MANDINGO (1975)

Technically, the title refers to a region in Africa near the Niger River, but for the film’s purpose it’s a slave with an overpowering physical presence. In the parlance of its 1840s setting, a Big Black Buck; only ‘Buck’ is hardly the word they’d use. Yet the film isn’t quite the dated political/cultural incorrect object you expect, but a legitimate, if often clumsy, attempt to deal with slavery, owners and the monstrous social system of Antebellum South. Inevitably, the film has trouble walking between titillation and raising the flag of social injustice, director Richard Fleischer’s work considerably coarsened from his ‘50s heyday. (This project sandwiched between helming a Charles Bronson revenge number and a still-born Sarah Bernhardt bio-pic with Glenda Jackson.) But though controversial and even despised at the time (if commercially successful amid the Blaxploitation era), the effort at something serious comes thru amid generous helpings of violence & nudity. Boxer Ken Norton (who had recently bested Mohammed Ali in the ring) is the manly specimen bought for slave owning James Mason by scion Perry King; a prize bull for procreation and big money fighting. The main storyline building tragedy from interracial affairs with King preferring his slave-mistress to wife Susan George, while she seeks revenge with the Big Black Buck. Then everything devolving into more dead bodies than you’ll find at the end of HAMLET. Quickly falling out of fashion, the film now has real historical interest . . . though less on the 1840s than for 1975.

DOUBLE-BILL: Think of MANDINGO as precursor and missing link between DJANGO UNCHAINED/’12 and 12 YEARS A SLAVE/’13.

THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS (1956)

Exceptional fact-based WWII story about a 1943 Espionage/ Intelligence operation meant to throw the Germans off the upcoming invasion of Sicily. The idea: get the Nazis to move even a few divisions to other possible targets and save thousands of Allied lives. The simple plan: plant false papers on a dead body, set it adrift near technically neutral Spain, then let the tide wash it ashore. Once found, local authorities will take charge, but are sure to let the Germans get a peek at the secret military scheme hidden on the body. After that, London headquarters will have to wait and watch for signs that the false info is moving up the Axis chain of command. Simple, in theory; difficult & delicate in practice, starting with finding an appropriate body. The first half of the film, with Clifton Webb & Robert Flemyng as British officers running the show is consistently interesting, both clear & believable. But the film kicks into a higher gear halfway thru when Stephen Boyd, smashing in an early lead, takes over the action as a German spy posing as an Irish friend of the dead man. Charged with authenticating his identity, he adds a dose of nerve-racking tension, especially in a long scene with an unprepared Gloria Grahame, whom he assumes is the decoy’s girlfriend. More cerebral than kinetic, yet packing a solid punch of suspense; with extraordinarily well-handled location shooting and art direction showing up well in cinematographer Oswald Morris’s handsome, restrained color scheme. A 20th /Fox release, but made by an all-British production team & cast (other than the two leads). In Hollywood this would have been handled mostly on the lot by a writer/helmer like George Seaton* or Phillip Dunne. What a difference Ronald Neame gives in visual texture & sheer easy directorial craft, never letting it turn static or talky. Tip top stuff.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Gloria Grahame’s habit of tweaking her face with plastic surgery between films was taking a toll on her career. Here, only 33, she looks not quite recovered from . . . what? Her face puffy and tight, her mouth not quite in synch with the voice. She’s still an excellent actress, a unique presence and yet distracting.

DOUBLE-BILL: *George Seaton shows his best form in another WWII espionage thriller, THE COUNTERFEIT TRAITOR/’62.

THE STORY OF LOUIS PASTEUR (1936)

First of three Waxwork Prestige Bio-Pics from Warners, all directed by William Dieterle and (in various disguises) starring Paul Muni. (The later two, on EMILE ZOLA/’37 and JUAREZ/’39, were three or four reels more prestigious.) Disparaged by modern critics as ‘films to make the industry proud,’ they actually hold up pretty well as simplified Great Man stories and as lively entertainments.* (The second half of ZOLA, basically THE DREYFUS AFFAIR, really hangs together, and JUAREZ is fascinating . . . whenever Muni’s Juarez isn’t around!) This one is lightest on its feet, with the least complicated storyline: Pasteur fights the French Scientific Bureaucracy to prove germs/microbes cause disease. Oddly, pasteurized milk (developed from early work in beer & wine) never comes into it. For dramatic purposes they drop his youthful efforts to save the silk industry (work done when his theories were rated crackpot pseudo-science) and substitute from decades later research involving sheep and an anthrax vaccine (lambs being so much cuter than silkworms) when he was well-established in his field. Then, hydrophobia for a final act, which proves a tougher nut to crack and has the script neatly pulling his family and his main nemesis into the story arc. A late Roberto Rossellini teaching film it ain’t . . . and thank goodness for that, even if some elements now look creaky and overstated.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: It’s a Bio-Pic Rule of thumb that the single most unbelievable story beat is also one of the truest. Here, it comes up when adorable child actor Dickie Moore, bitten by a rabid dog, makes an emergency call needing Pasteur’s as yet untested hydrophobia antidote. Experiment on a child? Yet the incident is true.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Those science-denying members of the French Academy once looked like too easy a target. These days, with politicians denying science right & left, perhaps not so far-fetched.

SHE HAD TO SAY YES

Everybody’s pimping Loretta Young at the Ladies’ Apparel outfit where she works. Secretary by day, she’s being lent out as an overnight plaything, a ‘Customer’s Girl’ to lonely (make that horny) out-of-town buyers. The company owner encourages the tactic, even offers bonuses. Fiancé Regis Toomey, who’s also her boss, has some misgivings, but needs the sales. (It also gives him the occasional free night for two-timing.) One ‘date’ (Lyle Talbot) falls for her big time once he figures out she really isn’t ‘that kind of girl.’ But as a special favor, just this once, maybe she could play up to a rival exec and help him close a big deal. Heck, by this point, Loretta’s pimping herself out! But adding a touch of blackmail to the mix with help from her tough-as-nails roommate Winnie Lightner. It’s like some 1933 #Me Too portent. (Or is it a How-To Manual?) And if it's no great shakes as drama, it is something of an eye-opening historical astonishment into pink-collar sexual politics/harassment. Busby Berkeley is no more than competent in his first non-dance helming assignment (with a co-directing assist from editor George Amy, presumably to make sure Busby got all the necessary shots), but a lot of sleazy honesty finds its way to the screen. Right thru a tacked on feel-good ending that offers Pre-Marital sex in place of conviction. Where has this Pre-Code treasure been hiding?

