THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 65

Frank Capra makes his Early Show debut, an honor he likely would have refused, while Bela Lugosi, Walter Huston, and Edward G. Robinson return to join an antediluvian vaudeville act in their first (and last) appearance. 

THEY LEARNED ABOUT WOMEN (1930): Here's a story you've never seen before: two lifelong friends are torn apart by a no-good dame. The twist: the friends are professional baseball players who moonlight as vaudeville entertainers. Or the other way around, it's never made clear.

One doesn't watch a picture like They Learned About Women for entertainment any more than archeologists explore pyramids to find a new place to live. It's strictly historical study, for this is the only feature starring Gus Van & Joe Schenck -- in their time (c. 1915-1930) the most popular singing duo in show business, who are now as au courant as the allosaurus. 

And here's where it gets fascinating for nerdy amateur showbiz historians. Put aside for a moment that Van has the face of a human bulldog, and Schenck possesses the voice of Neil Sedaka turned up to 11. They are great at what they do if -- and this is important -- you remember what audiences enjoyed a century ago, like harmony as loud as the lead voice, or songs featuring dialect humor. They Learned About Women feature three of the latter: African-American (despite the potential offense, a fantastic number you can watch here), Irish, and Italian, (You can find Van & Schenck shorts where they do their "tributes" to Jews and Chinese as well.)

Not all the music in They Learned About Women is culturally unacceptable in the 21st century; it's artistically unacceptable as well, although I enjoyed them tremendously. Without Van & Schenck, They Learned About Women would be an exercise in ennui. It's best to fast-forward through the "drama" and go straight to the songs -- IF you have any interest in the kind of pop music that was already going out of style by the time of the movie's release (Schenck himself died six months later). Don't miss leading lady Bessie Love's jazzy solo "I Got Me a Real Man", either. She's kind of a hot mama in her own innocent way.

BONUS POINTS: Authentic footage of the old Yankee Stadium is featured in the climactic ballgame. 

AMERICAN MADNESS (1932): For a director remembered for uplifting movies, Frank Capra had a pretty cynical (meaning accurate) eye for corruption, unbridled capitalism, and the sheer idiocy of the average American. His movies' tacked-on happy endings are nothing more than fairytale codas meant to make you forget the reality you just experienced. 

American Madness may be the first entry in that quasi-genre, and is definitely better than its forgotten status would have it. It also plays like the blueprint for It's a Wonderful Life, seeing that it focuses on a down-to-earth bank president facing a hostile takeover and a hostile clientele when hysterical rumors lead to a run by panicked depositors. 

Walter Huston, as usual, knocks it out of the park as Thomas Dickson, the big city bank president with a heart of gold and a knack for seeing the good in everybody -- even when one of them, cashier Cyrill Cluett, engineers the bank's robbery to pay off a debt to a gangster. Pat O'Brien is Matt, a colleague who believes Cluett is fooling around with Dickson's wife, winds up being the prime suspect in the robbery. But it's Huston who's the star of the show; his casual chit-chat and gangly walk suggest a friendly small-town businessman who goes by his gut feeling when it comes to loaning money. He's the boss you've always dreamed of having yet has never existed in real life. 

Strangely, American Madness feels at times more like a Howard Hawks picture, with realistic overlapping dialogue and fast paced action, leading an eye-popping climax with what looks like the biggest group of extras since the Babylon scene in Intolerance.  Brimming with humor, drama, and outright misanthropy, American Madness is the work of a moviemaker still questioning the so-called wisdom of both the ruling class and middle class. 

BONUS POINTS: American Madness is one of the last movies to feature the credit DIRECTED BY FRANK R. CAPRA. Maybe he dropped the "R" because it didn't have the same ring as Darryl F. Zanuck or Louis B, Mayer. 

THE DEATH KISS (1932): Gangsters are setting up a hit. As the target exits a nightclub, their moll gives him an unexpected kiss, allowing the hitmen to ready, aim, fire. CUT! It turns out we're on a movie set. As the director arranges for a second take, the crew realizes the actor was killed for real. Is Alec Baldwin on the loose again?

Cheap joke aside, The Death Kiss is actually quite a decent picture, reuniting the stars of the previous year's hit, Dracula: Bela Lugosi, Edward Van Sloan, and David Manners. Disappointingly, Lugosi, as studio manager Joseph Steiner, doesn't have a lot to do other than seem awfully anxious to pin the murder on the leading lady, who had been divorced from the now-dead actor. Van Sloan (as director Tom Avery) merely wants the set locked down, while Manners (wisecracking scriptwriter Franklyn Drew) wants to find the real killer since he's in love with the sexy suspect, as all scriptwriters are.

For a Poverty Row production from Sono Art-World Wide (the abhorrent Lucky Boy and Peacock Alley), The Death Kiss is a quite the meta-mystery in that it gives a behind-the-scenes look at the picture business, making good use of the equally-low-budget Tiffany Studios (where The Death Kiss was filmed) as we visit the sound stages, screening room and back lot. And typical of "inside" movies of the time, the guy running the studio is a malaprop-slinging Jewish caricature. (His response upon hearing about the murder of his star: "Oy, that's going to cost me a fortune!"). Figuring out whodunnit is beside the point; The Death Kiss is a fun watch, with some clever camerawork and familiar character actors helping to speed things along -- literally. You won't realize until the end that it all takes place in one day.

BONUS POINTS: As with The Vampire Bat, The Death Kiss uses the occasional hand-tinted sequences for cheap but interesting effects, especially when a movie reel goes up in flames. And did you know that the iceman often slid his delivery into the icebox through a special door in the wall of the house? The things you learn in old movies!

NIGHT HAS A THOUSAND EYES (1948): Sometimes a movie can make you rethink
your admiration of an actor (like Robert de Niro in most movies not directed by Martin Scorsese). Night Has a Thousand Eyes, on the other hand, increased my appreciation for Edward G. Robinson.

Its story isn't anything new, A phony showbiz psychic named Triton acquires a sudden gift (if you can call it that) of real prognostication which eventually sets off a chain of events that prevents the death of one person and causes the death of another --an idea previously explored in The Clairvoyant with Claude Raines. And as with The Clairvoyant, Night Has a Thousand Eyes deliberately makes you wonder if the tragic climax was inevitable or caused by the psychic's own actions: a cop-out ending to please the censors, I'd say. 

None of this negates my belief that Edward G. Robinson was the best of the major tough-guy actors of his time, including Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney. Because while those two gentlemen are great at what they do, Robinson goes one step further by creating enormous empathy for characters like Triton. You can picture Robinson in, say, The Caine Mutiny or White Heat, but neither Bogart nor Cagney could have starred in Night Has a Thousand Eyes -- or Scarlett Street, The Woman in The Window, Tales of Manhattan, and other dramas where Robinson shows a side painful in its melancholy. Kind of lost in the shuffle among the "classic" Robinson movies, Night Has a Thousand Eyes needs a million more viewers.

BONUS POINTS: William Demarest has a rare "straight" role as Police Lieut. Shawn, occasionally cracking wise as a sop to his fans.

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