THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 67

 As we wait to hear the conspiracy theories involving the latest attempt on Donald Trump's life, here are four movies to take your mind off of the madhouse we call "life itself".

APPLAUSE (1929): Had I been running a movie studio in 1929, I'd have ordered my directors to watch Applause multiple times. Then I would have barked, "That's how you make a talkie!" And all thanks go to director Rouben Mamoulian. From its opening moments with the camera following a theater poster floating in the breeze to its climax tracking close to another poster featuring the story's lead character, Applause is the first sound movie to really move.

Sure, its story of over-the-hill burlesque queen Kitty Darling trying to keep her virginal teenage daughter April from following in her footsteps seems hackneyed today. But it's what Mamoulian does with the camera and editing that brings it fully to life for its 80 minutes. The techniques we take for granted now -- overhead shots, lightning-quick edits, motion -- seem to have made their sound debut here. The Russian cinema-inspired montages of the creepy audience members and washed-up burlesque dancers stun even now, while Kitty's p.o.v. shot of her low-rent colleagues looking down at her and her newborn baby is more horror movie than happy.

Broadway legend Helen Morgan, only 29, looks the part of the middle-aged floozie Kitty Darling, forever a slave to her unfaithful live-in boyfriend/manager Hitch Nelson (played by the actor with the unforgettable name Fuller Mellish, Jr.). Sleazy with a capital S, Hitch puts the moves on the 17-year-old April with the line, "Charity begins at home!", a moment both hilarious and disgusting. As for pre-code language, there are two "damns" and a character named Tony who dislikes his name because it "sounds like a wop bootblack".

For those unfamiliar with the star of Applause -- long before Judy Garland took her first upper, Helen Morgan was the original "tragic" female entertainer: torch singer, alcoholic, four-times married, psychologically and emotionally troubled, dead at 41 of cirrhosis. And it's all there onscreen in Applause, perhaps the first great American talkie. Recommended viewing; an excellent print is free on YouTube. 

BONUS POINTS: Applause features some great location footage of the old Penn Station, Brooklyn Bridge, and atop a Wall Street skyscraper. 

GIRL OF THE PORT (1930): Few movies are ahead of their time while being incredibly dated as Girl of the Port. Josie (Sally O'Neil), a washed-up showgirl, is herself washed up on a South Seas island to tend bar at the local dive. There she meets McEwen (Mitchell Lewis), a horny, racist landowner, and Jim (Reginald Sharland), a drunken, shellshocked, pyrophobic World War I vet. Deciding Jim is the only decent guy on the island, Sally moves him into her hut for a few months to sober him up. McEwen eventually kidnaps Jim, gets him drunk, and takes him to another island to scare him to death at the natives' firewalking routine -- only to discover it has the opposite of the desired effect. 

There are plenty of interesting bits in Girl of the Port, none including the title character. The prologue is a terrifying war scene where Jim and his fellow British soldiers are beat back or burned up by Germans with flamethrowers, an event that would shellshock anyone. Later at the bar, Mitchell Lewis stuns when his character McEwen buys a round for the boys and toasts, "To white supremacy!", before calling one of the natives a "black baboon". His pride vanishes when Jim announces that McEwen is actually a "half-caste". As his white "friends" move away, McEwen realizes he's buying a round for the smirking "half-castes" who silently welcome him as one of their own. It's an unexpected, well directed moment.

So: self-loathing racism. Untreated PTSD. Alcoholism. A couple shacking up. All in all, plenty of pre-code situations to revel in. Too bad the wisecracking Sally O'Neil and the overwrought Reginald Sharland dampen the potential with dialogue and direction aimed at the cheap seats. Had Girl of the Port come along two years later (although released in 1930, it was filmed in 1929), it could have been a better-made, more sophisticated take on the issues it deals with. Still worth its 68-minute watch to see the horrors of World War I unflinchingly portrayed, and an openly racist character get his comeuppance -- although he had to be only half white to do so.

BONUS POINTS: If Mitchell Lewis looks and sounds vaguely familiar, it's because he's the captain of the guards in The Wizard of Oz who says of the Wicked Witch, "She's dead. Dorothy killed her!" The alleged "black baboon" was in reality the Hawaiian surfing champ and five-time Olympic medal winner Duke Kahanamoku, who appeared as himself in the silly semi-documentary Around the World in 80 Minutes with Douglas Fairbanks. 

THE ROAD IS OPEN AGAIN (1933): No other president had Hollywood around his finger like Franklin D. Roosevelt. Even the Republican studio heads felt obliged to jump on the New Deal bandwagon, featuring references and even entire shorts devoted FDR's good works. 

