"Ladies of Leisure," or Easel to Love

Barbara Stanwyck enters the 1930 film "Ladies of Leisure" -- and film history -- in a rowboat. The oars squeak. Her face is marked by mascara-streaked tears and she's clutching a broken dress strap. She's Kay, a party girl who just left a wild one on a yacht.

On shore is Ralph Graves as Jerry, who's also left a wild party, this one at his Manhattan penthouse. He's gone for a drive, but now he's fixing the flat tire on his Lincoln. Stanwyck climbs on shore, shivering.

Kay: How far is it to town?

Jerry: What town?

Kay: There's only one town.

So Jerry gives her a ride back to Manhattan, where the night is obliterated by blinking neon signs selling Squibb's Dental Creme and Aeolian Player Piano Rolls -- but where Kay will eventually learn to see beyond them to the stars.  

"Ladies of Leisure" isn't Barbara Stanwyck's first film, but it's the one that made her a star. It also marked the beginning of a five-picture collaboration with director Frank Capra (seen with Stanwyck at right) -- one that almost didn't happen. Capra wasn't impressed with Stanwyck at their first meeting, and she left upset. It wasn't until Capra was bawled out by Stanwyck's husband, comic Frank Fay, who urged Capra to watch an older Stanwyck screen test, that she was cast in the role.

Now back to the plot -- Jerry's an artist who's anything but starving. He lives high thanks to his family wealth -- dad runs a couple of railroads. On the ride back, Kay dozes off. While she's asleep, Jerry sees something in Kay's face -- something that leads him to use her as a model for his new painting, "Hope."

"She had a mask on, like everybody else," Jerry tells his mother, "but underneath I think she had this."

The tricky part is getting down to it while Kay is awake, and their first rocky sessions together show a bit of improvisation on Stanwyck's part:

 

Jerry knows that if Kay can get past her streetwise exterior, Hope will come through. But she's a tough nut to crack.   

Jerry: It's like a man I knew once. He was suspicious, bitter, harsh, cruel. Those things were written in his face like a map of his life. He died -- I saw him laid out. His face was a new face -- it was fine, noble. There was peace in it. He was himself again. Do you see what I mean?

Kay: No. All I get out of it is you gotta die to find yourself. Not me -- not for two dollars an hour.

Also hanging around is Jerry's upper crust fiancee (Juliette Compton). She's cool and controlling -- we know she isn't right for our hero because she calls him "Jeddy." Marie Prevost is around for comic relief as Kay's roommate and best friend. And then there's Jerry's boozy friend Bill Standish, played by the ever-welcome Lowell Sherman. He and Stanwyck are perfectly matched in the wisecrack department:

Kay (seeing Bill enter): Drunk again!

Bill: Congratulations, so am I.

Of course, Jerry eventually gets through to Kay and she lets down her defenses and becomes a perfect model. They also fall in love, in a scene that echoes the moment in Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life" when George Bailey (James Stewart) realizes in a mixture of anger and awe that he loves Mary Hatch (Donna Reed):

 

The Jerry-Kay relationship upsets Jerry's wealthy parents, and there's a father-son standoff. Jerry's mother (Nance O'Neil) visits Kay and tries to get her to break up with Jerry for his own sake, and in return mom gets the full Stanwyck:

Capra writes in his autobiography that, if she was filming an emotional scene, Stanwyck left everything on the field in the first take. And in this performance, so early in her career, she already has the ability to combine outer toughness with a sudden inner vulnerability that can tear your heart out. Sherman and Prevost perform like the pros they are. Graves, who was already a star thanks to his roles in the Capra-directed action pictures "Flight" and "Submarine," has a tough time impersonating someone with artistic temperament.

Here are the complete credits for "Ladies of Leisure."

"They Learned About Women," or Grand Slam Hams

"I'm Van!" "I'm Schenck!"
"Our music doesn't stenk!"

"They Learned About Women" was released in 1930, early enough in the evolution of talking pictures that silent film-style title cards were still used to introduce scenes -- and the leading men, who are supposed to be major league baseball players, are wearing eyeliner. But it's important because it's the only full-length talking film made by the team of Gus Van and Joseph Schenck -- Schenck died just after the movie was released.