DOUBLE-BILL: Released just four months earlier, Loretta Young worked the other side of the counter, so to speak, in the naughty & hilarious department store dramedy EMPLOYEES’ ENTRANCE which, unlike this film, is also quite a good movie.

TALES OF MANHATTAN (1942)

French director Julien Duvivier’s broad, easy, even facile technical command made his WWII Hollywood sojourn smoother than fellow exiles like Max Ophüls or Jean Renoir. And this portmanteau pic, a series of short stories charting the downward social trajectory of a fancy formal tailcoat, his biggest commercial success from those years, shows a remarkable range in genre and style, elegant and unfazed in any situation. It gets off to a smart start as Charles Boyer, Rita Hayworth and jealous husband Thomas Mitchell find out whom she really loves . . . and if his new tailcoat is bulletproof. Then things turn a bit too coy as bride Ginger Rogers finds a billet-doux in a pocket of that same tailcoat, now owned by tonight’s groom Cesar Romero. Best man Henry Fonda shows up and says it’s his. The note or the bride? Hence our tailcoat becomes used goods, and just the right price for Charles Laughton’s debut at Symphony Hall conducting his own composition ‘Bacchanal Moderne.’ But it's an awfully tight fit. Now the tails are really down on their luck; so too Bowery bum Edward G. Robinson who finds his mission pals have buffed up the tails for him to attend a posh college reunion dinner. Too bad the donation box had no dress shirt to go with it. But a ‘dickie’ will do . . . as long as he keeps vest & jacket buttoned up. Then, a big robbery and escape by plane by J. Carroll Naish. He’s in the air when a spark sets the jacket aflame. Nothing to do but toss it out, loot and all! And so it floats down to a poor black community where Paul Robeson, Ethel Waters and Eddie ‘Rochester’ Anderson figure out, with The Lord’s help, how to share the wealth. There's even a happy end for the bedraggled tailcoat. With its remarkably high percentage of winners, and standout perfs from Laughton, Robinson & Boyer, TALES is also a great period overview.

DOUBLE-BILL: Duvivier followed up with another omnibus pic, FLESH AND FANTASY/’43, moving from 20th/Fox to Universal and bringing along Boyer, Robinson & Thomas Mitchell.

LINK: The little robbery section was apparently a replacement for an axed comic turn by W. C. Field which has occasionally been included as an extra. You can check it out via these two low-quality, but watchable youtube clips. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RW1eBG33Uk&list=RD0RW1eBG33Uk&t=5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6N9hbJ68Vw&index=2&list=RD0RW1eBG33Uk

PARRISH (1961)

This was the second entry in the Troy Donahue Hormonal Quartet of young/ illicit love (after A SUMMER PLACE; before SUSAN SLADE and ROME ADVENTURE*), all four produced, directed & written by Delmar Daves & lushly scored by Max Steiner. Donahue never recovered from the type-casting. (Our French poster is subtitled ‘The Man With the Head of an Angel.’) This is the one set amongst cutthroat Connecticut tobacco growers and it does a nifty job laying out the labor intensive, masochistic farm work. The problem comes in the interlocked romances between rival tobacco clans that make up the storyline. Claudette Colbert, who manages to look both older & unchanged in her final big-screen appearance, is Troy’s mom, hired to escort/control tobacco man Dean Jagger’s wayward daughter. But Claudette soon finds she’s being courted by Karl Malden, Jagger’s hard-charging, land-devouring nemesis. Meantime, Donahue, after a brief fling with field gal Connie Stevens (preggers by a Malden scion), sequentially falls for the daughters of Jagger and Malden who themselves are his sequential bosses! Yikes. How many ways can a pretty blue-eyed blonde boy be pulled before he’s torn in two? So he runs off to the Navy just before the third act starts. By now, Delmar Daves is dropping plotlines left & right. Heck, it’s past the two-hour mark before he gets Donahue in swim trunks! And Max Steiner can’t come up with anything to match his big swoony love theme from SUMMER PLACE. (The film's really no worse than PLACE, yet a big step down. But kudos to cinematographer Harry Stradling, the one creative guy who manages to up his game.) Sure seems hard to stay abreast of the current Teen Zeitgeist.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Three of the four pics in the quartet get reasonable circulation. Only SUSAN SLADE has fallen thru the cracks. Is it significantly worse . . . or better?

KING OF THE ZOMBIES (1941)

Don’t be fooled by the remote, tropical island setting, this is still your standard Haunted House/Mad Doctor comic thriller. All done in the slow, silly, dumbed-down micro-budget house style of Monogram Pictures. And actually, kinda fun . . . if you’re in the mood. A pair of pilots and a valet (indispensable black comedian Mantan Moreland), on the hunt for a missing Admiral, follow a radio signal and crash land on a mysterious island. But where’s the radio transmitter? Where’s the Admiral? They’re welcomed by local hypnotist/doctor Henry Victor (making like Bela Lugosi), his sleepy wife & female ‘guest,’ house staff and . . . what did we leave out . . . oh yes, ZOMBIES. Yikes! The thrills are modest in the extreme, but Moreland gets lots of comic elbow room, a girl to flirt with, shares top-billing and stretches beyond the stereotypical ‘Darkie Humor’ he was often regulated to. He still pops his eyes, of course, but the general comic persona is more in line with Eddie ‘Rochester’ Anderson or even Flip Wilson than other ‘black’ comic relief of the era. Put on your period glasses to enjoy.

