The Mouthpiece (1932)

As a prosecuting attorney, it’s Vincent Day’s (Warren William) job to see that guilty parties get the punishments they deserve.  But when Vincent mistakenly sends an innocent man to the electric chair, the guilt is too much for him to bear and he vows to never prosecute again and becomes a defense attorney instead.  He starts out defending the innocent and the satisfaction of helping them out is good and all, but then he discovers the real money is in defending the guilty.

Once Vincent starts working with the seedier crowd, business is booming.  He even has to hire Celia (Sidney Fox) as a second secretary to help out Miss Hickey (Aline MacMahon), his main secretary.  Celia is young, beautiful, and very naive.  Vincent is very attracted to her, but she only has eyes for her fiance Johnny (William Janney).  However, she admires the work Vincent does, thinking he’s honestly protecting innocent people.  One day in court, she watches in awe as he drinks a bottle of poison from the evidence to prove that it’s harmless.  Little does she know that afterward, Vincent went straight from the courthouse to a two-bit doctor to have his stomach pumped.

Later that night, Vincent has Celia come to his apartment under the guise of needing some work done, but he comes on to her instead and she turns him down.  Worst of all, she finds out the truth about what happened in court that day.  Completely disillusioned, she gives her two weeks notice, but refuses to be paid for it.  She doesn’t want to take any money gotten through such dirty ways.  Vincent has no problem meeting women, but Celia’s rejection really stings him badly.  On Celia’s last day, Vincent gives her a check for a hundred dollars and proves that he earned it through legitimate means.

Celia and Johnny are planning to get married right away, but then Johnny is framed for stealing some bonds and gets arrested.  Of course, Celia knows Vincent is the only one who can help him, but when she tries to find him, he’s gone off on a very long bender.  Miss Hickey sobers him up and he gets to work clearing Johnny’s name and getting the person who was really responsible for stealing the bonds arrested.  This move costs him the trust of the criminal underworld, but that doesn’t bother Vincent at all since he’s decided to go straight again.  As he leaves to see Cecile get married, he’s gunned down outside his office.

I have been very excited to see The Mouthpiece for a long time now, since I’d heard Cliff from Immortal Ephemera speak very highly of it.  I was not disappointed at all, it’s now my favorite Warren William movie.  This is exactly the kind of character Warren William is best known for playing and he plays Vincent to the hilt.  The Mouthpiece also has a phenomenal supporting cast.  Aileen MacMahon was a flawless choice to play Vincent’s loyal secretary and Sidney Fox sure had that wide-eyed and innocent act down pat.

The Mouthpiece also has a nice, fast pace and great dialogue, so it’s rather surprising that it’s not a more well-known movie.  I don’t see it on TCM very often, nor has it even been released by Warner Archive.  Let’s hope that changes, because The Mouthpiece deserves to be rediscovered.  Any fan of pre-codes would go crazy for it.

Beauty and the Boss (1932)

Bank president Baron Josef von Ullrich (Warren William), like so many men, very much appreciates a beautiful woman.  But there’s just one place he doesn’t want to see them — in his office.  He keeps his bank running like a well-oiled machine and he’s afraid having a beautiful woman as his secretary would be too distracting.  So when he decides that it’s too hard to keep his mind on work with Olive (Mary Doran) as his secretary, he fires her, but starts seeing her outside of work.

When Susie Sachs (Marian Marsh) hears that Josef needs a new secretary, she finagles her way into seeing him without an appointment.  She very desperately needs the job and at first, Josef tries to get rid of her, but she refuses to go and eventually ends up winning him over.  She shows him just how hard she can work and most importantly, she’s very plain looking, so Josef gladly hires her.

Susie proves to be the perfect secretary, but when she accompanies Josef to Paris to take care of some business, she spends a lot of time keeping Josef’s many admirers at bay.  Not because he doesn’t want to see them all, but because she’s fallen in love with Josef.  Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to have anything more than a professional interest in her. One of the ladies she sent away was Olive and when Josef finds out about that, he sends Susie over to Olive’s apartment with some flowers to make up for it. While at Olive’s, Olive tells Susie that men will never notice her as long as she acts more like a machine than a woman.

Susie realizes that if she ever wants to get Josef’s attention, she needs to take Olive’s advice and reinvent herself. She gets herself a beautiful evening gown, a little bit of perfume, has her hair styled nicely, and suddenly, she’s a whole new woman with a whole new outlook on life.  Naturally, Josef can’t help but notice the change in her…and he likes it!

