What’s on TCM: May 2012

Happy May, everyone!  It certainly looks like it’s going to be a busy month on TCM.  Joel McCrea is the star of the month, which is something I know a lot of people have been wanting to see for quite some time.  He’ll be featured every Wednesday night this month.  Every Thursday night will be all about movies based on true crime stories.  Plus there’s the annual 48-hour war movie marathon for Memorial day will run from May 27-28.  So without further ado, let’s get to the schedule:

Private Lives (1931)

The phrase “happily divorced” is one that easily applies to Amanda (Norma Shearer) and Elyot (Robert Montgomery).  Their marriage was extremely volatile, but now that they’re divorced (and thrilled to be rid of each other), they’ve both moved on and remarried; Amanda to Victor (Reginald Denny) and Elyot to Sibyl (Una Merkel).  After each of their weddings, they each head off to their honeymoons.  Imagine their surprise (and horror) when Amanda and Elyot find out they’re both honeymooning in the same city, in the same hotel, in rooms right next to each other.

They each beg their respective new spouses to leave immediately, but they both end up getting into arguments that end with Sybil and Victor storming out of their rooms.  Left alone, Amanda and Elyot step out onto the terrace outside of their rooms and start having a conversation.  They start looking back on their relationship and suddenly remember what it is that made them fall in love in the first place.  They kiss and impulsively decide to run away from their honeymoons and go to St. Moritz together.  The only thing standing in their way of happiness is their tendency to constantly get into fights, but they even think of a way to stop those.

At first, all is going well between Amanda and Elyot, but soon their arguments start popping up more and more often.  Eventually, their plan to stop arguments quits working and they get into a knock down, drag out fight that involves Amanda breaking a record over Elyot’s head and completely trashing their rented chalet.  The next day, they find that their new spouses have teamed up to track them down.  Sybil and Elyot decide that they aren’t going to divorce and Amanda and Victor do the same.  The two couples sit down to have breakfast together, but when Sybil and Victor get into an argument, Amanda and Elyot get such a kick out of seeing what they must look like, they once again decide to run off together.

Private Lives has some of my favorite acting by Norma Shearer.  There are some scenes where she says so much with just the glance of her eyes or the tone of her voice.  Definitely watch for her expression when she first realizes that Elyot is in the room next door and listen to the way she uses her voice when she and Elyot are reminiscing about their relationship, it’s great stuff.  The movie itself is fully of smart, witty lines that lent themselves perfectly to being delivered by Norma and Robert Montgomery.  The two of them had such a wonderful rapport with each other, it was a real delight to watch the two of them go to town with this material.

Faithless (1932)

Before the stock market crash of 1929, Carol Morgan (Tallulah Bankhead) was living the high life as the daughter of a successful banker.  But when the stock market crashes, Carol refuses to scale down her extravagant lifestyle and is in complete denial that things could get tough for her, too.  Her accountants try to warn her, but she won’t listen to them and goes about living her life as usual.  Her boyfriend Bill Wade (Robert Montgomery) works in advertising and prefers living a much more modest lifestyle.  Carol is very much in love with him, but he’s hesitant to get married because he doesn’t want people to assume he married her for her money.  Although they briefly get engaged, Carol ultimately can’t deal with being married to someone who only makes $20,000 a year and their engagement is called off.

When Carol finally faces the fact that she has lost everything, she goes back to Bill and finds things aren’t so great for him, either.  He’s just lost his job and although he has a lead on another one in Chicago, Carol decides she’d rather live off the hospitality of her still wealthy friends rather than marry Bill.  Bill does get his job in Chicago and Carol travels all over the country, staying as long as her friends will put up with her.  Eventually, she makes her way to Chicago and stays with Mr. and Mrs. Peter M. Blainey.  Mrs. Blainey is willing to pay Carol $1,500 for giving them the privilege of being able to use her name to get into the society pages, but throws her out when she catches Carol borrowing money from her friends.  Carol packs her things, but before she can leave, Mr. Blainey (Hugh Herby) offers her $1,000.  He says there are no strings attached, but the strings come later and before she knows it, she’s his mistress.

