THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 70

Strap yourself in as we travel to Bengal, Jamaica, the old West, and a tool supply company. Oh, and Florida, too, but keep it to yourself.

BEYOND BENGAL (1934): The 1930s were a prime era for jungle documentaries, no matter the quality, e.g., the notorious Ingagi. Harry Schenck, Beyond Bengal's star/director, is credited on only three other movies. This made him as qualified as anybody else churning out these things, especially when it came to padding it out with phony footage shot in Florida. (You can figure out the Florida scenes because they're in focus and, well, look phony.) Even the industry trade paper Variety doubted Beyond Bengal's authenticity in its bemused review.

In fact, you can bet your last poisha that anything in focus is as fraudulent as Harry's on-camera friend Joan Baldwin almost dying of jungle fever. Not even the footage of a native guide almost eaten by a crocodile trying passes the smell test. On the other hand, another guide almost getting squeezed to death by a python looks genuine -- but if it is, why didn't the cinematographer help the poor schmuck instead of cranking the camera? Oh, I know why! Non-white = expendable. 

The Bengali segments that are definitely for real are when Harry's pals shoot animals. (At one point, the narrator gloats, "Boy, this is gonna be good!" as one poor tiger is ready to bite the dust.)  When the narrator describes a panther as "the most dangerous and hateful creature on the planet," it's clear nobody involved with Beyond Bengal ever went beyond 5th grade to learn the definition of "ironic". An interesting history lesson to see how you didn't need A.I. to fool the public. 

BONUS POINTS: "Produced in cooperation with HIS HIGHNESS THE SULTAN OF PERAK F.M.S." (as the credits read), Beyond Bengal was nominated for the Mussolini Cup at the 1934 Venice Film Festival. Do they give that out anymore?

VAGABOND ADVENTURE: JAMAICA (1934): In addition to pseudo-documentaries about jungle life, one-reel travelogues entertained audiences at a time when travelling the world was strictly for the wealthy. 

Unlike MGM's Technicolor Traveltalks, the Van Buren/RKO Radio Vagabond Adventures lived down to their name. Its 16mm black & white footage of Jamaica captures none of the "silver rivers", "verdant valleys" and "blue Caribbean sea" the narrator breathlessly describes. His patronizing description of "peasant Negroes" hasn't aged well, either.  And why does the accompanying music sound like a Jewish folk song? However, what it offers is a rare look at Jamaica decades before it was a tourist haven for vacationers and potheads.

The opening shot presents a shoreline without hotels or bars, while the rest of the area doesn't seem to have any buildings more than two stories high. Locals still make sugar the old-fashioned way (it involves an oxen team, which also takes the banana crop to the ships), and peddle their foods at the market.  

Outside of the trolley car and autos in Kingston, Jamaica as presented in this Vagabond Adventure is probably little different from how it had been a century earlier. If you can get past the annoying voiceover, it's more fascinating than any contemporary documentary on the country you'd find today.

BONUS POINTS: We see the statue of Queen Victoria, who the narrator informs us "is lovingly referred to as the supreme lady of Jamaica". Not anymore, I bet.

TRAIL OF THE VIGILANTES (1940): Tim Mason, a reporter from back East, goes undercover out West to expose a colleague's murder by Mark Dawson, a cattleman ripping off locals by running a protection racket.

If you think that's a fairly standard plot for a run of the mill oater, so did director Allan Dwan. That's why he hired someone to do a rewrite and turn Trail of the Vigilantes into a sly upending of the genre while maintaining its serious throughline. From the moment Tim Mason shows up in the ironically named dusty town of Peaceful Valley -- a scene awfully similar to anyone who's seen Blazing Saddles -- you know this is not going to be your typical B-western. 

Luckily, the cast is game, starting with Franchot Tone as Tim, the tenderfoot who doesn't convince anybody he's an old cowhand, with an amusing running gag of making an ass of himself while jumping on his horse. As two ranch hands, Broderick Crawford and Andy Devine send up their usual screen roles, while the great Mischa Auer gets the most laughs as a con man impersonating a Native American chief, Spanish bullfighter, Russian Cossack, and Southern shyster. There is nobody but nobody like Mischa Auer around anymore, and we're all poorer for it.

 And talk about out of the box casting -- Warren William plays straightman as the no-good polecat Mark Dawson. At 46, he carries the bearing of a man a decade older but looks as elegant in Western finery as he did tuxedos during his pre-code days at Warners. Trail of the Vigilantes doesn't always hit the mark -- a scene at a mudhole is straight out of a latter-day Three Stooges short -- but otherwise provides a ranch-sized number of genuine laughs while still providing the action and dramatic arc that comes with the (Western) territory.

BONUS POINTS: Co-star Peggy Moran later recounted Trail of the Vigilantes did good box-office with "New York's sophisticated audiences." 

