James Cagney

Box Office Poison: Kay Francis

Kay Francis.

When you hear the words “the queen of Warner Brothers,” who is the first person you think of? For many people, the answer is probably going to be Bette Davis. After all, she starred in several of the studio’s most prestigious films, like Dark Victory; Now, Voyager; and The Letter, just to name a few, so it certainly wouldn’t be an undeserved title. Over time, she became so closely associated with Warners that she was nicknamed “the fifth Warner brother.” But before Bette Davis, there was Kay Francis.

While Bette Davis was trying to make a name for herself in movies like Parachute Jumper and Fashions of 1934, Kay Francis had been starring in pre-Code classics like Jewel Robbery, Man Wanted, and One Way Passage for Warners, as well as Trouble and Paradise and Girls About Town at Paramount. She signed her first contract with Warner Brothers in 1932 when they offered her a better deal than Paramount was offering her.

By 1935, Kay Francis had reached the peak of her career at Warners when she officially became the highest paid star at the studio, receiving a salary of $4,000 per week and a lavish new dressing room. Following the success of I Found Stella Parish, she was given a new three-year contract with Warner Brothers even though her contract wasn’t up yet. Louella Parsons reported that this new contract was Jack Warner’s way of rewarding her for her cooperative nature and for never turning down a script offered to her. This new contract bumped her salary up to $5,250 per week.

Even though things were going extremely well for Kay at Warner Brothers at this point, she had lofty ambitions for where she wanted her career to go next. She aspired to work with Charles Laughton. Notably, she was interested in playing Edith Cortright in Dodsworth, but the part went to Mary Astor instead when Warners refused to loan her out. She was also interested in starring in adaptations of Tristan and Isolde and of Mildred Cram’s novel Forever, the latter of which fell through when it was discovered that Norma Shearer already owned the rights to it. Kay was even involved in the early stages of forming a studio similar to United Artists along with Richard Barthelmess, Clive Brook, and Ronald Colman, which also never came to fruition.

Lobby card for The White Angel with Kay Francis.

All was seemingly going well for Kay Francis — and then The White Angel came along. The Story of Louis Pasteur had been a big hit for Warner Brothers, so they decided to ride their own success by producing The White Angel with Kay Francis starring as Florence Nightingale. Not only was there pressure to live up to the success of The Story of Louis Pasteur, being given the chance to play a historical figure was an opportunity for Kay to move past her image as a fashionable glamour queen. But while Kay’s performance received many good notes, and a compilation of reviews featured in the Motion Picture Review Digest largely ranged from very positive to average-but-not bad, the movie as a whole didn’t make the impression Warner Brothers was hoping for. While The Story of Louis Pasteur earned two Academy Award wins for its writing (Best Writing – Original Story and Best Writing – Screenplay), The White Angel didn’t have the strong foundation that Pasteur‘s screenplay offered.

When Kay first read the script for The White Angel, she recorded her reaction in her diary: “Read my new script — dear God!” You might not expect that a biopic of Florence Nightingale would be particularly controversial, but getting approval from all the necessary parties proved to be surprisingly difficult. First of all, a key part of the movie was supposed to feature Florence Nightingale being presented to Queen Victoria. But when the production was denied permission to depict Queen Victoria in the movie, the reworked scene lacked the same dramatic punch as the original version would have had. The Breen office also took issue with scenes depicting brutality, which is highly restrictive when trying to tell the story of a woman providing care to soldiers wounded in a brutal war. One scene involving an amputation had to be cut.

The timing of the release of The White Angel also didn’t work to the movie’s advantage. A movie like The White Angel could have potentially benefitted from people seeing it for school assignments, as was the case for Romeo and Juliet with Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard. Unfortunately, The White Angel was released in late June 1936, after the school year had ended. Kay later said she regretted making The White Angel and producer Hal Wallis noted it was a box office disappointment.

Kay Francis and Errol Flynn in Another Dawn.

The White Angel was followed by 1936’s Give Me Your Heart, which was a more typical Kay Francis movie and was more successful financially than The White Angel. Of course, Jack Warner decided this meant that Kay should stick to her usual fare: movies full of glamour and melodrama. Give Me Your Heart was followed by 1937’s Stolen Holiday and Another Dawn. In her diary, she said of Stolen Holiday, “Script from studio — BAD! Too sweet — old hat.” Considering all the ideas Kay had for her career, getting stuck in the same old types of roles over and over was very disappointing.

Another Dawn is an interesting movie in the sense that a lot of key people involved with it didn’t particularly want to be involved. Warners had originally planned the movie for Bette Davis, who got placed on suspension after refusing to do it, which is how it ended up going to Kay Francis. Kay seemed utterly bored by her role and said of it, “I don’t do much in it. Things just happen to me. I am just a wife who has been unfortunate in love, as usual.” Errol Flynn didn’t really want to do the movie, either. Director William Dieterle only did the movie as a favor to Hal Wallis.

Reviews for Another Dawn were, at best, mediocre. Generally, critics thought the writing was weak and the premise was trite. A critic for the New York Times said of it:

“Not since the fabled phoenix has the Arabian desert blossomed into anything quite so stunning as Kay Francis and her extensive wardrobe in ‘Another Dawn.’ Too often, however, has it, or its romantic Hollywood substitute, beheld the the familiar triangular plot…The picture is not entirely without merit, of course. Herbert Mundin is in it, and the California sand dunes have rarely, if ever, been photographed more beautifully.”

