THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 60

Two more obscure European movies take their place alongside a pre-code political drama and a legendary early talkie that marked the beginning of the end of one of the most popular silent actors of his time.

HIS GLORIOUS NIGHT (1929): You might not have heard of His Glorious Night, but if you're a fan of Singin' in the Rain, you're definitely aware of it. You know the scene when Gene Kelly's character bombs in his first talkie while moaning, "I love you, I love you, I love you"? This movie was the inspiration. To quote Paul Harvey, now you know the rest of the story.

The mockery inflicted on Gilbert at the time of His Glorious Night's release was unfair and cruel (even if he over enunciates the word "cruel" with two syllables throughout the movie.) Yes, the love scenes between Gilbert and leading lady Catherine Dale Owen are overwrought, and in need of rewrites. But contrary to legend, Gilbert doesn't have a squeaky voice. Rather the deep resonance that his silent movie roles implied, he sounds like a normal person. Too, the romance genre he specialized in during the silent era became a thing of the past in favor of musicals, gangster pictures, and wisecracking comedies.

So after nearly a century of being buried in the MGM vaults, the biggest realization of the recent restoration of His Glorious Night -- a truffle of a trifle about royal love lives, mix-ups, and the like -- is that it's a comedy. It's supposed to be funny, and, when Gilbert and Owen aren't pitching woo, they're funny, too, as are the supporting characters, including Owen's mother and a perpetually squabbling couple who appear throughout. Shout out, too, to Gustav von Seyffertitz, hilarious as the nervous, confused police commander. I laughed out loud a good half dozen times during His Glorious Night, and always on purpose. 

The production's problems lie not with Gilbert but the technical crudeness inherent in early talkies, along with the pedestrian direction by Lionel Barrymore. Had Ernest Lubitsch, the master of the sophisticated sex comedies, called the shots, His Glorious Night would have turned out better all around, and maybe have given John Gilbert a better transition to sound. His later movies, like the edgy pre-code Downstairs, proved he was as good as many of his contemporaries. His Glorious Night might not be glorious but doesn't deserve the negativity from by wiseasses who don't know any better. (You can tell what kind of a life I lead when I sob Leave John Gilbert alone!)

BONUS POINTS: Gustav von Seyffertitz's pledge, "I know nothing!" would later be echoed by Sgt. Schultz in Hogan's Heroes. Must be a German thing.

THE BILLION DOLLAR SCANDAL (1933): At a time when it seems like the 1% can
get away with anything, up to and including murder, it's nice to see when one of them gets it, even if it's only in a pre-code picture. The big money scandal here involves the fleecing of the American taxpayers by a group of oil magnates led by John Masterson. His live-in physical trainer, ex-con "Fingers" Bartos, turns states evidence against them at the behest of a crusading newspaper publisher. Knowing their lives will be ruined if Bartos testifies before a closed-door Congressional committee, Masterson and his pals hire a fixer named Carter B. Moore to keep the guy's yap shut. And by fixer, I mean hitman.

The one-sheet on the right implies that The Billion Dollar Scandal is based on a true story, although my research can't confirm it. This doesn't prevent the movie from being an interesting slice of life drama when Depression-era audiences had it in for the uber-rich who never seemed to pay for their crimes while petty transgressors like Bartos and his pals Ratsy Harris and Kid McGurn spent years up the river simply for lack of a good lawyer. Almost a century later, the oil barons portrayed here are as hateful as any of today's tech billionaires -- they boast of their illegal behavior and how they're out to help only each other while screwing over the rest of America.

Robert Armstrong (the poor man's Victor McLaglen) kind of overdoes the "dese and dose" routine as Fingers, who will do anything to protect his kid brother, right down to trying to break up his romance with Masterson's daughter Doris -- which Masterson himself is trying to do as well. Still in pre-MGM befuddled character days, Frank Morgan shows what a good dramatic actor he was as the despicable Masterson, the oily oil oligarch who destroys people's lives simply for sport. Wardrobe and slang aside, The Billion Dollar Scandal resonates that the wealthiest among us will always pull society's strings because no matter how much money they have, it's never enough.