IMPULSE (PILOT EPISODE) (1952): Before Alfred Hitchcock Presents, there
was Impulse. Or would have been had there been more than its unaired pilot episode. Going by the opening narration of this episode (titled "Mr. Pips"), the series would have explored the idea of the consequences from acting upon our worst impulses. Don't tell me you haven't had the urge.

The eponymous Mr. Pips, a mousy worker at a tool supply factory, is regularly humiliated by his repulsive boss into literally crawling through a rabbit-warren of sky-high crates piled dangerously high to retrieve items. These scenes -- far creepier and more claustrophobic than you'd expect -- are greeted by non-stop derisive laughter by the workers, including the woman Pips has a crush on. Eventually, the laughter stops when Pips, finally pushed to the breaking point, brings a gun to work in order to exact some well-deserved revenge. Never push a mousy guy too far.

Maybe you need some personal connection to the mousy side of life to appreciate it, but character actor King Donovan slams it out of the park as Pips, a perfectly nice guy who's allowed himself to be the object of ridicule by not standing up for himself. When he finally explodes by smacking his boss in the mouth with a gun, I almost shook with joy. Pips forcing the weeping guy to crawl through the crates and ordering the others to laugh at the threat of death? Heaven.  If this was the kind of series Impulse had been like, I'd have owned the entire run on 4K UHD Blu-ray. Oh, and the moral of the episode seems to be Chicks dig guys who threaten violence to others!  

BONUS POINTS: "Mr. Pips" was directed by Alfred E. Green, whose 119 credits include Dick Powell's NRA-rah rah short The Road is Open Again.

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THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 26

 As time passes, I've come to realize that it's a good thing 75% of movies made before 1950 are lost. This makes it so much easier to watch what already exists, whether they're worth it or not. Fortunately, three out of the following four certainly are. I'll leave it to you decide which category each falls under.

CONDEMNED TO LIVE (1935): The geniuses at the ignoble Invincible Pictures must have
decided a semi-remake of the previously discussed The Vampire Bat was necessary, even if only a year had passed. In an unnamed European village where everybody has a torch ready to fire up and nobody uses contractions when they speak, a series of strange murders are occurring. The much-respected Prof. Kristan pooh-poohs the idea of a giant bat or vampire being the culprit -- and for good reason! Without giving too much away, let's just say the first time you see the good professor rubbing his forehead in pain, it's time to get out the stake and silver bullet.

Condemned to Live is a great title for an otherwise borderline C-movie -- this budget must have gone mostly to the furniture (which is no compliment to the furniture). You'd never know it was made the same year as Top Hat or Mutiny on the Bounty, unless you were aware that Invincible Pictures and its equally cheesy releasing studio Chesterfield Motion Pictures Corp. peddled their wares strictly to the very small town theaters that couldn't afford the good stuff. It opens interestingly enough, with a prologue showing how Kristan's mother was bitten by a vampire bat when she was giving birth to the professor-to-be (M is for the mutant that she made me...) before jumping ahead a few decades -- which isn't made clear until roughly 20 minutes before the end. I guess they couldn't afford a slide that said 30 YEARS LATER.

While Ralph Morgan likely didn't appreciate M-G-M loaning him out for Condemned to Live, he's a better actor than Maxine Doyle as his fiancée  Marguerite, who speaks her first-draft dialogue like a 12 year-old in a school play. And while Pedro de Cordoba's fine diction adds some class as Kristan's best friend, the actor we really came to see is Mischa Auer as the professor's gimpy hunchback assistant with the cool name of Zan. As with Dwight Frye in Vampire Bat, Auer is the villager's prime suspect as the killer. Zan, in fact, knows his boss is behind the murders, but volunteers to take the blame for him -- the kind of employee every boss would love to have around the office. 

While not entirely terrible, Condemned to Live is interesting more as a sample of low-budget horror of the '30s rather than just as a movie, period. A restored DVD currently available probably makes for better viewing than the worn-out print I watched on YouTube, but wouldn't necessarily make it good.

BONUS POINTS: Due to the unimaginative cinematography, editing, and lighting, it's easy to pretend you're on the set during filming. But you'll ask yourself what the hell you're doing there.

Q PLANES (1939): British military planes are going missing throughout Europe
and the U.S. west coast. Major Charles Hammond of British Intelligence disagrees with the belief that it's a coincidence and, with the help of test pilot Tony McVane, discovers that all roads lead to Nazi Germany.

You wouldn't know it from that brief outline, but the British-made Q Planes is as much comedy as it is spy drama; the title itself sounds like a parody of the genre. (If there was an explanation of why they're called Q planes, I didn't catch it.) Witty dialogue comes as fast and furious, forcing you to sit up and pay attention. And this being British, the dialogue is spoken impeccably well, making everybody sound like, duh, stage trained British actors.