LINK: Beware subfusc Public Domain DVD editions. Instead, this remarkably clean, shiny print on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs4ApsGryPo

THE UNDERWORLD STORY (1950)

Like Joseph Losey & Jules Dassin, up-and-coming director Cy Endfield was BlackListed out of Hollywood by the early ‘50s Communist Witch Hunts. And just when he was moving from the ‘D’ to the ‘B’ list. Reestablished in England, he’d have a mid-career breakout with ZULU/’64, but judging by this sharp little tabloid thriller, the talent was already in place, the loss considerable. The story’s a bit far-fetched, but Endfield (who also did the adaptation) shows how to run with the ball to good effect. Dan Duryea, playing the flawed hero for a change, is a wised-up reporter, always playing the angles until he gets booted from a big-city rag and lands at a struggling small-town journal. Owner Gale Storm isn’t too sure about the guy’s ethics, but his new position is saved when a juicy local murder falls into his lap. Victim: daughter-in-law of Herbert Marshall’s big-time newspaper titan. Murderer: his own son, the girl’s ne’er-do-well husband. Fall Gal: the victim’s Negro personal servant, caught pawning ‘stolen’ jewelry. A local news campaign at first supports the accused, but is soon run over by Marshall’s national news syndicate. Lots of fun watching Duryea switch sides to take immediate advantage of the changing situation before growing a spine and taking a principled POV. (Duryea?  Principled?!) And if Gale Storm underwhelms, other support is dandy with Howard Da Silva’s mob boss channeling Ed Wynn’s Perfect Fool character for a truly original giggling threat of a villain. Wonderfully shot by Stanley Cortez with much of the small-town noir flavor he’d use in NIGHT OF THE HUNTER/’55. If you can swallow some of the convenient plot turns, this is pretty snazzy work, loaded with hot button issues on the free press, race, conspiracy, trial by innuendo & whispering campaigns. Not great, but a real find.  (That's a one-shot 1950 tie-in comic-book for our poster; Duryea on the left, D.A. Michael O'Shea on the right.) 

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: BlackListed along with Endfield by 1951, scripter Henry Blankfort who lived to 1993 and never got another credit; Howard Da Silva, with only stage work between ‘51 and ‘59.

DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1941)

JEKYLL AND HYDE films lean one of two ways: Murdering Monster or Principled Doctor Goes Wrong. This rather stolid version, a big, handsome prestige piece from M-G-M, goes for the latter, actually past it, more like a Great Man bio-pic perverted into horror. Consistently interesting, and consistently disappointing, you can see what they’re aiming at, but never feel it. Starting with a miscast Spencer Tracy, neither dynamic as Jekyll nor demonic as Hyde, and with woefully unconvincing stunt doubling in the action scenes. Much more successful is the counter-intuitive casting that places Lana Turner (not bad, but hopelessly American) as his virginal fiancée and an utterly ravishing Ingrid Bergman as the tarty barmaid. She fought to get away from playing another saintly character. Director Victor Fleming tosses in some very Freudian dream sequences for the doctor (ladies as horses to be whipped!) and generally puts on the polish, but can only get so far on good intentions. Best work comes from Joseph Ruttenberg’s ultra-creamy cinematography and, whenever he’s given a bit of space, Franz Waxman’s score.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: With more permissive attitudes and modern CGI effects, it’s surprising no one’s tried to show Jekyll strip down to watch his own whole-body transformation. He’s that rare Dr. Frankenstein who’s also The Monster. Watching in horror and fascination as he morphs from ‘smooth man’ Jacob into ‘hairy man’ Esau, to give it a Biblical turn.

DOUBLE-BILL: In 1920, John Barrymore did the transformation without special effects or makeup, just lighting, facial contortion & imagination. Alas, his director, John S. Robertson, was a pretty dull fellow at the time. Luckily, Barrymore repeats the trick to far better effect in DON JUAN/’26, going in and out of his villain face as part of his rescue of Mary Astor. Rouben Mamoulian’s excellent 1931 version with Fredric March camouflages the effect using adjustable color filtering on b&w film stock to fine effect. If they’d only taken equal care with Hyde’s unfortunate simian teeth!

BIG LEAGUER (1953)

After a spot of episodic tv work, Robert Aldrich made the jump from asst. to feature director in this low-stakes, sweet-natured nothing-burger of a baseball pic. Edward G. Robinson, ‘grey-listed’ into B-pics for ‘Pre-Mature Anti-Fascism’ between HOUSE OF STRANGERS/’49 and THE TEN COMMANDMENTS/’56, seems to be having a perfectly swell time running a training camp for minor league prospects. And the film works just fine as long as it sticks to the quotidian ins-and-outs of progress on-and-off the field. Everyone gets their own character tic (just one, mind you), as they try to move up to the 'minorest' of minor league contracts. Best of the lot, young Richard Jaeckel, a standout as a pitcher with promise (and some nice movement on the ball from the mound). Too bad the big romance between front office gal Vera Ellen (Robinson’s cute niece and general baseball doyen) and handsome third-base lug Jeff Richards doesn’t connect.* But with modest screen time, they hardly deflate the basic Who’s Getting Cut/Who’ll Win the Big Game storyline. Fun, at a tidy 81 minutes.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Richards, getting the star-making treatment @ M-G-M, didn’t catch on. But if he looks familiar, it’s probably because you remember him as one of the Seven Brothers who stole those Seven Brides in the great Stanley Donen musical. As the sole non-dancer/non-singer in the bunch, he’s the guy shunted to the side in favor of his ballet backwoodsmen brothers whenever the music starts.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Scroll down one MAKSQUIBS Write-Up for Robert Aldrich as asst. director in Jean Renoir’s THE SOUTHERNER. Renoir had quite the knack for hiring assistant directors who went on to great things: Jacques Becker, Satyajit Ray & Luchino Visconti among them.

DOUBLE-BILL: In THE KID FROM LEFT FIELD, an ever so slightly more substantial baseball pic from the same year, Anne Bancroft gets the same front office gal part Vera Ellen has here.

THE SOUTHERNER (1945)

This seems to have been the film Jean Renoir was happiest with during his WWII California layover. (He moved permanently to the L.A. area, but made no films there after the late ‘40s.) And how ironic that this slice of near-documentary rural Americana should feel nearer his work in France then such French-set Hollywood films as THIS LAND IS MINE/’43 and DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID/’46. The story is a simple one: Zachary Scott stops picking cotton at a big outfit to work an unused tract of land to raise a crop of his own. With barely the bare necessities, wife Betty Fields, Grandma Beulah Bondi and the two young’uns start turning up the land, looking up a working well, fixing up the shack of a house and hunting up their supper. Structured by the four seasons*, it charts a series of problems bravely approached, if not always solved; unneighborly neighbors; and the beauty & ravages of nature. There are overstatements in some of the acting (Bondi a bit of a ham, Fields a bit too groomed); and some of the story construction tilts toward happy coincidence (and worse, convenience). But more is very strong, often moving. Scott, still early in his career, looks to be an incipient Gary Cooper (not that this happened), especially at one low point, arguing with God alone in the field. Faults and all, it’s a memorable, life-enhancing film, at times recalling special moments in John Ford (the dance scenes) and even D. W. Griffith (a flood sequence that might have come out of WAY DOWN EAST/’20). Fully worthy of Renoir. Something you can’t say about much of his Stateside work.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Renoir’s first Hollywood film, SWAMP WATER/’41, frustrated him with its studio-bound rural settings. Here, he’s freed shooting almost entirely on real locations. Though he’d triumphantly return to high studio artifice when called for as in FRENCH CANCAN/’55.  OR: Another back-to-the-farm saga, MINARI/’20, with surprising similarities in its cast of characters and events.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/01/minari-2020.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Remarkably for a little independent film, even Oscar® noted something special in this most unusual film for the time, giving it three nominations, including Renoir’s only one for Best Director. Up against Clarence Brown, Leo McCarey, Alfred Hitchcock, and Billy Wilder (the winner for LOST WEEKEND).

