Blondie of the Follies (1932)

Blondie (Marion Davies) and Lottie (Billie Dove) are longtime friends. Their families live in the same tenement building in the working class part of town, but Lottie longs to become a big star and find a better life for herself. Eventually she leaves her old life behind her to move to Park Avenue and become a star in the Follies. When she comes back to visit on Mother’s Day, Lottie (who now goes by the name Lurline Cavanaugh) brings Blondie back with her so she can see her swanky new apartment.

What Lottie doesn’t expect is for Blondie to catch the eye of Larry Belmont (Robert Montgomery), who she’s been pursuing. Since Lottie will be performing in the Follies that night, Larry offers to take Blondie so she’ll have a chance to see Lottie at work. Not only does Blondie have a swell night with Larry, spending all night with him at a speakeasy after the show, he even gets her a job as a chorus girl, which makes Lottie extremely jealous.

Blondie’s father doesn’t approve of her going into showbiz, but she does it anyway and becomes a big hit in the show. But after finding out how much Larry means to Lottie, she promises to leave him alone. But Larry still loves Blondie and doesn’t like that Lottie’s been exposing Blondie to that kind of lifestyle (never mind the fact that he’s the one who got her the job in the chorus.) It all ends with Lottie and Blondie getting into a big fight. After a few months have passed, Blondie tries to patch things up between Lottie and Larry again, to no avail. Although she and Lottie are able to mend their fences, Larry still loves Blondie, which continues to strain their relationship.

Mention Marion Davies and many people will think of Susan Alexander, Charles Foster Kane’s talentless wife in Citizen Kane. Since Citizen Kane was such a thinly-veiled stab at William Randolph Hearst, the character of Susan Alexander is often assumed to represent Marion Davies. But Marion Davies is no Susan Alexander and Blondie of the Follies is proof of that. This was easily one of my favorite talkies Marion did. Movies about love triangles were nothing new and movies about showgirls were nothing new, even in 1932. But Blondie of the Follies manages to not feel trite or done before. Davies and Billie Dove were both fantastic in it. Blondie of the Follies was the last film Billie Dove made because she was frustrated with Hearst’s meddling to make Marion out to be the star of the film. I’d love to see some of Billie’s cut scenes because she’s so great in the scenes that made it in, the scenes Hearst felt were “too good” must have been pretty phenomenal.

If nothing else, Blondie of the Follies is worth watching just for the brief scene where Marion Davies and Jimmy Durante do impressions of Barrymore and Garbo in Grand Hotel. Marion was well known for doing impressions at parties of other big movie stars, something we also see her do in The Patsy. But seeing her impersonate Garbo along with Jimmy Durante is pure gold.

The Wet Parade (1932)

File this one under “misleading posters.” It really isn’t much of a romance.

In 1916, the Chilcote family is known for their wealth.  But all of that is lost when family patriarch Roger (Lewis Stone) goes on a bender and gambles away the family fortune.  Distraught over what he has done, Roger commits suicide.  His teetotaler daughter Maggie (Dorothy Jordan) wishes for prohibition, but her brother Richard, Jr. (Neil Hamilton) loves alcohol as much as his father did.  After his father’s death, Richard, Jr. heads north to write a play and moves into a hotel run by his friend Kip Tarleton (Robert Young) and his family.

 

Like the Chilcotes, the Tarleton family is also dealing with a loved one’s alcoholism.  Mrs. Tarleton (Clara Blandick) doesn’t drink and neither does Kip, but Kip’s father Pow (Walter Huston) drinks like a fish.  Richard arrives at Kip’s hotel just in time to hear the results of the 1916 presidential election.  When Woodrow Wilson wins, Pow and Richard are happy since Wilson is opposed to prohibition.  But despite Wilson’s anti-prohibition platform, prohibition soon becomes the law, and bootleg liquor becomes readily available.  When Pow drinks some bad bootleg alcohol, he flies into a rage when his wife confronts him about it and beats her to death.  Pow is sentenced to life in prison.

With his mother and father both out of the picture, Kip has no other choice but to close the family hotel.  But Kip gets a lot of support from Maggie, who he has since fallen in love with.  They get married and vow to wage war against bootleggers.  Meanwhile, Richard continues spending all his time drinking bootleg alcohol and starts dating nightclub owner Eileen Pinchon (Myrna Loy).  Kip gets a job working with Abe Shilling (Jimmy Durante) at the Treasury Department as a prohibition officer.  He does very well at his new job and the two of them even successfully shut down Eileen’s nightclub.  But Kip is so good at his job, bootleggers begin to target him and with Maggie now expecting a baby, Kip has to decide if his job is worth it.