Van and Schenck were gigantic in vaudeville -- they were a part of the Ziegfeld Follies from 1918-21 -- and their repertoire included songs like "She Knows Her Onions," "Away Down South in Heaven" and the quizzically titled "If You Want to Miss a Heaven on Earth, Stay Out of the South."

In the movie, Van and Schenck are Jerry and Jack, two guys who play baseball for the Blue Sox by day (no night games back then) and play in vaudeville at night. Their performing style was simple -- Van sang bass and Schenck harmonized on tenor while playing piano.  They did a lot of good-humored ethnic comedy numbers, usually poking fun at the Irish and Jews, such as "Dougherty Is the Name":

What plot there is to "They Learned About Women" involves a love story between Jack and Mary (Bessie Love), who are driven apart by the manipulative Daisy (Mary Doran). As if that isn't enough, the hussy also tries to split up Jerry and Jack!

In between there are several musical numbers that take place in the theatre and on the field -- although staging "Shake That Thing" in the team shower probably isn't the best choice. There's also comedy relief from Tom Dugan and Benny Rubin. Dugan would go on to play Hitler in several World War II-era movies, including Ernst Lubitsch's "To Be or Not to Be," and Rubin would become a popular comic second banana for everyone from Jack Benny to the Three Stooges. Their Irish-Jewish interplay actually echoes Van and Schenck's routine -- and as an added bonus, Dugan's character stutters.

During the early talkie era, Bessie Love was one of the busiest actresses at MGM, with a fresh, charming quality. Here's her big number in the picture, performed live on the set as far as I can tell:

You can see the full cast and production info here.

"The Silver Horde," or Alaska Me Anything

"The Silver Horde" is undoubtedly the most detailed film ever made about the process of canning salmon. Granted, there's not a lot of competition -- it's like being the world's oldest cat ballet company.

Aside from that honor, "The Silver Horde" is an interesting look at two stars early in their career -- Joel McCrea and Jean Arthur, more than a decade before they generated genuine heat onscreen in George Stevens' "The More the Merrier."

Based on a story by Rex Beach, adventure novelist and Olympic water polo player (!), "The Silver Horde" takes place in Alaska, where good guy Boyd Emerson (McCrea), who has failed at gold prospecting, takes a job at a salmon fishery run by Cherry Malotte (Evelyn Brent). Times are tough -- the business is struggling because of competition from the ruthless fish financier Fred Marsh (Gavin Gordon). Big Salmon ruins everything!

(Because of the color of their scales, large quantities of salmon are known as a "Silver Horde." End of title explanation.)

We're told that Cherry is a former "hanger-on in a men's camp," if you know what I mean and I think you do, but she has a heart of gold and she has eyes for Boyd. He, on the other hand, is unaware of Cherry's past, but he only has eyes for haughty rich girl Mildred Wayland (Arthur, seen at left).

Cherry sends Boyd to Seattle, along with longtime fisherman Balt (Louis Wolheim) and comic relief Fraser (Raymond Hatton), in pursuit of a loan to install canning equipment:

In Seattle, the rough-hewn Balt, encouraged by the streetwise Fraser, gets new clothes, a fancy hat and a manicure:

Boyd, meanwhile, is combining business with pleasure by paying a visit to Mildred, and who does he meet but Big Salmon himself:

Big Salmon puts a wrench into the works and the loan is cancelled. But Cherry comes to Seattle and works her wiles on the banker, who happens to be an old acquaintance. And while they're out clubbing, Cherry sees Boyd with Mildred.

Back in Alaska, the equipment is put into place, and there's a salmon-canning montage that's a thing of beauty:

Considering this is one of his early performances, Joel McCrea seems as relaxed as ever. But -- and this is maybe because she's playing so against type as a haughty rich girl -- Arthur is really having a hard time. Here's a scene where she tells Boyd about Cherry's past -- hoo, boy:

By contrast, as Cherry, Evelyn Brent goes to toe to toe with Arthur and summons real Stanwyck energy to her takedown. 