Warner Brothers did its part by releasing the half-reeler The Road is Open Again. Dick Powell is sitting at the piano trying to knock out a new patriotic song. Upon closing his eyes for a moment, he's visited by the ghosts of George Washington, Abe Lincoln, and Woodrow Wilson. Rather than running out of the room screaming in terror, Powell listens to the trio explain how wonderful Roosevelt is, confident that the newly-elected commander-in-chief will right the ship of state. All that is required from the country is faith in their leader, and to buck up, because the road to prosperity is open again.

Huzzah! Dick Powell has the hook for his song. And as the ghosts disappear, Powell sings -- off the top of his head! -- "The Road is Open Again" as newsreels of people going to work and pro-New Deal headlines fill the screen.  And before you can say "massive national debt", the merry propaganda picture is over.

No doubt The Road is Open Again is charming while, according to some economists, completely wrongheaded about the New Deal in general. Yet it reminds us of a time when a president with a good heart and sound mind was able to bring a country together when rabblerousers on both ends of the political spectrum were dividing Americans, unemployment and inflation were on the rise, and dictators were starting to run riot over Europe. So glad things have gotten better!

BONUS POINTS: The lyrics to "The Road is Open Again" appear onscreen so the audience can join in. But just try to sing louder than Dick Powell.

HALLELUJAH, I'M A BUM! (1933): In an unusually witty performance, Al Jolson is Bumper, who lives the happy-go-lucky homeless life with his pals in Central Park. Bumper switches gears when rescuing June Marcher, who tried to end it all by jumping off a bridge into a park lake. June, having lost her memory, falls in love with Bumper. Going gaga himself, Bumper asks his pal John Hastings -- the goodtime Mayor of New York -- to arrange for a job so he can eventually marry June... not realizing she's the Mayor's ex-girlfriend. 

One of the year's biggest financial flops, Hallelujah, I'm a Bum! has so many things going for it. Offbeat direction by Lewis Milestone; a sophisticated screenplay by S.N. Behrman; an incredibly clever score and "rhythmic dialogue" by Rodgers & Hart; and a great supporting cast. Harry Langdon is a riot as Egghead, the Communist trash collector who condemns both the "plutocrats" who run the city and "parasites" like Bumper and his pals who sponge off the workers. The never-disappointing Frank Morgan plays Mayor Hastings with equal parts sophistication and human qualities. There's some racy pre-code dialogue, too, with Madge Evans (as June) involving a pun on "laying a cornerstone", while a gay-coded maid wearing a monocle makes an appearance.

So why did it bomb so badly? Its production history involving three directors, a sneak preview debacle requiring an entire re-shoot with a new script, score, and at least one actor re-casted, along with Jolson's dimming popularity and the unusually sophisticated score all likely contributed. While the pace starts to flag during its final third, Hallelujah, I'm a Bum! (available for free at Internet Archive in an excellent print) is now considered by many contemporary movie critics to be not only Al Jolson's best movie but the pre-code musical most deserving of a revival. I could have told them that upon my first viewing on a UHF channel in 1970, but it's nice being proven right again. (The print I saw back then was the original British release, with the word "Tramp" replacing "Bum" in the title and songs, the offending word having a much different meaning there.)

BONUS POINTS: Richard Rodgers cameos as an assistant photographer, while Lorenz Hart can be seen as a harried bank teller. And six years before co-starring in The Wizard of Oz, Frank Morgan says, "There's no place like home." 

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THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 74

 Anti-communism! Pro-New Deal! Capitalism! Civil Rights! The entirety of the 20th century in three movies and one TV show. 

FORGOTTEN COMMANDMENTS (1932): The amount of hypocrisy that went into the making of Forgotten Commandments is equal only to its mediocrity. The work of two directors (each probably had to poke the other to stay awake), Paramount's low-budget, anti-Commie screed is further cheapened by two reels of... well, let the opening credits explain: Glorified by Spectacular Episodes from CECIL B. DE MILLE's Epic "THE TEN COMMANDMENTS". By the way, that's the 1923 silent version. Without it, this thing would run crawl only 40 minutes.

Newlyweds Paul and Marya move to Moscow to attend med school. Being married, they're allowed less expensive lodgings: a dorm-like facility, where each side-by-side "apartment" is one room minus a ceiling. Prof. Marinoff takes a liking to Paul, as does his sweetie Anya. Not to worry -- Marinoff considers monogamy to be anti-revolutionary... until Anya seduces Paul, which drives Marya to divorce, and Marinoff himself to murder. Moral: When the boot's on the other foot, Reds turn green with jealousy. (As for DeMille's Ten Commandments footage, it brings to life the story of the Exodus told by an old Orthodox priest to a group of children, which lands him in front of a firing squad. He should have stuck with "Hansel and Gretel".)