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Speaking of The Four Seasons, the famous Vivaldi violin concertos (long before they became a film staple/cliche) would make their movie debut as score to Renoir’s THE GOLDEN COACH/’52.

BAD BOY (1949)

A sort of secularized BOYS TOWN/’38, the bathetic Spencer Tracy/Mickey Rooney film about a ‘juvie camp’ run by a priest who believes there are no bad boys, this unexceptional B-pic, directed by indie specialist Kurt Neumann, is far easier to swallow, and a lot more effective than M-G-M’s indigestible prestige item. Audie Murphy takes his first leading role as a 17-yr-old tough guy, a crook who gets caught in a hotel robbery and sent to Lloyd Nolan’s ‘juvie ranch’ rather than ‘juvie jail’ and twenty years in prison when he turns 18. (Variety Club International supported the ranch thru donations made at movie theaters across the country.  Still collecting in the '70s. But now?)  You’ll guess the rest. But the film, helped by a tight budget that keeps things down to basics, does a neat job showing the workings at the ranch and the workings of Murphy’s tempest-tossed personality. Warm & polite in domestic settings and around women (Jane Wyatt, excellent as Nolan’s wife & helpmate), he shows a near psychotic hair-trigger temper when challenged. He really is depraved, an all-round rotten kid, a post-WWII sea change in levels of violence. Never much of an actor in any traditional sense, Murphy is able to deliver the necessary threat in his own way. Though a flashback to when he was 12, still played by the then 25-yr-old war hero, if with slightly neater hair, doesn’t work. Neither does the wrap up. But with excellent tech work for an indie (Karl Struss lensed) and fine supporting players (James Gleason, Rhys Williams, Selena Royle) buffing things up, it gets the job done.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, cringe-worthy BOYS TOWN helps puts this in perspective.

MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR (1958)

Herman Wouk’s classic novel on the aspirational evolution of upper-middle-class Jews on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, with its drama balanced on the theatrical divide separating Upstate Catskill Summer Resorts and Broadway, is near perfect film material. The movie? Merely a place holder. Natalie Wood makes a lovely (and nice) Jewish American Princess, coming-of-age in the arms of Gene Kelly, a big fish in a little Catskill pond as entertainment director*, betrayed by the limits of his talent in the big city. (Brave, raw work from Kelly; Wood somewhat betrayed by the limits of her talent.) It’s one of those frustrating films where everything seems to be in place, but nothing quite clicks. Director Irving Rapper hasn’t a memorable shot in him. (Well one, right at the beginning, a very odd camera set up in an elevator with the BACK wall removed for the shot.) Plus unsolved structural problems in a script that needs to keep adding on new, unwieldy storylines. It’s certainly well cast up and down the line: camp pal Carolyn Jones; hopelessly-smitten bland doctor Martin Balsam; hopelessly-smitten nerdy playwright Martin Milner, looking like a young Mike Nichols in his black-framed glasses, each particularly fine. There’s even a perfectly swoony theme song in ‘A Very Precious Love.’ Somebody really ought to try this one again.

DOUBLE-BILL: Perhaps they have tried again in Amazon Prime’s THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL (not seen here) which mines similar territory.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Look sharp for a little scene played under a marquee for TUNNEL OF LOVE. A big hit on stage for writer Joseph Fields in ‘57, Kelly directed a flop film version in ‘58. Then had better luck on a second project later this year directing the original B’way production of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s FLOWER DRUM SONG with a book by the same Joseph Fields.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Entertainment director at one of those big Catskill resorts was nothing to sneeze at.  M-G-M boss Dore Schary & Broadway’s master-of-all-trades Moss Hart (between directing gigs on MY FAIR LADY and CAMELOT at the time) each held the position in the '30s.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY Vol. 2 (2017)

With the element of surprise inevitably lost in Vol. 2, it’s a bit of a hunt to find the kind of fun that bubbled up more naturally in the first Guardians adventure as our motley gang of Space Enforcers again fight villains and a surfeit of over-elaborated CGI effects. Three main story arcs are called into action: Chris Pratt finds his dad (amusingly claimed by Kurt Russell and a weird computer-enhanced youthful version of himself in the prologue); a battle of sisterly sibling rivalry (violently tiresome stuff); and an arrogant Queen, a client turned adversary. But, like a six-course meal highlighted by unassuming side dishes, the pic works best when visual overkill gives way to silly comic routines, space age vaudeville acts like the one here that finds Young Groot, a CGI-animated twig and the film’s breakout star, unable to fetch the correct item to help our heroes make a prison escape. More like this in Vol. 3, please.

DOUBLE-BILL: Vol. 1.

ADVENTURE (1945)

Off the screen since the death of his wife Carole Lombard in‘42, and then service in WWII, Clark Gable returned with Greer Garson in this much anticipated, if misguided, opposites-attract romance famous for its ad-copy (GABLE’S BACK AND GARSON’S GOT HIM!) and for flopping at the box-office. (It actually made a considerable profit.*) Even with Gable directing pal Victor Fleming, it’s no RED DUST/’32 or GONE WITH THE WIND/’39, let alone TEST PILOT/’38, their other films together. The set-up sees Gable’s alpha-male Merchant Marine back in San Fran after being torpedoed, meeting Garson’s Elizabeth Barrett Browning quoting librarian and immediately sparking a relationship so combustible, they mange to dislike each other right into a quickie marriage . . . followed by a quickie divorce. Color is added via Joan Blondell, cheerleading for the bride; and a conscience for the groom in shipmate Thomas Mitchell. Those two are fine; the leads, not so much. Gable less charming rogue than big-time jerk; Garson as much at fault as the script since she proves unable to get the ball back to him. Just check out Rosalind Russell with Gable in THEY MET IN BOMBAY/’41 to see how this problematic script might have worked with a faster, tougher, more acerbic comic player on the other side of the net.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Profitable or not, someone knew something had gone off for these stars who spent almost two years off screen figuring out their next step. And it was worse for director Fleming with three down years before making what turned out to be his last film, a big flop version of JOAN OF ARC/’48 with Ingrid Bergman.

