So Big! (1932)

As a young girl, it looks like Selina Peake (Barbara Stawnyck) has got the life.  Her father is well off and he sends her to one of the best finishing schools in Chicago.  That all changes when her father suddenly dies and leaves her with no money to support herself.  With some help from her friends’ father, she gets a job as a school teacher in a small farming community outside of Chicago.  She moves in with the Pooles, a family of farmers.  Their son Roelf Pool (Dick Winslow as a child, George Brent as an adult) is too busy working on the farm to attend school, so Selina tutors him when he has time.  Roelf develops a bit of a crush on Selina and becomes very jealous when she falls in love with Pervus De Jong, another farmer, and marries him.

Selina and Pervus soon have a son, Dirk (Dickie Moore as a child, George Brent as an adult).  Selina wants Dirk to grow up to be able to do all the things she wasn’t able to.  When her husband dies, she continues to work hard on the farm to make that happen and she does it all alone.  Death also pays a visit to the Pool family and Roelf’s mother also dies, prompting him to leave home.  The years fly by and Roelf has become the talk of the art world as a sculptor in Europe and Dirk has recently graduated from college with a degree in architecture.  But Dirk isn’t especially fond of being an architect, and when he begins seeing a married woman who offers to get him a job as a bond salesman for her husband’s company, he takes her up on the offer.

Even though Dirk quickly works his way up to assistant manager and is making much more money than he was as an architect, Selina can’t help but be a little disappointed that her son doesn’t have the job she always dreamed he would have.  One day, he meets artist Dallas O’Mara (Bette Davis) and instantly falls in love with her.  Although Dallas also likes Dirk, but she won’t marry him because she prefers people who look rugged, like they’ve really lived and worked and suffered.  Eventually, Roelf makes a triumphant return to America and to Dirk’s surprise, finds out that Roelf and Dallas know each other and that she is planning to bring him to see his mother.  A big reason Roelf wanted to come home was to thank Selina for helping him become the person he now is.

So Big! isn’t one of my favorites.  A lot of the shifts in time were pretty abrupt and jarring, but I liked it well enough and it’s quite interesting in some respects.  Considering that Stella Dallas went on to become one of Barbara Stanwyck’s most definitive movies, it’s interesting to look at this as something of an early precursor to Stella Dallas.  Only it’s kind of like Stella Dallas in reverse.  Instead of a lower class girl aspiring to be part of the upper class and sacrifices everything for her child, it’s an upper class girl who becomes a farmer’s wife and works hard to give her child everything.  It’s also interesting to see a young Barbara Stanwyck crossing paths with a young Bette Davis.  Unfortunately, their characters don’t actually interact with each other, which is too bad, but it’s exciting just to get to see the two of them in the same movie together.

Female (1933)

Alison Drake (Ruth Chatterton) is a woman with no interest at all in conforming to stereotypical expectations of women.  Rather than being a secretary or a shopgirl, she is perfectly happy running her father’s car company.  She runs a tight ship, but it doesn’t leave her much time for romance.  So rather than having long-term relationships, she prefers to seduce some of her male coworkers every now and then without getting too attached.

When she gets a visit from Harriet (Lois Wilson), an old school friend who is now married with children, Harriet finds Alison is a different woman than she remembered.  The Alison she went to school with was hopeful and romantic, nothing like the hardened, cynical woman she now is.  Harriet doesn’t try to change Alison and after she leaves, Alison continues on with her life as usual.  But eventually, Alison finds herself getting frustrated with her life.  When she throws a big business party at her house one night, she realizes that not a single person there likes her for who she is, they’re all only interested in the fact that she’s the president of her company.

Alison sneaks away from her party and finds herself at a shooting gallery, where she meets Jim Thorne (George Brent).  She comes on to him in her usual fashion, but he turns her down.  The next day at the office, Alison is waiting to meet an acclaimed engineer who has just been hired.  She’s surprised to find that the new engineer is none other than Jim, but not more surprised than Jim is when he finds out Alison is his new boss.  Alison may have had a lot of men in her life, but Jim is the only one to make her feel differently about everything.  She tries every trick in the book to seduce Jim, but he’s not falling for it.  At last she succeeds when she invites him to an employee’s picnic and he was the only employee invited.  That evening, Jim impulsively proposes to Alison, but Alison is so thrown off guard that she turns him down.  Jim quits his job and goes to New York, leaving Alison to realize that she loves Jim so much that she’s willing to put her business on the line.

Female is definitely one of my favorite pre-codes and it’s another essential pre-code movie.  Even though I’ve always found the ending slightly disappointing, Ruth Chatterton truly shines in it, the art deco sets are stunning, and the script is very sharp.  I love how in the beginning of the movie we see the exterior of the car factory, then some of the secretaries talking to each other about how the president is busy giving someone what for.   And then it cuts to the inside of the conference room where we see the back of a man talking, and the audience expects him to be the boss, but then the camera moves around him and we see Ruth Chatterton and that she’s the boss.  It’s such a great reveal.  And be sure to look for all the references to other Warner Brothers movies from that era like Picture Snatcher, Footlight Parade, and 42nd Street.