BONUS POINTS: The Billion Dollar Scandal is one of the few movies where I recognized damn near everybody. In addition to Frank Morgan (The Wizard of Oz) and Sidney Toler (the Charlie Chan Monogram mysteries), and dozen or so character actors, there are representatives from a slew of classic horror movies of the time: Robert Armstrong (King Kong), Edward van Sloan (Dracula), Olga Baclanova (Freaks), and Irving Pichel (Dracula's Daughter). For me, this is cinematic comfort food.

SZIRUSZ (SIRIUS) (1942): Recently I was in the mood for a 1940s Hungarian time-
travel/romantic-comedy/sci-fi musical. Lucky me, I stumbled across Sirius. See what happens when you wish hard enough? 

Count Tibor Akos is taken to 1784 Austria in eccentric Professor Sergius's mini-rocket. Still dressed in his era-appropriate costume party outfit, Tibor spends his time at a royal party, where he falls in love with Italian opera singer Rosina Beppo, and insults everybody else. Tibor's misbehavior climaxes in a duel with his own great-grandfather. As Tibor is wounded, Sergius returns in time to bring them both back to 1942 Hungary.

Other than the shockingly diaphanous slips worn by ballerinas in a dance sequence, there's nothing in Sirius that wouldn't have been out of place in a Hollywood movie of its time. Tibor continually mentioning future events to the baffled 18th-century royal court; the only-a-dream copout; and the climactic reveal of Sergius's daughter being Rosina's lookalike great-granddaughter (which anyone familiar with old movies would have predicted before the mini-rocket even took flight to the past). 

Well, so what? Sirius is a charming, witty movie, similar to Leslie Howard's time-travel move of a decade earlier, Berkeley Square, only with laughs. Even when Sergius is carted off to the bughouse, babbling about how he stood beside Atilla the Hun and witnessed the creation of earth on his travels, you want to believe the men's adventures. That whole "explanation" of how the mini-rocket crashed after two seconds in the air? Hungarian goulash, if you ask me!

BONUS POINTS: Viewers can come up with their own ideas of a 1942 Hollywood version of Sirius. Fredric March insults the royal court of 1784 Germany while falling in love with a French opera singer played by Alexis Smith. Alan Mowbray as March's great-grandfather, George Zucco as the nutty professor -- why didn't Warner Bros. buy the American remake rights?

KRAKATIT (1948): Attention, fans of science fiction, film noir, obscurities, and all-around strange stuff. The year American studios were churning out detritus like The Babe Ruth Story and My Dog Rusty, the Czechoslovak Film Company released Krakatit, a production that anticipated the atomic bomb scare of the 1950s the hallucinogenic 1960s, and the all-round paranoia of 1970s. And to make it that much more futuristic, it's based on a 1924 novel, long before Robert Oppenheimer had even heard of a place called Los Alamos. 

Krakatit's opening scenes could be right out of a typical Hollywood film noir of the time. A dangerously ill unidentified man has stumbled into a hospital. Strapped with an oxygen mask to stay alive, he falls unconscious, leading to a flashback that carries the rest of the movie. He's a scientist named Prokop, and has developed Krakatit, a weapon (named after the Krakatoa volcano) that makes the A-bomb look like a water balloon. Falling ill after a small sample blew up in his lab, he had given the formula to a friend.  In short order, Prokop receives a letter from his colleague's girlfriend... stumbles to the home of a village doctor... is approached by a strange man named Carson acting as a representative for a country wanting the formula... creates another bomb made out of cosmetics...  and experiences still more adventures, climaxing with Krakatit destroying several European capitals. 

Is any of it real? Are they dreams? Hallucinations? Hallucinations of dreams? Dreams of real events? Real events made hallucinative through his illness? Take your pick, folks. All I can tell you is that Krakatit  doesn't resemble any other movie of its time. 

Karel Hoger gives Prokop a haunted, guilty demeanor throughout, ashamed of his "talent" for creating explosives out of anything handy.  Worthy of mention is Eduard Linkers as the chatty, nattily-dressed Carson. His lighthearted performance is similar to the pre-Bilko Phil Silvers during his movie days, and gave me a smile every time he appeared onscreen. Had Krakatit been made in Hollywood by an independent studio like Monogram with a larger than normal budget, it would be considered a movie landmark, and the greatest American sci-fi noir (if there is such a genre) ever made. 