When you think of Warren William movies, you don’t typically think of delightful romantic comedies, but that’s exactly what you get with Beauty and the Boss.  I hadn’t realized going into this movie that it was supposed to be a comedy, so I was in for a very pleasant surprise. It’s another one of those great short-but-sweet overlooked pre-code gems that I love finding.

I love a classic, totally reprehensible Warren William cad, but it was refreshing to see him in something more lighthearted for a change.  Josef is still a bit of a cad, but he’s a far more likeable cad than we see in Employees’ Entrance or Skyscraper Souls. Marian Marsh and Mary Doran were both very memorable as well.  Some of Marian Marsh’s rapidfire line deliveries truly have to be heard to be believed. The way she rattles off some of her lines could easily give Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday a run for her money.

The Mind Reader (1933)

Chandra (Warren William) and his friend Frank (Allen Jenkins) have tried their hands at just about every carnival scam there is and haven’t had much luck with any of them.  But then they realize where the real money is — fortune telling.  Chandra becomes Chandra the Great, and while he’s performing, Frank hides under the stage and uses a secret microphone to feed questions from the audience to Chandra. Frank also uses the shows as a chance to steal purses from some of the audience members.

After a show one night, the owner of a stolen purse comes back with her niece Sylvia (Constance Cummings) to look for it.  Chandra is very attracted to Sylvia, so he tries to impress her by pretending to have a “vision” of exactly where the purse is.  Chandra and Sylvia start seeing each other and he swears up and down that he’s really in it to help other people.  Even when he hires her to be his secretary, he manages to keep his real motives hidden from her for a while.  Even when she does start to figure it out, he convinces her the act is really just an advertisement for his ability to help people.

Chandra and Sylvia get married, but he isn’t able to keep up his charade for much longer.  When a person commits suicide after getting some bad advice from Chandra, Sylvia begs him to give it  up and go straight.  He becomes a door-t0-door salesman and Frank becomes a chauffeur, but then the two of them come up with a new scheme.  Frank has the dirt on all the wealthy men in town and knows exactly when they’re cheating on their wives.  Chandra poses as a psychic again, Dr. Munro this time, and sells his services to their wives to tell them when their husbands are with their other women.  It doesn’t take long for the unfaithful husbands to start getting angry with Dr. Munro, and when one comes looking for revenge, Chandra shoots the man in self-defense and flees, inadvertently leaving Sylvia to take the fall for him.

The Mind Reader is a pretty enjoyable Warren William vehicle, but not one of his best from the pre-code era.  Warren William is very good in it and Chandra is very much the unethical heel he is best known for playing, but Chandra has more redeeming qualities than Williams’ characters in things like Employees’ Entrance or Skyscraper Souls.  It’s a rather unusual pre-code, which isn’t a bad thing, but I think I would have liked the movie more if the ending weren’t so forced.

I’ve got to hand it to The Mind Reader, though, for containing what has got to be the most canted angle shots I have ever seen in one movie.  The canted angles represent how crooked Chandra and Frank were, and this movie has more canted angles than an episode of Batman.

All in all, it isn’t a bad movie, but if you’re looking for a definitive pre-code Warren William movie, I’d definitely recommend Skyscraper Souls or Employees’ Entrance over The Mind Reader.

What’s on TCM: August 2012

How is it already time for another round of Summer Under the Stars?!  As usual, TCM has done a great job of coming up with a nice blend of stars who are no strangers to the SUTS schedule and stars who have never been featured before.  The more I look at the schedule, the more excited I get to start my Blogging Under the Stars marathon.

Some of the days I’m most looking forward to are: Myrna Loy (August 2), Marilyn Monroe (August 4), Toshiro Mifune (August 9), Ginger Rogers (August 12), James Cagney (August 14), Lillian Gish (August 15), Jack Lemmon (August 22), Gene Kelly (August 23), Kay Francis (August 21), and Warren William (August 30).  I have seen woefully few Akira Kurosawa films, so I am really looking forward to Toshiro Mifune’s day.  As a fan of silents and pre-codes, I was thrilled to see Lillian Gish, Kay Francis, and Warren William got spots on this year’s line-up.  Lately, I’ve been really getting into Tyrone Power movies, so I’m glad to see he got a day this year.  And since I’ve always wanted to see more Jeanette MacDonald movies, I’ll definitely be tuning in a lot for her day.