The Wet Parade is an ambitious movie, but perhaps too ambitious for its own good.  I see the messages it was trying to convey, but the final result was heavy-handed and overly long.  I thought the character of Maggie was very underutilized. The movie opens with the story of her family, so it’s easy to think that she would be a prominent character in the rest of the movie, but no. Instead, she’s relegated to supporting character status after that and serves no real purpose other than to be on Kip’s side.  After her father’s death, she seemed quite passionate about prohibition but unfortunately, we don’t actually see her being active in the prohibition movement, it’s just talk.  It would have been nice to see her actually trying to do something about it.

But one thing The Wet Parade does have going for it is a strong cast.  The idea of Jimmy Durante the prohibition agent may sound strange, but I appreciated the comic relief he brought and will probably be one of the few things I strongly remember about The Wet Parade.

Movies That Could Have Been: The March of Time (1930)

Recently, I had the pleasure of revisiting the That’s Entertainment! trilogy.  As much as I love the first That’s Entertainment!, I love how much rare footage is featured in part three.  One of the movies discussed in part three is an abandoned project from 1930 called The March of Time.  The March of Time was intended to be a follow-up to The Hollywood Revue of 1929 and was set to be shot in two-color Technicolor and feature stars like Bing Crosby, Joan Crawford, Buster Keaton, Jimmy Durante, Ramon Novarro, and Marie Dressler.  Only unlike The Hollywood Revue of 1929, The March of Time seemed to have more of a central concept — the past, present, and future of entertainment.  A number of musical scenes were shot for the film, but then the project was scrapped and never completed.

I’m sure that if The March of Time had been completed, it’d be thought of as a historical curiosity today, but I kind of wish that it had been completed.  As awkward and creaky as they are, I sort of love early musical efforts.  They’re just so earnest that I can’t help but find them endearing.  Especially in cases like this where lots of top stars of the era were put together in one movie just because it’s interesting to see all those stars together.  I’d also be quite interested in seeing what they thought the future of entertainment would be.

Even though The March of Time was abandoned, some of the filmed scenes eventually ended up being included in other things.  You can find some of these scenes on YouTube, but I want to specifically highlight one scene called The Lock Step featuring The Dodge Twins:

What I want to know is if this number was supposed to be representing the present or the future of entertainment.  Because if this was supposed to be the future, then they were surprisingly accurate in predicting Elvis’ Jailhouse Rock number.

On an Island With You (1948)

Navy Lieutenant Larry Kingslee (Peter Lawford) is one of actress Rosalind Reynolds’ (Esther Williams) biggest fans.  He even had a chance to meet her during World War II when she was doing a USO show and chose him to do an act with her.  During her act, she kissed him, but even though it was just part of her job to Rosalind, it meant a whole lot more to Larry.  Luckily for Larry, though, he gets to meet Rosalind again a few years later when she films a movie where he’s stationed.  Since the movie is about Rosalind’s character falling in love with a Naval officer, Larry is asked to serve as a technical consultant.  The only problem is that Larry is still carrying a torch for Rosalind and her fiance Ricardo Montez (Ricardo Montalban) is playing the Naval officer her character falls in love with.

While shooting one day, Larry feels like Ricardo isn’t playing the scene with enough passion, so he tries to demonstrate how he thinks the scene should be played (because apparently technical consultants have directorial authority over a movie).  During his demonstration he kisses Rosalind and decides that he’s going to get Rosalind away from Ricardo if it’s the last thing he does.  His love of Rosalind is hardly a secret, though.  When the crew goes out to a nightclub one night, Rosalind turns down his offer to dance so she doesn’t lead him on and Buckley (Jimmy Durante) tries to get him to go after fellow actress Yvonne (Cyd Charisse) instead.  Even though Yvonne is Rosalind’s friend, she’s secretly got a thing for Ricardo.

Back on the set, Larry is needed to circle his plane around with Rosalind on board.  However, he doesn’t just circle around once like he’s supposed to.  Instead, he flies off with Rosalind to the secluded island where they first met years earlier.  At first, he just intends to be gone for an hour so he can make Rosalind dance with him and declare his love for her.  But then some of the island natives take some parts from his plane and they’re stranded.  Rosalind is furious and tries to explain that she was just doing her job at that USO show.  To prove that she can kiss someone without feeling anything, she kisses him again, but this time she does feel something.  The next day, Larry sets out to find the natives and get his parts back, but while he’s gone, Ricardo, Buckley, and a search party come and rescue Rosalind.  Buckley stays behind to find Larry and finds him having a feast with the natives.  When they get back, Larry finds himself in plenty of hot water for this stunt.  Not only is he fired from the movie, but he’s also in trouble with the Navy for improper conduct.  Rosalind tries to save him, saying going to the island was her idea, but he insists on taking the blame.  The relationship between Rosalind and Ricardo just isn’t the same after she returns and he begins to go after Yvonne instead.  When Larry comes to apologize to Rosalind, she kisses him and they live happily ever after.