(Cherry's friend Queenie is played by Blanche Sweet in one of the few sound film appearances she made after a long career in silent films.)  

Here's the complete film:

"The Big House," or Slammer Time

In the 1930 film "The Big House" people are constantly dwarfed by their surroundings. The prison where most of the story takes place is full of high walls and towers but it's also claustrophobic, crammed with sweaty prisoners sleeping three to a cell and filling the courtyard like a swarm of ants.

We first see the prison from the viewpoint of a new prisoner, Kent (Robert Montgomery). The paddy wagon that transports him to the gates is overwhelmed by the structure itself in a striking opening shot:

Once he enters, Kent is systematically reduced from a normal guy to just another convict -- they're givin' him a number and takin' way his name.

Kent is there because he's been found guilty of being a standoffish prig -- oh, and also of killing some guy in a drunken car accident. His cellmates are Butch (Wallace Beery at his Wallace Beery-ist, full of childlike bluster and yet handy with a machine gun) and Morgan (Chester Morris). They urge Kent not to hang out with the prison stool pigeon -- he's the only convict who's wearing a necktie -- but Kent hopes that he can trade inside information for a reduced sentence.

"The Big House" is full of scenes that have become prison movie cliches, showing up in films from "White Heat" to "Birdman of Alcatraz" to "The Shawshank Redemption." One of the best is the mess hall riot, not just because of Beery's violent protest of the dehumanizing effects of prison, but because of the silence -- and the hopeless panorama of convict faces -- leading up to it:

Beery's character is punished for the riot by being sent to "the dungeon," but before he goes he passes his knife to Kent. Then, during a surprise search, Kent slips the knife into Morgan's jacket. As a result, Morgan, a day away from parole, also gets sent to the dungeon. After his 30-day stretch of living in darkness, Morgan fakes illness and escapes through the infirmary. While on the outside, he seeks out and falls in love with Kent's sister (Leila Hyams), and she with him. But it isn't long before Morgan is nabbed and sent back to stir.

While Morgan's been out, Butch has been planning a massive escape to take place on Thanksgiving Day, while the place is low on guards. In a witty scene taking place that morning, all the convicts end up at a church service, singing "Open the Gates (of the Temple)." Then as they all kneel in prayer, Berry starts passing guns and bullets down the row to his fellow escapees.

Morgan refuses to be involved in the break, but he won't rat on Butch, either. That task falls to Kent. When the escape turns into a standoff between the convicts and the guards, Butch blames Morgan. But he finally figures out the truth. Meanwhile, Kent seems to be melting into a puddle of sweat:

Kent is killed in the riot, and Morgan is forced to shoot Butch. But Butch forgives him just before he dies. "The Big House" ends with a focus on Morgan, who's given an early release for his role in stopping the escape and saving a guard's life. The "decent" prisoner, Kent, is revealed as a coward and a stool pigeon, and Morgan effectively takes the place of Kent within the family.

"The Big House" won an Oscar for screenwriter Frances Marion, who adapted the script from Lennox Robinson's play. It was smoothly directed by George Hill, Marion's husband at the time. It represented a career-saving role for Beery, who got the role as a result of the death of Lon Chaney, Sr., who passed away after making only one talkie, "The Unholy Three."  

Here are the complete credits.

"Children of Pleasure," or The Great Spite Way

The 1930 MGM film "Children of Pleasure" tries to whip up big-city showbiz razzle-dazzle in the manner of the same studio's Oscar-winning "The Broadway Melody" or "Chasing Rainbows," but due to a wan leading man and subpar musical numbers (including one where the dancers are dressed as brooms), the effect is more like a handful of confetti shaken out of a pant cuff by a surly headwaiter.

The leading man, Lawrence Gray, is a handsome fellow who supported Marion Davies in her first talkie, 1929's "Marianne," and who played opposite Marilyn Miller in "Sunny," one of the year's top-grossing films. But left to his own devices, Gray has little more than a smile and a shoeshine, and a mildly pleasant singing voice.