Carol absolutely loathes Blainey, but she doesn’t have any other options.  One night, she is pleasantly surprised when Bill finally tracks her down and drops by.  But her happiness is short lived when Bill figures out what’s going on and leaves.  No longer to put up with Blainey, she leaves him and tries to find a job, but has no luck since she has no marketable skills or experience.  Her luck starts to turn around when she runs into Bill again one night.  He’s found a job as a truck driver and the two of them decide to get married on the spot.  Even though he soon loses that job, he gets another one, but is injured in an accident.  Now Carol has to get money for medicine and has no other choice but to turn to prostitution.  Unfortunately, she makes the mistake of trying to pick up Bill’s brother Tony and he turns her into the police.  The officer takes pity on her when she vows to never do it again and gets her a job as a waitress.  She hadn’t been ready to tell Bill about how she earned the money for his medicine, but is forced to confront the issue when Tony breaks the news to Bill for her.

Faithless isn’t a terribly remarkable movie, but it is enjoyable enough.  Tallulah was pretty good in it, especially in the beginning when her character still thinks she’s rich.  She totally owned her character’s awful attitude in the beginning of the movie, but when her character is totally desperate in the end, she didn’t quite go into that part with the same zeal she did earlier.  Robert Montgomery was more consistently good, though.  It’s no must see movie, but if you do have an interest in Tallulah Bankhead, I’d recommend checking it out anyway.  She was mainly a theatrical actress and didn’t make very many movies, so it’s nice to get to see her in action.

The Divorcee (1930)

While staying at a resort with some friends, Jerry (Norma Shearer) and Ted (Chester Morris) decide to get married with one stipulation — that their marriage will be a marriage of equals.  Their friends are thrilled for them  and spend the rest of the night celebrating their good news.  Well, everyone except for Paul (Conrad Nagel), that is.  He’s been carrying a torch for Jerry and spends the evening getting drunk.  When the party’s over, Jerry and Ted leave separately while some others get into a car driven by the now very inebriated Paul.  Of course, this does not end well and he crashes the car and disfigures their friend Dorothy.

Ted and Jerry get married and out of guilt, Paul marries Dorothy.  Ted and Jerry couldn’t be happier together but that all comes to an end the night of their third wedding anniversary.  When some of their friends come over for a party, a woman named Janice (Mary Doran) tags along with one of the guests.  Not only has Janice already met Ted, but they had an affair one night when he was drunk and away on business.  When Janice corners Ted in the kitchen, Jerry catches them and immediately knows what’s going on.  She confronts Ted about it and he tries to brush it off, claiming that it didn’t mean anything, but Jerry is heartbroken.  After Ted leaves for Chicago on business, his best friend Don (Robert Montgomery) keeps her company while he’s out of town.  Since this was supposed to be a marriage of equals, Jerry decides to even the score and have an affair with Don.  After all, they were supposed to be equals, right? But when Ted gets back from his trip, Jerry breaks the news to him and suddenly Ted’s singing a different tune when Jerry says it didn’t mean anything.

As much as Jerry wants to make their marriage work, she can’t deal with Ted and his double standards and divorces him.  Jerry sets out on her new life determined to have plenty of affairs and boy, does she!  But while on a trip for work, she runs into her old friend Paul.  Paul is still married to Dorothy, but has never been able to forget Jerry.  The two of them begin having an affair and travel together all over the place.  Paul and Jerry even talk about getting married, but after Jerry meets with Dorothy, she doesn’t have the heart to take her husband away from her.  Meanwhile, Ted hasn’t been faring so well and has been hitting the bottle pretty hard in Paris.  When New Years Eve rolls around, Jerry decides to spend it in Paris, hoping she would run into Ted.  They meet again at a party and decide to start the new year by giving their marriage another try.

The Divorcee is one of the most essential pre-code movies and rightfully so.  I love the story, actually I think it would still make for an interesting movie if it were made today.  I don’t think it really gets enough credit for what an important movie it is.  The Divorcee is basically the movie that really put the whole pre-code era into high gear.  And if you’re unfamiliar with the pre-code era, then getting to see a woman like Jerry is a very interesting change of pace from how women were often portrayed in movies made under the code.  Norma Shearer is phenomenal in it, easily one of her finest moments.  I love the story about how Norma had to fight Irving Thalberg to get the part.  She desperately wanted the part, but Thalberg didn’t think she was right for it so to prove her point, she went and had some saucy pictures taken.  After seeing the results, he finally saw Norma’s point of view and let her have the part that went on to get her an Oscar.  It’s a great movie and if you have even the slightest interest in the pre-code era, you absolutely must see it.

