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DIRECT FROM THE STUDIO
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Goodbye, video stores;
Hello, studio vaults!
of TheColumnnists.com
The way we watch movies
and the way we buy DVDs is changing. Again.
It seems like only yesterday when I was going to a neighborhood
bijou to watch a double bill.
These days I get lost in those multiplexes–last week it
was the AMC 24 where I watched "State of Play," which
did not fare well in the emerging culture of the plexes where
action flicks and teen movies (like "17 Again") bring
in youthful moviegoers.
The rules are also changing at the video store. First Toronto’s
Tower Records and Video crashed. And Virgin Records (which also
sellds DVDs) backed out of a proposed new store. Then Sam the
Record Man (and Video Man) closed after 60 years in business.
I was discovering there were few places left to hunt for rare
DVDs. The few remaining superstores were only interested in large
volume titles--anything considered off the beaten track was missing.
Which is why I eagerly checked out the Warners Archive which
is now up and running at wbshop.com. Warners owns the film libraries
of WB, MGM and RKO, a formidable 3,000 or so titles.
The idea is to circumvent the stores and sell directly to the
public and offer titles not available elsewhere, all for $19.95.
About a hundred titles are up with more being added each month.
But the ads are a bit confusing, saying all the films have never
been on DVD. That’s true but I still have a couple of titles
(including "Chained," "Mr. Lucky" and "Thousands
Cheer") from my VHS years.
This website's Managing Editor Ron Miller first alerted me to
the existence of the archive and I arranged to get four titles
through his U.S. address to review on this site since orders
outside continental U.S. are currently unavailable (different
countries have different rights).
All four DVDs came quickly and are of the highest quality. But
there are no extras except the movie trailer--no scene selection
or deleted scenes or critical commentary.
I picked four movies I’d never seen on TV or anywhere else
for that matter: "We Were Dancing" (1942), "Beast
Of The City" (1931), "Cain and Mabel" (1936) and
"Goodbye, My Fancy" (1951).
I wasn’t sure what to expect but all proved delightful surprises.
I always wondered why Norma Shearer’s next-to-last movie,
"We Were Dancing," never seemed to be on TV.
Now I know. It’s not that the film is really bad. It’s
just irrelevant. Made in 1941, it was released after Pearl Harbor
and Noel Coward’s slight one-act comedy of manners must
have seemed positively antiquated to most moviegoers at such
a time.
Shearer would only make one more film, the equally flimsy comedy
"Her Cardboard Lover"(1942) before retiring.
The first question to ask about "We Were Dancing" is
why she chose it over "Gone With the Wind," "Pride
and Prejudice" and "Mrs. Miniver". Any one of
these three would have minted a comeback.
With the death of husband Irving Thalberg in 1937 there was no
one to guide her and her choices proved disastrous.
At 40, Shearer was still lovely if a little mature to portray
a Polish princess engaged to a wealthy Long Island socialite
(Lee Bowman). At their engagement party she suddenly falls for
the aristocratic but penniless Melvyn Douglas. They elope that
night and then reality settles in. Their married life consists
of sponging off wealthy friends until Shearer can no longer take
it.
As with all MGM “A” productions, this one boasts huge
sets and beautiful people. Shearer’s costumes are by Adrian
and scenes take place in a hunting lodge the size of Versailles.
The “bad girl” in the cast was played by Gail Patrick,
who at 5-10 not only towers over Shearer but is eye-to-eye with
Douglas. Patrick became a good friend of mine –she later
produced the Perry Mason TV series–and said she cowered
whenever Shearer entered the sound stage, followed by an impressive
retinue of servants.
“She wasn’t MGM’s Queen–she was the Empress
and one never forgot it," Patrick told me. "I couldn’t
help feeling the film would have been great if made a decade
earlier. But with the war clouds hovering, who really cared?
Norma was convinced this was going to be her biggest hit. Instead,
it played double bills and its failure broke her spirit.”
But I’d watch this one just for the huge supporting cast:
Marjorie Main, Connie Gilchrist, and such Brit scene stealers
as Heather Thatcher, Reginald Owen and Alan Mowbray.