Warner Brothers had wanted Another Dawn to be a special production, so “nice sand dunes” was hardly the reaction the studio was hoping for.

Costume test with Kay Francis for Confession.

1937’s Confession has undergone a critical re-evaluation over the years and has become popular among Kay’s modern day fans, but its initial reviews were somewhat mixed. Many critics thought it was Kay’s best movie in a while, but also thought the plot was a rehash of other Hollywood melodramas. By now, Kay was fed up with all the melodramatic roles and welcomed the comedic change of pace that First Lady (1937) offered. Unfortunately, First Lady was mostly well regarded for its writing and for Verree Teasdale, but Kay’s performance got some good notes from Variety and Hedda Hopper.

However, before audiences even had a chance to see First Lady, a career-altering event for Kay was happening behind the scenes. During her most recent round of contract negotiations, she had a very specific project in mind: starring in Tovarich alongside Charles Boyer and with Anatole Litvak directing. She felt strongly enough about it that she considered being able to do Tovarich a key condition of accepting this contract. Given the quality of material she had been recently been given to work with, she felt that Tovarich would be a surefire way to give her career a shot in the arm. When Warners announced that Claudette Colbert, on loan from Paramount, would be starring in Tovarich instead, Kay was angry enough to file a lawsuit to get out of her contract.

News of Kay’s lawsuit may have been surprising to many because, while some people found her cold and aloof, she wasn’t exactly known for being a diva, either. Remember how Jack Warner voluntarily gave her a new contract in 1935 as a reward for always accepting projects offered to her? The House on 56th Street and Mandalay were both rejected by Ruth Chatterton before Kay took them on without objection. When it came to work, she was extremely professional. She was punctual and always tried to keep her personal and professional lives separate. She was very reliable and had a nine-year streak of not calling out for even a single day off, which lasted until the production of Confession. There are many stories about her being generous and kind to others at the studio, at times rejecting special treatment on the set if it wasn’t also being given to extras. Of course, there were some disputes during productions, but Kay would often come back to smooth things over after calming down. In her personal life, she was known for leading a surprisingly modest lifestyle for a big movie star and didn’t even get a nice car for herself until 1937 — and even then, she preferred driving herself to hiring a chauffeur.

Filing a lawsuit wasn’t even Kay’s first line of action. She tried resolving the problem out of court, but was forced to go to court on September 3, 1937 when Warners refused to budge. In her suit, she accused Warner Brothers of putting her, “in pictures of inferior quality and putting her name in a special interstudio register which kept other studios from bidding for her services.” So not only was she prevented from doing Tovarich, she clearly hadn’t forgotten her disappointment of not being loaned out for Dodsworth.

Bette Davis before her court hearing.

Her case had some common ground with other lawsuits that had already been filed against Warner Brothers by James Cagney and Bette Davis. In all cases, pursuing those legal disputes was very risky for the stars involved. Bette Davis didn’t win her case, but she still got the better roles she wanted. On the other hand, James Cagney did win his case and his contract with Warner Brothers was nullified in 1936. However, other major studios weren’t willing to work with him because they’d be in a tough spot if Warner Brothers succeeded in getting the ruling overturned. This led to Cagney making two movies for the independent studio Grand National, both of which lost money. Cagney later returned to Warner Brothers in 1938 with better contract terms.

These types of legal disputes also had the potential for damaging the star’s reputation with the public. Both Cagney and Davis faced their share of slings from the media during their disputes. In Bette’s case, some tried to paint her as ungrateful and money hungry. But in a letter to Jack Warner written by Bette on June 21, 1936, months before her day in court, she talks about wanting a loan out clause in her contract and vacation time, and even offers to accept less pay if her terms were agreed to. (This letter is available to read on Stars and Letters, but doesn’t talk about her wanting better roles at Warner Brothers, which was another big part of her case.)

With Kay’s status as being a top-paid star, she certainly faced the risk of also being labeled money hungry. But similar to Greta Garbo, Kay Francis wasn’t a big fan of dealing with the media. Kay tolerated it more than Garbo, but she had her limits and valued her privacy. Unfortunately, this meant that some publications seemed to already be losing their patience with Kay even before her trial and were eager to cite specific examples of what they deemed bad behavior. In the July 3, 1937 issue of Picturegoer, there is a letter from the editor dedicated to Kay Francis, chiding her over reports of becoming too temperamental. These issues include a vague mention of trouble while filming 1934’s Wonder Bar, having a reporter thrown out of a party she hosted at a restaurant, not being attentive enough to British press on a trip to England, and arguing with director Joe May about dialogue in Confession. The letter also essentially blames her for the state of her career at that point, as if she controlled the projects she was given:

It seems very likely that nobody wanted to see a revival of the charming and sophisticated Kay Francis of One Way Passage and Trouble in Paradise more than Kay Francis.

Picturegoer ran another article about Kay Francis in their October 2, 1937 issue which opens under the pretense of being sympathetic, reminding people of her reputation for being highly cooperative with Warner Brothers, before citing some brief examples of “artistic temperament” during the productions of The White Angel (which they erroneously call The White Sister) and Confession before airing some grievances about Kay’s relationship with the press:

“It is particularly unfortunate that, amid her other troubles, Kay is not on the best terms with the Hollywood writers and is not getting a sympathetic press at a time that she needs it. She has never liked being interviewed, but until recently managed to maintain particularly friendly relations with the reporters.

