THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 46

 This Early Show entry is a mixed bag, with one great movie, one pretty good, one creepy, and a forgotten TV show starring a now-century-old legend. You can't say I don't deliver the goods.

THE CRIMINAL CODE (1930): Just as the first phase of movie musicals was overstaying its welcome, prison dramas took hold, and The Criminal Code was one of the best. Robert Graham is on his sixth lap of a ten-year prison stretch for manslaughter. Mark Brady, the new warden -- and former D.A. who sentenced Graham -- hires him as a chauffeur, giving the young man a daily taste of freedom and for Brady's daughter Mary. But before Graham can make a move on her, he's thrown in the prison "dungeon" for refusing to squeal on a fellow prisoner named Galloway, who stuck a shiv into a stoolie -- even though it means losing his chance at parole. 

The Criminal Code -- better looking than your average Columbia movie of the time -- is remembered mainly as the movie that allegedly inspired director James Whale to hire Boris Karloff (as Galloway) for Frankenstein later that year. There's far more to the movie than that, as it also shows how its director Howard Hawks was already polishing his fast-talking, multi-conversational style in only his second talkie. It's on display primarily in the first few minutes, but Hawks seems to have urged Walter Huston (Brady) to not only keep up the speed but intensify it along the way. And while Huston looks the part of the D,A.-turned-warden, he has an amusing habit of muttering "Yeah" -- both as a statement and a question -- while chewing on a cigar in a possibly unintentionally nasal imitation of Edward G. Robinson. 

As for the others, Phillips Holmes (Men Must Fight) makes for a sympathetic Graham, who over time has gone mad in stir. A young, dreamy-eyed actor, Holmes is convincing and empathetic as the nice guy-turned-grimy prisoner. And then there's Boris Karloff who admires Graham so much for keeping his yap shut that he willingly pays the ultimate price himself. Had Frankenstein not come along, he'd have probably gotten typecast in criminal roles. (He also played a prisoner in the now-lost French language version of Laurel & Hardy's first feature Pardon Us.) But it's Hawks himself who's the real star of The Criminal Code, putting his mark on almost every scene, bringing a welcome fervency into what could have been a routine melodrama.

BONUS POINTS: An unexpectedly young (and dramatic) Andy Devine is the prisoner who provides the weapon when a brutal prison guard gets what's coming to him.

THE LIMEJUICE MYSTERY, OR, WHO SPAT IN GRANDFATHER'S PORRIDGE? (1930): Any one-reeler nearly a century old with a title like that deserves a looksee. Until you looksee it for yourself. Then you realize how you just wasted eight precious minutes of your life -- or if you're pupaphobic, terrified to near death, for the cast is made up entirely of marionettes. 

A UK production, The Limejuice Mystery has a plot that... well, doesn't really exist. A murder happens in a bar in London's Limehouse district. (We know that because "Limehouse Blues" is heard almost incessantly on the soundtrack.) As weeks pass without the police coming any closer to solving the crime, master detective Herlock Sholmes is literally begged to step in to help. Not that he actually steps in. As with all the marionettes here, he more or less slides across the floor as if, er, moved via strings controlled by drunks. And if you think the name Herlock Sholmes is witty, his "co-star" is named Anna Went Wrong, as if out of one of those pornographic Tijuana Bibles.

There's no dialogue here, because The Limejuice Mystery is a wonderful example of pantomime that the British music hall in known for. Well no, that's not true. It's because providing dialogue would have been a tremendous waste of time and effort. As with the nightmarish I Am Suzanne! , its alleged appeal lies strictly in watching pieces of wood carved into grotesque-looking humans getting dragged around like a dog by its cruel master. The Limejuice Mystery exists in a good print on YouTube, while movies highly-regarded in their day have vanished without a trace. That's the real mystery here.

BONUS POINTS: Nobody actually spits in grandfather's porridge. 

THE LAST CROOKED MILE (1946): Private dick Tom Dwyer horns in on a police investigation of a bank robbery in order to collect the reward money. He starts by cozying up to nightclub thrush Sheila Kennedy, former girlfriend of the robbery leader named Jarvis who, along with his two assistants, were killed when their getaway car took  swan dive off a cliff. Dwyer is convinced the money is hidden somewhere in the getaway car, now restored and on display at a carnival. But before he can get his mitts on the dough, he has to get past "Wires" McGuire, a criminal whose trademark is strangling people with -- you'll never guess -- a wire. No more wire hangers!

At times it's difficult to figure out if Republic Pictures' The Last Crooked Mile is supposed to be taken seriously. Former cowboy star Don "Red" Barry plays Dwyer like a combination of James Cagney and Dwayne "Dobie Gillis" Hickman -- ready to throw a punch minute, spout goofy dialogue the next. Even the ever-reliable Sheldon Leonard (as McGuire) verges on laughing at one point, as if he doesn't know what's going on. But once it settles down, The Last Crooked Mile is quite an enjoyable 67-minute outing.

But it's B-queen Ann Savage as Sheila Kennedy who got me watching it. Almost unrecognizable at times with dark hair rather than her usual

blonde, Savage is more vulnerable here than in her best movie, Detour, even if she appears to know more than she lets on. A nice twist is the way Dwyer starts romancing her despite having a girlfriend named Bonnie. Is he really starting to fall for the moll, or does he suspect her as being part of the bank heist? You'll have to find out for yourself. All I can tell you is that I was 50% fooled -- which is something else you'll have to figure out yourself by watching the movie to its very last crooked mile.

BONUS POINTS: Barry and Savage have a couple of surprising moments with risqué dialogue that wouldn't have been out of place in a 1930s pre-code movie, proving the censors weren't very bright.

MOTHER'S DAY (10/21/58): Judging by the hoopla surrounding Dick Van Dyke's
99th birthday, you'd think that Mary Poppins and his first sitcom were the only things ever starred in. Why oh why did no one ask him about hosting Mother's Day, ABC-TV's kinder, gentler rip-off of Queen for a Day? Unlike the latter's cruelly exploitative nature, Mother's Day pit middle-aged women against each other in friendly challenges all moms apparently should know, like telling raw eggs from hard-boiled by touch alone, or figuring out which of a half-dozen steaks weighs four pounds. Women sure had it easy in the '50s!

Mother's Day's contestants were submitted by the loved ones of women who were deemed worthy of prizes provided by the producers -- mink stoles, tea sets, portable record players, and a vacation to one of a half-dozen glamorous cities. (The Latin Quarter, where the show aired from, was probably the classiest joint any of the contestants or audience members ever visited.) In addition to those eggs and steaks stumpers, the moms in this episode are submitted to a memory test and, in the weirdest moment of any game show in history, telling the difference between a dynamite cap from three similar-looking harmless devices -- as we're reminded, kids playing in vacant city lots are forever bringing home explosives. 

And as for Dick Van Dyke, no daytime host was ever more affable; women at home probably considered him such a nice young man. Today, he's the only reason worth watching Mother's Day if only to learn that legends had to start somewhere, even if meant wiping egg yolks off their hands. Well, also to remind us that live lunchtime programs like this and The Liberace Show ("next on most of these stations") were the closest housewives had to a vacation from their humdrummiest of lives. 

BONUS POINTS: One of Mother's Day's sponsors is Betty Crocker's hot cereal Protein Plus, back when it was pronounced Pro-Tee-In. Just to show my age, I remember hearing that pronunciation in commercials.

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