BONUS POINTS: Four years before the publication of the novel Krakatit, its author Karel Capek wrote the stage play R.U.R., which introduced the word "robot". This guy was really on to something.

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THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 28

 This Early Show entry is something of a cheat, since I caught two of the movies at the Museum of Modern Art's recent film restoration festival (a special thank you to my wife for MOMA membership on Christmas!). These two movies may appear on TCM soon, by why take the chance by waiting? 

MAN, WOMAN AND SIN (1927): Newspaper reporter Al Whitcomb, a young man
with a humble background who lives with his mother, falls crazy in love with society editor Vera Worth, not realizing she's the sidepiece of his boss, Mr. Bancroft. Vera strings Al along for her own amusement, to the point where he's buying expensive gifts with money set aside for mom. When Bancroft catches Al at Vera's apartment, a fight breaks out between the two men; in defending himself from a fatal blow, Al accidentally kills his boss. Vera lies under oath as to the truth behind the incident, leading to the death penalty for Al. Will Mom's pleas to Vera to recant her testimony save her beloved son? Go on, guess.

 Man, Woman and Sin is an example of "It's the singer, not the song" -- even if it is a silent movie. And the "singer" is John Gilbert. Usually playing the sophisticated or caddish type, Gilbert here is totally believable as the shy young man who grew up in poverty, and is too naive to realize that Vera is way out of his league. Whether gazing at her with awe, throttling a colleague who warns him about her, or sitting helplessly in the courtroom, Gilbert sells his role without ever overacting. An extraordinary scene comes when he's hiding in an abandoned, allegedly haunted house after killing Bancroft. As he sits on the floor gripping his handkerchief for comfort, a large shadow of a hand comes into view, causing him to cower and scream in terror before realizing it's only his mother -- a heartbreakingly convincing moment that no other leading man of his time could have equaled or had the cojones to attempt. (The more I see of John Gilbert, the more I believe he's one of the most underrated movie actors ever.)

At the time of its release, Man, Woman and Sin received extra interest for co-starring stage actress Jeanne Eagles, star of the previously-discussed The Letter. As with Gilbert, Eagles, at 37, is a little old for her role. Yet you can still get why a guy like Al would steal money and even threaten his mother for speaking ill about her. It's a shame that the recently restored print of Man, Woman and Sin is available only at New York's Museum of Modern Art, where I recently caught its first official screening in almost a century. It's a wonderful example of a done-to-death story becoming something exceptional with the right actor (and a live piano accompaniment).

BONUS POINTS: Twelve year-old Phillip Anderson, who plays Al Whitcomb as a child in the early scenes, went on to a 30 year-career editing movies including Ocean's Eleven, Sayonara, and The FBI Story -- proof that there's a life for child actors when they grow up.

ARROWSMITH (1931): The second MOMA screening. Former small-town doctor Martin Arrowsmith has spent two years trying to find a one-size-fits-all cure for every disease when he's assigned to the West Indies to see if it works on ending the bubonic plague. He's ordered to inject only half the population with the serum, and the other half with a placebo to see if the real thing actually works. As Arrowsmith loses himself in work, his wife Leora is killed by the plague herself. No longer caring about the rules of science, he drunkenly orders all the islanders to get the serum. While their lives are saved, Arrowsmith, filled with self-contempt, returns to the US, vowing to get back to real science rather than headline-grabbing news his lab prefers, like saving the lives of an entire nation. What the...?

If you wanted someone to play a distinguished hero in 1931, you went straight to Ronald Colman -- even if, as Martin Arrowsmith, he's roughly 15 years older than his character. Audiences of the time didn't care, since he was epitome of class, And if you wanted self-sacrifice, you went with Helen Hayes as his wife. Poor Leora gives up her nursing career to nurse her husband, who not only becomes the accidental cause of her death (you'll never smoke a cigarette without making sure a germy lab vial didn't drip on it first) but may have had a brief affair with rich bitch Joyce Lanyon (Myrna Loy, made-up to look almost Oriental, her typical role at the time). Their affair, if there was one, is presented so subtly that it's likely because producer Sam Goldwyn wanted the audience to sympathize with Arrowsmith that much more when Leora dies.