Forsaking All Others (1934)

Jeff Williams (Clark Gable), Dill Todd (Robert Montgomery), and Mary Clay (Joan Crawford, and not to be confused with the Lana Turner character from They Won’t Forget) have been friends since childhood.  For the past twenty years, Mary has been in love with Dill and Jeff has been in love with Mary.  Years later, Jeff goes off to Spain on a long trip and Dill and Mary decide to get married.  When Jeff returns, not knowing Mary and Dill are engaged, he comes home determined to finally tell Mary how he feels about her.  But when he arrives, he realizes he’s just in time for their wedding.  He’s a little deflated, but keeps his chin up, offers to give the bride away, and starts enjoying the pre-wedding festivities.

The night before the wedding is Dill’s bachelor party, and everybody has a swell time.  When Dill gets back to his room at the end of the night, he’s surprised to get a visit from Connie (Frances Drake), a past girlfriend.  She’s heard that he’s getting married and has shown up to make one last attempt to win him back.  Even though he resists at first, he ends up sending Mary a telegram the next day announcing that he’s run off and married Connie instead.  Humiliated, Mary goes to spend some time in the country with her Aunt Paula.  After a while, Jeff comes to visit and to see how she’s doing.  He also comes bearing some of her mail, which includes an invitation to a party Connie and Dill are having.  Jeff tries to talk her out of going, but she insists on going anyway.  When she and Jeff arrive at the party, Dill was surprised to see them because he had no idea Connie had invited them.  But once he sees Mary, he remembers just how much he loved her.

After the party, Dill keeps trying to see Mary.  Even though Jeff tells her to stay away from him, she won’t listen.  One day, they get together and take a trip out into the country.  But then they have a minor car accident and get caught in the rain.  But luckily for them, they aren’t too far from Aunt Paula’s country home so they crash there for the night.  Dill calls his valet to come pick him up, but secretly tells him not to come until the next day.  Nothing too scandalous happens that night, but Dill does get burned badly while trying to build a fire in the fireplace.  The next morning, Aunt Paula finds out that the two of them are there and calls Jeff to go with her to get them out.  Little do they know that Connie is also on her way over since Dill’s valet tipped her off.  Paula and Jeff get there first and when Jeff finds a burned up Dill, who now has a cold from walking in the rain, sleeping on the couch,  he realizes nothing happened and has a good laugh at his friend’s unfortunate night.  But then Connie arrives and wants a divorce.  After all that they’ve been through, Dill and Mary once again decide to get married.  And once again, Jeff shows up before their wedding determined to tell Mary how he feels.  But this time he goes through with it.  After he leaves to catch a boat to Spain, Mary realizes that she loves him, too, and runs after him.  This time it’s Dill who gets left at the altar.

I think Forsaking All Others is something of an underrated 1930s Joan Crawford movie.  It’s not Oscar material, but it is a pretty fun little comedy.  Joan and Clark Gable always made a fantastic team and they are in top form here.  Robert Montgomery was pretty fun, too.  Billie Burke doesn’t have a big part and she basically just plays the same type of character she did in Dinner at Eight.  Even though I liked Frances Drake as the conniving Connie, I might have been interested in seeing Rosalind Russell in that part.  This was only Rosalind Russell’s third movie and she doesn’t get a lot of screen time, but I think she might have done well as Connie.  The writing is pretty fast paced and sharp, which Roz later proved she was a pro at working with, so I think she could have done well in a bigger part.  If you’re a fan of either Joan, Clark Gable, or Robert Montgomery, you’ll definitely want to check this one out.

Strangers May Kiss (1931)

Lisbeth Corbin (Norma Shearer) is a forward thinking young woman who isn’t one to bow to social norms.  The expectation that she particularly loathes is the idea that all women want to get married.  She and her boyfriend Alan (Neil Hamilton) are both perfectly happy with not being married.  On the other hand, there’s Steve (Robert Montgomery), Lisbeth’s former lover and current friend.  Steve still loves Lisbeth and repeatedly asks her to marry him, but she’s not budging on the whole “no marriage” thing.  Her anti-marriage stance is further cemented when one evening, she goes out to a nightclub with her aunt Celia and Celia catches her husband cavorting with another woman.  Devastated, Celia throws herself out of her apartment window.  When Alan has to go to Mexico for work, she follows him.  However, she soon learns the real reason Alan is content with not being married: he’s already married to another woman.  To add insult to injury, when Alan is sent on another assignment in Rio de Janeiro, he doesn’t arrange for Lisbeth to come with him.  Instead, he arranges a trip home for her.  Lisbeth is absolutely heartbroken and instead of going home, she goes to Europe, where she becomes famous for being the life of every party.