BROTHER ORCHID (1940)

Belatedly picking up the ball after Columbia Pictures had a big success kidding Edward G. Robinson’s gangster image in John Ford’s THE WHOLE TOWN’S TALKING/’35, Warners made three of their own: A SLIGHT CASE OF MURDER/’38; BROTHER ORCHID/’40; and LARCENY, INC./’42, all with journeyman director Lloyd Bacon. This middle one is best of the lot, better balanced dramatically, with the comic angle rising naturally into place. After a prologue sends protection racketeer Eddie G. off to Europe (looking for class he loses his shirt), the first act plays it more-or-less straight, and very effectively, as he tries to win back his organization from upstart Humphrey Bogart, and only saves his neck by hiding out with a crop of peaceful, flower-cultivating monks. Naturally, the last two acts have him besting Bogie and saving long-time gal Ann Southern (who’s great with Eddie G.) from rich Texan Ralph Bellamy, all while helping out the saintly Brothers. Though not quite since each plotline gets a bit of a twist. The humor is atypically gentle for Warners; the plotting clever if riddled with shortcuts; the wrap-up satisfying. It's a real charmer.

DOUBLE-BILL: This release was sandwiched between two superior bio-pics for Eddie G., that most unexpected (and unexpectedly excellent) syphilis drama DR. EHRLICH’S MAGIC BULLETS/’40 and the wire-service news drama A DISPATCH FROM REUTERS/’40.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: While it’s almost par-for-the-course that Robinson never won a competitive Oscar®, it’s still something of a shock that he also never got a nomination.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Note our Italian poster (top) gives no indication this isn't straight mob stuff.  Here's the Stateside poster, comic angle included.

ALIAS JESSE JAMES (1959)

Contractually, Bob Hope left Paramount Pictures in 1957 after a two decade run, but this self-produced/ United Artists release remains all Paramount ‘above and below the line.’ From nearly retired director Norman Z. McLeod to cinematographer Lionel Lindon, costumer Edith Head, even process shot whiz Farciot Edouart. It’s also got some leftover Paramount laughs in it. Arguably, his last.* Bob plays his usual cowardly braggart character, a flop insurance salesman who’s just sold a big policy to Jesse James. Yikes! Now, he’s got to go out West to keep his wily client from getting killed and bankrupting the company. It’s a superb comic idea, and spun out to reasonable effect, but also typically undisciplined Bob Hope, where any old gag will do. There’s no commitment to the idea, to any idea. Still, modestly entertaining in a scattershot way with Wendell Corey showing unexpected comic chops as James and Rhonda Fleming, as the girl between them, dueting nicely in a musical bit. (Hope, such an underrated song plugger.) If it starts to run out of steam in the last act, a shoot-out finale is fun, with every tv cowboy star of the day (plus Gary Cooper and Bing Crosby) popping up for a pot shot at the villain. Painless at worst, with decent yuks along the way. But pretty much the end of the line, Hope-wise.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Hope, on film & in tv in the ‘60s & ‘70s, slid from comic decline to pure anti-humor. It all but buried his great gifts in the ‘40s and ‘50s from an entire generation.

THE LOST SQUADRON (1932)

Very effective, very empathetic ‘lost generation’ story about three WWI fighter pilots (and their sidekick mechanic), survivors who’ve come home to lost jobs & lost gals, but stick together as daredevil stunt flyers for Erich von Stroheim’s tyrannical Hollywood movie director. The flyboys are Richard Dix, Robert Armstrong, a young Joel McCrea (towering over the rest of the cast), and Mary Astor as the ambitious actress who ditched Dix for career & marriage with the sadistic von Stroheim. The film, an early assignment for producer David O. Selznick during his wildly prolific year @ RKO*, shows Hollywood all but fully recovered from the silent-to-sound transition. Smoothly helmed by George Archainbaud, it’s loaded with excellent plane stunting (real & highly accomplished fakery), and some gorgeous cinematography from Edward Cronjager & Leo Tover. Look sharp for a couple of whacking good edits: one as a wire support gives way on a plane during a flight, and an edit/light cue on a trapped von Stroheim, his character half Howard Hughes and half . . . himself! And there’s some flavorful behind the camera stuff. Check out the cranking speed being used as a couple of operators turn the silent cameras used to shoot the stunt flying. (And isn’t that the old set from Doug Fairbank’s THIEF OF BAGDAD/’24 seen in the background when Dix is being rescued from an ocean crash?) Very Pre-Code, too. Not in the sex department, but from someone getting away with murder.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Selznick left his mark at RKO, 16 films over 1932-'33, including WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD; BIRD OF PARADISE; THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME; BILL OF DIVORCEMENT; THE ANIMAL KINGDOM; PENGUIN POOL MURDER; TOPAZE; even KING KONG.

BLACK PANTHER (2018)

For all the hype, buzz, critical & commercial huzzahs, the latest addition to the MARVEL SuperHero Variety Pac is perplexingly poor. On the technical side, direction & editing of conventional scenes and action set pieces (with or without heavy CGI add-ons) feels rushed, choppy, generally out of sorts. (Too much post-production second guessing?) And those astro-ships really do look like something from an ‘80s tv space opera. And while the first act of the story turns out to be something of a dodge, after much needless globe-trotting & dispensable character intros, it all boils down to a pair of newly introduced cousins (one upstanding/one evil) vying for the throne to a secret hidden ultra-advanced African nation.* Good King: noble/boring; Bad King: hip-hop/baddass. (Go Team Baddass!) Over-stuffed and over-produced (how many art designers did it take?), the film is an easy write-off. So easy, you may doubt your reaction. Did the Afro-Centric Zeitgeist pass me by? Perhaps . . . perhaps not. A quick peek @ IMDb finds most of the Comments truly brutal. Perplexing.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: *The same secret/unknown world trope worked better for WONDER WOMAN/’17 .

