MOVIE OF THE DAY: "THE CHEAT" (1931)

 The Cheat is a pre-code melodrama remembered not so much for its story but one shocking scene that you couldn't get away with now. Now that I think of it, you likely couldn't get away with any of it now. Sounds good!

Up and coming businessman Jeffrey Carlyle is madly in love with his wife Elsa. Elsa, in turn, is madly in love with Jeffrey. And money. It's a little difficult to see which comes first. Elsa is also a bad gambler, having lost $10,000 in cards at her Long Island country club, thanks to a double-or-nothing bet that never works out in movies. 

Elsa's lose way with dough must be a well-kept secret in her circle, since she's put in charge of $14,000 meant to go to the Milk Fund. (And you thought milk was expensive now!) When Elsa gets wind of a stock market opportunity that promises a 100% return in 48 hours, she puts $10,000 of the milk money into it, believing everything will work out by Friday. This dame certainly places misguided faith in double-or-nothing bets.

Just to let you know, she's the one doing the talking
here.

When that wager goes south, she has nowhere to turn but the mysterious Hardy Livingstone, a Sinophile whose entire house, right down to the servants, is early Japanese. Livingstone, having the hots for Elsa since forever, gives her a check for $10,000. Which covers one debt but not the other, something nobody seems to think is a problem.

In return, all Livingstone wants is for Elsa to drop by his house whenever he commands. That debt appears to clear up the following day, when her husband's big business deal comes through, allowing her to repay Livingstone. Mr. Japanese-Wannabe millionaire refuses the check despite Elsa refusing to go through with her end of the bargain. Which one is the cheat here anyway?

What do you do when you're branded, and you know
you're a cheat?

Even when he accepts that Elsa will never put out for him, Livingstone proves that
she's still his property. Not by holding her captive or demanding the return of a cool Japanese dress he lent her for a costume party, but by branding her chest. Talk about a money shot!

It seems anti-climactic to describe the rest of the movie -- Elsa shoots Livingstone in the shoulder; Jeffrey (remember him?) takes the blame, but is let off the hook during the trial when Elsa shows the brand to the courtroom as the reason she pulled the trigger. Nothing tops that branding scene, even if it is done in shadow. Another cheat!

Elsa realizes going to a costume party
with her husband dressed like that was a
bad idea.

Tallulah Bankhead, still a year or so away from starting to look like Tallulah Bankhead, plays Elsa alternately languid and panicked, in love and bored out of her mind, enjoying the good life while trying to escape it. I mean, Tallulah Bankhead connected to the Milk Fund? Only when it's mixed with bourbon. She appears to be a decade older than the milquetoasty Harvey Stephens, playing Jeffrey, yet they're both only 29 years old. 

The only actor who can go toe-to-toe with Bankhead is Irving Pichel. Both an interesting character actor (unforgettable in Dracula's Daughter) and movie director (ranging from the tense The Most Dangerous Game to the ethereal Tomorrow is Forever), Pichel has a style and beautiful voice unlike anybody else's. 

Livingstone feels the fury of an outraged courtroom.
Not so suave now, are you, Mr. Sophisticate?

Very much an actor of his time, he can suddenly appear to be contemporary without breaking a sweat. Pichel's portrayal of Livingstone begins as friendly and generous, gradually becoming just a little creepy before going full-blown screwy and, finally, scared for his life when the courtroom spectators go for his blood.

If The Cheat sounds melodramatic, it ought to, since it's a remake of a Cecil B. DeMille silent of 1915. The major difference -- other than, you know, people not talking -- is that Hardy Livingston was named Hishuru Tori, and played by Sessue Hayakawa. Yes, the rich, exotic man in love with the white lady was Japanese. Now replay the story, particularly the branding, with that in mind. A story like that a decade or so into the 20th-century was positively scandalous. And, for a lot of white women bored with their husbands, exciting as hell.

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

To read about the Tallulah Bankhead pre-code Devil and the Deep, go here.

MOVIE OF THE DAY: "DEVIL AND THE DEEP" (1932)

When Charles Laughton toured the US in the 1950s reading passages from Shakespeare and the Bible, did small town audiences remember there was a time he gleefully played some of the sleaziest characters in movie history? Sir William Porterhouse, William Marble, Dr. Moreau, Sir Humphrey Pengallan... and, in his first American movie, submarine commander Charles Sturm in Devil and the Deep. Laughton might have third billing, but his character's redolence hangs over the rest of the cast like London's Great Fog of 1952 -- almost as fatally.

Sturm and his wife Diana have been dismally married many years because of some kind of monetary favor he did for her father. (No way I could ever be accused of that.) And so she is condemned to a lifetime of paying off a debt that she was never really part of. That's what you get for being born, sweetie!