The trouble all started when Kay gave a party some time ago. She lives in an extremely modest little house, and when she entertains on on any scale she does so in one of the larger Hollywood restaurants. On this occasion, a reporter gate-crashed.

No one likes to have her party gate-crashed, but Kay might have handled the situation more tactfully. She had the intruder ejected.

Her press vendetta has moreover been intensified by her friendship with Delmar Daves, a screenwriter she met during the making of The White Sister, and with whom her name has been linked in the romance rumors.

Kay has always felt that her marriage to Kenneth McKenna might have stood a better chance if it had not been for all the publicity that surrounded it from the outset, and she has openly resented press interest in her new romance.”

(One can’t help but wonder if the reporter who crashed Kay’s party worked for Picturegoer since they sure seemed salty about that incident.)

Not much is known about what, exactly, went on during Kay’s trial. What we do know is that, rather than having her contract nullified as Kay initially wanted, it was decided that Kay would finish out her contract at Warner Brothers. The official explanation was simply that Kay and Warner Brothers had reached an amicable agreement. Even other people who worked at Warner Brothers were rather baffled by the outcome and weren’t quite clear about what happened. Decades later, Bette Davis said of it:

“Out of the blue, it was announced she would complete her contract by starring in B-pictures! It was simply unprecedented and no reason was ever given. A huge embarrassment for such a star — she had many, many fans…Jack Warner was despicable to Miss Francis. I felt awfully sorry for her, and it certainly scared every actress in town. She said what she had to: that she was looking forward to retiring. Or, at least, taking some time off after working so hard. No one dared question her explanation, but it was known.”

Regardless of what exactly went on in the courtroom during Kay’s trial, her relationship with Warner Brothers was irreparably damaged and the agreement seems to have been anything but amicable. Jack Warner set out on a mission to make Kay miserable enough to break her contract so that the studio could sever their ties with her. But Kay refused to take the bait and continued to collect her big paychecks until her contract ended in September 1938.

Kay Francis in Women Are Like That.

Despite the quality of her recent movies, Kay was still considered a popular star among moviegoers. But despite her lasting popularity, Jack Warner insisted on putting her in what he considered the worst, most demeaning projects possible. First up was 1938’s Women are Like That, which was not particularly well received.

“The plot lacks both dramatic continuity and point. The mood wavers between connubial romance and connubial ruckus, without ever becoming persuasive.” – New York Herald Tribune

“It represents a courageous attempt to explain in the protracted seventy-very-odd minutes at its disposal certain aspects of a human problem which has baffled philosophers through the ages…There is only one question I must ask the authors of Women are Like That. It is, “Like what?” – New York Times

“Women are like that; so probably a good proportion of upper middle class women will like the extremely dull story, pseudo-intelligent dialogue, the romance between middle aged Francis, middle aged O’Brien. It is a woman’s picture for a comparatively small proportion of women at that. Estimate: weak programmer.” – Philadelphia Exhibitor

Some media outlets were also still taking jabs at Kay’s behavior. In an article titled “Kay and Pat are Like That!”, which ran in the January 1938 issue of Screenland, the writer does talk about the warm, friendly side to Kay, but it comes after the writer spends a considerable amount of time making heavy-handed efforts to paint Kay in a bad light while building up Pat O’Brien as the nice, easygoing good guy. After talking about how Kay filed her lawsuit after not getting to do Tovarich, they talked about how Pat O’Brien ended up doing Women Are Like That after rejecting another project:

“And it seems that Pat O’Brien was scheduled to go into Swing Your Lady but he didn’t like the script (neither did Joan Blondell who walked right off the set and took a course in hula dancing), and Pat didn’t want to pile up another suspension so he said holy mackerel and jumping catfish, haven’t you got something else around here I can do?”

Other highlights from that article include:

“A suing actress isn’t the most sociable person in the world — instead of the customary one chip she has the whole block on her shoulder — she is utterly convinced that the studio is trying to ruin her, so why should she be pleasant to anyone? The boys and girls from the publicity department hang an imaginary ‘Small-pox’ sign over the door of the stage and keep as far away as possible. Little people like you and me run like mad in the opposite direction. A suing star, it seems, has all the delightful charm of a coiled cobra.”

“On the set, she is slightly aloof, even when not suing, and doesn’t like to have crowds of tourists gaping at her when she is doing her scenes, or interviewers hanging around waiting to ask if she is going to marry Delmar Daves. On the other hand, Pat O’Brien, a cordial good-natured Irishman, and as natural as the day is long, likes nothing better than having mobs of people watching him act — in fact he and Humphrey Bogart even act better, if that is possible, when they have an admiring audience — and he doesn’t care what an interviewer asks him because his life is an open book. When Pat first started working at Warners, a guy asked him, ‘Mr. O’Brien, do you want your sets closed or not?’ To which our Mr. O’Brien replied, ‘If you want to tear down the sides of the stage and put in grandstands it’s all right with me.'”

Kay Francis in Comet Over Broadway.