Two years pass and men are flocking to her left and right, including Steve, who has followed her all over Europe.  Steve still wants to marry her, but she’s even less interested in marriage than before.  She’s still carrying a torch for Alan and when she gets a telegram from him saying that he’s gotten a divorce, she’s thrilled and immediately goes to see him.  Unfortunately, he sent that telegram before he found out about Lisbeth’s new reputation and he is not at all pleased about it.  When she arrives, he refuses to see her.  Lisbeth is heartbroken again, but Steve proposes yet again, and she still turns him down.  The two of them return to New York and resume a relationship, until they run into Alan at the theater one night.  In the time they’ve been apart, Alan has forgiven Lisbeth and once again, Lisbeth goes running right back to him.

I really liked Strangers May Kiss.  The story had some flaws, but it had a good cast.  As always, Norma was fabulous in it.  So very charming, natural, and with just the right amount of vulnerability.  Plus it’s always a joy to see her with Robert Montgomery, who proves to be quite the scene stealer as the eternally boozy Steve.  I’ve been really into watching the 1960s Batman TV series lately, so I was pleasantly surprised to see a young Neil Hamilton in a starring role here.  Too bad I liked him much better as Commissioner Gordon because Alan was a real jerk.  I was definitely rooting for Lisbeth to wind up with Steve over Alan because it’s completely beyond me why anyone would want to end up with Alan.  Charming but tipsy should win out over someone who hides being married any day.  It’s also interesting to see a movie so openly challenging the idea that everybody must get married.  It’s just not an idea put forth too often in movies or on television, especially when it’s a female character.  Strangers May Kiss isn’t a perfect movie, but still very pre-code and worth taking a look at.

Riptide (1934)

When Lord Philip Rexford (Herbert Marshall) and Mary (Norma Shearer), a party girl socialite, are invited to a costume party and are given a couple of ridiculous costumes to wear, it turns out to be a blessing in disguise.  Before the party, the two of them meet and, upon seeing how goofy their costumes are, they decide to skip the party, ditch the costumes, and spend the evening together dressed as normal people.  That night leads to a whirlwind romance and an impulsive marriage.  Five years later, they are still happily married with a daughter and living in England and Mary’s wilder days seem safely behind her.  But when Philip has to take a trip alone, Mary quickly becomes lonely and accepts his Aunt Hetty’s invitation to take a trip to Cannes.  The two of them have a swell time, but things start to get out of hand when Mary finds out Tommie Trent (Robert Montgomery) is staying in the same hotel.  Tommie has quite a reputation of his own and had a thing for Mary in the past.  Unfortunately, Tommie’s hard-living lifestyle has caught up with him and left him nearly suicidal.  But when Mary shows up at his hotel room, everything brightens up for him.  She brings him down to the party, the two of them get drunk, and have a lot of fun together.  But when Tommie gets carried away and kisses Mary, Mary goes back to her room instead of being unfaithful.  Tommie tries to follow her back to her hotel room by climbing onto her balcony, but ends up taking a serious fall.

When Mary finds out what happened, she goes to see him in the hospital.  But when she is photographed kissing him very innocently, her marriage is torn apart by scandal.  Mary swears up and down that nothing happened, but given her past, he won’t believe her.  When Tommie was well enough, she had him come and tell the whole story to Philip, but that only makes things worse.  Eventually, Philip decides he wants a divorce and Mary begins a real relationship with Tommie.  But then Philip does some investigating and finds out Mary was telling the truth the whole time and asks her to come see him.  Still in love with him, she gladly goes, but Tommie decides to see Philip, too, to tell him how he feels about Mary.

Riptide was Norma Shearer’s final pre-code and compared to some of her other pre-codes, the story feels relatively tame.  It’s not as obviously scandalous as The Divorcee and it’s not like her character is challenging conventional values such as marriage like in Strangers May Kiss.  But it still definitely has its pre-code moments.  It’s got a former wild party girl trying to put her past behind her, a married woman cavorting with a former lover, and when the divorce papers are drawn up, she even willingly gives up custody of her daughter.  Norma’s performance here is one of my favorites out of all her pre-codes.  When her character was supposed to be fun, boy was she bubbly, fun, and free.  She was quite intoxicating to watch.  I also like the fact that she closed the pre-code chapter of her career with her best co-star of that era, Robert Montgomery.  I think it’s interesting that the pre-code era of Norma’s career really began and ended with movies both dealing with troubled marriages that also starred Robert Montgomery.  Riptide makes for a nice bookend to that era of Norma’s career.  And if for no other reason, it’s worth seeing just for Norma’s entrance dressed in her ridiculous insect costume.  Best Norma Shearer entrance ever!