On an Island With You just fell flat all around.  It wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t remarkable either.  There was nothing noteworthy about the story and the way Larry dragged Rosalind off to an island and made her dance struck me as creepy and stalkerish rather than romantic.  Esther Williams, Ricardo Montalban, and Peter Lawford all have made far better movies, but if you’re a Jimmy Durante fan, you might want to see this one.  Even though Esther, Ricardo, and Peter were the stars, Jimmy Durante was a total scene stealer.  Even during Esther’s swimming scenes, I was more eager to see Jimmy again.    I’d watch it again if nothing else was on, but I’d be hard pressed to highly recommend it to anybody other than Jimmy Durante fans.

The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942)

When Ernest and Daisy Stanley (Grant Mitchell and Billie Burke) invite the famous radio personality Sheridan Whiteside (Monty Woolley) to dine at their home while he’s in town for a lecture, they’re only expecting the prestige that comes with having a celebrity come to their home.  What they don’t count on is Sheridan taking a fall on their steps and injuring his hip.  Unable to leave until it’s healed, Sheridan turns the Stanleys’ house completely upside down.  He and his secretary Maggie (Bette Davis) take over the entire first floor of the home: the phone is ringing off the hook, his Christmas presents are being delivered left and right, and Sheridan invites over some colorful guests like members of his prison fan club.  The Stanleys’ house staff is completely exhausted by trying to meet all his demands and dodging Sheridan’s endless barrage of insults.  And just to make things more interesting, some of those Christmas presents are things like penguins and an octopus.

One afternoon, Bert Jefferson (Richard Travis), the owner of the local newspaper, comes by to see if he can get an interview.  Sheridan initially turns him down, but Bert wins him over with some good snarky comments.  Bert also wins over Maggie and the two of them go ice skating together.  Maggie quickly falls in love with Bert and when she reads a play she wrote, she gives it to Sheridan hoping he’d get it into the right hands.  Instead, he sees that Maggie is smitten and, afraid Maggie will quit her job to be with him, calls up his actress friend Lorraine Sheldon (Ann Sheridan) and has her come to town right away.

When Lorraine arrives on Christmas Eve, he tells her to try to charm Bert away from Maggie.  Even though Lorraine tries hard, Maggie sees exactly what Sheridan is trying to do.  Another actor friend of Sheridan’s, Beverly Carlton, comes to town on Christmas Eve, too.  As luck would have it, Beverly can do an uncanny impression of Lorraine’s current boyfriend so Maggie has Beverly call Lorraine, pretend to be her boyfriend, and tell her he wants to marry her.  Lorraine buys it hook, line, and sinker, but when Sheridan finds out who really called her, he fills her in and she goes right back to working on Bert.

By the time Christmas morning rolls around, all sorts of chaos ensues in the Stanley home.  Maggie quits her job, Sheridan’s friend Banjo (Jimmy Durante) comes to town, Bert decides to go with Lorraine, and, to top it all off, Ernest Stanley cracks and brings the sheriff over to force Sheridan out of his house.  But when Maggie tells Sheridan off, he realizes he has to get Lorraine away from Bert to make Maggie happy.  Luckily Banjo come up with an idea to get Lorraine away from Bert and off to Nova Scotia with him.  With Lorraine on her way to Nova Scotia, Sheridan gives Maggie his blessing to marry Bert and is finally ready to leave.  But just as he’s out the door, he slips once again and it’s back to the Stanley home for him.

I adore The Man Who Came to Dinner!  It’s so incredibly sharp and witty, I just can’t get enough of it.  Bette Davis didn’t make too many comedies in her long career, which I always thought was a shame because she was often absolutely hilarious in interviews.  She was never going to be a rival to Carole Lombard, but she knew how to deliver a witty line, which was exactly what this movie called for.  This was really a nice breath of fresh air in Bette’s career when you consider that she made this right after The Little Foxes and in the same year she also did In This Our Life and Now, Voyager.  The supporting cast was great, Jimmy Durante and Ann Sheridan were a lot of fun.  But even though Bette Davis gets top billing, there’s no denying that the real star here is Monty Woolley.  He was amazing at delivering all those razor-sharp comebacks.  I always love a movie full of snappy comebacks and The Man Who Came to Dinner certainly gives movies like The Women a run for the money in that department!  It’s one of those movies you have to see more than once just to catch everything.  But it’s such a delightful movie, watching it more than once is no chore.