Ralph Richardson has the time of his life as the witty, pipe-puffing Hammond, battling his superiors in order to prove his theory correct, while engaging in a running gag of cancelling dates with his girlfriend in order to solve the mystery. Laurence Olivier plays straightman as McVane; he, too, is convinced that someone is sabotaging the planes at the airplane factory where he works. And being the most handsome, sexy pilot in the UK, he's given a romantic interest in Hammond's sister Kay (Valerie Hobson), a reporter who's working undercover herself at the factory commissary. Retitled Clouds over Europe in its American release, Q Planes is a splendid way to spend 82 minutes in the company of some classy British actors having fun in the months before the war in Europe changed everything forever. 

BONUS POINTS: A brief scene in a theater's dressing room with American actresses -- or British actresses playing Americans -- makes Richardson, et al sound even classier than they do already.

SYLVIE ET LE FANTOME (1946): Baron Eduard sells a portrait of his mother's long-ago lover, Alain, that has become the romantic fixation of his 16 year-old daughter Sylvie. Alain's ghost and that of his dog, both invisible to humans, escape the painting as it's being moved, and start to explore the castle where the family lives -- and as he does, falls in love with Sylvie. Eduard has hired an actor named Anicet to play Alain's ghost at Sylvie's birthday party, when two young men sneak into the castle: the love-sick Fredrick, and Ramure, a thief, both of whom have already met her. Eduard mistakes them for Anicet's colleagues, and asks all three men to take turns playing Alain's ghost. As the evening progresses, the disguised young men learn that Sylvie is in love with one of them, while Alain realizes he's no longer the objection of her affection.

The charming, genuinely romantic Sylvie et le Fantome (no translation necessary) eschews the usual heavy handed ghost shtick that its American counterparts would have featured. Being French, it takes the heroine's love for Alain's portrait seriously; at no time does the actress, Odette Joyeux, ever play it for laughs. (You remember what love was like when you were 16, right?) This makes the comedy provided by the hammy Anicet even funnier, even if his costume resembles something you'd see at a Klan meeting. And either the director wanted to make the set look like a damp castle or they filmed it in the real thing, because you can see the actors' breath every time they talk.

Of all the movie's stars, the only one who might seem familiar today is Jacques Tati as Alain's ghost. While primarily a stage actor at this time, he must have been famous enough to have his name in large letters, separate from the rest of the cast, in the opening credits. And it must be his name alone that was the selling point; he has no dialogue and is given very little in the way of physical comedy that any actor wouldn't have been capable of. Tati polished those same traits in later years when creating the character of Monsieur Hulot in a series of brilliant comedies. Kind of a fairytale for grown-ups, Sylvie et le Fantome is never for a moment manipulative, and will leave you wondering why they don't make French movies like this anymore.

BONUS POINTS: Jacques Tati's scenes used a 19th-century theatrical technique called Pepper's Ghost, making them more realistic than the usual double exposure we're used to. That is, if you find ghosts realistic.

EAT THE DOCUMENT (1967): The creators of the short-lived anthology series ABC Stage 67 requested a documentary of Bob Dylan's 1966 concert tour of the UK. Directed and edited by Dylan himself, the 50-minute Eat the Document takes the form of cinema verité -- French for "out of focus, choppy, and difficult to understand". No song or conversation is heard in its entirety. Clueless journalists ask stupid questions. Dylan watches a bagpipe parade. Fans complain about him abandoning folk for rock & roll. An anonymous woman walks her basset hound across a busy street... Dylan seems to be daring us to turn off the TV, as I almost did more than once. 

To its credit, Eat the Document isn't flattering to Dylan, as when he impassively watches a bandmate trying to buy a young man's girlfriend, who becomes less and less amused during the bartering session. Near the tour's end, Dylan appears physically and psychologically drained in the back seat of a cab with John Lennon, who advises him, in so many words, to suck it up. (His friend Johnny Cash gets more screentime than Lennon's 10-seconds.) By then, I figured this ramshackle jumble of images and audio resembled what the tour probably felt like to Dylan himself, making Eat the Document a far more authentic piece of work than a "professional" movie might have been. 

No surprise the folks at ABC Stage 67 rejected Dylan's cinematic reverie. Until the age of YouTube, only the most rabid Dylan fans ever had a chance to see it in midnight screenings and bootleg videos. While Eat the Document's third-generation condition doesn't make for easy viewing, it oddly helps you live what he was experiencing. We can only hope that, at 82, Bob Dylan is more comfortable in his current self-described "never ending tour."

BONUS POINTS: Dylan's touring musicians, the Hawks, would never look this young again when, two years later, they renamed themselves The Band.

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THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 11

 Having just finished several consecutive 12-14 hour days of background work on a much-anticipated, high-wattage cable miniseries, I have only now gotten around to finishing another entry in my you-may-or-may-not-want-to-see forgotten movies and TV shows of decades ago. And I think I already know what your choice will be. Ring up the curtain!