Subtle as a Russian farm tractor, Forgotten Commandments' script ("Don't keep calling me 'darling'. It's bourgeoise!") is Reefer Madness without the reefer. It also shares the same non-qualities -- simple set-ups, the look of filmed rehearsals -- as similar quickies of the time. Nobody, other than John Carradine as a rabblerousing Marxist, puts any effort into their performance -- it's astonishing this dreck was produced by one of the major studios. But what really bugs me is that the sexual shenanigans frowned upon here were rampant in Hollywood as they are now. Worse, it would take another seven years for a major studio to make an anti-Nazi movie, having spent most of the decade running scripts past the German embassy for approval. The real forgotten commandment in 1930s Hollywood was Thou Shalt Cower Before Fascists.

BONUS POINTS: Marguerite Clark (Marya) and Irving Pichel (Marinoff) starred in Dracula's Daughter four years later. Gene Raymond (Paul) starred in the manic marionette melodrama I Am Suzanne! Edward van Sloane (as a surgeon) was Hollywood's go-to actor as medicos, while Harry Cording (as a cop) was the junkie doctor in Narcotic. That's my idea of an all-star cast. 

MOTHER'S HELPER (1933): People who think certain Hollywood folks kowtow to Donald Trump have never watched the studio-produced, pro-NRA shorts. These didn't just explain what Pres. Roosevelt was trying to accomplish, they lauded him as the second coming of Abe Lincoln while actively pushing his agenda to audiences who just wanted to escape real life for a couple of hours.

Unlike The Road is Open Again, there's no finger-snapping song to warble in Mother's Helper. This is just a three-minute sitcom featuring a husband explaining to his wife that he's home early because his boss has signed the NRA pledge. The husband's workhours have been split with new employees in order to provide more jobs to the Depression-hit unemployed. At least that's what I think he said. When you've got Fox Film's resident Swedish dialect comedian El Brendel doing the talking, you're lucky to figure out (or care about) half of what he's saying.

Professional flibbertigibbet Zasu Pitts is the housewife who tries just as hard as us to understand what this NRA business is all about, fluttering her fingers as if shaking with the D.T.'s. Or maybe, as a hardcore anti-FDR Republican in real life, being forced to recite dialogue like "Anything the president does is OK with me" made her shake with rage. A genuinely funny appearance by starlet Esther Muir as Brendel's new part-time wife -- his own idea of NRA -- wraps things up with an unexpected laugh. An interesting example of how show business worked with the government in order to push a president's agenda, Mother's Helper offers all kinds of possibilities for a contemporary, ICE-inspired short starring Dean Cain and Roseanne Barr.

BONUS POINTS: Esther Muir would gain lasting fame as Groucho Marx's would-be paramour in A Day at the Races. 

TAKE IT FROM HERE (1954): When a movie has only one showing, it's either a real
stinkeroo, something completely oddball (like It Never Happened ) or a promotional short made for a convention. Take it From Here falls in the last two categories, but people with a less worldly view of entertainment than me would drop it in the first as well. It's lonely being open to the strange and different.

Made for the 1954 Texaco gas station owners convention -- did you know such a thing existed? -- Take it From Here is a two-reel musical advising them how to promote their businesses. Such a premise sounds pretty D-U-L-L, which is why the Texaco folks jazzed things up with over a half-dozen dames with fishnet- stockinged gams. Set in the "Texa-Courtroom", Judge Harry Von Zell provides over (make that leers over) a "trial" where the women -- each representing a different mode of advertising -- musically "testify" how they help the gas stations keep the pumps pumping. I guess that still sounds pretty dull if you're not looking at the aforementioned fishnet-stockinged gams.

This is where Jimmy Durante and Donald O'Connor come in. Clad in their finest Texaco pump jockey uniforms, the two sing and clown their way through a pep talk aimed at the "jury" (i.e. conventioneers). Their message is essentially, Texaco dropped a fortune on a national advertising blitz, now hand out Texaco hats to your customers. Unlike similar ephemeral shorts, Take it From Here is in wonderful condition, looking as good as it did the day it was run for a room of drunken conventioneers who wanted more of the girls and less of the stars. 

BONUS POINTS: The classy unnamed singer representing radio --the only woman here in a fancy dress -- is a reminder of the weekly Saturday afternoon Metropolitan Opera broadcast sponsored by Texaco from 1940 to 2003. The conventioneers did not give crap one about her. 