Warners hit the mark in demeaning Kay by making her do Women Are Like That, but following it up with 1938’s My Bill ended up backfiring by being more successful than expected. Secrets of an Actress and Comet Over Broadway, also released in 1938, both failed to make an impression with critics and audiences. Comet Over Broadway is notable for being another movie that Kay Francis starred in after Bette Davis refused to do it. Bette called it, “the first nothing script I was given since my court battle in England,” and claimed that she was sick but would have made an effort for better material.

Comet Over Broadway wasn’t the last time the careers of Kay Francis and Bette Davis would overlap. After Bette was put on suspension for refusing to do Comet Over Broadway, she was assigned 1938’s The Sisters, a movie that had been planned for Kay. Kay had expressed an interest in doing 1939’s Juarez, but it ended up going to — who else — Bette Davis. Prior to her lawsuit, Kay had been considered for Dark Victory, and she was interested in the doing the movie, but Jack Warner made sure the part went to Bette.

When Kay Francis was included in the Box Office Poison ad published in 1938, nobody was probably less surprised than Kay. This was exactly the sort of thing Jack Warner had been hoping for post-lawsuit and even in the few years leading up to the ad’s publication, she had no delusions about the quality of scripts she had been receiving.

In addition to assigning her the worst projects possible, Warners continued punishing Kay Francis behind the scenes. Her nice, big dressing room had been reassigned to John Garfield and, subsequently, to Bette Davis. When she wasn’t busy working on set, the studio had her do screen tests with young actors the studio was considering working with. Not only was this the kind of thing that would’ve been considered way beneath the pay grade of someone like Kay Francis, a lot of stars of her stature would consider it an insult to be asked to do it. But Kay still showed up every time and did those screen tests without complaint. Warners even resorted to doing completely petty things just to make her more miserable, like giving her call times that were several hours earlier than when she was actually needed on set and denying her lunch pass requests so that she couldn’t eat with friends in the studio commissary. But she was determined to ride her contract out to the very bitter end, as she said, “even if they put me in a bathing suit and have me walk up and down Hollywood Boulevard!”

Many other Warner Brothers employees were quietly sympathetic to Kay’s situation. The two who had the most influence and best understood what she was going through, Bette Davis and James Cagney, arranged a meeting with Harry Warner to advocate for better treatment for Kay since Harry had the power to overrule Jack Warner’s decisions. However, they weren’t able to get anywhere. There is some speculation that Harry Warner was actually the one behind the studio’s campaign of humiliation for Kay Francis, not Jack Warner, and it was blackmail for some incriminating information they had about Kay, possibly an affair involving another woman. However, I did not come across any meaningful evidence supporting this claim.

By the time she did King of the Underworld, released in 1939, she was still a bigger name than Humphrey Bogart. The script for King of the Underworld was reworked to enhance Bogart’s role, but much of the film still focuses on Kay’s character. Despite this, Warner Brothers decided to give Humphrey Bogart top billing in this movie; his first time getting top billing in a movie. Knocking Kay down in the billing order was such a blatant power move on the studio’s part that critics understood exactly what was going on and couldn’t help but comment on it. Bosley Crowther wrote in the New York Times, “We simply want to go gallantly on the record against what seems to be an act of corporate impoliteness.” Bogart also felt bad about the way Warner Brothers was treating Kay. Even the movie’s original title — Lady Doctor — feels like an insult with its laziness.

Kay’s last movie for Warner Brothers was Women in the Wind, released in April 1939, which some noted had an aura of people just being eager to get the movie done and over with as quickly as possible. Perhaps the most notable thing about the production of Women in the Wind is that it’s when Kay gave a widely-quoted interview that was the basis for an article in the March 1939 issue of Photoplay magazine. This is where the famous quote, “I can’t wait to be forgotten,” came from. That line was said when she was about to film the last scene of her last Warner Brothers movie.

This article includes many candid quotes that show someone at a real crossroads in their life. She talks about wanting to take time to relax, enjoy life, and enjoy the freedom of not being under contract. She talked about wanting to retire, but didn’t completely rule out the idea of doing more movies.

“I don’t say I’ll never make another picture because if I should happen to be in Hollywood and some producer offered me a good part, I’d jump at it. But as far as another contract, or making a career of pictures is concerned, I’m through!…The parade is passing me by and I don’t care.”

Looking back at her career and the way she handled things, she was remarkably honest in her thoughts:

“Perhaps I’d have been better off if I had fought for better stories, but the end didn’t justify the means. I’d have been suspended and the time I was under suspension would have been added to the end of my contract. So, instead of being free now, I would probably have had another year to go. And, even then, I’d have had no guarantee the stories I picked would have been any better. Even if they had been, the only difference would have been that I would be retiring in a blaze of glory instead of more or less inconspicuously — and this is the way I want it. I’ll be forgotten quicker this way.”

Despite her difficulties with the studio, it’s still clearly a bittersweet ending for her. Kay still had great relationships with many crew members at the studio and got a bit misty eyed over the fact that this was the first time she wasn’t hosting a wrap party for the cast and crew.

“I knew I’d start crying and so would some of the others. I didn’t want to become maudlin or sentimental. I didn’t want to say my goodbye that way. I want to remember all these people as friends with whom I used to kid — with whom I had swell times. I don’t want to remember them — or have them remember me — with long faces and red eyes. I want to saunter off the lot and out of their lives as casually as though the picture weren’t finished and we’d be meeting again in the morning.”