The complete Summer Under the Stars schedule is available to be download here.

Cleopatra (1934)

After being kidnapped and forced out of Egypt, left to die in the desert, Cleopatra (Claudette Colbert) turns to the only person she knows can help her — Julius Caesar (Warren William).  She makes her way to see Caesar and just as he is about to officially support her brother Ptolemy over Cleopatra, she makes her grand entrance, unfurled from a rug.  She knows how badly Caesar wants to conquer India, and to make it worth his while to help her, she promises him that he could use Egypt to make his way to India.  Caesar still doesn’t quite trust Cleopatra, but she manages to prove her loyalty to him and seduces him, starting a very passionate affair.  Caesar’s affair with Cleopatra becomes the talk of Rome and has some people very worried for what it could mean for Rome’s future.  When Caesar brings Cleopatra to Rome, those close to him beg him to end things with her, and he ignores them and carries on with his plans to address the senate.  But some people, desperate to save Rome from Caesar and Cleopatra, kill him before he can get to the senate.

With Caesar gone, Marc Antony (Henry Wilcoxon) and Octavian (Ian Keith) are named Rome’s new rulers and it is Marc’s responsibility to avenge Caesar’s death by killing Cleopatra.  He arranges a meeting with Cleopatra in a public place so that his soldiers could ambush her, but she knows better.  Instead, she has Marc join her on her barge, where she plans to win him over with food, liquor, jewels, and dancing girls.  She seduces him and the two of them also begin a passionate love affair.  Meanwhile, back in Rome, Octavian has officially declared Marc a traitor and sends King Herod to Egypt to tell this to Cleopatra.  He also has Herod tell her that if she kills Marc herself, Rome will be friendlier to Egypt.

Cleopatra doesn’t want to kill Marc, but some of her advisors recommend that she do it for the good of Egypt.  King Herod also warns Marc of his traitor status and Marc naturally starts getting nervous when he hears that Cleopatra is testing out poisons on prisoners to be executed.  And although she does plan to poison his wine at a dinner she throws for him, they find out that Rome has declared war on Egypt before he has a chance to drink it.  He goes off to fight with the Egyptians and is defeated.  Cleopatra rushes off to offer Octavian all of Egypt in exchange for Marc’s life, but Marc assumes that she is turning her back on him and stabs himself.  Cleopatra returns in time to find him still alive and explains what she has done, but he soon dies in her arms.  With Marc gone and the Romans breaking down the gate to the palace, Cleopatra decides to end it all with a snake bite.

I believe it was Cecil B. DeMille who once said that if a movie set in a biblical or historical setting, you can get away with anything.  His rendition of Cleopatra is proof of that.  This would be an excellent movie to show to someone who thinks classic movies were all so innocent.  With all of Claudette Colbert’s skimpy costumes, her handmaidens in equally skimpy costumes, adultery, murder, and all sorts of other debauchery, their jaws would be hitting the floor so fast.  Cleopatra was released near the end of the pre-code era, and what a way to end an era!  I don’t even particularly like historical dramas, but I thought this version of Cleopatra was fantastic.  With all the crazy debauchery and the big battle scenes, Cecil B. DeMille was so completely in his element here.  This movie needs to be seen to be believed.

What’s on TCM: December 2011

We’re down to the last month of 2011 already!  TCM will be closing out the year in top form.  December’s star of the month is William Powell, which I am very excited about since I’m a big fan of his.  It also means we get two nights of movies featuring him with Myrna Loy, one night being the entire Thin Man series and another night featuring their other collaborations.  His movies will be showcased every Thursday night this month.  TCM will also be celebrating the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens a little early (his birthday isn’t actually until February) by devoting Monday nights to showing various film adaptations of his work.  And of course there are Christmas classics galore to look forward to!

Employees’ Entrance (1933)

For Kurt Anderson (Warren William), Franklin Monroe department store is his life.  He’s the manager and doesn’t think twice about dismissing anyone he thinks isn’t helping the store reach its full potential, no matter how damaging it is to the other person.  When an up-and-coming clothing company can’t deliver a shipment on time, Kurt cancels the order and sues them for damages, knowing it would completely wipe out the company.  When he decides a long-time employee is no longer useful, he fires him and the employee ends up throwing himself out of a window.  None of these things faze Kurt at all, he figures they aren’t his problem.

