As with I Confess! and one or two other movies, Bordertown on its face shouldn't be a subject of this blog. Studio production, A-list stars, serious theme -- well, maybe a crackpot like me should take it apart, if only to show how a 1934 drama made with the best intentions can look mighty illiberal today. Because what starts out as poor boy makes good through hard work is really stay in your place poor boy -- because poor boy is Mexican American.
After being disbarred, lawyer Johnny Ramirez hoofs it down to Mexico with the intention of acquiring money -- and the power that comes with it. Rising from bouncer to co-owner, with Charlie Roark, of a gambling joint, he fends off the affection of Charlie's wife, Marie, while falling for Dale Elwell, the woman his client was suing at the time of his disbarment.
As you can tell by their names, the women in this triangle are about as Mexican as Barry Fitzgerald. And two decades before I Love Lucy, the idea of a Latino man being coupled with one white woman, let alone two, was just not accepted in polite (i.e., racist) society. Even if the Latino man is, in reality, Paul Muni, a white Austro-Hungarian-born actor who got his start in Yiddish theater. In 1934, you had to pretend to be Latino to get near an Anglo woman if you were doing anything other than serving her a drink.
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| Another woman who hasn't learned that insanity isn't a turn-on for most guys. |
You also had to give the white women unacceptable reasons for showing interest in a -- gasp -- Mexican. For Dale Ewell, it's just a wild fling with someone who, financially, has now entered her league, but is otherwise what was referred to as "the other".
Marie Roark's excuse is more direct: she's crazy enough to murder her husband -- by making it look like he fell asleep in the garage with the engine running -- in order to make herself that much more available to Johnny. She even gives him money to open his own 5-star casino. I'm sorry to say no woman has gone to that much trouble for me.
When her little scheme still doesn't win Johnny's corazon, Marie tells the police that he confessed to killing Charlie. And even in Mexico, the word of an obviously crazy white woman is enough to bring him to trial. It's only when Marie is dragged out of the courtroom after babbling incoherently on the stand is it clear to all that Johnny's been framed. And even then, he has to tell his lawyer to demand that the trial be dismissed on grounds of Marie's insanity. Maybe the mouthpiece should have gone to Johnny's law school.
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| The condescending bitch or the crazy lady: which to choose? |
With Marie out of the way, Johnny drives to L.A. in his new car to propose to Dale Ewell. Her response is stunned laughter. Sure, he was good enough to screw -- but marry? "There's such a thing as equality," she reminds him -- meaning he's not her equal. Running out of his car, Dale heads straight into traffic and gets what's coming to her, all over the pavement. Johnny just cannot get a break.
So there's nothing more Johnny can do than sell his casino, donate the proceeds to fund an endowment for future lawyers, and return to his poor Los Angeles neighborhood -- and, more importantly, his mother and his church, where he promises the padre that he's back "where I belong: with my people."
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| They even made his face whiter than Bette's. |
No more white folks for me! Barrio, here I come! Warner Brothers probably thought it was a tragic yet necessary message. Look what good trying to join white society did Johnny: one dead business partner, one dead woman, and another woman headed for the madhouse. And did I say they were white?
Over and over, we're told that Johnny just isn't couth. Hell, he was disbarred for socking a white lawyer in the jaw during a trial. Even Dale Ewell's nickname for Johnny is "Savage." In fact, every white woman in Borderline is interested in him because he looks like a brute due to his skin color. Maybe it's a good thing they hired Paul Muni to play Johnny in tanface, because I'm not sure any Latino actor could have gotten behind Bordertown's message, even in 1934.
The Warners publicity department probably was a little nervous regarding Bordertown's promotion. The image atop the page features Muni in a sombrero, which he never wears in the movie. In the poster on the left, the sombrero has been ditched for a white tux, with the sideburns the only clue that Muni might be one of those people.
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| I would love a headshot like this. |
As with Al Pacino in Scarface and Carlito's Way, Muni's accent sounds acceptable until he's paired with a real Latino; then you immediately discover the artifice. In fact, he sounds like Tony Camonte, his Italian character in the original Scarface from two years earlier -- which is to say, not Italian. Or Mexican, either. In fact, I still can't figure out what accent he's doing.
Muni was still considered ***A GREAT ACTOR!*** at the time of his death in 1967, even though he made his final movie almost a decade earlier. So it's something of a surprise that most of his performances are delivered with a slice of ham -- or, to be fair, a dose of theatricality. Like his Warners colleague George Arliss (with whom, early on, he shared the honorific "Mr." in movie credits), Muni was considered one of the premiere stage actors of his time. Arliss, however, learned to act for the movies while Muni never quite shook his stage training. While he's often entertaining, be appears to be telling us, Look at me! Now this is acting!
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| Paul Muni meets his match twice over. |
In Bordertown, though, Muni goes toe to toe with Bette Davis. Eyes popping out like golf balls, brandishing a sick smile that rivals that of Charles Manson's groupies, speaking her lines as if she's just downed a couple tablets of speed, Davis chews the scenery as if she hadn't eaten in weeks. And as Charlie Roark, Eugene Pallette's steals every scene from Muni by notching up his already scratchy bullfrog voice enough to make it sound like he's snacking on barbed wire between takes.
Only Margaret Lindsay, playing the allegedly classy Dale Ewell, keeps it lowkey throughout -- that is, until informing Johnny that he isn't her type -- then she goes haywire and walks in front of a speeding car. It's interesting to speculate if audiences at the time thought it a better fate than being married to a Mexican. Thank God the U.S.A. has evolved from those pre-enlightened times, right? Right?!
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