As Kay Francis left the Warner Brothers studio lot for the final time, she was saluted by the attendant at the gate. Her dispute with the studio took so much out of her that she never wanted to speak of it again, simply referring to it as “her great struggle.”

Kay Francis, Cary Grant and Carole Lombard in In Name Only.

After leaving Warner Brothers, she stayed active films for several years, mostly in movies for RKO and Universal but with a few for 20th Century Fox and Monogram also in the mix. Of her post-Warner Brothers movies, the best remembered is 1939’s In Name Only with Carole Lombard and Cary Grant. She also had the opportunity to appear in movies alongside people like Deanna Durbin and Rosalind Russell. 1944’s Four Jills in a Jeep is also notable for being inspired by a USO tour she did with Martha Raye, Carole Landis, and Mitzi Mayfair during World War II. After making her final film in 1946, Kay moved onto the stage and did touring productions of plays like State of the Union, Let Us Be Gay, The Last of Mrs. Cheyney, and Goodbye My Fancy. However, health issues began to take a toll on her life and she gave her final stage performance on August 5, 1954. After her shoulder was fractured during a fall, she retired from acting.

Simpson Sundays: Mmm…Grapefruit

James Cagney Mae Clarke Public Enemy Grapefruit

Season 4, Episode 14: Brother From the Same Planet

In this episode, Bart gets mad at Homer and decides to get revenge by pretending that he has no father and signing up for a Big Brothers program. When Homer realizes what Bart’s done, he decides to get back at Bart by signing up to be a Big Brother to a young, underprivileged boy named Pepi. While talking to Pepi, Homer describes an exaggerated tale of the way Bart treated him:

The Simpsons Public Enemy Parody

Homer: “Son, I want you to know I love you very much.”

Bart: “Shut up!”

Homer: “Mmm…grapefruit.”


It’s about time I finally started a new feature on here! Come back every Sunday for another classic film reference or parody from The Simpsons.

Smart Money 1931

Smart Money (1931)

Nick Venizelos (Edward G. Robinson) runs a barbershop by day, but has a reputation for being a very shrewd gambler by night. Known as Nick the Barber, he runs games out of the back room of his barbershop along with his friend Jack (James Cagney) and a lot of his friends believe he could win big if he went into the city and got into a game with some other big name gamblers. They’re even willing to chip in money for Nick to go to the city to gamble with.

Armed with $10,000, Nick takes a train to the city and gets to work at finding out where the action is. If there’s one thing Nick can’t resist, it’s a pretty blonde and when he sees hotel employee Marie (Noel Francis), he’s drawn to her like a magnet. She tips him off about a big card game and when he arrives, Nick thinks he’s playing with notorious gambler Hickory Smart. The only problem is that Hickory Smart is serving a prison sentence in Florida and Nick ends up losing big time to conman Sleepy Sam (Ralf Harolde). When Nick finds out what’s going on, he tries to win his money back, but gets beaten up and he vows to get even with them someday.

Nick goes back to being a barber, but within a few months, he’s ready to get his revenge. Not only does he successfully con the con men, his reputation as a gambler quickly grows. He even gets to finally play cards with Hickory Smart — and wins! He becomes infamous for being one of the biggest gamblers around, which doesn’t go unnoticed by the District Attorney. But Nick soon realizes his new position is being jeopardized by a woman he’s been trying to help.

Smart Money isn’t one of the all-time great gangster movies, but it’s enjoyable enough. The most interesting thing it has going for it is that it showcases two of Warner Brothers’s biggest stars right as their careers were starting to really take off. Edward G. Robinson had just recently had his career breakthrough with Little Caesar and Cagney was working on Smart Money at the same time he was working on The Public EnemyThe Public Enemy ended up being released first, so although Cagney is a supporting actor in Smart Money, he became an A-lister by the time it was released (which explains why Cagney gets equal billing with Robinson.) Smart Money was also, surprisingly, the only movie the two actors made together. It’s really too bad Cagney and Robinson didn’t do another movie together where they both really got to be on equal footing.

Not only does Smart Money have Cagney and Robinson as they were on their way up, it also features a very brief appearance from another rising star, Boris Karloff. Smart Money was released shortly before the public saw his iconic performance in Frankenstein. Keep an eye out for him in the beginning of the movie as one of the gamblers in the backroom of Nick’s barber shop.

Pre-Code Essentials: Footlight Parade (1933)

Footlight Parade By a Waterfall

Plot

When talkie pictures come into popularity, it starts cutting into business for Broadway musical producer Chester Kent (James Cagney). He’s in dire need of a hit show, but everyone keeps flocking to these newfangled talking pictures instead. He’s convinced this is just a fad, but when his business partners take him to the theater to see one for himself, he becomes fascinated with the musical stage show the theater puts on before each movie. Chester decides he needs to get into the prologue game and convinces his business partners what a brilliant plan it is.

Chester gets right to work on his prologues with help from his faithful secretary Nan (Joan Blondell). Nan is deeply in love with Chester, but Chester is so busy, he doesn’t even realize it. He’s got all these prologues to produce, which is anything but a smooth process. He’s going through a divorce and now finds himself getting caught up with gold diggers. Everything that can go wrong does, but when a huge opportunity comes along, he has no other choice but to pull himself and his team together and get three prologues ready to perform in three days.