Before leaving one night after closing, Kurt finds a young woman named Madeline (Loretta Young) trying to spend the night in the furniture section.  She desperately wants a job in the store and although she has a place to stay, the store’s furniture displays are much nicer.  Kurt takes her out for dinner and promises to give her a job.  But don’t think that Kurt has a soft side, he later takes advantage of her.  She gets a job as a model in the womens’ department and meets and falls in love with Martin West (Wallace Ford), who also works in the store, but works under Kurt.   Martin suddenly finds himself on the rise in company after he makes some good suggestions about how to increase sales and Kurt makes him his assistant.  By now, he and Madeline want to get married, but his new job is very demanding and Kurt warns him right off that this is not a job suitable for married men.  Despite Kurt’s warning, Martin and Madeline get married anyway but keep it  a secret from Kurt.

Sure enough, it turns out that Kurt was right.  Martin is always working late and it puts a strain on his relationship with Madeline.  The two of them end up having a huge fight one night at a company party and Martin gets so drunk that he passes out and spends the night in the store.  As for Madeline, she runs into Kurt and the two of them end up spending the night together.  Unaware that she’s married, he asks her out again the next day, so she finally admits that she’s married to Martin.  Wanting to break them up, he tries bribing fellow salesgirl Polly Dale (Alice White) to seduce Martin away from Madeline, but she refuses.  Later, he makes sure that Martin finds out that Madeline has slept with him.  Devastated, Madeline tries to kill herself and Martin goes to see Kurt, ready to kill him.  See, Kurt has gotten into some trouble with the board of directors and with his job now on the line, Kurt welcomes the idea of being shot and even gives Martin the gun.  Martin does shoot him, but doesn’t seriously hurt him.  With Kurt on the mend and once his job has been secured again, Martin and Madeline decide it’s for the best for them to find jobs elsewhere.

Employees’ Entrance is pretty fascinating stuff.  It’s not so much that the story is super compelling, but watching Kurt is kind of like watching a trainwreck.  I don’t mean that Warren William did a lousy job, actually he was excellent in it, I mean that Kurt was such an incredible jerk that I couldn’t stop watching because I just had to see what horrible thing he was going to do next.  And the most interesting thing about Employees’ Entrance is that it doesn’t try to redeem Kurt in any way, shape, or form.  He doesn’t have any big revelations about how awful he was, he doesn’t try to better himself.  No, instead he just keeps on being the same old heel he always was with zero redeeming qualities.  It’s not often that you see a character so very unapologetically heartless as Kurt Anderson.

Three on a Match (1932)

Even as children, it was clear that Mary Keaton (Joan Blondell), Vivian Kirkwood (Ann Dvorak), and Ruth Wescott (Bette Davis) were on three very different paths in life.  Ruth was always very serious about doing well in school, graduated top of the class, and grew up to be a stenographer.  Mary was a bit more rebellious and even spent some time in a reform school, but grew up and went into show business.  Vivian, on the other hand, was the popular girl and went on to marry Robert Kirkwood (Warren William), a rich lawyer, and become a housewife.

After their time together in school, years go by and the girls fall out of touch.  But they end up meeting up again for lunch and Vivian reveals that even though it looks like she’s got it made, she’s really quite bored with her life.  To add some spice to her life, she takes a cruise, where she meets Michael Loftus (Lyle Talbot).  But before the ship even leaves, she takes her son and runs off with Michael.  While Vivian takes up a hard-partying lifestyle full of booze, cocaine, and parties, quality parenting gets put on the back burner.  Police investigate their disappearances, but the only person who finds them is Mary.  Mary tries to talk some sense into her, but when she won’t listen, she goes to see Robert to tell him where they are.  He takes his son back, divorces Vivian, and goes on to marry Mary.

Meanwhile, Vivian has hit rock bottom.  She’s run out of money and she and Michael owe $2,000 to a trio of gangsters, Harve (Humphrey Bogart), Dick, and Ace.  Michael goes to Robert and threatens to go public about Mary’s criminal background, but Robert isn’t fazed by him and throws him out of his office.  Instead, Michael hatches a plan to kidnap Mary’s son and hold him hostage.  The whole ordeal makes Mary realize just how far she’s fallen and, in order to save her son, takes some lipstick, writes a note on her nightgown, and throws herself from the window.

