confession to name but three. The Great Man Votes, Arsene Lupin and Svengali when the others aren't available. (I find Grand Hotel a little too long and stuffy.) 

Playmates should be viewed for what it was meant to be -- a silly comedy meant to float its co-star until the next bill came due. If it ever turns up, watch the first half, or at least enough to catch the soliloquy. No actor today, save perhaps Christopher Walken, can take mediocre material and make it compulsively watchable. This, friends, is genius at work.

To put things in perspective, let's compare the three leads of Playmates:


One guy named Kay, the other named Ish.

Kay Kyser: A so-so bandleader/songwriter remembered, if at all, for the radio quiz show Kay Kyser's Kollege of Musical Knowledge -- and giving the world the dopey trumpet-player/comedian with the proto-Jerry Lewis haircut, Ish Kabibble. Retired in 1950, died in 1985.






Ugh.

Patsy Kelly: An obnoxious character actress whose career peaked with a series of two-reelers with Thelma Todd in the mid-'30s, only to devolve into being Tallulah Bankhead's paid companion and assistant. A role in the 1971 Broadway revival of No, No Nanette led to some supporting parts in movies and TV.  Died in 1981.


John Barrymore: One of the greatest actors of his time, expert at both comedy and drama, whose unfortunate final years do not make any less stellar at least a dozen cinematic roles that stand the test of time and then some. A man whose very name is still considered the Rolls Royce of acting, John Barrymore worked until the very end of his life in 1942.

If you were an entertainer, which legacy would you prefer?
                                              
                                           *********************


The best way to prevent anyone from slipping into alcoholism is to show them this unedited newsreel footage of John Barrymore on his return to Broadway at age 57. Warning: it isn't pretty. Fast forward to the 18-second mark.