My Thoughts

Sometimes, an actor or director gets on a big streak of hit movies that when we look back, we say, “Wow, that was a great year for them!” For Busby Berkeley, that year was 1933. In 1933, his distinct brand of choreography made 42nd Street a huge hit, and then he topped himself by following it up with Gold Diggers of 1933. Last, but certainly not least, he one-upped himself again with Footlight Parade. These three movies are some of the most iconic movie musicals ever produced and the fact that they all came out in the same year is absolutely astonishing. With Footlight Parade, Berkeley really pushed himself and came up with some of the most imaginative and whimsical numbers of his career. (For years before I’d even seen any Busby Berkeley musical, I’d see pictures of the chorus girls standing on that fountain as part of the “By a Waterfall” number and know it was a Busby Berkeley scene. That’s how emblematic that scene is for Busby Berkeley.) By this point, he was pretty much done even pretending that these musical numbers could ever be produced on a real stage. But they are so witty, clever, saucy, and imaginative, it’s really easy to just go along with it.

For me, Footlight Parade is also one of James Cagney’s best movies. He is truly a force of nature in it; he truly leaves me in awe. Actors who can do gangster movies and musicals equally well are a rare breed and Cagney certainly falls into that category. He absolutely nails its rapid-fire dialogue and excels at working in such a fast-paced environment. And his dancing…oh, my.  Some of the dance moves he does in this movie look like early precursors to some of Michael Jackson’s dance moves. And like Michael Jackson, he makes all that dancing look so incredibly easy and effortless. But if you ever try some of those moves yourself, you’ll quickly realize how hard it really is.

However, out of Berkeley’s big three hits of 1933, Footlight Parade is the one whose plot now seems the most dated. 42nd Street is the classic backstage musical and people have no problem understanding Gold Diggers of 1933 deals heavily with the Great Depression.  But the fact that many movie theaters used to put on these musical prologues before movies during the early talkie era is now largely forgotten, except by film history buffs.


The Definitive Pre-Code Moments

All of the musical numbers.

“Outside, Countess! As long as they’ve got sidewalks, you’ve got a job!”


Why It’s an Essential Pre-Code

Each of Busby Berkeley’s three big musical hits of 1933 are full of pre-code material, but Footlight Parade easily tops them all. Innuendo, adultery, references to prostitution, tons and tons of chorus girls in skimpy outfits, bawdy musical numbers…Footlight Parade spends many of its 104 minutes openly thumbing its nose at censors. I love how there are several instances of Chester being told that censors either will or do object to content in his prologues. These are clearly jabs at movie censorship boards and the movie is essentially acknowledging and making fun of its own pre-code-ness, which is something I have never seen happen in any other pre-code movie.

Pre-Code Essentials: The Public Enemy (1931)

The Public Enemy 1931

Plot

Even from a young age, it was abundantly clear that Tom Powers (James Cageny) wasn’t on the path to being a law-abiding citizen. Along with his best friend Matt Doyle (Edward Woods), they grow from being young punks to real gangsters under the guidance of “Putty Nose” (Murray Kinnell). But when Putty Nose betrays Tom and Matt, they get in close with “Nails” Nathan (Leslie Fenton) and move into the bootlegging syndicate. Meanwhile, Tom’s brother Mike (Donald Cook) has taken a completely different path in life. While his brother is getting rich by breaking the law, Mike enlists in the military to serve in WWI and works hard to earn an honest living when he returns. Mike deeply resents how his brother is getting rich by breaking the law while he tries so hard to lead an honest life and gets nothing in return.

Tom and Matt become quite well known in the criminal underworld and Tom is particularly ruthless. Given the opportunity, he kills his old mentor Putty Nose. Tom is also awful to the women in his life. When he gets tired of seeing Kitty (Mae Clarke), he ends it by shoving a grapefruit in her face and starts taking up with Gwen (Jean Harlow) instead. After Nails Nathan dies in an accident, Tom gets even more aggressive and gets involved in a nasty mob war that ends up being his downfall.


My Thoughts

Not only is The Public Enemy one of my favorite pre-codes, it’s one of my favorite movies in general. When I saw it for the first time, I wasn’t terribly interested in gangster movies, but I picked up a copy of it because I’d heard it was good and because I like Jean Harlow. The Public Enemy isn’t Jean Harlow’s finest moment, but this is the movie that made me a fan of the gangster genre. With Cagney’s tour de force performance, its well-written script, and fast pace, how could I not be pulled in by it? The Public Enemy is a prime example of why I adore the early 1930s style of film making so much. It clocks in at just 83 minutes, but has a very complex, layered story that is fast paced, but never feels rushed. There’s a very fine line between “fast paced” and “rushed,” but The Public Enemy walks that line flawlessly. And then there’s Cagney. I just can’t say enough about how much I adore his performance as Tom Powers.


The Definitive Pre-Code Moments

Tom’s gay tailor.

Tom’s derogatory behavior towards women, most infamously when Mae Clarke gets the grapefruit in the face.

All of Tom’s criminal activities.