RUN FOR COVER (1955)

After literally exploding on screen in WHITE HEAT/’49, James Cagney had trouble finding a worthy follow up until his 1955 annus mirabilis with top-grossing MISTER ROBERTS, an Oscar® nom for LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME, a splashy song-and-dance cameo in THE SEVEN LITTLE FOYS and this exceptional chamber Western for Nicholas Ray, also on a run at the time.* Cagney’s riding into a new town with young John Derek, a local he’s just met, when they’re mistaken, and nearly lynched as train robbers. It all gets sorted out, but not before Derek is seriously injured and taken to the farm of Jean Hersholt (in his last feature) & Viveca Lindfors to recuperate. Cagney warms to the whole situation, romance with Lindfors and surrogate father to Derek, a hardluck type who now adds a limp from his shattered leg to the chip already on his shoulder. The main action has them joined as sheriff & deputy with a bank heist to track, a bunch of suspicious townsfolk and a host of personal demons coming unleashed. The twists & turnarounds in plot & character are unusually well-handled, even surprising (this is after all a Stranger-Comes-To Town Western), with plenty of strong perfs backing it up, certainly the best thing Derek ever did. Working with Ray and Cagney can do that for you. Story an early credit for married team Harriet Frank & Irving Ravetch and scripted by Winston Miller with MY DARLING CLEMENTINE and ROCKY MOUNTAIN on his Western C.V. It’s also stunningly shot by Daniel L. Fapp; the original VistaVision prints must have been gorgeous. The quality tells. It should be as well known as Cagney’s other 1955 films.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *And what range Cagney shows in these four films! Comic tin-pot tyrant; thug with a limp; revisiting George M. Cohan and this ‘faraway guy,’ as his friend Pat O’Brien called him in real life.

THAT FORSYTE WOMAN (1949)

M-G-M took unusual care on this literary prestige item, with darkly glamorous atmosphere and strong period detail. Even the ladies’ hairstyles aren’t a dead giveaway to 1949. Pared down to fit film conventions, the John Galsworthy storyline becomes a three-tiered tale of misdirected uppercrust romance with a tragic episode to straighten things out. It holds your attention, but under Compton Bennett’s too suave direction the film taxis down the runway without ever taking off. As chilly, entitled Soames Forsyte, a man who can purchase everything except the love of Greer Garson, the only woman he wants, Errol Flynn is the main reason to see the film, with a natural sympathy complicating our reactions. Walter Pidgeon, the artist/black sheep of the clan who also falls under Garson’s spell, should have been fine, but an off-putting dye job makes it a struggle. But it’s Robert Young, as a third suitor, drifting away from perky fiancée Janet Leigh to Garson (who’s fine here and certainly looks the part to a ‘T’), who really lets the side down. Too American, too pleasant, there’s no passion or danger to this modern outlier architect. See Montgomery Clift the same year in THE HEIRESS to get an idea of what’s missing. The film survives the missing leg of the stool, but just barely.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned, William Wyler’s THE HEIRESS/’49, with Clift, Olivia de Havilland, Miriam Hopkins & Ralph Richardson, showing all too clearly what’s not here.

SHINING VICTORY (1941)

Taken from JUPITER LAUGHS, a B’way flop* Warners produced on B’way, presumably retitled SHINING VICTORY to echo DARK VICTORY, a big 1939 hit, this medico-drama about brilliant, caustic research doc Henry Stephenson and his humanizing doctor assistant (Geraldine Fitzgerald) seems made entirely from borrowed pieces. Mostly REBECCA/’40, from its fiery end to a chilly man-of-the-world with a secret, even a ripoff of the Miss Danvers character. The story is largely driven by experiments to find a chemical cure for dementia at a Scottish sanatorium (which happens to look much like REBECCA’s Manderley), but the real purpose of the film was to raise the profile of stolid Henry Stephenson from prestige supporting player to leading man in the Walter Pidgeon mold.* It didn’t come off for a number of reasons: First, Irving Rapper, in his directing debut, has trouble animating a film that doesn’t step outdoors for a full hour; Second, the doctor’s intimidating character, meant to be an obsessive, is mostly a pain, and doesn’t add up when he suddenly melts into Mr. Nice Guy; and Third, because Stephenson died of a heart attack a month after this opened. Only 52.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *On B’way, it starred Alexander Knox who also didn’t break thru after splashy leads in Hollywood; and Jessica Tandy, in supporting roles until finally hitting stardom on film as a senior citizen.

DOUBLE-BILL: *Pidgeon had an outstanding 1941 with MAN HUNT for Fritz Lang; BLOSSOMS IN THE DUST with regular co-star Greer Garson; and John Ford’s HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY.

THE SHOW (1927)

Released a few months before his better-known THE UNKNOWN (a supreme piece of absurd, ironic dismemberment horror), this fine Tod Browning silent has been overlooked. Big mistake! The high batting average for Late Silents holds on this grisly little tale, with John Gilbert, freed from his Great Lover roles, transformed into a despicable/irresistible barker for a carny show of fake freaks (Torso Woman; Underwater Woman; Spider Woman). He also gets in the act himself as John the Baptist, with a trick beheading to follow Salome’s dance. That’d be Renée Adorée, Gilbert’s BIG PARADE co-star, dancing on-stage as Salome, and pining away for Gilbert off-stage. He hardly notices, too busy wooing any young thing with cash to boost. But show owner Lionel Barrymore notices, and is jealous enough to try substituting a real sword in the beheading spectacle. And that’s after he’s robbed and murdered a sheep herder, the father of Gilbert’s latest inamorata! Gilbert, who looks good for the crime, hides in Adorée’s attic where he learns . . . well, too much to give away. This plotty nonsense is stunningly well executed, with masterly painted backdrops of cityscapes giving a touch of Grimm Fairy Tale atmosphere, and director Browning exceptionally lively, adventurous in pacing & clever angles. But the real revelation is Gilbert, reveling in his reformed bad guy role, swaggering away like some louche Liliom (Billy Bigelow in the musical CAROUSEL). Here, a modern audience can clearly see what all the fuss was about in his meteoric career. Beautiful print, too, and a fine new score for chamber orchestra by Darrell Raby. Great for Silent Cinema newbies who’ve yet to move beyond the great comedians.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, THE UNKNOWN/’27. OR: His career going downhill fast, Gilbert pleaded for a chance to play another cad, this one unreformed, in DOWNSTAIRS/’32.