Gray plays songwriter Danny Regan, whose tunes are being whistled by every Dick and Dora along the great white way. "That's the stuff!" they say in unison. Yes, the world is Danny's oyster -- he even knows Jack Benny (playing himself)!

Danny's big hit at the moment is "A Couple of Birds (with the Same Thing in Mind)," sung in a Broadway revue by Fanny Kaye, played by May Boley. This is Boley's only musical role, which should tell you something. Her other credits include the 1930 film "Moby Dick" (as Whale Oil Rosie) and the 1939 version of "The Women" (as woman under mud pack). From its heard-it-before rhythms to its blackface chorus, "A Couple of Birds" is highly missable.

Meanwhile, back at Danny's music publishers, we meet the warm, vivacious Emma (Wynne Gibson), Danny's former vaudeville partner who secretly lurrves him as she helps him put over his songs. Alas, Danny has met Pat (Judith Wood, acting under the name Helen Johnson), a rather chilly society girl, and the big sap falls for her like a tycoon jumping off a skyscraper ledge on Black Thursday.

Then there is more plot -- we're introduced to Fanny's piano player and reluctant lover, Andy (Benny Rubin). Fanny and Andy keep popping up to banter about Andy's roving eye.

Fanny (on Andy ogling a secretary): You never looked at me like that!

Andy: You never looked like that!

A production number based upon
particulate matter.

Danny pitches his next big number, called, um, "Raisin' the Dust." And brother, it's sweeping the country! Or at least this soundstage, where the chorus girls wear broom bristles on their arms and legs and rhyme "hades" with "ladies." What fun this must have been to shoot.

At the end of the number, Fanny -- wearing a one-horned hat that makes her look like a cockeyed unicorn -- brings Danny on stage. He sees Pat in the audience and is smitten again, much to Emma's disappointment. Danny and Pat finally formally meet at a nightclub, where we also get a musical number with Lawrence Gray, Wynne Gibson and Benny Rubin.

Because I can never resist including a number that ends with a joke about "my fanny.")

Anyway, before you can say "Why in the world would you want to marry an iceberg like her?", Danny and Pat are engaged. But she's still hanging around with old flame Rod (Kenneth Thomson playing the same kind of smarmy rich guy he plays in "The Broadway Melody"). And just before the ceremony Danny overhears Pat and Rod making baby talk, with Pat telling Rod "you're Danny's understudy." So the heartbroken Danny breaks up the wedding rehearsal, giving Gray his only opportunity in the movie to display emotion that isn't expressed by a smile.

But never fear -- Danny turns to the long-suffering Emma to relieve his broken heart.

"Children of Paradise" is based on the play "The Song Writer," which author Crane Wilbur based on the courtship of Irving Berlin and heiress Ellin MacKay. The plot of the movie-play turns out differently than the Berlin-MacKay affair -- despite the strong objections of her anti-semitic father, MacKay and Berlin were married more than 60 years, until her death in 1988 (he died the next year). In a bit of poetic justice, Berlin reportedly helped his father-in-law financially when the old guy was wiped out by the 1929 crash.

As for Gray, his career faded quickly and he ended up in grade-C westerns before dropping out of show business in the mid-1930s.

 

"Danger Lights," or Honey Choo Choo

Plotwise, the 1930 film "Danger Lights" is "The Broadway Melody" with locomotives -- a love triangle involving two people who hate to hurt the odd one out. But it also offers interesting location footage of trains and train yards, a glimpse of Jean Arthur early in her sound career, and one of the few talkie film performances of Louis Wolheim, who died in 1931 of stomach cancer.

Off camera, Wolheim had a reputation as a cultivated man -- he attended Cornell University and spoke several languages -- but his stocky, plug-ugly appearance meant a career in tough character roles, including a memorable turn as Stanislaus "Kat" Katczinsky in "All Quiet on the Western Front," made just before this film. Wolheim's profile wasn't exactly Barrymore-ish -- it looks like two upside-down 7s on top of each other.