CLUB HAVANA (1945): It's a busy night at Club Havana. A medical intern is on his first date with a clothing store salesgirl. A middle-aged couple are reuniting after a year's separation. A financially embarrassed money manager is wining and dining a wealthy widow in hopes of handling her millions. A young divorcee learns that the man she's in love with is no longer interested in her. And a customer is recognized by one of the club's musicians as a murderer. By closing time, there will be an arrest, attempted suicide, two killings, a marriage of convenience, and five musical numbers. And no cover charge!

Kind of a musical version of Grand Hotel on a Cracker Jack budget, Club Havana is a genuinely entertaining B-picture from PRC Pictures and semi-legendary director Edgar G. Ulmer. Because of its 62-minute running time, the stories have to move quickly. But take into account those five musical numbers scatted throughout, plus the credits, you have roughly 45 minutes to jam these mini-dramas in -- all but the last five minutes told in real time!

Never have I seen so many people in one movie where I knew the faces, yet almost nobody's name. The exceptions to the latter were Paul Cavanaugh as the investor, and Tom Neal as the lovesick doctor. You could consider Neal as Leonardo DiCaprio to Edgar G. Ulmer's Martin Scorsese, but that might be giving them both too much credit. Whether lovey-dovey with his date or saving a woman from a sleeping pill OD, Neal's constant expression registers as mild concern -- as if he's wondering how much to tip the coat check girl. (His character's treatment for the barbiturate OD: a quart of strong black coffee and a walk in some fresh air. Thanks, Doc, you're a genius!)

Club Havana's raison d'etre seems to be cashing in on the watered down Latin American big band music craze that was sweeping the US, due to Xavier Cugat and his former band member Desi Arnaz. The low-rent musical acts featured were probably scouted from various L.A. nightclubs, giving an idea of what your average patron saw in 1945 as they sipped pina coladas on a night out on the town after taking in Club Havana as the bottom half of a double feature. I'd have been one of them.

BONUS POINTS: The wealthy widow turning the tables on the desperate money manager, as her three bespectacled teenage children watch with fascination, is worthy of an A-picture from any major studio of the time; it's likely the wittiest moment in any PRC production.

FOR YOU I DIE (1947): After being forced into a prison break by fellow convict Matt Gruber,

Johnny Coulter makes his way to a lodge where Matt's ex-girlfriend Hope Novak works. As he waits for Gruber to show up so they can plan their next move, Johnny finds himself the objection of affection by another lodge worker, Georgie, even as he and Hope fall in love. Gruber eventually arrives, when a fight and a shootout ensue. Johnny drives the wounded Gruber to the police. Gruber confesses to forcing Johnny to break out of stir; Johnny is taken back to prison to serve the one year remaining on his sentence, when he will return to start a new life with Hope (and hope).

For You I Die -- now that's a great title for a '40s B-picture. Perhaps too great considering the final product. I guess I was expecting the "sap falls in love with a bad dame" story, minus the prison break angle. You know, a good guy who falls into crime in a frenzy of lust. Adding to the story reversals is character actor Mischa Auer as lodge guest Alec Shaw, a Russian-born cab driver/aspiring actor/amateur artist providing comedy relief and philosophical musings in equal measure. Now, you can never go wrong with Mischa Auer, although his performance is a little out of place in what's supposed to be a dark movie. And when I say dark, I mean literally as well as figuratively; I'm thinking the producers set many of the scenes at night to save on the electric bill.

Speaking of dark, Paul Langton (as Johnny Coulter), whom we last saw as a gumshoe in Murder is My Beat, is something like Humphrey Bogart without the range or charisma. In the few roles I've seen him in, an air of an impending doom hangs over him like an especially heavy fog. Even when his characters are on the right side of the law, it seems like he's hiding a very dark secret. Yet, like Tom Neal, that kind of personality fits these low-budget dramas, as if it was too strong for A-pictures. 

As for the rest of For You I Die's cast, only Jane Weeks really goes toe to toe with Langton as far as style is concerned. Brusque, strident, trampy rather than sexy, Weeks dishes it out but good as the no-good Georgie, who tries blackmailing Hope while wanting to skip town with the unwilling Johnny. (It's shocking that she's only 29 here.) Either she was too realistic for her own good, or decided movies weren't her thing -- of her seven roles, four were uncredited. In other words, she's perfect for a worth-one-look movie like For You I Die. 

BONUS POINTS: Mischa Auer was also the movie's associate producer. As he probably said in half of his movies, How you like that?

VIOLATED (1953): Who is murdering and scalping innocent women in New York? Is it low-rent photographer Jan Verbig?  The creepy, sex-obsessed Joe Summers, just released from Bellevue Hospital? Convicted child molester George Mastro? Or could it be anyone of the suspects Police Lt. McCarthy rounds up at the station house? He better find out soon, before innocent aspiring teen model Susan Grant and zaftig dancer Lili Damar find themselves on the wrong end of a fatal pair of scissors. 