HOLLYWOOD ROUNDTABLE (August 28, 1963): Following Martin Luther King, Jr.'s
March on Washington, seven of its participants gathered in a TV studio to discuss the civil rights movement. Moderated by journalist David Schoenbrun, the roundtable consisted of Harry Belafonte, Charlton Heston, Sidney Poitier, writer/director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Marlon Brando, and James Baldwin. 

That's one heck of a discussion group, and startling in so many ways -- not the least of which is Heston and Brando being on the same side of a liberal cause. Unlike similar broadcasts today where the idea is scoring points with meme-ready wisecracks, these folks are lowkey and thoughtful; Heston freely admits that his involvement in the civil rights movement was for too long merely cocktail party chatter. Such a thing would get you condemned today for being late to the game rather than being literally welcomed to the table.

The white guys have their own way of speaking. Heston tends to be brief, occasionally quoting the founding fathers. Mankiewicz is passionate, verging on angry, at how "the Negroes" have been treated. Brando is Brando, talking as if being paid by the word, wanting to be taken seriously as anything but an actor. If Schoenbrun hadn't interrupted him, Brando would have kept yakking all night.

Belafonte, Poitier, and Baldwin of course are the only ones who speak from
experience in regard to civil rights or lack thereof. They are serious; while likely appreciative of the white celebrities' support, the three appear to be thinking Why should I care what they have to say? They also make you sit up and listen; Baldwin's closing remarks would be considered shocking today. 

Hollywood Roundtable, filmed by the U.S. Information Agency (oh, how times have changed!) makes one yearn for the time when news and public affairs programs were civilized and made you think. Too bad a discussion about civil rights doesn't include any women, though.

BONUS POINTS: It's weirdly nostalgic seeing people on TV enveloped in cigarette and pipe smoke. 

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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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MOVIE OF THE DAY: "WHOM THE GODS DESTROY" (1934)

Many successful businessmen want to make the road in life easier for their children. John Forrester, the lead character in Whom the Gods Destroy, is no different. A theatrical impresario who would have made David Merrick look like an usher, Forrester works day by day to make his son, Jack, a great playwright. But get this -- John Forrester is dead! And yet, he isn't. However... wait, let's back up a bit.

John Forrester is sailing on an ocean liner that collides with an abandoned ship. Bravely (stupidly?) offering up his life jacket to a woman he doesn't know, Forrester has a panic attack when the images of his wife and five year-old son appear before him. Naturally, this gives him the impetus to grab an abandoned fur coat, pass himself off as a woman and make his way onto a lifeboat. And don't tell me you wouldn't do the same thing, guys, even if you didn't have hallucinations of your wife and kid. 

As if.

By the time Forrester quietly makes it back to New York, he discovers that he's been hailed as a hero for sacrificing his life in order to save another's. Fearful of being found out as a phony, he changes his identity, grows a beard, and works at a diner for five years, then at a puppet theatre for another twelve. (Drowning at sea or working at a puppet theatre for over a decade -- which sounds like a worse fate to you?) 

Meanwhile, the now-grown son Jack quits college in order to follow in his father's footsteps by writing, producing and directing a Broadway show. Only the difference is, Jack's play sucks, big time. Forrester introduces himself to Jack as a friend of his father, and urges him to try again. Summoning all his talent, Forrester helps to shape Jack's new play into a triumph, never once revealing his real identity. Like anyone in the theatre would ever refuse credit for anything.

You can tell he's a Communist;
he's got a cool haircut and hipster overcoat.

Whom the Gods Destroy attempts to cram something of an epic story in its 70-minute running time, going off in several different directions before settling into the father-and-son thread. The shipboard scenes promise an interesting subplot featuring an Eastern European refugee, Peter Korotoff, who spits on Forrester in disgust. "You are a capitalist!" Korotoff exclaims (like Forrester didn't know already). "Men of money should be destroyed!" 

Forrester laughs it off, observing, "Some day we'll read a news item about him saying he's been hanged." Ah ha, I thought, we're going to see the commie swinging from a noose at the climax! 

Well, no. When he's later prevented by Forrester from escaping the sinking ship with the women and children, Korotoff pulls a knife on him, only to be shot by the Captain. His whole purpose, then, is to provide the cruel irony of Forrester successfully pulling off the same stunt. Commies and capitalists, they're all the same.

That's no lady!