Sturm takes great pleasure in ruining Jaeckel's
career before the end of the second reel.

While stationed in North Africa, Sturm is happily aware that the man under his command, Lt. Jaeckel, has struck up a friendship with Diana. Happily, because it allows him the chance to punish Jaeckel by hauling him up on charges of "inefficiency". And since the lieutenant is played by 31 year-old Cary Grant, this is certainly a Jaeckel & Hyde situation. 

What Sturm is too thick (figuratively and

Sempter makes sure that they don't knock over
the phony palm tree on the Paramount soundstage.

otherwise) to realize is that Diana really has been faithful to him all along, which makes her in need of the "brain specialist" that he's been seeing. Faithful, that is, until running into a fellow named Sempter one evening... and doing the dirty with him under the desert moon faster than you can say, "What was your name again?"

But this isn't just a one-night lay for Sempter, because in the morning he asks Diana, "Do you love me?" -- which is probably what Pete Davidson does the first time with every woman, too. But if Pete looked like Gary Cooper, who plays Sempter, it's understandable why Diana answers in the affirmative. But since Diana is played by Tallulah Bankhead, Sempter should take her reply with a rock of salt.

"Dahling, didn't I see you inside of me last night?"

Despite her feelings for him, Diana doesn't want to see Sempter again. So just imagine her surprise when he arrives at her house the next day as Jaeckel's replacement on Sturm's sub. That's some funny stuff there, lady, eh? 

This time, Sturm knows there was more than tea and crumpets between his wife and subordinate. When Diana sneaks aboard the sub while it's still in port, Sturm decides everybody needs to pay the price for her affair. Setting sail without letting Diana out first, Sturm deliberately puts the sub on a collision course with a ship and blames Sempter for the "accident". 

"Sorry, men, that you have to pay the price for my
psychopathy. But thank you for your service."

Wait, that's not enough madness? Well, how's this: Sturm demands that Sempter be thrown in the stockade, tells the crew about Diana's tryst, and then calmly waits for all of them to die. And the crew of the Caine thought Capt. Queeg was crazy!

Even by pre-Code standards, the first-rate Devil and the Deep takes things one step further by showing the sexual frustration running not-so-deeply in the marriage situation. Diana all but shouts I gotta get laid before my head flies off! every time she meets a new guy.

Look at them. If that's not love, I don't know what is.
Which tells you all you need to know about me.

Sturm, on the other hand, is either impotent or, perhaps more likely, finds sex repulsive. What else can explain his compulsion to set up younger, handsome men in sexually-unfulfilled relationships with his wife, then secretly watch them as they share their feelings for each other? That way, he can get off by punishing his wife emotionally and the men professionally. That's definitely a two-fer in the sadism department.

Charles Laughton, however, must have been a glutton for masochism, because not a moment goes by when he isn't making himself look even homelier than he already is. Running his hands down his face, asking Cooper pathetically, "Have you ever felt sick to death? Sick of being alive?... Must be a happy thing to look like you do. Women must love that. I've never had that", you get a terribly uncomfortable feeling that Laughton isn't acting. It's a brave, brilliant, even moving moment: Sturm's ugliness has driven him to the brink of insanity. Of course, that doesn't mean his habit of loudly telling the same bad jokes day after day isn't doing the same thing to everyone else.

Another fun evening with the Sturms.

In his brief time onscreen, Cary Grant still gets to shine in what was only his fifth movie appearance. As in his debut, This is the Night, his charisma is on display, far more so than the then-bigger star, Gary Cooper, who, as usual, sounds like he's reading his lines for the first time straight from the script. 

Cooper, however, figures in Devil and the Deep's most mesmerizing scene. When Diana leaves her house the evening Jaeckel is stripped of his duties, she stumbles into a parade of revelers celebrating a holiday. Director Marion Gering cuts quickly from Arab faces to hands banging drums to Diana and back again, over and over, creating a forbidden sexual tension broken only when Sempter rescues her from out of nowhere by blocking her against a wall with his long, stiff arm. Yup, we get the picture.

That's "Night Over Tunis"
to you, pal.

I almost forgot about Tallulah Bankhead, one of those actresses -- make that personalities -- who never quite became a movie star. Only 30, she already has the jaded personality, smoky voice, and tired eyes of a woman twice her age. She's good-looking and, I suppose, sexy, but in an uncomfortable way, as if she's seen too much of everything, including you. Especially you.

Bankhead's personality might have been too chilly even for Norway, where, on at least one poster, Gary Cooper's name came first, and his warm all-American face was the main draw. Must be a happy thing to look like him. 


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

To read about Cary Grant's movie debut, This is the Night, go here.
To read about the ridiculous Gary Cooper movie The Fountainhead, go here.