DIRIGIBLE (1931)

Big budget, big box-office, big Grauman’s Chinese Hollywood Premiere, DIRIGIBLE repped a big step up for little Columbia Pictures, production chief Harry Cohn & director Frank Capra.  Still pretty lively, too.  One of a series of six or seven films for alpha male Ralph Graves (impulsive, arrogant, borderline obnoxious) & granite-jawed mentor Jack Holt; professional & romantic rivals, yet inseparable.  With Graves inevitably going too far and Holt saving his ass even though it means losing the girl.  Only the settings and the girl (here Fay Wray) change, as in the three Capra made: SUBMARINE/’28; FLIGHT/’29; DIRIGIBLE/’31.  This last the one to go for, technically advanced, with a better balanced storyline between its South Pole adventure and entanglements at home.  Aided by the new pen of wounded Navy vet Frank Wead, who knew the territory and would later write for Howard Hawks & John Ford.  Plus superb use of real dirigible footage (flying or inside enormous hangers, the latter, stunningly captured by cinematographer Joseph Walker) mixed with top-line process & model effects that even now raise only the occasional giggle.  Check out some devastating dirigible destruction during a freak storm at sea.  Graves didn’t last out competition from Pat O’Brien & James Cagney in these roles and quickly sank to Poverty Row work, yet he’s no stiffer than Holt.*  The real standout is character man Roscoe Karns as a doomed crewman, and, of course, Capra’s lucky charm actor, Clarence Muse.*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Sure enough, just as Graves’ contract was wrapping up at Columbia, Pat O’Brien was co-starring with Walter Huston in Capra’s transformative AMERICAN MADNESS/’32.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/03/american-madness-1932.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Muse, the sole Black actor in the film, plays waiter & then ship’s cook, working a fairly standard stereotype.  Waiting table on the three white leads, they discuss travel plans to The Antarctic, while he chimes in to their insufferable, barely hidden condescension.  But look a bit more closely; it’s just possible he’s playing them.  Muse was a wonderful actor.