Speaking of Sam Goldwyn, his once-a-year movies were always big-budget, glossy productions that made MGM pictures look like Monogram B's, and Arrowsmith is no different. This was probably the best-looking movie of 1931, with huge sets filled with enough props to fill a warehouse. Director John Ford must have worked closely with the cinematographer and lighting crew, too; he seems to have been influenced by German cinema's expressionism movement at the time. Restored to its original 101-minute running time, Arrowsmith is a little slow, with scenes that drag the momentum on occasion. Still, it's a fascinating movie that, if nothing else, is beautiful to look at, and proves once and for all that saving lives is secondary to scientific principles. 

BONUS POINTS: Dr. Oliver Marchand, the West Indian doctor played by Clarence Brooks, is portrayed as Arrowsmith's professional equal, a chance rarely given to black movie characters or actors at the time.

NIGHT TRAIN TO MUNICH (1940): Days before the UK and Germany go to war, British spy Gus Bennett goes undercover in Berlin as a Nazi official in order to rescue the kidnapped Czech scientist Axel Bomasch and his adult daughter Anna, while making sure a real Nazi official Karl Marsen never catches on to the ruse. Bennett pulls it off, until being recognized on the titular train by an old school chum. Marsen turns the tables on Bennett, only to learn that the Brits are far more clever than he realizes.

As with the previously-discussed Q Planes, the British production Night Train to Munich takes on the Nazis with a mixture of drama, suspense, upscale British wit, and romance. While Margaret Lockwood is top-billed in the credits, it's 32 year-old Rex Harrison who steals the show here. Not only does he deliver lines with exquisite charm and style, he gets to sing a couple of songs when disguised as a music hall entertainer. While the Nazi threat is definitely taken seriously, the movie itself is often quite the lark, with a dandy climax taking place on a tram from Germany to neutral Switzerland, and everybody's pistols seemingly containing a couple of dozen bullets. You won't believe a second of it, but it's still exciting (and utterly unique).

Three of Night Train to Munich's co-stars are worth mentioning. Paul von Henried gives Karl Marsen a convincing mixture of good guy (as when he's undercover as a prisoner in a German concentration camp with Anna) and bad (remember, he's really a Nazi!). When von Henried moved to Hollywood, he dropped the "von" from his name and became of Warner Brothers' most popular wartime leading men -- you know him as the anti-Nazi activist Victor Laszlo in Casablanca. Serious movie buffs will recognize character actors Basil Radford and Nauton Wayne repeating their lighthearted roles of the slightly befuddled friends Charters and Caldicott from the 1938 Alfred Hitchcock classic The Lady Vanishes (which also starred Margaret Lockwood). It's Caldicott who blows Bennett's cover on the train, while Charters figures out a way to warn the spy that Marsen is on to him. While dealing with a deadly serious subject, the multi-genre Night Train to Munich is great fun all the way around. I just hope I'm never caught up in a similar shootout on the tram from Manhattan to Roosevelt Island.

BONUS POINTS: The miniatures standing in for real sets. Yes, it's obvious, but it's so much more charming than greenscreen or CGI.

THE STEVE ALLEN SHOW (January 19, 1958): Before Fidel Castro and his merry
band of comunistas came marching into Havana, Fulgencio Batista was running the show. Well, him and the Mafia, back when the island was a haven for American tourists ready to drop a wad at the casinos. So, the Havana Riviera Hotel was delighted to play host to Steve Allen and his gang one winter evening.  And if nothing else, it sure makes an historically interesting change from his usual New York headquarters.

After Gene Rayburn does his announcer's shtick in Spanish, Steve walks to the Riviera's main room, where he quickly (and kind of shockingly) opens with, "Well here we are in Havana, the home of the pineapple and Meyer Lansky." Not that it was any secret that Lansky was the owner of the Riviera, and who was doubtlessly happy to get a free, one-hour commercial for his business. And boy, do we see a lot of the Riviera, whether in the casino area (where Steve Lawrence lip-syncs "Begin the Beguine"), poolside (where Mamie van Doren lip-syncs "Sand in my Shoes" and the dance team of Augie and Margo do the mambo). But what really stands out is how well-dressed the gamblers and audience are, completely different from the dumpy t-shirt & shorts crowd you find in any casino today. Say what you want about the Mob, but at least they enforced a dress code.

