Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Broadminded opens with one of the most bizarre, fetishistic sequences in a pre-Code comedy—a high society party in which all the attendees are dressed as babies. The centerpiece involves Joe E. Brown riding in a crib, wearing a bonnet, and drinking from a milk bottle as a dozen or so attractive young women watch in suggestive admiration. From there, it’s a pretty standard road picture, but some of the particulars (including a threatening adversary played by Bela Lugosi) feel similarly unique. At this stage in his career, the studios didn’t seem to quite know how to best serve Brown’s persona—as with Going Wild, here he suggests the standard of the modern man, with his very stylishness clashing with his brash persona and creating a fairly unlikable combination. To better serve all audiences, Brown would later appear more wholesome, both in his demeanor and in steering pretty clear of the sexuality that opens Broadminded. Aside from Lugosi, Thelma Todd also appears in a small role, giving the film the appeal of seeing both of the performers before their careers would take drastic (in Todd’s case, tragic) turns. Marjorie White steals the show as the blonde who has her sights set on Brown, and Margaret Livingston contributes fine work as the high society ex-fiancée of William Collier Jr.
Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Some film historians have generalized Hollywood productions of the 1930s as participating in an escapist sensibility that counteracted the real-life desperation of an impoverished American populous. Gold Diggers of 1933 reveals a more complex relationship that audiences had with films in the midst of the Depression. It is a film which underscores the misery of the economic times while poking fun at what an amusing trifle of a genre picture it is. While the middle hour or so of the picture is a fairly standard romantic musical comedy, it is ingeniously bookended by two game-changing sequences. The iconic “We’re in the Money” number that begins the film is tinged with irony, challenging the idea that audiences were “escaping” with such entertainments because it is a sequence that ends with authorities taking apart the production due to its lack of funds. Just as memorable is the closing “Remember My Forgotten Man” number, which brings into light the grim reality of the times just moments after the plot threads are resolved and it seems as though everything will end happily ever after. Director Mervyn LeRoy’s (and Busby Berkeley, who directed the musical numbers) genius in his imagining is that he frequently pulls the rug out from underneath the audience in this fashion. His bookending sequences demonstrate the unreality of the machinations of a typical Hollywood comedy, and in doing so he both celebrates the escapist pleasures of the genre and reveals just how removed they are from the reality of the time.
Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Joe E. Brown had rapidly become one of the most bankable stars at Warner Brothers in the early 1930s with a handful of musical comedies beginning with the 1929 color spectacle On with the Show. Top Speed, based on the hit Broadway musical released the previous year (the production that discovered a 17-year-old ingenue named Ginger Rogers), gave him one of his first starring vehicles. The plot concerns a pair of bond clerks (Brown and Jack Whiting) who pose as millionaires to impress a couple of rich women (Bernice Claire and Laura Lee). As expected of a Warner Brothers production of the era, it moves quickly and brims with snappy dialogue and racy material. Lee is a terrific match for Brown, playing his aggressive, over-eager romantic partner. They have a couple of amusing dance numbers in which Lee coaches the awkward, elastic Brown on how to appropriately move his legs. A climactic boat race feels like an afterthought, although it involves some hilarious exchanges between Brown and Frank McHugh, who was appearing in only his second ever film as–what else?–a humorous drunk.
Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Upset with the way MGM had been utilizing her, William Randolph Hearst sought better roles for mistress Marion Davies when his Cosmopolitan Pictures made the transition over to Warner Brothers in 1935. The first picture made for the studio was Page Miss Glory, an irresistible Cinderella story that sees a common hotel maid given the opportunity of a lifetime when she takes upon the invented persona of the titular celebrity. Davies was a fine comedienne (her work in the late silent Show People is terrific), and she benefits here from the best supporting players that Warner Brothers had to offer. Besides the more familiar faces–including Pat O’Brien, Mary Astor, Lyle Talbot, Allen Jenkins, and Frank McHugh in a bigger part than he was often given–Patsy Kelly is a stand-out as another chambermaid. It is unclear who exactly the joke is on in the film, with just about everyone (including Davies and her ideal lover, a pilot played by Dick Powell) rendered as complete dopes. Regardless, the picture is an amusing distraction about publicity and the way that audience’s consume celebrity images (the conceit being that a conman (O’Brien) creates the perfect woman through a composite of other famous stars–some Dietrich here, Garbo there, etc.). One of the highlights sees a photograph of Dick Powell come to life in a ludicrous, but nonetheless satisfying musical number.
Filed under: Reviews | Tags: 1932, i am a fugitive from a chain gang, mervyn leroy
Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Concluding with one of the most haunting shots in all of American cinema, I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang is one of the great achievements of the pre-Code era – a problem picture so stirring that it actualized social change. Beyond memorably depicting the barbaric chain gangs of the American south in the early 20th century, it is one of the great pictures about a country failing its war veterans. Among its many lasting images, few are more silently devastating than a box of war medals in a pawn shop. Writers Brown Holmes and Howard J. Green nimbly condense the Robert Elliott Burns autobiography of the same title to ninety minutes and impressively represent the concision and effectiveness of well-executed Hollywood storytelling. The script is wisely understated – take, for instance, the poetic image of the fugitive Paul Muni blowing up the bridge that he had constructed, or the simple line in which it is revealed that the cost of Muni’s lawyer is significantly higher than what it had cost the state to search for him. Whereas many films of this period faced certain scorn for their levels of violence and sexuality, Chain Gang is a scathing indictment of not only the treatment of prisoners, but of the unjust law system that serves its institutions over the individuals.
Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Although its title is relatively obscure today, Anthony Adverse was a sensation in the mid-thirties. The twelve-hundred page goliath by Hervey Allen was one of the highest grossing novels of its decade. Warner Brothers found similar popular success in adapting it for the screen in 1936, which would garner the prestigious endeavor seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture. The film, however, was not met with the same critical acclaim – Frank S. Nugent of the New York Times described it as “bulky, rambling, and indecisive”, and as such its reputation has faded over time. Indeed, it is clear that neither screenwriters Sheridan Gibney and Milton Grims nor director Mervyn LeRoy knew quite how to approach an adaptation of this size. Title cards and expositional speeches are used often to contextualize the events, and the film maneuvers so quickly through so much story that it becomes nearly incoherent. Within five minutes of screen time, for example, Fredric March, who plays the titular role, transforms from noble romantic into unruly slave trader. March isn’t particularly memorable in the role, but then again, who could be when the biggest and most revealing acting challenges have been cut for time? The film serves today as merely a curiosity of 1930s popular American culture, and, while it certainly represents Warner Brothers at its flashiest, it is an over-plotted mess.
Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Esther Williams is among the most fascinating of Hollywood stars if only because she appeared in a genre that remains uniquely her own. Million Dollar Mermaid, a melodrama about the rise of a celebrity swimmer, is a fine example of the familiar A Star is Born narrative refit to highlight Williams’ unique talents. Victor Mature is well-cast as the sleazy but affable promoter, and Walter Pidgeon also stars as Williams’ father in a typically dignified performance. Though Williams’ on-screen persona doesn’t have the edge to get across her character’s hunger for rebellion against the era’s controlling patriarchy – the real-life Annette Kellerman famously caused an uproar by wearing a one-piece swimsuit to a public beach in the early 1900s – she has a fine chemistry with Mature. Most memorable about the picture is a Busby Berkeley choreographed swimming sequence, deliciously over-the-top with vibrant red and yellow hues of water accompanying swimmers perched high above the pool on trapezes.
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