What’s on TCM: March 2011

Ah, March.  March always feels like a bit of a slow month just because it’s hard to keep up the kind of momentum that 31 Days of Oscar has.  But it’s always been a little bit of a welcome lull to me since 31 Days of Oscar can be such a marathon.  But there are still definitely some big highlights to look forward to this month.  Namely, I’m most looking forward to Jean Harlow as Star of the Month.  If you’ve been wanting to see more of her movies, now is the perfect time because TCM will be playing nearly all of her most important movies.  Also worth noting is that instead of having just one guest programmer this month, there will be many.  On Mondays and Thursdays this month, prime time will consist of movies chosen by TCM employees and they have made a lot of very excellent choices.  Now, with no further ado, let’s get onto my highlights for the month!

Baby Face (1933)

To say that Lily Powers (Barbara Stanwyck) had a lousy upbringing is a huge understatement.  Her mother died when she was very young, leaving her to be raised by her father Nick, the owner of a speakeasy in Erie, Pennsylvania.  He makes her work in the speakeasy and has even been pimping her out to his customers since she was fourteen years old.  She does have two friends in Chico (Theresa Harris), her co-worker, and Adolf,  a cobbler who is a big fan of Nietzsche.  Lily has had just about enough of her life and is ready to leave, but just as she gets into a huge fight with her father about it, a still explodes and he’s killed in the fire.  Not knowing where else to turn, she turns to Adolf, who advises her to go to a big city and use men to get whatever she wants.  So she and Chico sneak onto the next train, where Lily seduces a worker on the train so he won’t throw them off the train.

When they arrive in New York City, Lily sets her heart on getting a job at the Gotham Trust.  She’s never worked in an office before, but once again, she seduces her way into the job.  She continues to use men left and right to move up within the company.  Even a young John Wayne is no match for Barbara Stanwyck’s wiles.  She works her way up to executive Ned Stevens (Donald Cook).  Ned’s happily engaged to Ann Carter (Margaret Lindsay), but Lily likes the challenge.  She even specifically arranges it so that Ann will find her together with Ned!  Ann tries to get her father J.R. Carter, the vice president of the company, to make Lily back off, but Lily wins him over in her usual style.  Not only does Lily get herself a new boyfriend, he gets her a stylish new apartment and a job for Chico as her maid.  What Lily doesn’t count on is Ned flying into a jealous rage and shooting J.R. before shooting himself.

The only man who seems able to resist Lily is Courtland Trenholm (George Brent).  After he’s elected president of the company, Lily’s first order of business is to try to get $15,000 from the company to stop her from handing over her personal diary to the press.  Instead, Courtland gives her a job in their Paris office to get her out of the way.  Lily accepts, and in Paris, she works her way up to being the head of the travel bureau.  When Courtland stops by the Paris office, he’s quite surprised to see that she wasn’t just another gold digger and finally succumbs to Lily’s charms.  Like J.R. before him, Courtland buys Lily lots of expensive gifts.  Unfortunately, Courtland finds himself in hot water after the bank fails.  He turns to Lily and asks her to sell her expensive jewelery so he can afford to defend himself, but she refuses.  Rather than face ruin, he shoots himself.  But Lily realizes that no amount of money can buy true love and changes her mind.  She finds Courtland in time and she’s able to save his life.

You didn’t think I was going to spend thirty days talking about pre-codes and not mention Baby Face, did you?  There were some pretty scandalous movies made in the pre-code era, but I think Baby Face is most definitely the most sordid of all the pre-codes.  There is absolutely nothing even remotely safe about Baby Face.  It takes elements that would be controversial enough on their own, but then adds a twist to them that makes them even more shocking.  Not only was Lily a prostitute, she was pimped out at a very young age by her own father.  And not only does she use men to get ahead in life, she’s actually encouraged to do so and she doesn’t blink an eye at her own behavior.  Baby Face is Barbara Stanwyck at her toughest and she is amazing to watch.  If you’ve never seen this movie before, just watch this clip:

It’s always great to watch Barbara Stanwyck telling somebody off and the scene where Lily yells at her father is my favorite instance of that.  And I love her tough girl attitude in that scene.  Who else could break a bottle over a man’s head and go back to her drink like it was nothing more than hitting a fly with a flyswatter?  This is one of those movies that truly must be seen to be believed.

What’s on TCM: March 2010

As March rolls in, 31 Days of Oscar enters its final days.  But there’s still plenty to see in those final days.  On Monday, March 1st at 9:30 AM EST, there’s Possessed starring Joan Crawford and Van Heflin.  Most people consider Mildred Pierce to be the highlight of Joan Crawford’s career, but I think her performance in Possessed really gives Mildred Pierce a run for its money.  Prime time on March 2nd looks fantastic: West Side Story, Rebel Without a Cause, and Giant.  I am a little embarrassed to say that I have never seen Rebel Without a Cause, but I’m looking forward to seeing it.   If you’ll be home during the day on March 3rd, the last day of 31 Days of Oscar, be sure to check out Adam’s Rib at 11:30 AM, which is followed by The Asphalt Jungle at 1:30 PM.   Two totally different movies, but they’re equally amazing.

TCM resumes its normal programming on March 4th, but it looks like there’s still plenty of great stuff to look forward to.  This month, they’ll be spotlighting a rather interesting couple of stars: Ginger Rogers and Akira Kurosawa.  I’m definitely looking forward to the Ginger Rogers movies, but I’m not so sure about the Kurosawa.  I’ve seen Rashomon and I’ve tried watching Seven Samurai a couple of times before but just haven’t been able to get into it.  Rashomon was good, just not really my cup of tea.  Anyone have any suggestions as to which of his movies I should check out this month?  I’ve heard so many great things about Kurosawa and I’m still willing to give his movies a shot, I just don’t really know where to begin.