Tom being raped by Paddy Ryan’s girlfriend:


Why It’s an Essential Pre-Code

You know a movie is tough when they have to add an introduction explaining that the movie you’re about to see isn’t meant to glorify this behavior. Gangster movies had their first real golden age during the pre-code era. Not only was there The Public Enemy, there was also Little Caesar and Scarface. There were certainly gangster movies that came after the production codes were being enforced, but the pre-code era allowed them to be more violent and be a bit more ruthless and sinister. A lot of the more violent scenes were edited out when The Public Enemy was re-released under the influence of the production codes.

In one noteworthy scene, Tom goes to a tailor to be measured for a suit and the tailor is meant to be a flamboyantly gay man. When the movie was re-released, the bit where the tailor comments on Tom’s arm muscles ended up on the cutting room floor along with some of the movie’s more violent moments.

Pre-Code Essentials: Blonde Crazy (1931)

Blonde Crazy Cagney Blondell

Plot

Bert Harris (James Cagney) is a hotel bellhop by day and runs gambling and bootlegging rackets by night. When Anne Roberts (Joan Blondell) shows up at the hotel looking for work, Bert knows Anne is exactly the kind of gal he needs working with him and manages to get her a job at the hotel even though the job has already been filled. He tries his best to win her over and she resists for a while, but eventually gets her to join his racket.

After the first time she helps him extort some money from a hotel guest, they go out to celebrate and Bert meets fellow con-artist Dan Barker (Louis Calhern). Dan and Bert start conspiring on a scam together, but it’s all a rouse to con Bert and Anne. When Bert realizes they’ve been ripped off, he and Anne go on a train to go after him, but Anne ends up meeting and falling in love with Joe Reynolds (Ray Milland). Bert has been head-over-heels in love with Anne since the day he met her, but Anne just isn’t as into the criminal lifestyle and thinks Joe is everything Bert isn’t. But after marrying Joe, Anne finds out he’s a lot more like Bert than she realized. Joe’s gotten himself into some serious trouble and the only person Anne can turn to for help is Bert.


My Thoughts

I absolutely love Blonde Crazy. Cagney and Blondell are two of my favorite stars of the pre-code era and this is a perfect vehicle for them to do what they did best. They had the perfect energy for this kind of fast-paced movie with snappy banter.


The Definitive Pre-Code Moments

When Bert goes looking for money in Anne’s brassiere.

Anne doing a glorious job of shutting down a lecherous hotel guest.


Why It’s an Essential Pre-Code

It would be easier to list what isn’t pre-code about Blonde Crazy; it’s pretty much 79 minutes of non-stop pre-code action. Not only is it chock full of saucy and full of suggestive stuff, it does a great job of making Bert and Anne into characters you find yourself oddly rooting for and hoping they end up together despite the fact that they’re a con artist and an accomplice. Under the production code, it was a big deal that the audience wasn’t supposed to be able to root for criminals. Anne’s a little more conventionally sympathetic since she’s not as interested in the criminal lifestyle, but Bert is completely invested in it. Cagney brought so much energy and charisma to Bert (not to say that Blondell didn’t do the same for Anne), that it’s really hard to not to get wrapped up in all of that. He made it easy to forget you’re hoping a criminal gets the girl in the end.

What’s on TCM: July 2014

Maureen O'HaraHappy July, everyone!  With summer now in full swing, TCM has plenty of great movies to watch on hot summer nights.  Maureen O’Hara is July’s Star of the Month and will be featured every Tuesday night this month.  TCM will also be commemorating the hundredth anniversary of World War I every Friday by showing some of the best WWI movies, including The Big ParadeSergeant YorkGrand Illusion, and All Quiet on the Western Front, just to name a few.

The night I am most looking forward to this month is July 10th.  TCM will be featuring six classic documentaries such as Salesman, Harlan County USA, and Sans Soleil. I really like documentaries and that night’s movies is a nice mix of things I’m looking forward to re-watching and ones I’ve been wanting to see.

Now, on to the rest of the schedule…

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Blonde Crazy (1931)

Blonde Crazy PosterWhen Anne Roberts (Joan Blondell) tries to get a job as a hotel housekeeper, bellhop Bert Harris (James Cagney) takes one look at her and knows he wants her to work at the hotel.  The position has already been filled, but Bert fixes it so that Anne gets the job.  Even though Bert is a bellhop by day, he’s got gambling and bootleg alcohol rackets going on the side and he wants Anne to be his partner in crime.

After catching hotel guest A. Rupert Johnson, Jr. (Guy Kibbee) in a compromising situation, Johnson gives Bert quite a bit of money to keep his mouth shut.  Bert and Anne go to a fancy hotel in another city to celebrate and end up meeting fellow con artist Dan Barker (Louis Calhern).  Dan and Bert plan a scam to pull together, but in the end, it’s Bert and Anne are the ones who get ripped off.  They hop on a train to try to find Dan, but on the way, Anne meets and falls in love with Joe Reynolds (Ray Milland).  Joe is more sophisticated and cultured than Bert and Anne can’t resist that.  Even though Bert confesses his feelings toward her, Anne decides marries Joe instead.

A year passes and turns out Joe is much more like Bert than Anne realized.  He’s stolen $30,000 from the company he works for and is facing a prison sentence.  Anne knows the only person who can possibly get him out of this mess is Bert, so she turns to him for help.  Bert comes up with a plan, but it backfires and Bert is the one who ends up in prison.  When Anne comes to visit him, she tells Bert that she loved him all along.