Here, Wolheim is Dan Thorn, a hard-driving railroad yardmaster whose bark is worse than his bite. We know this because that's what everyone is always telling us, and because Dan has opened his home to his disabled railroad buddy Ryan (Frank Sheridan) and daughter Mary (Arthur). Mary is preparing to marry Dan out of obligation, but that changes when Doyle (Robert Armstrong) hits town. He's a tramp who's hitched a ride on a freight, but when Dan finds out he's a former engineer he gives the guy a job. And when Doyle gets a gander at Mary, he makes up his mind to stay:

Oblivious to the attraction between Doyle and Mary, Dan keeps pushing them to spend time together because he's too busy working on the railroad all the livelong day. And when they're walking home across a railroad trestle, Doyle and Mary act on their attraction:

By the time Dan finally finds out what's going on, the couple has made plans to leave town together. But a hitch develops while they're cutting across the rail yard:

Dan is badly injured, because the train in rain hits mainly on the brain.

The only hope is to get him to a Chicago brain specialist within five hours, but the fastest train on record can make it only in seven. A guilt-stricken Doyle takes the throttle, and Dan makes it to the Windy City in record time. To make everything hunky-dory, Dan realizes that he really loves the railroad, not Mary, and he gives the couple his blessing.

Much of "Danger Lights" was filmed in Montana, at the Miles City yards, and director George B. Seitz fills the movie with lots of hard-charging railroad action! Wolheim is a winning presence as Dan, but occasionally he garbles his lines (at one point he says to someone, "How'd you like to have a new man for your suttapacka job?"). And it's always interesting to see Arthur; here she is just starting to demonstrate her familiar screen mannerisms. Comic actor Hugh "Woo Woo!" Herbert is also along as a rail hobo -- he was also the film's dialogue director.

Here is a full cast and credits list for "Danger Lights," and here is the complete film:

Awkward Early Talkie Theatre: "The Broadway Melody"

Star-struck sisters coming to New York, struggling songwriter, backstage drama, misguided love -- it's all there, and more, in the 1929 film "The Broadway Melody." It's like a cliche incubator. It also has those awkward little touches we love in early talkies -- hammy acting, stilted silences and a musical soundtrack that makes it sound like the orchestra's in the bathroom.

To the concrete canyons of Broadway, where there's a broken light for every heart, or something like that, come the something-something sisters, Queenie (Anita Page) and Hank (Bessie Love). Queenie is blonde and stauesque, if you know what I mean and I think you do, and Hank is a little pepperpot of personality. ("I'm gonna lay that dame like a roll of linoleum," she says of a rival at one point.)

Hank's boyfriend Eddie (Charles King) has just joined the Zanfield Follies, and he's promised Hank that she and Queenie can join the show. We first meet Eddie at the Ye Olde Gleason Music Publishing Company, overseen by character actor James Gleason, who also co-wrote the dialogue. Eddie has just put the finishing touches on the movie's title song: 



Eddie and the girls are reunited, and since he hasn't seen Queenie since she was a little princess, he's surprised, to put it mildly, that she's grown so tall -- and stuff.

Meanwhile, there is backstage drama aplenty. Queenie and Hank get jobs in the chorus, and Queenie ends up as the main visual attraction, if you know what I mean and I think you do, in a big production number. There she attracts the attention of oily rich guy Jacques (Kenneth Thomson), who, in a bid at regular-guy status, signs his calling card "Jock." Queenie is attracted to Eddie, but out of loyalty to her sister she starts hanging with Jock.

Time out for some backstage banter:

Gay designer on his outlandish costumes: I design the costumes for the show, not the doors to the theatre.

Chorus girl: I know that -- if you had, they'd be painted in lavender.

Then it's time for the big-time production of "Broadway Melody":



Hank is mystified by Queenie's behavior. Eddie, mixing his metaphors, says, "I guess the bright lights just got under her skin." Then Queenie and Eddie have an awkward scene all their own:

There's a lot to like in "Broadway Melody," and if you don't like you can pass the time by counting how many times Queenie and Hank undress and slip into skimpy costumes and/or underwear. We also see them performing their vaudeville act, "Two Harmony Babies From Melody Lane," which includes the line "We can do more with a vo-de-oh-doh/Than Mr. Rockefeller can do with his dough."