Otherwise, it's pretty much just another Steve Allen episode, with guest Edgar Bergen and the Man in the Street interviews (Tom Poston, Louis Nye, Don Knotts, and dummy Mortimer Snerd). Steve saves special guest Lou Costello (a semi-regular on the Allen show) for the last 15 minutes, where the comedian recreates an old gambling skit he originated with Bud Abbott, from whom he split less than a year earlier. Tom Poston slips easily into the part of the wiseguy who unexpectedly gets swindled by the allegedly naive Costello. Meyer Lansky probably got a good laugh out of it. Although had it happened to one of his soldiers, both guys would been whacked on the spot.

BONUS POINTS: Familiar comedic character actor Cliff Norton does the commercials for the Johnson's Wax, Jubilee, Glade, Glo-Coat, and other products your mother used for cleaning the house when she had no other options in life.

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THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 12

 If TCM and YouTube had been around when I was growing up, I'd have left the house even less than I already did. And I still would have ignored the classics in favor of cinema's red-headed stepchildren. Enough with the classics! Up with the arcane, the outré, and the uncouth! Just don't ask for your money back, bub.

WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH OUR OLD? (1911): On the day an old carpenter learns that his wife is gravely ill, he loses his job to a younger worker. As his money runs out, the carpenter is arrested for stealing groceries. The judge, having seen similar situations, bails him out and gives him money for his wife's medical care. When the carpenter arrives home with a doctor, the wife is already dead.

Try running that synopsis past a studio, see how far it gets you. But being the star director at Biograph, D.W. Griffith had free reign to make any kind of movie he liked. And what he liked were social dramas exposing the lives of the dispossessed and those who profit from them. And just to show you how serious he was about it (and movies in general), What Shall We Do with Our Old? was just one of 75 movies Griffith made in 1911! But that's when movies like this ran 15 minutes or less.

You can't expect much in the way of subtlety in most movie acting of the time. Nobody shakes their head in sorrow when pounding a fist on their chest will do. Yet there is something undeniably moving about the story and its characters. W. Chrystie Miller makes the carpenter (as the song goes) a man of constant sorrow.  Who among us in his position -- a dying wife, loss of income, imprisonment -- would look or behave any differently in real life?

When watching a movie like What Shall We Do with Our Old?, a modern audience needs to prepare for simple sets, long takes, a static camera, and occasional histrionics -- it is, after all, 112 years old. And while movie-making has come a long way since then, what hasn't changed is the question that the title poses. 

BONUS POINTS: While the actress playing the old wife, Claire McDowell, is obviously much younger under her make-up, W. Chrystie Miller was 68 at the time. To put that in perspective, he was born when John Tyler was the 10th President of the United States.

LUCKY BOY (1928): A young man from the Lower East Side turns his back on the family business in favor of vaudeville. As his fortunes rise, he falls in love with a shiksa, questions his values, and returns home to tend to a sick parent, where he at last gains familial blessings for his career choice. In other words, the silent/sound hybrid Lucky Boy steals from The Jazz Singer lox, shlock, and barrel of schmaltz. There's even a "Mammy"-style song, "My Mother's Eyes", performed not once, twice, but FOUR times in 77 minutes.

Credit -- make that discredit -- lies with scriptwriter/ star George Jessel, one of the most inexplicable celebrities of the 20th century. If Lucky Boy is any indication, the 1928 version of Jessel was little different from the tedious talk-show nudge of four decades later, viz: A personality similar to a dead flounder; an endless supply of hackneyed jokes and mawkish songs delivered in a mumbling, nasal voice bordering on the near-incomprehensible; forever confusing sentiment with sentimentality; and sporting a hairpiece that wouldn't fool a blindfolded mite.

Originally titled The Ghetto until a last-minute change, Lucky Boy features its star playing someone named Georgie Jessel. And if that first name sounds adolescent, it's no accident. In the movie's early scenes, Jessel plays the teenage version of himself swearing to run away from home -- when the actor himself was 30! 