I really have to hand it to everyone involved in this sleazy, low-budget excuse for entertainment -- I felt violated just watching Violated (there's a line that will attract an audience). All the genuine New York locations seen throughout, whether Greenwich Village exteriors, bars, the studio apartment doubling as the photographer's studio, even the Staten Island ferry, look grimier than they really were. This is an Ugly-with-a-capital-U movie.

And the actors! Well, "actors" might be too strong a word. The people being paid very little to walk and talk in front of the movie camera aren't just unphotogenic -- they're actively grubby, shabby, and unkempt. When Lt. McCarthy spits out, "What a buncha crumb-bums!" at a roomful of suspects, you get the feeling they've heard the same thing in real life. Even the "exotic" dancers are repulsive.

Technically, Violated provides everything you'd expect -- simple camera set-ups, sloppy editing and lighting, claustrophobic sound -- that were hallmarks of the grindhouse genre. Then there's the scene with Lili Damar in a tub with a phone and radio on a shelf directly over her head -- did no one think this was an electrocution just waiting to happen? Or was the director hoping to ultimately avoid her paying her salary just to save a few more bucks?

BONUS POINTS: Thanks to one of the Greenwich Village scenes, we can see that furniture movers were still using horse-drawn wagons as late as 1953. You can learn history in the strangest places.

THE COLGATE COMEDY HOUR (4/15/1951): There's some irony that the most popular form of entertainment in the early days of the futuristic medium of television was vaudeville. The most popular series of this type was The Colgate Comedy Hour, hosted by a rotating roster of entertainers; this episode features loud singer Tony Martin. Perhaps because Martin lacked what would be called comedy chops, Fred Allen was brought on not only as the unofficial co-host but head writer as well. 

And this is what makes this episode kind of fascinating. Having hosted his own weekly radio comedy series almost continuously from 1932 to 1949, Fred Allen loathed TV, particularly the Colgate format. Known as a dry, urbane wit, Allen must have squirmed at having to put up with the old-fashioned musical numbers, especially one featuring a little girl fantasizing that Tony Martin was her father. Had Allen presented the same idea on his radio show, the little girl would have sued Martin for bellowing a song into her ear as he does here before switching her allegiance to Frank Sinatra.

Still more irony!  Allen revives one of his radio characters, Chinese detective One Long Pan, in a sketch with Martin and guest Celeste Holm. One Long Pan had been a radio audience favorite; here, seeing Allen -- a strange looking guy to begin with -- in full make-up is actually scary. Naturally, he never misses an opportunity to mangle the stereotypical Chinese accent. (His long-time running gag of pronouncing "revolver" as "lelowler" is revived here.) People today offended by the benign Charlie Chan movies would be positively apoplectic by what goes on here. One wonders what the Chinese/Hawaiian actor Richard Loo thought being in this sketch as, you guessed it, a houseboy (he was 48 years old).

Fred's alleged friend Tony Martin seems aware of Fred Allen's new position in show business, introducing him as "a gentleman you've enjoyed many, many times in the past". It's no surprise announcer Don Pardo excitedly informs us that the hot young duo Martin & Lewis will be emceeing The Colgate Comedy Hour two weeks hence, in addition to being the special guests the week after that when another young up-and-comer, Jackie Gleason, hosts. A former vaudevillian himself, Fred Allen -- whose droll humor peeks through from time to time in this episode -- likely realized he was being overtaken by the kind of new generation of comedians he once symbolized. 

BONUS POINTS: This episode was produced by Sam Fuller, later known as the writer and/or director of non-comedy classics-to-be including Shock Corridor, Pickup on South Street, Crimson Kimono and House of Bamboo. Maybe he saw in Fred Allen what he would become if he didn't carve a new path for himself.

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THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 5

 

Say, something's missing here...

Life here is up in a heavel, as my mother would say, as our kitchen undergoes a gut renovation. The sounds of hammering and sawing last a good six hours a day; various pieces of kitchen furniture take up space in the living room; and everything is covered in plastic. 

None of this is conducive to writing even a blog such as this, so I must take my leave with this entry begun a couple of weeks ago. I hope to return by the middle of June, when the work will allegedly be completed. Until then... well, you can always re-read the old stuff.

CORRUPTION (1933): There's a title that says it all. When Mayor Tim Butler keeps his promise to clean out the crooks in the city government, he's framed in a phony love-nest scandal by the political machine that got him elected. Returning to his law practice, Butler is then wrongly convicted of murder -- despite no bullet being found in the victim. Soon, other corrupt officials are murdered without any bullets. Volkov, a scientist and friend of Butler's, confesses to the murders by explaining how he invented a gun that fires ice pellets. Really. Butler is released from prison, is named State's Attorney, and gets engaged to his lovesick secretary.