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The Warner Archive edition of MGM's "Beast of the City" with Jean Harlow. |
I remember trying to watch "Beast Of The City" (1931) when it came on Canadian TV in 1958. The 16mm print was pretty fuzzy and it was so late at night I soon was asleep. This time I stayed awake–the print is amazingly clear. I kept wondering why this one hasn’t been included in one of those Pre-Production Code collections.
First impression: this one is so sordid it’s a wonder it was made at MGM. But "Little Caesar" and "The Public Enemy" had been such hits for Warners, MGM got on the crime scene bandwagon –Louis Mayer even imported Jean Harlow from "Public Enemy," buying up her contract from Howard Hughes.
Harlow is second billed behind Walter Huston, well cast as a crusading cop. Harlow is a glitzy good-time girl trying to get policeman Wallace Ford to join the other side. Underworld big shots are well played by Jean Hersholt and J. Carroll Naish.
The violence would get this film an X if released today–it climaxes in a bloody shoot out between the cops and the crime bosses in which virtually everybody gets mowed down, including Harlow, who looks tough and cheap. I’m told the movie got few Canadian bookings because of the violence ("Public Enemy" was banned altogether).
"Cain And Mabel" (1936) is a rarely shown musical with a plumpish 39-year-old Marion Davies getting first billing over Clark Gable, who was by then a Top Ten box office attraction.
But she was the mistress of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst. When Davies lost the lead in "Marie Antoinette to Norma Shearer, Hearst moved his Cosmopolitan Productions from MGM to Warners, where Davies made a series of overstuffed movies with leading men many years her junior.
In fact she’s fun when wisecracking, improbably cast as a hoofer who gets the lead in a Broadway musical after star Pert Kelton walks out. Gable sans mustache (and looking like Jack Dempsey’s brother) is the prize fighter in the hotel suite below hers who objects to all night tap dancing sessions.
The pseudo Busby Berkeley production numbers are gargantuan and there’s a neat cast of Warners supporting players: Ruth Donnelly, Allen Jenkins, William Collier Sr. And if you look really hard you’ll spot Jane Wyman as a backup chorine and former silent star Marie Prevost as a sarcastic secretary.
In summary I couldn’t stop watching this ode to bad taste but I’m not sure I’d ever watch again.
Once I was walking back from lunch in Toronto with character actor Sam Wanamaker. We paused at the Edwardian jewel, the Royal Alexandra theater, and he said he was getting strange vibes about the place.
Next day he phoned to say “I acted at the Royal Alex in 1949 in the touring company of the hit play 'Goodbye My Fancy' starring Madeleine Carroll.”
That was my convoluted reason for picking "Goodbye My Fancy," a rare Joan Crawford comedy. The director was Vincent Sherman, who told me Crawford had absolutely no sense of humor, chewing over every phrase and relishing every syllable.
In "Fancy," Crawford is a congresswoman (think Clare Booth Luce) who returns to her alma mater to accept an honorary degree.
Accompanying her is ironical secretary
Eve Arden and a Life photographer (Frank Lovejoy). Robert Young
is the college president, once her lover and the reason she was
tossed out of college after a night in the college stadium. Lurene
Tuttle is her former roommate who seems to have aged far faster
than Crawford.
The film betrays its stage origins as players enter and exit
chattering away and Crawford talks in an exaggerated manner.
She has a spiel extolling free speech delivered in such an artificial
manner she obviously doesn’t know what she’s talking
about.
The film failed because her fan base just didn’t dig all
that political talk–remember the theme is battling McCarthyism.
Sherman worked overtime with special lighting and flattering
closeups to disguise her advancing years. But it’s newcomer
Janice Rule who truly shines. Maybe that’s why Crawford
continually berated her on the set.
And Eve Arden predictably steals every scene she’s in. The
film might have succeeded if Arden had taken the lead but at
Warners she was strictly comic relief. A few years later she
had a huge hit as TV’s "Our Miss Brooks" and Young
matched her with "Father Knows Best."
The film’s failure hastened Crawford’s departure from
Warners. It was time for another comeback: 1952’s "Sudden
Fear."
©2009 by Jim Bawden. The illustrations are all courtesy of The Warner Archive and the films' original studios, MGM and Warner Bros. This column first posted May 4, 2009.
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