What a duo James Cagney and Joan Blondell were!  I’ve seen nearly all of the movies they made together and I’d say Blonde Crazy is one of their best, second only to Footlight Parade.  Blonde Crazy is practically tailor-made for Cagney and Blondell — snappy dialogue, pre-code antics, and plenty of chances for Blondell to be sassy and for Cagney to be his high-energy self.  They make it an absolutely irresistible movie.  Whether you’re a fan of Cagney, Blondell, or pre-codes in general, you will have a lot of fun with Blonde Crazy.

Sinners’ Holiday (1930)

Sinners' Holiday Running a penny arcade is a family affair for Ma Delano (Lucille LaVerne) and her grown children Jennie (Evalyn Knapp), Joe (Ray Gallagher), and Harry (James Cagney).  Mitch (Warren Hymer) runs a sideshow near the Delano’s arcade, but it’s actually a front for his bootlegging operation.  Ma Delano despises alcohol and wishes Mitch would just go away, but she has more ties to it than she’d like.  Her daughter Jennie is dating Angel Harrigan (Grant Withers), Mitch’s former sideshow barker.  And unbeknownst to her, Harry has gotten involved in Mitch’s racket.

After Mitch gets picked up by the cops, Harry starts running the bootlegging business himself and helping himself to the profits.  When Mitch gets out of jail and finds out how Harry has been running things, he’s out for blood.  Mitch confronts Harry, but Harry shoots and kills Mitch.  Harry tries to get his girlfriend Myrtle (Joan Blondell) to cover for him with the police.  However, he tells the truth to his mother and she tries to frame Harrigan for the whole thing.  But what they don’t realize is that Jennie witnessed the confrontation between Harry and Mitch.

Sinners’ Holiday isn’t a terrible movie, but there are plenty of far better movies out there about bootleggers.  However, Sinners’ Holiday is very noteworthy for being the film debut of James Cagney.  Sinners’ Holiday was based on a play called “Penny Arcade,” which had a brief run on Broadway.  Cagney and Blondell were in the play together and even though the critics didn’t care for the show, they did like Cagney and Blondell.  As fate would have it, one of their admirers happened to be Al Jolson.  Jolson thought the story might work well as a movie so he bought the rights and sold them to Warner Brothers with the stipulation that Cagney and Blondell play the same roles they had in the stage version.

Even though the movie isn’t particularly great, it’s easy to see why Jolson made sure to insist on Cagney being included in the film version.  He is by far the biggest reason to watch Sinners’ Holiday.  If I didn’t know better, I wouldn’t have even guessed that this was his film debut.  Not only does he get an extremely generous amount of screen time for someone who had never made a movie before, he plays the part as though he’d already been playing gangster types for years.  Not a bad way to get a start a movie career.

My Favorite Pre-Code Journalists

As you will see with this weekend’s Journalism in Classic Film Blogathon (hosted by Comet Over Hollywood and Lindsay’s Movie Musings), there are plenty of great movies that feature memorable journalists.  Citizen Kane, His Girl Friday, All the President’s Men, just to name a few.  But for me, my favorite reporters in movies were all from the pre-code era.

Clark Gable It Happened One NightClark Gable as Peter Warne in It Happened One Night

Now Peter Warne is a reporter who will go to any length to get a good story.  And you gotta admit, he put up with a lot of nonsense from Ellie on their trip together.  But when it comes down to it, Peter isn’t a greedy man.  After falling in love with Ellie, he just wants to publish his story so he can have the money to marry her.  And even when it looks like she’s left him to go back to Westley, he still doesn’t care about the huge reward.  All he wants cares about is getting his expenses reimbursed.

Joan Crawford in Dance, Fools, DanceJoan Crawford as Bonnie Jordan in Dance, Fools, Dance

Bonnie Jordan may be just a rookie reporter, but she also goes the extra mile for her job.  When one of her fellow reporters is killed while investigating gangster Jake Luva (played by Clark Gable), her editor sends her to find out who is responsible for his death.  So Bonnie takes a job dancing in Jake’s nightclub so she can get close to him.  Of course, she ends up biting more than she can chew and even though she gets her story, she decides being a reporter just isn’t right for her after all.  But you’ve certainly got to give her credit for giving it her all.

Glenda Farrell in Mystery of the Wax MuseumGlenda Farrell as Florence Dempsey in Mystery of the Wax Museum

You can always count on Glenda Farrell to bring plenty of sass to her characters and Mystery of the Wax Museum is no exception.  Not only is Florence sassy, she can dig up stories on slow news days and is smart enough to figure out what’s really happening at the wax museum.  Every newspaper needs a Florence Dempsey type on their staff.

James Cagney in Picture SnatcherJames Cagney as Danny Keane in Picture Snatcher

Gotta love Danny Keane.  After giving up being a gangster, he decides to pursue his lifelong dream of being a newspaper reporter.  He doesn’t work at the best paper in town, but he makes the most of the opportunity.  Danny is clever, resourceful, and not afraid to break the rules, so he excels at getting some hard-to-get pictures for the paper.  Even though he’s not the most ethical journalist, he’s not cold and ruthless, either.  When he goes too far on the job and ends up hurting the girl he’s fallen in love with, he feels just awful about it.

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For more contributions to the Journalism in Classic Film Blogathon, head on over to Comet Over Hollywood or Lindsay’s Movie Musings.