 Poverty row studio Tiffany-Stahl promoted George Jessel as "The Original Jazz Singer". It was a reminder that he had been the star of the Broadway play of the same name, only to lose the movie version (and his place in film history) to his frenemy Al Jolson in a salary dispute with Warner Brothers. Whether called The Ghetto or Lucky Boy, the title of the short story on which this cinematic consolation prize was based is probably more appropriate: "The Schlemiel".

BONUS POINTS: The only legitimate laughs are provided when Jessel makes a few pointed jokes regarding Henry Ford's antisemitism. 

WIR SCHALTEN UM AUF HOLLYWOOD! (1931): Viennese-born actor Paul Morgan arrives from Germany to report via shortwave radio on his experiences in Hollywood. After a German expatriate shows him around the city, Morgan literally parachutes into the MGM studio, where he meets Buster Keaton, John Gilbert, Joan Crawford, Adolphe Menjou, and Leo the Lion. In the evening, he attends a movie premiere where even more Metro actors appear.

Yeesh, that's it? Now picture the whole thing in German without subtitles, and in a washed-out print. That's Wir Schalten Um Auf Hollywood! (in English, We're Switching to Hollywood!), made for release exclusively in Germany, one of Hollywood's biggest foreign markets. And brother, they can have it.

Strictly for obscurity fanatics, Wir Schalten... features production numbers from the never-released 1930 Metro musical revue The March of Time. Two of the numbers are obviously cut from what seems to be the sole surviving print of Wir Schalten..., although we're blessed to see a recreation of a turn-of-the-century vaudeville routine featuring people tapdancing in horse costumes. The picture also gives us the opportunity to hear Joan Crawford awkwardly attempting to speak German. Adolphe Menjou, though, is utterly fluent in a weird movie-within-a-movie where he's eventually shot by Paul Morgan, climbs a ladder to Heaven, then enters a cinema where he orders the film rewound so that he lives. 

Other than Menjou's commendable German delivery, the movie's highlight is Buster Keaton ignoring Paul Morgan in the Metro commissary. Likely shot in one take, a bored-looking Keaton gets more laughs fooling around with cutlery than most comedians with a closet full of props. He returns at the climax dressed as a caveman to knock Morgan unconscious with a club. Wir Schalten Um Auf Hollywood! will make you yearn for the same fate.

BONUS POINTS: Sergei Eisenstein can be seen at the climactic movie premiere. Russian filmmaker at a Hollywood premiere in a German movie -- gee, it looks like we can all get along! 

STREET OF CHANCE (1942): Before griping about your day, consider the plight of Frank Thompson. After getting conked on the head by a piece of falling debris, Frank gradually learns he had been living as someone named Danny Nearing for the last year. As Nearing, he was having an affair with a dame named Ruth Dillon despite him being happily married to another woman. Confused yet? So is he -- especially when a silent, tough guy gets on his trail. Oh, and I almost forgot: Frank is wanted for a murder he can't remember! And the only witness who can clear him is a bedridden old crone who can't speak. Like I said, no complaints about your day.

Based on a story by Cornell Woolrich, Street of Chance's main characters all reflect Frank Thompson, in that none of them are who they appear to be. Ruth Dillon is just a housekeeper -- until she isn't. Frank's hulking nemesis Joe Marruci appears to be out to kill him -- except he doesn't. The two survivors of the murder victim are the obvious suspects -- up to a point. 

While Burgess Meredith and Claire Trevor are fine as Frank and Ruth, it's Sheldon Leonard, as usual, who steals the show as Joe Marruci. Scarier here than he typically is in dramas, Leonard was born to dominate whatever project he appeared in, whether movies, radio or TV. I love this guy.

Director Jack Hively seems to have wanted to jazz up what would have been an ordinary B-mystery. His use of lighting (and darkness) is effective, as are the impressive crane shots that literally elevate the movie's look. Still, there's never a minute during Street of Chance when you aren't cognizant that the movie makes absolutely no sense, is overflowing with handy coincidences, and sports more loose ends than a welcome mat that's been caught in a tornado. Maybe that's why it's so entertaining.

BONUS POINTS: The grandly-named Adeline DeWalt Reynolds, who plays the elderly mute, entered the movie business at age 78, two years before Street of Chance's production, and continued until her death in 1960. See all you aspiring actors, there's hope for you yet!