SO EVIL MY LOVE (1948)

When missionary widow Ann Todd fell for handsome con man Ray Milland on the ship home from Jamaica, she never expected to find herself involved in art theft, blackmail, murder and miscarriage of justice. And that’s only the half of it, dearie. Suggested (really?) by some turn-of-the-last century events in London, the film has something of the spirit of GASLIGHT to it as Milland romances Todd into moral quicksand even as he's two-timing her with a tart, all while pushing her to renew an old friendship with neurotic Geraldine Fitzgerald, now rich & fleece-able, unhappily married to a control freak husband. Smart & sadistic, the husband may be on to them, but he also may not last the night due to a heart condition. Maybe his death could be helped along. That still leaves private investigator Leo G. Carroll stalking about. But what can he prove? After a straightforward first act, multi-tangents all start playing out at once in narrative counterpoint, and the script is soon in over its head. Easy to imagine how this U.K.-based production, made thru the Hal Wallis Unit @ Paramount, could have benefitted with closer Hollywood supervision. Legendary producer Wallis, normally a stickler in script construction, here letting the ball drop just a bit. Or perhaps there’s just too much plot for the running time. Lewis Allen’s stock megging is fine as far as it goes, but so much more could have been done in atmosphere & suspense. But very strongly cast in its Hollywood leads (all with U.K. backgrounds) and in London supporting players, even if Ann Todd always comes across as Joan Fontaine’s understudy.

DOUBLE-BILL: You can see what’s missing here by comparing the British version of GASLIGHT (retitled ANGEL STREET/’40) with the superior Hollywood remake of 1944. (M-G-M suppressed the earlier film which has led many critics to let its underdog status cloud their judgement of the two films.)

CANDIDE (1991)

Celebrating the Leonard Bernstein Centennial. For the latest re-release of this composer conducted version of Bernstein’s brilliant, if flawed masterpiece, Deutsche-Grammophon have brought together the 1989 studio recording and the live concert event that preceded it (2 CDs/1 DVD). Even with an outbreak of the flu, the concert version is the better bet in all but sound balance, with the grandiosity Bernstein brought to just about everything in his final years, partially tamed by the excitement of working in front of an audience. Some things still move at near practice tempo, but there’s far more momentum. And while it has the operatic inflation of Lenny’s infamous (and bizarrely miscast) studio recording of WEST SIDE STORY, this cast is pretty wonderful (with subtitles to clear up diction from the chorus and high flying sopranos). Also, the operetta style of the piece has less trouble handling the Bernstein bloat. Normally sparing with tunes, Bernstein’s a positive spendthrift here, inspired by Voltaire’s wild ride thru a series of picaresque disasters, as characters die & pop back to life in exciting adventures & fresh lands as naive Candide learns life’s painful lessons and finally matures. His musical response miraculous. (Even better than his WONDERFUL TOWN, which takes some doing.) And what a thrilling climax at the end when the orchestra drops out for a choral peroration in ‘Make Our Garden Grow.’ Jerry Hadley is a nonpareil Candide (looks just right, too), while vet singers Christa Ludwig & Nicolai Gedda (a man with perfect diction in six languages) grab every laugh. Book troubles have been the bane of this remarkable show since Lillian Hellman wrote the original problematic script (Richard Wilbur, with the lion’s share of lyrics, had no such problems). But this concert version, from a rewrite by Hugh Wheeler, works pretty well. But the score’s the thing. Best served in the Original Cast Recording of 1956, abridged, of course, but still sounding well. And definitely not at practice tempo!

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Lenny’s rep as composer is far stronger now than it was during his lifetime. Perhaps the lack of critical respect partially explains some of his more ponderous tempos. Serious tempos for a composer who wanted his work to be taken seriously.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: If only Steven Spielberg & (especially radical/intellectual/over-thinking playwright) Tony Kusher had dared to take on Lenny’s CANDIDE (dying for a proper film treatment) rather than going for the easy win with their announced WEST SIDE STORY remake.

STAGE MOTHER (1933)

This second-tier feature from M-G-M is a real find. A sort of proto-GYPSY*, it moves in dramatic shorthand following hard-luck vaudeville artiste Alice Brady (in a blistering perf) as she goes thru a couple of husbands and dozens of cons & cutthroat measures to push talented daughter Maureen O’Sullivan into the big stage success she missed out on. Some of the shared elements with GYPSY/’62 are quite striking, but this film, strongly paced by fading director Charles Brabin, has backstage verisimilitude you can almost smell, and a thrilling, vicious dog-eat-dog theatricality that went missing in Mervyn LeRoy’s embalmed version of the great musical. Highlights include a wild Kiddie Cattle Call audition with scores of would-be child vaudevillians (look for ‘Little Rascal’ Carl ‘Alfalfa’ Switzer and surely that’s an uncredited ‘Baby’ Rose Marie right before O'Sullivan's dance), and some stage-worthy production numbers for O’Sullivan (and her dance double). The last act is fearsomely overstuffed: three sabotaged romances (NYC politician; Boston Brahmin Franchot Tone; Phillips Holmes with a bad British accent); and a final Mother/Daughter showdown that really is right out GYPSY’s last act (did GYPSY librettist Arthur Laurents know this film?) before a hurried wrap-up. Dramatically, it’s plenty rough & tumble, and Brady’s magnificent perf (more Marie Dressler than ‘Method’) will shock modern realists, but this film is the rough-edged real deal in too many ways to miss, bumps and all.

DOUBLE-BILL/ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *GYPSY, the great Jules Styne/Stephen Sondheim/Arthur Laurents/Jerome Robbins/Ethel Merman musical about Mama Rose & daughter Gypsy Rose Lee triumphed five times on B’way and made one mediocre film. Long touted for remake, Barbra Streisand is planning on going into production when she turns 80. And with Lady Gaga, a dazzling age-appropriate choice for Mama Rose, as Gypsy.