Three on a Match is one wild ride!  I just love it.  The cast is really outstanding.  This is one of Bette Davis’ early movies and she wasn’t really being used to her full potential yet.  Joan Blondell was good, but the real star was Ann Dvorak.  She did a spectacular job playing a junkie.  When she was supposed to be strung out, she was so jittery and nervous, it must have been really hard to get that just right.  This was also was also an early appearance from Humphrey Bogart.  In fact, it was the first time he played a gangster and he certainly showed a lot of promise in that type of role.  Three on a Match is quite possibly the ultimate example of a movie that packs a lot into a short amount of time.  It’s only 63 minutes long, and doesn’t waste a minute of it!  A fantastic cast, great performances, it’s well written, and it’s all packed into just over an hour.  What’s not to like here?

Skyscraper Souls (1932)

David Dwight (Warren William) is a man who only cares about two things: the hundred story skyscraper he’s built and women.  Lots and lots of women.  He’s married to Ella (Hedda Hopper), but only technically.  He pays all her extravagant bills and she doesn’t mind the many other women in his life.  There’s Sarah Dennis (Verree Teasdale), his long-time secretary and mistress.  Sarah wants him to divorce his wife and marry her, but he says Ella won’t divorce him.  The truth is, he’s never even asked for a divorce.  And then there’s Lynn Harding (Maureen O’Sullivan), Sarah’s secretary.  Lynn’s has been seeing Tom Shepard (Norman Foster), a bank teller, but she’s more interested in marrying a rich man.  So when David tries to phase things out with Sarah and make Lynn his new girl, it’s hard for Lynn to resist.

When David isn’t trying to manage all the women in his life, he’s desperately fighting to save his bank and his building.  Bank examiners are investigating him for taking out a massive loan from his own bank to build his skyscraper and to save his bank, he arranges a merger with another bank.  When Tom gets a tip about the merger, he buys up stock thinking that once the stock went up, he’d have enough money to make Lynn want to marry him.  Lots of other people have the same idea, not knowing that David has worked out a plan to get the price of the stock to soar, then get out and leave everyone else holding the bag.  When the stock plummets again, many of the shareholders are completely ruined, including Tom.  David couldn’t possibly care less about the jilted shareholders, though.  Now he owns his building outright and he’s got Lynn willing to go to Europe with him.  When Sarah finds out about what he’s done, she refuses to let him destroy Lynn’s wife the way he destroyed hers.

Skyscraper Souls is really a lot like Grand Hotel.  Only instead of a fabulous art deco hotel, it takes place in fabulous art deco offices.  There’s even a scene where Anita Page’s character wears the same dress as Joan Crawford in Grand Hotel:

But despite the similarities between the two movies, Skyscraper Souls never feels like a cheap imitation of Grand Hotel.  If you know someone who claims they don’t like old movies because they’re cheesy and unrealistic, Skyscraper Souls is a good one to show them to try to change their mind.  It’s definitely a movie that could still be made today.  People who think old movies were all like Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland musicals would definitely be surprised to see David’s very open marriage, murder, suicide, Anita Page playing a prostitute, and how virtually everybody is trying to use other people to get what they want.  There was nothing even remotely safe about this movie.  It’s even got a little bit of cursing, if you listen carefully:

Warren William gave an outstanding performance as such an incredibly ruthless and unethical business man.  I loved how he was able to walk the line between being a horrendous jerk but remaining charming enough that you can see why all these women were attracted to him.  Maureen O’Sullivan did a great job of remaining quite likeable even though she played a self-confessed gold digger.  I thought Sarah was quite an interesting character, especially in regard to how she was torn between being a jilted lover and protective of Lynn.  She and Lynn were very close friends and Sarah would do anything to see that Lynn was happy.  But then when David’s all set to run off with Lynn instead of marrying her, Sarah had very good reason to wash her hands of Lynn forever.  In many other movies, this would have played out differently and more predictably.  But this one takes the less-traveled path and ends with the ex-mistress trying to save the new mistress.

My only complaint about Skyscraper Souls is that some of the subplots felt kind of tacked on.  I like Anita Page, so I really would have liked to have seen her in a bigger part here.  Especially since her acting here was much better than it was in The Broadway Melody, so she had really grown as an actress for talkies.  If I had a star rating system, I’d give it three out of four stars.  Not perfect, but it’s certainly something I’d gladly watch again.