Oh, hell. I have nothing new to say about these movies. I’ve sat and stewed for over a week, broiling under the pressure of a promised feature. This is it: they’re wonderful, sexy, powerful. Watch them if you can.
Time to move on.
The basics:
Film 28: “The Locked Door” (1929)
Adapted by C. Gardner Sullivan from the novel by Channing Pollock
Directed by George Fitzmaurice
Ann Carter (Barbara Stanwyck) – a victim of attempted rape – marries well in spite of her one mistake in judgment (trusting her boss’s son on a date). When he comes back to seduce her stepdaughter Helen (Betty Bronson), Ann tries everything she can to protect the girl – short of being honest with her husband. Barbara Stanwyck’s first real movie – melodramatic villain (cue the silent Mustached Kidnapper Theme), but the issues of trust and blame are still relevant and controversial.
Favorite scene: the long tracking shot in opening sequence of Twenties urbanites at an endless bar getting blitzed on an illegal “booze cruise”
Film 29: “Ladies of Leisure” (1930)
Adapted by Jo Swerling from the play by David Belasco and Milton Herbert Gropper
Directed by Frank Capra
Yep. That Capra. The man responsible for enshrining Donna Reed as Queen of the Good Girls in “It’s a Wonderful Life” here relishes the double entendrees of professional “party girls” Dot Lamar (Marie Provost) and Kay Arnold (Stanwyck again) – and showing them repeatedly in their undies.
Can serious artist Jerry Strong (Ralph Graves) take his irreverent model Kay seriously?
Of course he can. Even Capra gets bored with the de rigueur social maven girlfriend quickly; we don’t see her after the first 20 minutes of the film. Who wouldn’t rather watch Babs parry and thrust instead with the establishment? Even our hero’s mother Mrs. Strong (Nance O’Neil) stops in to give Kay a long, forgiving kiss on the mouth.
Not your grandmother’s take on morality and sexuality, that’s for sure. HER grandmother was a lot more fun, it seems.
Favorite Quotes:
Dot Lamar, after being teased that a single girl can’t afford to eat too heartily: “Sex appeal has no weight limit!”
Local playboy Bill Standish: “Most men never get to be 18, and most women are over 18 when they’re born.”
Film 30: “Double Harness” (1933)
Adapted by Jane Murfin from the play by Edward Poor Montgomery
Directed by John Cromwell
If you don’t know Ann Harding, this film is a perfect intro. Very rarely seen after the implementation of the heinous 1934 Production Code, Harding always played the most consistently well-educated, sexually independent women of the pre-Code era.
Too old to pretend to be a virgin, too accomplished to play the ingénue, she fascinated her leading men precisely because she wasn’t Ginger Rogers. (Of course, not even Ginger Rogers was really Ginger Rogers. Most of the time, her feet were bleeding as she smiled and hopped alongside Fred Astaire.)
Here Harding plays Joan Colby, a shrewd woman infatuated with John Fletcher – a petulant and caddish William Powell. Joan’s already sleeping with John when she realizes she’s in love with him, but he’s not “the marrying kind.” So she conceives a scheme to push him into wedlock, but immediately regrets it. To assuage her guilt, she pushes him to do well in Daddy’s business. And he’s apparently grateful. Hmmm – okay, so these women weren’t all the way liberated.
But who cares? The normally reserved Harding is sexually obsessed and the always gentlemanly “Thin Man” Powell is a dog. That’s entertainment!
And just in case you’re one of those people who sincerely believe that the 35 years of censorship that followed these movies helped create the wonderful, sassy women of the 1930s and ‘40s (instead of their existence in spite of the censors), I submit an excerpt from an excellent essay on Barbara Stanwyck’s career by Susan Doll on Turner Classic Movies site (http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title.jsp?stid=81662&category=Articles):
Stanwyck began to specialize in playing social mavericks or working class girls who didn’t always follow the rules of proper behavior in their efforts to get ahead, or to just survive. These were women who had grown weary of financial burden, cynical from constantly dodging the passes of rich men, and hardened from having children out of wedlock.
Yet, these characters had strong hearts and fiery spirits, and audiences could see the suffering beneath the hardened exterior. Her characters may have taken a wrong moral turn, but they remained sympathetic. Depression-era Americans, who were struggling with economic hardships themselves, could relate to the difficult decisions and impossible situations her characters faced.
Over the next few years, Stanwyck played this type of role in such films as Ladies of Leisure (1930), Forbidden (1932), Ten Cents a Dance (1931), and Baby Face (1933), among others. In 1934, after the introduction of the Motion Picture Production Code (the Hays Code of censorship), her screen image was altered or expanded to include more traditional female protagonists, because adulteresses, women with illegitimate children, or party girls were no longer acceptable as sympathetic leading ladies. But, the “tough-talking dame” aspect of her screen persona remained.