When it's all said and done, Hank realizes that Queenie loves Eddie, and she steps out of the picture. At the movie's end, she's ready to go on a vaudeville tour with a new partner, and with the advice of her stuttering agent (Jed Prouty):             

Here are the complete credits, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.

 

Awkward Early Talkie Theatre: "Hollywood Revue of 1929"

"The Hollywood Revue of 1929," MGM's entry in the look-at-us-we're-talking sweepstakes, is a lot like Warner Bros.' "The Show of Shows," released later that year. It's a big-budget hodgepodge of skits and songs featuring almost every performer on the lot (a select few were exempt -- Al Jolson isn't in "The Show of Shows" and Greta Garbo isn't in "Hollywood Revue").

The budget is so big, the chorus ends up passing the hat.

Both films were designed to introduce audiences to the brave new world of talkie films -- the ironic thing is that early talkies, because of cumbersome cameras and sound recording equipment, were much less "free" than silent films. The setting that both studios use to showcase sound is very static -- a clearly defined stage, proscenium arch and all. ("Broadway Revue" even has a pit orchestra.)

Joan Crawford warms up for her big dance number. 

Still, this was a chance to see your favorite actors and actresses talk, dance and sing. MGM used to brag about having "more stars than there are in heaven," and at least a galaxy or two is accounted for here -- Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, John Gilbert, Marie Dressler, Bessie Love, Anita Page, Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton and many others.

Like "The Show of Shows," "Hollywood Revue" prides itself on being very up to date, with sketches that poke fun at quaint Victorian songs and melodramas. The opening number of "Hollywood Revue" and at least part of the proceedings take place in the context of a much more modern setting -- a, um, minstrel show.

The emcees here are Conrad Nagel and Jack Benny. Benny was a headliner in vaudeville by this point, but this is early in his career and he's just beginning to perfect the mannerisms and low-key style that he would utilize so successfully in radio and television. The emcee of "The Show of Shows" is Frank Fay, whose stage persona Benny freely admitted to appropriating, and in comparing the two, Fay comes off as more effective (at least to me). Here's Benny in a sketch with William Haines:



Here, by comparison, is Frank Fay in "The Show of Shows":



The other emcee, Conrad Nagel, is pleasing and polished -- like almost everybody else he sings a number, a song that sends lyrics of love right up into Anita Page's nostrils.

The two performers who are featured most prominently in "Hollywood Revue," however, are singers -- Charles King and Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards. King was the male lead in MGM's other big film of 1929, "The Broadway Melody," and gets far more attention here that he merits. (He sings the song "Your Mother and Mine," which is parodied in "The Show of Shows.")

Edwards, on the other hand, was never a big star, but he was a reliable second banana in several MGM films of the early 1930s. (And he was the voice of Jiminy Cricket in "Pinocchio.") His singing style is simple and appealing, and here he accompanies himself on the uke:

That is some art right there.

Comedy bits are offered by Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton and Marie Dressler, but they are minor stuff. There are also quite a few ensemble numbers with elaborate sets and costumes.

And then, toward the end, there is for me the most wince-able portion of "Hollywood Revue" -- a bit, shot in two-strip Technicolor, with Norma Shearer, John Gilbert and Lionel Barrymore.

You've probably heard of it if you haven't seen it -- Gilbert and Shearer perform the balcony scene from "Romeo and Juliet," and then director Barrymore tells them that, under studio orders, the dialogue must be updated.

Norma Shearer tries and fails to act like a regular person.

It's one of those ideas that has "cute" written all over it, and not in a good way. It also features what is supposed to be good-natured, natural bantering between the three, and it's truly squirm-worthy.

Soon enough comes the ending, also shot in two-strip Technicolor -- it's the movie's big hit song, "Singin' in the Rain," sung by the entire cast, in rain slickers, as they prepare to -- board Noah's Ark?

SEE Cliff Edwards in a rain hat! SEE Joan Crawford looking around for her camera! SEE Buster Keaton look like he wishes he was somewhere else!

SEE the complete credits for "The Hollywood Revue of 1929"!

 

Public Domain Theatre: "Lights of New York" (1928)