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MOVIE OF THE DAY: "DOWNSTAIRS" (1932)

Karl Schneider has been hired as the personal chauffeur of Baroness Elosie von Burgen.
A charming sociopath, Karl wastes no time in blackmailing Eloise over her extramarital affairs, seducing Sophie the middle-aged cook (strictly to get his hands on her lifesavings), and eventually making love to Anna the maid while her husband Albert the butler is away. 

Before long, the crafty chauffeur has turned husband against wife, chef against chef, butler against butler, and Baron and Baroness against everybody else. And Karl? He's ready to move on to the next family to disrupt, rob, and destroy. And, as usual, with a positive reference in hand, just to keep his mouth shut. This guy is really good at his job,

There goes the bride.

That little outline doesn't do justice to Downstairs, one of the more modern, shockingly hilarious pre-codes. From the moment Karl arrives at the von Burgen home -- on the marriage day of Albert the butler and Anna the maid -- you know he's bad news. Karl kisses the bride full on the lips, and just ramps things up from there. Breaking up marriages, stealing property, and threatening his employer come as easily to him as fixing the carburetor. You don't want to laugh, but it can't be helped. That is, if you're a cynic like me. 

If Sophie the cook believes this guy loves her, she deserves
what's coming to her.

Not only does Karl lie with the ease of a snake slithering through tall grass, he makes his victims feel guilty for doubting his character in the first place. Karl doesn't just manipulate people -- he destroys them piece by piece before rebuilding them to do as he commands. 

And you wind up feeling contemptuous of these saps for falling for his bullshit to begin with. He even manipulates the audience! So get off your high horse and admit you wish you had half this guy's nerve.

Laugh it up while you can, Albert. Your bride's going
to find out what a real man is capable of.

Karl knows how to get what he wants from everybody. He regales women with (false) tales of his childhood in order to bring out their maternal aide and shares jolly jokes over steins of beer with Albert the butler so the poor guy doesn't realize he's being cuckolded. 

And as for messing with the Baroness, well, there's nothing wrong with Karl lifting her jewelry, and gifting it to the maid -- as long as he doesn't tell the Baron about her dalliances. Anyone who thinks that the concept of the "anti-hero" was invented in the 1950s needs to give Downstairs a spin. 

"The Gilbert of Old" and
"amazing comeback" were
code for "You'll like him
this time, honest!"

As good as the supporting cast is, all credit for Downstairs' success goes to John Gilbert, who plays Karl as if he knew the guy personally. (He wrote the scenario, too, so maybe he didn't have to look beyond the mirror.) Gilbert is remembered now, if at all, by the false legend that his movie career was ruined by talkies because of his squeaky voice. 

The first five minutes of Downstairs disabuse you of such nonsense. Possessing an engaging charisma, his is one of the best, most natural performances of any pre-code picture. Unfortunately, a tense relationship with studio head Louis B. Mayer, coupled with audiences' changing tastes and his severe alcoholism -- Gilbert is only 35 in Downstairs, but you'd never know it -- doomed him.

 

And he's not even supposed to be drunk
in this scene.

His most arresting performances, in fact, happen in movies when he's supposed to be drunk. Unlike other actors, Gilbert underplays those scenes to such perfection -- the slight swaying, trying to focus his eyes, the way he tries not to sound inebriated -- that make you unsure if he's acting or really is drunk. Gilbert died at 37, so it's pretty easy to figure out.

In addition to booze, 
maybe he should have
laid off the smokes, too.

It's ironic, then, that some of Gilbert's silent movies, when he was the highest paid actor in Hollywood, might be considered old-

fashioned now, while his less successful talkies show an actor with an utterly contemporary style whose career should have flourished for decades. Downstairs could be remade today but it's doubtful any current 35 year-old actor could best John Gilbert's performance.

A couple of words about the other Downstairs actors. If you close your eyes, you'd swear Albert the butler was played by Bela Lugosi instead of Paul Lukas. And then when you open your eyes, there are times when Virginia Bruce (Anna the maid) looks just like Lisa Kudrow of Friends.  But John Gilbert is definitely the real thing.

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