Well, huh. So much for not having anything to say.
Time to move on.
The basics:
Film 28: “The Locked Door” (1929)
Adapted by C. Gardner Sullivan from the novel by Channing Pollock
Directed by George Fitzmaurice
Ann Carter (Barbara Stanwyck) – a victim of attempted rape – marries well in spite of her one mistake in judgment (trusting her boss’s son on a date). When he comes back to seduce her stepdaughter Helen (Betty Bronson), Ann tries everything she can to protect the girl – short of being honest with her husband. Barbara Stanwyck’s first real movie – melodramatic villain (cue the silent Mustached Kidnapper Theme), but the issues of trust and blame are still relevant and controversial.
Favorite scene: the long tracking shot in opening sequence of Twenties urbanites at an endless bar getting blitzed on an illegal “booze cruise”
Film 29: “Ladies of Leisure” (1930)
Adapted by Jo Swerling from the play by David Belasco and Milton Herbert Gropper
Directed by Frank Capra
Yep. That Capra. The man responsible for enshrining Donna Reed as Queen of the Good Girls in “It’s a Wonderful Life” here relishes the double entendrees of professional “party girls” Dot Lamar (Marie Provost) and Kay Arnold (Stanwyck again) – and showing them repeatedly in their undies.
Can serious artist Jerry Strong (Ralph Graves) take his irreverent model Kay seriously?
Of course he can. Even Capra gets bored with the de rigueur social maven girlfriend quickly; we don’t see her after the first 20 minutes of the film. Who wouldn’t rather watch Babs parry and thrust instead with the establishment? Even our hero’s mother Mrs. Strong (Nance O’Neil) stops in to give Kay a long, forgiving kiss on the mouth.
Not your grandmother’s take on morality and sexuality, that’s for sure. HER grandmother was a lot more fun, it seems.
Favorite Quotes:
Dot Lamar, after being teased that a single girl can’t afford to eat too heartily: “Sex appeal has no weight limit!”
Local playboy Bill Standish: “Most men never get to be 18, and most women are over 18 when they’re born.”
Film 30: “Double Harness” (1933)
Adapted by Jane Murfin from the play by Edward Poor Montgomery
Directed by John Cromwell
If you don’t know Ann Harding, this film is a perfect intro. Very rarely seen after the implementation of the heinous 1934 Production Code, Harding always played the most consistently well-educated, sexually independent women of the pre-Code era.
Too old to pretend to be a virgin, too accomplished to play the ingénue, she fascinated her leading men precisely because she wasn’t Ginger Rogers. (Of course, not even Ginger Rogers was really Ginger Rogers. Most of the time, her feet were bleeding as she smiled and hopped alongside Fred Astaire.)
Here Harding plays Joan Colby, a shrewd woman infatuated with John Fletcher – a petulant and caddish William Powell. Joan’s already sleeping with John when she realizes she’s in love with him, but he’s not “the marrying kind.” So she conceives a scheme to push him into wedlock, but immediately regrets it. To assuage her guilt, she pushes him to do well in Daddy’s business. And he’s apparently grateful. Hmmm – okay, so these women weren’t all the way liberated.
But who cares? The normally reserved Harding is sexually obsessed and the always gentlemanly “Thin Man” Powell is a dog. That’s entertainment!
And just in case you’re one of those people who sincerely believe that the 35 years of censorship that followed these movies helped create the wonderful, sassy women of the 1930s and ‘40s (instead of their existence in spite of the censors), I submit an excerpt from an excellent essay on Barbara Stanwyck’s career by Susan Doll on Turner Classic Movies site (http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title.jsp?stid=81662&category=Articles):
Stanwyck began to specialize in playing social mavericks or working class girls who didn’t always follow the rules of proper behavior in their efforts to get ahead, or to just survive. These were women who had grown weary of financial burden, cynical from constantly dodging the passes of rich men, and hardened from having children out of wedlock.
Yet, these characters had strong hearts and fiery spirits, and audiences could see the suffering beneath the hardened exterior. Her characters may have taken a wrong moral turn, but they remained sympathetic. Depression-era Americans, who were struggling with economic hardships themselves, could relate to the difficult decisions and impossible situations her characters faced.
Over the next few years, Stanwyck played this type of role in such films as Ladies of Leisure (1930), Forbidden (1932), Ten Cents a Dance (1931), and Baby Face (1933), among others. In 1934, after the introduction of the Motion Picture Production Code (the Hays Code of censorship), her screen image was altered or expanded to include more traditional female protagonists, because adulteresses, women with illegitimate children, or party girls were no longer acceptable as sympathetic leading ladies. But, the “tough-talking dame” aspect of her screen persona remained.
Well, huh. So much for not having anything to say.
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