Third of four filmings of Alice Hegan Rice’s popular/bathetic turn-of-the-last-century family drama, as hopelessly old-fashioned in 2025 as it must have looked on the Paramount lot in 1934. Raising her brood in a ramshackle shack on the wrong side of town on a (chicken) wing & a prayer, eternal optimist Mrs. Wiggs expects Mr. Wiggs to return any moment with a Klondike fortune. Till then, depending on the kindness of strangers to help her family and bedridden boy. Directed by Norman Taurog, an Oscar-winning kid specialist who later became an Elvis specialist, it’s got Southern sentiment, lessons in prideful poverty and blather to spare. Yet not without interest what with W.C. Fields in a rare ‘legit’ role* (third act comic relief as suitor to spinster neighbor Zasu Pitts), an old-fashioned vaudeville show that looks like the real thing (what a missed opportunity not to have Fields come on stage with a juggling act as his intro). And, in her movie debut at 44, Pauline Lord (on B’way ANNA CHRISTIE; THEY KNEW WHAT THEY WANTED; ETHAN FROME), one of the many stage legends of the 1920s & ‘30s who rarely (or never) got to film their famous roles . . . or any others. (Think Ethel Barrymore, Katharine Cornell, Maude Adams, Gertrude Lawrence, Ina Claire, Lynn Fontanne, Adele Astaire.) For Lord, the tears, uplift & sentiment a DOA career launch. Yet, she’s fascinating. None of that theatrical too big/too ‘hot’ for the camera. Though turning matronly, she’s vocally & physically commanding without feeling untouchable. Some less oppressive role might have set her up in the sort of distinguished support roles Ethel Barrymore played for a decade as a senior.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Next year, Fields would have his legit triumph playing Micawber in DAVID COPPERFIELD/’35. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/david-copperfield-1935.html
No comments:
Post a Comment