You thought Mr. Smith Goes to Washington was controversial. Corruption features party bosses ready to assassinate the Mayor if necessary. Perhaps only a B-indie could get away with such a cynical story. And the fatal ice pellets, too. That's why Corruption -- the movie, not the crime -- is so engaging.

The never-quite-a-movie-star Preston Foster plays the incorruptible Tim Butler with a tough, streetwise manner, far from James Stewart's hayseed Mr. Smith. And it's always a pleasure to see the great character actor Mischa Auer, here with a Russian accent as Volkov. Be on the lookout for Jason Robards (father of Jr.) as the Police Commissioner. Thumbs up, too, for director C. Edward Roberts for giving the trial scene a stark, nightmarish look with a black background and lighting the actors dramatically underneath, just to disguise the fact they couldn't afford a courtroom set.

BONUS POINTS:  As disgraced party boss Gorman leaves Butler's office at the climax, newspaper photographer Charlie Jasper gives him the finger. I'm not kidding. 

THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY (1933): Psychiatrist Emil Brandt confesses to Police Cap. Riley and Lt. Martin that he's hypnotized a patient named Adams to skim $100,000 from a bank till and bring to him later that night. Brandt is afraid that he'll hypnotize Adams to kill himself afterwards. Some shrink! Martin accompanies Brandt to his house to prevent the suicide, and is later replaced by Riley. Brandt has a change of heart when Adams arrives. After Riley leaves, Brandt's greedy wife Freda shows up just before the lights go out. Adams is killed, Brandt is chloroformed, and Freda is bruised on the face. Reporter Dan McKee turns up to try to solve the case and get a front page exclusive. Before the night is over, one more person will be killed, and another named the murderer from a houseful of suspects.

Director William "One Take" Beaudine appeared to have wanted talented actors to help him live up to his nickname. All the primary players are familiar (to me), even if their names aren't. It's like an all-star no-star cast, except for Stuart Erwin as Mckee, and Jean Hersholt as the wacky shrink. And yes, that's the same Jean Hersholt of the Oscar's Humanitarian Award, which Will Smith is never going to win. 

Crime of the Century is celebrated for being a mystery where all the clues are laid out before you; there are no previously-unseen characters turning up at the last minute, either. And once you learn who the killer is, you realize it was obvious if you had been paying attention. A clever mystery with a carload of  pros in its cast, Crime of the Century might not live up to its name, but it's great fun nonetheless.

BONUS POINTS: At roughly the one-hour mark of its 73 minute running time, Arthur Hohl (another familiar face) stops the show and explains that, because movie mysteries move so quickly, Crime of the Century will pause for 60 seconds to give the audience a chance to guess who the killer is. Damn, I wish movies were this charming now.

GOLD (1934): Scientist Werner Holk is taking part in an alchemy experiment with his mentor Prof. Achenbach, who is killed when his machine blows up. British businessman John Wills later hires Holk to continue his work in Scotland. Holk figures out Wills sabotaged Achenbach's experiment, and decides to return the favor, even as he finds himself falling for Wills' daughter Florence.

Gold, made in Germany, was one of those talked-about sci-fi movies that was supposed to be a classic yet difficult to find. Now that it's readily available, the movie is really a straight-ahead melodrama with a couple of really cool alchemy machines on huge soundstages. Hans Albers, the most popular German actor of his time, plays Holk, looking kind of like a Teutonic George C. Scott. Michael Bohnen was a good choice to play the British Wills since he resembles Nigel Bruce. 

As with the 1945 German version of Titanic, the British are the enemies in Gold. Just to drive the point home how decadent they are, they smoke and drink while Holk abstains (as did Hitler). However, he allows himself one beer over one lunch. He is German, after all. 

BONUS POINTS: It's impressive to see gargantuan sets that were made by hand rather than CGI. 

MURDER BY THE CLOCK (1931): After changing her will to favor her weak-kneed nephew Herbert instead of her violent, feeble-minded son Phillip, rich old crone Julia Endicott is strangled to death. Herbert's unfaithful wife Laura had convinced Phillip and Herbert to kill her with the promise of hanky-panky to the winner. Although Herbert is the guilty party, Phillip is arrested on circumstantial evidence. 

Not satisfied with orchestrating one death, Laura convinces Phillip to break out of jail to kill Herbert, while she drops a similar hint to her sidepiece Thomas. And just as Police Lt. Valcour is cracking the case, Julia Endicott -- you know, the rich old crone -- appears to have left her coffin. What a wacky family!

I've actually left out a few other of Murder by the Clock's plot twists that happen over 75 minutes. Not that it makes any sense. Murder by the Clock seems to be Paramount's answer to the Universal horror movies blowing up the box office at the time. Even for 1931, the acting and dialogue are creaky, and Regis Toomey as the comedy relief Irish cop is no help. But Lilyan Tashman is effectively nasty as the manipulative Laura, while Irving Pichel steals every scene as the mentally-defective, savage, horny Phillip, in a performance aping Dwight Frye in Dracula, and then some. He's the best reason to spend your time watching Murder by the Clock.