The question any right-thinking person would have at this point is Who the heck would confuse this guy for a woman, even with a fur coat pulled up to his nose? If his ample girth wouldn't have been enough of a tip-off, surely his haircut, tuxedo pants and dress shoes should have been a dead giveaway. Only when carried off the lifeboat in a small Irish village is Forrester found out. Slapped around by the angry townsfolk, Forrester is condemned as a coward. Personally, I thought it was a pretty clever ruse that went unappreciated by these hicks, but that's the New Yorker in me.

Only one villager cares for the sickly Forrester, restoring him to health over the next several months. Together, they cook up a fancy tale explaining how Forrester survived the sinking, thus allowing him to return home with his head held high and his gut still hanging low.

Ah ha, I thought once again. Forrester is going to be treated to a hero's welcome by family and strangers alike, only to look nervously over his shoulder for any witnesses during the next six reels!

No, this is definitely not a headline
he wants to see.

And again, I was proven wrong. Once Forrester gets a look at the plaque outside his theatre proclaiming his alleged shipboard sacrifice, his mind goes into zany-montage mode as he realizes what would happen if the truth were to come out. 

Stumbling around in the rain -- you knew it would be raining, right? -- and mumbling to himself, Forrester is picked up by a cop and taken to court, where the judge throws him in the pokey for, well, stumbling around in the rain and mumbling to himself. If that was a crime, I'd have served a life sentence by now.

Keep it up, laughing boy, see how
funny things are when the reviews
come out.

And here's where the story really falls apart. John Forrester has been made out to be the biggest thing on Broadway outside of Sophie Tucker's ass. Playwright, director, producer. His plays run at the John Forrester Theatre. The concession stand probably sells Forrester Gummi Bears. Yet no one recognizes him when returns to New York! 

From that point on, my heartstrings were plucked without success, thanks to that enormous plot hole. All there was left to revel in was the sight of Jack Forrester -- played by Robert Young -- getting the smirk wiped off his smug face when his play bombs on opening night.


Well, one person eventually recognizes Forrester -- his wife, Margaret, to whom Jack insists on introducing on the opening night of his second, successful play. While Jack goes out for Champagne, John and Margaret reunite for the first time in almost two decades. In a genuinely touching moment, they reignite the love they once shared, while Margaret desperately tries to understand her husband's motives. John convinces her that their son must never know the truth, yet promises to see her from time to time "for the few years we have left." 

Ol' Sparky, circa 1934.

At that point, Whom the Gods Destroy abruptly came to an end, awkwardly cutting to the 1950s Columbia Pictures logo rather than its 1934 incarnation seen at the beginning. Something smelled rotten in Burbank, so a little investigation was in order. 

I discovered that apparently all of the prints of Whom the Gods Destroy currently in circulation leave out the scene that originally followed afterwards: John, suitcase in hand, sneaking away from his family forever, believing that any kind of a relationship with his wife is impossible under the circumstances. 

Thus I was deprived of an unhappy ending for which I was craving. Maybe if Columbia Pictures made the complete Whom the Gods Destroy available legally instead of forcing screwballs like me to troll the "grey market" for my fix, we wouldn't be disappointed by someone's scissor-happy hackwork. 

The title for its Swedish
release translated as
The Great Disaster,
leaving it wide open for
wisecracks galore.

As with other pre-code movies on this blog -- Why Men Fight, Guilty as Hell, The Sin of Nora Moran -- I was attracted to Whom the Gods Destroy initially due to its unusual title, perhaps expecting some pseudo-spiritual melodrama. I suppose it's rather churlish to expect greatness from what turned out to be nothing more than a big fat soap opera with a Broadway angle. And, as with soap operas in general, realism isn't what its creators were going after. 

But by no means is Whom the Gods Destroy a bad movie. The sinking of the ship is appropriately terrifying, featuring all-too realistic panic and, as with Forrester's later scene in New York, a surprisingly lengthy montage. Walter Connolly's performance as Forrester is emotionally believable even when the story isn't. (Even less believable is that the portly actor was only 47 years old at the time.) As usual, Robert Young is Robert Young, which isn't necessarily the worst thing. 

Pulling the

Big deal -- you can still see the strings!

strings -- of the marionettes -- are the Yale Puppeteers, a theatrical troupe established in 1922 by graduates from, of course, the University of Michigan. (This was apparently before truth-in-advertising laws went into effect.) Extra points are awarded to legendary character actor Akim Tamiroff in his brief but semi-pivotal role as the Commie. 

And just to show how Broadway has changed over the years, the curtain-closing scene of Jack's successful play consists of the lead character blowing her brains out on a church altar. I don't see a play like that opening in Broadway's Disneyfied world any time soon. Bring on the marionettes, boys!

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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.