THE SECRET PARTNER (1961)

Innocent-man-on-the-run pic . . with a twist you’ll see coming a mile away. But not bad, with a neat turn from Bernard Lee (007's original ‘M’) as a wily, chain-smoking detective closing in on the case. It also provides the rare chance to catch glamorous Haya Harareet in something other than BEN-HUR/’59. She’s the estranged wife of Stewart Granger, a cargo shipping exec who’s already being blackmailed by his dentist, now forced to prove that a robbery at his firm is an elaborate frame-up. With production values and tension wanting, the film needs a lot more plot & personality than it gets. But scripters David Pursall & Jack Seddon think their one big twist is enough. (And a painfully intrusive jazz-inflected score by Philip Green also doesn’t help. Green does far better for Dearden in ALL NIGHT LONG/'62, a modernized OTHELLO set amid the London jazz scene.) Dearden makes an efficient job of it, but try SAPPHIRE/’59 to see him really work a police procedural.

DOUBLE-BILL: Though best known for KHARTOUM/’66 (a very uneven pic), Dearden’s SAPPHIRE, with its intriguing race angle and excellent location work, may be his best film.

PLEASE BELIEVE ME (1950)

After an influential run of poetic/ atmospheric low-budget horror pics (CAT PEOPLE/’42 to BEDLAM/’46), producer Val Lewton never quite returned to form after ankling R.K.O. (Though his last, Hugo Fregonese’s APACHE DRUMS/51, is visually alive, an impressive, downbeat Western.) Not that he could have done much with this modest programmer, a 3 GUYS/1 GAL rom-com, pleasant enough, even cute, and not nearly as stupid as you expect. It stars Deborah Kerr, four years & four pics into her M-G-M contract, still unsure what to do with her. She was just too good at anything they tossed her way. (At least it’s not QUO VADIS?/’51!) Here, she's a penniless Brit who’s just inherited a Texas cattle ranch. Why she must be worth millions! Or so she imagines. So too, three handsome, eligible bachelors on the same ocean liner: wealthy Peter Lawford; suspicious lawyer Mark Stevens; con man Robert Walker; a trio of preening roosters against one choosy hen. In sketch-like scenes played in airless interiors & breezeless ship decks, Lewton seemingly gives in to the studio’s complete lack of atmosphere. Surely the budget could have stretched for a fan or two. And there’s no more style after we reach New York, though at least the romantic roundelay gets neatly worked out without much comic flop sweat. Director Norman Taurog hardly scintillates (for ocean liner romance it’s no LADY EVE; for a sharply defined male trio try TOM DICK AND HARRY, both 1941), but at least he doesn’t push.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: A pool-side moment on board has a neat example of changing tastes in body image. Watch Peter Lawford pop up from the water and give a body-builder pose. Frankly, he looks great, lean, toned & manly. But he’s greeted with derisive laughs, too skinny to pull it off. Today, he’d be trending on the internet and Kerr shamed for not being a Size 2.

DOUBLE-BILL: As mentioned above, everyone knows EVE, but give TOM DICK AND HARRY a look for peak Ginger Rogers.

CONTEST: One of the Unwritten Rules of Billing Etiquette is broken on this film. Hint: it involves the ending. Name the broken rule (Bonus Bragging Rights if you know the reason behind it) to win a MAKQUIBS DVD Write-Up of your choosing.

TÔKYÔ BOSHOKU / TOKYO TWILIGHT (1957)

Though it opens in classic Yasujirô Ozu style: Slightly detached middle-aged single father; Younger daughter in need of a husband; Older daughter in need of a better husband; this film rapidly descends into ever darker corners of family melodrama. Baldly stated, Ozu’s plot elements might well have shown up in a late ‘50s/TechniColored Hollywood tear-jerker: unwed pregnancy; the reappearance of a mother after twenty years; excessive drinking & gambling (sake in place of Scotch/Mah Jongg instead of poker); hunting up cash for an abortion; disrespectful youth; suicide; deathbed contrition. (Douglas Sirk or Mark Robson could have done it up Hollywood style.) But in spite of all the heightened action, this is still very much a Yasujirô Ozu film, with his subtle restraint in all departments, played out in his signature style of unforced inevitability. Fascinating, heartbreaking, utterly his own. Ozu films change like the proverbial river once you put a foot in. But here, it’s Big Foot, and with a proportionate change in the current’s flow.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Criterion has apparently leased their LATE OZU Series from Shôchiku Japan Home Video unit. The color films have all come up well, but some of the b&w titles, though in very clean prints, seem to have been processed with a compressed grey scale, slightly dulling Ozu’s impeccable compositions.

THE GREAT MEADOW (1931)

Poorly received at the time, M-G-M’s attempt to add Talkie technology to the frontier spirit that made James Cruze’s THE COVERED WAGON/’23 one of the great hits of its day, now looks like a considerable achievement in historic Americana. But an extended production schedule meant that by the time the film came out, it was already looking somewhat dated in technique & acting style. Dialogue is on the declamatory side and sometimes wide master shots play out in a stage-bound proscenium manner. But director Charles Brabin also gets loads of period color and detail following a party of settlers, in the late 1770s, who brave an eight-month journey from comfortable Virginia to wild Kentucky thru brutal terrain & hellish weather to reach a promised valley, an Eden of a Great Meadow. (Stunning location cinematography, presumably Clyde De Vinna's, with William Daniels back at the studio.) They’re led by newlyweds Johnny Mack Brown & Eleanor Boardman who meet all trials head-on. And such trials! Indians; disease; food shortages; birth pains; blizzards; desertion; loved ones gone missing on missions . . . the works. At only 75 minutes, it sounds overstuffed. But the stiff acting actually works in the film’s favor, undercutting the melodrama, and Brabin scores by really putting everyone thru their paces on what looks like a very rough journey. He has a penchant for low traveling shots, from the waist down. (Boardman, married to director King Vidor, must have been full of wild tales when she got back from the grueling location shoots. No wonder she retired from acting later that year.) Plenty creaky in places, but often filled with a sense of fresh beauty and wonder as well as having a rare feel for the sheer labor hidden behind personal heartaches.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Johnny Mack Brown was then in free-fall @ M-G-M. King Vidor’s big 70mm BILLY THE KID/’30 had just underperformed; a Joan Crawford musical (GREAT DAY) had the plug pulled; then this disappointment followed by another Crawford mishap as he found himself replaced by Clark Gable when COMPLETE SURRENDER was reshot/retitled as LAUGHING SINNERS/’31. Finally, his third-billed role in the very successful THE SECRET 6 (also ‘31) got shoved to the side with a seventh-billed Clark Gable effectively taking over the hero’s spot while the cameras turned! After that, minor studios and B-Westerns for JMB.