BONUS POINTS: Other than Irving Pichel? Well, the alarm that Julia Endicott has installed in her coffin in case she's buried alive makes a creepy sound. Hey, you gotta take the good stuff where you can.

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MOVIE OF THE DAY: "THE WOMAN CONDEMNED" (1934)

Another masterwork from the oeuvre of director Mrs. Wallace Reid (of Sucker Money fame), The Woman Condemned is a mystery in that it's impossible to figure out not only the story but how anyone involved kept a straight face while making it. 

Lacking Mrs. Reid's usual "controversial" subject matter, The Woman Condemned settles instead for a rickety murder melodrama that the B-unit at Warner Bros. thrived on -- only the Warners crew knew what they were doing. And yet it wouldn't have been half as entertaining as what Mrs. Reid and her fellow cineastes churned out. Sometimes talent isn't all it's cracked up to be.
 

Guilty for murdering music
in the first degree.

Radio singer Jane Merrick has just finished warbling a forgettable tune for a studio audience resembling a particularly unforgiving jury. This is her final performance for a while; as the unctuous announcer intones to her fans, "I know you join me in wishing her the best vacation ever." This sap must be a graduate of the Diane Sawyer School of Inappropriate Emoting. 

"I'm in The Woman
Condemned while my
kid does Eugene
O'Neil. Go figure."

But just where Jane's vacationing is a mystery she's keeping from Jim Wallace, the man who doubles as the station manager and her boyfriend. (Call her the Caucasian Julie Chen.) Jim, by the way, is played by Jason Robards, the father of Jason Robards, Jr., despite looking and sounding more like TCM's ubiquitous host Robert Osborne. That's only the beginning of the confusion The Woman Condemned giddily offers.

Time passes, although the way Mrs. Wallace Reid handles things, you don't know if it's a day or three years. After not hearing a word from Jane since she hit the road, Jim drops by her apartment. Getting the "I don't know nothin'" routine from Sally the maid, Jim leaves, only to see Jane staring down from her bedroom. Jane does the only thing anyone would do if they were hiding: close the drapes five seconds too late. Jim, in return, does the only thing someone would do if he knew his fiance was at home: hire a detective to find her. These two maroons were made for each other.

"Simon says put your hands on your hip."

Later that evening (or maybe a week later -- like I said, Mrs. Wallace Reid doesn't have a high regard for time frames) the police chase a mysterious figure away from Jane's fire escape. Five minutes later, a woman named Barbara Hammond is caught on the same fire escape by a cop with a bad Irish accent. Dragged into night court, Barbara is saved only by Jerry Beall, a reporter who claims to be her fiance, just to get her off the hook and in the hay. The judge, a sucker for lovebirds, marries them on the spot. Surely there must be easier ways to pick up women in L.A. 

After a night out on the town, Barbara is smitten with the creep she's suddenly married to. (It took my wife at least a week following our marriage.) However, Barbara needs to leave a while, but promises to return to her life of Mrs. Jerry Beall in a few days. This movie has more women pulling disappearing acts than a Las Vegas lounge show.

"Thank goodness two people can't see
 me peeking through the shades from
five feet away."

Not having learned her lesson the first time, Barbara once again winds up on Jane's fire escape just in time to see Jane in her living room with Dapper Dan, a gigolo so oily he rivals the Exxon Valdez. (Fans of O Brother Where Art Thou may recall Dapper Dan as the brand of hair cream favored by George Clooney.) Jane is apparently in love with Dapper Dan enough to finance his craps game despite his seeming indifference toward her.  A moment after Dapper Dan leaves, Jane is fatally shot. 

Barbara, pistol in hand, is arrested for the murder. While waiting for the police to arrive, a neighbor keeps Barbara at gunpoint, telling his wife, "I'll keep an eye on this woman," hitting that last word like an insult. For some reason, characters in these old B-movies are utterly contemptuous of women attempting anything other than housework or stenography. How dare these dames do a man's job like murder!

"Did you hear the one about the
electric chair? It'll kill ya!"

Leave it to Jerry Beall, ace reporter, to do the snooping that cops are paid for. After an inappropriately jokey prison visit with Barbara ("I warn you: I'm not going to be made a widower without a struggle"), Jerry gets into Jane's apartment and finds a note pad with a phone number belonging to a certain Dr. Wagner. Dropping by Wagner's sanatorium (in these old B-movies, they're always sanatoriums because the word "clinic" isn't ominous enough), Jerry can't get past the front door. Luckily for him, Dr. Wagner is the kind of sawbones who performs surgery in the on the first floor with the shades wide open for all to see. 

And what Jerry sees here looks an awful like the alleged late Jane Merrick getting brain surgery -- or, this being L.A., possibly a face lift with a shot of botox. Dr. Wagner and his assistant have no idea they're being watched until Sally (Jane's maid) casually drops by the o.r. to say hi. (I hope this kind of thing doesn't go on during surgeries anymore). Sally screams upon noticing Jerry, as would anyone hoping to see a good actor playing his role instead. And, reacting with the same genius possessed by Jane, Dr. Wagner closes the shade after he knows he's been seen. 

Now, say you witnessed a mysteriously-missing radio singer going under the scalpel of what appeared to be a psycho doctor -- what would you do? Of course! Call her boyfriend, wait twenty minutes for him to arrive, then decide that it might be a good idea to call the cops. Shades pulled too late, waiting to call the cops -- these people are sloooooow to move.  So slow that they're held captive by Dr. Wagner, who toy with the idea of slicing open their skulls while they're awake. (This guy is clearly an out-of-network provider.) Fortunately, Sally recognizes Jim as Jane's boyfriend. In no time, Dr. Wagner becomes best pals with the two guys he was ready to lobotomize a moment earlier. Wagner explains that it was really Jane's twin sister Joan who was shot, and that Jane herself was only undergoing surgery to remove a birthmark. Oh. I see.

If you didn't know she was getting
the third-degree, you'd have
thought it was a shampoo
commercial.

But wait! Where does that leave Barbara Hammond, the woman condemned? She's undergoing the third degree down at headquarters, while Dapper Dan watches impassively until the room goes dark. A moment later, the lights go on -- and Jane appears where Barbara once stood. A gunshot rings out; Jane drops to the floor. 

Taking a page from Los Angeles Police manual How to Get a Confession Out of a Suspect by the Most Preposterous Ways Imaginable, Dapper Dan barks in his thick-as-shell steak Argentinian accent, "I told you I'd get you! You thought I had forgiven you, hanh? But I waited five years to pay you off! Five long years in that pen you sent me to!"  A cops slaps the cuffs on him; Jane, unharmed, gets to her feet. Barbara reveals herself as the detective investigating the Merrick shooting, allowing them to make with the honeymoon. Jane agrees to marry Jim now that her pesky birthmark is gone. And the audience is left to make sense of the previous 61 minutes.

Sudden death and murder. OK...

The Woman Condemned was released by Progressive Pictures, "Progressive" meaning the moving images were created by a camera and not cave drawings illuminated by fire. Boasting all the hallmarks of a Mrs. Wallace Reid effort -- woozy theme music, stilted delivery, awkward transitions, mediocre sound, a budget that wouldn't cover the cost of a kitchen makeover -- The Woman Condemned doesn't even attempt to convey even the most rudimentary police procedures that were in place by 1934. Ballistics tests, taking fingerprints, studying clues. The closest a cop comes to examining the corpse is muttering, "Murder, hunh?" There's a promotion just waiting for that flatfoot.

But, as with similar low-budget movies of its time, there are a few interesting location shots, including an all-too brief nighttime car chase through downtown Los Angeles, complete with storefront Christmas decorations. Jerry and Barbara's studio-bound first date is intercut with an authentic (albeit second-rate) nightclub performance featuring glamour girls whose entire act seems to consist of wearing oversize feathers. Historically, these are the most interesting scenes in The Woman Condemned. Artistically, too. 

The doctor will see you now.

As the creepy Dr. Wagner, the always-terrific Mischa Auer is The Woman Condemned's only familiar -- and compelling -- actor. Filming him from Jim's point of view as he (Auer) approaches threateningly with a scalpel is Mrs. Wallace Reid's one inspired moment. For reasons unexplained, Auer's name is spelled "Aver" in the credits. I initially thought they were going for that fancy-shmancy old-school Greek typography. But considering the quality of the rest of the movie, the designer was probably drunk.

Is this the face that launched 25
years of Three Stooges shorts?

Claudia Dell, who plays Barbara Hammond, deserves a mention for reasons having nothing to do with The Woman Condemned. For one thing, she co-starred in Yellow Cargo, another movie discussed on this site. More importantly, Ms. Dell is said to be one of the three women who modeled for the original Columbia Pictures logo. You can bet she got mighty sick of jokers asking, "Hey Claudia, who ya carryin' that torch for, haw haw!"

"Have you heard my husband was
a junkie?"

As those who remembered reading about Sucker Money will attest (very few, I would guess), Mrs. Wallace Reid -- nee Dorothy Davenport -- was the only woman who capitalized on her husband's drug overdose by taking his name professionally. If nothing else, this definitely set her apart from the rest of the crowd even more than being one of the few female directors of her time. Somebody ought to try it now. While I'm not generally a fan of remakes, I would pay good money to see a movie with the following credits:

                      THE CONDEMNED WOMAN
                                   Starring
                           JENNIFER ANISTON 
                                 Directed by 
                             MRS. BRAD PITT 

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

One of Mrs. Wallace Reid's other movies, Sucker Money, is discussed here.
Claudia Dell's Yellow Cargo is discussed here.