OVP: Come and Get It (1936)

Film: Come and Get It (1936)

Stars: Edward Arnold, Joel McCrea, Frances Farmer, Walter Brennan

Director: Howard Hawks & William Wyler

Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (Best Supporting Actor-Walter Brennan*, Editing)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Walter Brennan: click here to learn more about Mr. Brennan (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Walter Brennan spent much of his early career in bit parts, largely focusing on small roles that amount to what we would call "cameos" if he were famous, but really were extra work since he hadn't made a big name for himself yet.  It wasn't until 1935 that Brennan would start to get more significant work, but that history is important when you think about Brennan's most singular achievement to anyone looking back on his career today: that of winning three Academy Awards in the span of five years, unprecedented for an actor both then and now (it seems pretty much unthinkable that this feat will ever be matched).  This is because of a quirk in Academy voting laws in the early 1930's.  When the Academy introduced the supporting categories in 1936 (in part due to Franchot Tone being nominated for Best Actor in what pretty much everyone considered to be a "supporting" role), extras were still a part of SAG (this would end in 1946 when the Screen Extras Guild would be formed) and as a result, many were eligible to vote for the Oscars.  One of the primary reasons that people attribute to Brennan's unusual feat of winning three Oscars in rapid succession was of his popularity as a former member of the extras, who voted for him en masse to get all three of his trophies.  I have seen two of Brennan's three Oscar wins (he would later take trophies for Kentucky and The Westerner), so I figured I couldn't do a month devoted to him without getting to his first (and my final) Oscar win for him, Come and Get It.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie, based on the bestselling novel by Edna Ferber is about Barney Glasgow (Arnold), a cutthroat logging tycoon who rises up from the ranks as a foreman and (thanks to a lack of scruples and marrying for money) finds himself as the head of the logging industry in Wisconsin.  The film is split into two halves, the first of which shows Barney's rise, when he & his buddy Swan Bostrom (Brennan) form a partnership, and Barney must choose between the true love of his life, a saloon singer named Lotta Morgan (Farmer) and the wealthy Emma Louise (Mary Nash).  He chooses money, and Lotta ends up marrying Swan, even though her heart is broken.  Years later, when Barney is rich, he seeks out Swan, now a widower, whose daughter Lotta Bostrom (also Farmer) is the spitting image of her mother (apparently that's what happens when you cast the same actress to play both parts!).  Driven mad by his inability to have Lotta in his youth, he aggressively pursues her, even though he's married and there's a huge age gap, but the younger Lotta is more interested in his son Richard (McCrea), and despite Barney's protestations, Richard & Lotta end up together in the final moments.

There's a lot of good stuff here, and I get why this novel was a success.  Barney is not an antihero but a proper villain, but still a bad guy who learns a lesson by the film's end-that youth & love are far more precious than money, and you cannot buy them no matter how hard you try.  The final moments of the film work really well as Lotta rejects Barney not for his money or for his cruelty, but for his age, the one thing his fortune cannot do is buy back the time he's spent selling his soul.  It's solid plotting, and combined with the cruelty of his treatment of the elder Lotta, a great comeuppance.

But in the Hays Code world, you don't really get a lot of mileage out of the obsession that Barney has with the younger Lotta (in a different world, this could've served as inspiration for Vertigo), and Arnold isn't a good enough actor to get beyond what the page has in front of him.  Instead we largely get a slog, albeit one with a very talented Frances Farmer playing two women so differently you'll be forgiven for thinking they're different actresses (Farmer, of course, is the stuff of Hollywood legend given her tragic offscreen life, but it's nice to see her afforded the ability to actually act here, and prove that she was more than just a sad tale).  Brennan's performance is, charitably, fine.  He plays Swan as a comic relief stereotype, which would be fine except there's nothing really there.  I will admit that I generally like Walter Brennan (if you watch enough old Hollywood performances inevitably you see him in a lot of stuff), but I don't know that I've ever seen a movie where he actually deserved an Oscar nomination, much less a win.  This is true for his caricature of a person in Come and Get It.

Dracula's Daughter (1936)

Film: Dracula's Daughter (1936)

Stars: Otto Kruger, Gloria Holden, Marguerite Churchill, Irving Pichel

Director: Lambert Hillyer

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

On Sunday, we talked about Bela Lugosi, and I mentioned that I wanted to kick the series off with him as I didn't expect us to get to Bela in the coming weeks despite him being a major part of our past two seasons.  That's in large part due to Dracula's Daughter not going as intended.  In the years that followed Dracula, Lugosi was oftentimes typecast (much to his chagrin) as a staple in horror movies.  Unlike Boris Karloff, he wasn't able to escape that shadow, and because he was constantly working in bargain-basement horror (even by 1936), he wasn't able to negotiate the kind of salary he initially demanded in Dracula's Daughter, which he priced himself out of by demanding too much money (the initial plans were to hire Lugosi for the film).  As a result of these factors, Lugosi (unlike Karloff) would not get to spend most of the 1930's playing his  most famous role, and indeed his only other appearance onscreen as Dracula was in 1948's Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

(Spoilers Ahead) Dracula's Daughter takes place immediately after the events of 1931's Dracula, with Professor Van Helsing (Edward van Sloan in a small part), being arrested for murder, but ultimately it not being a problem because he killed a man who was already dead.  He enlists the help of his old student Dr. Garth (Kruger), who quickly comes in contact with a woman named Countess Marya Zaleska (Holden), who turns out to be Dracula's daughter.  Zaleska is leerier of her urges for blood, but like Dracula, ultimately cannot resist, and starts to murder young woman around London, including kidnapping Dr. Garth's love interest Janet (Churchill).  The film ends with the Countess shot through the heart by one of her accomplices whom she refused to make immortal, and Dr. Garth & Janet safe-and-sound.

The film takes on a different camp value than we're used to from Dracula.  When I think of the Dracula pictures, I am always struck by how they have this sort of fading virility, this way that Bela Lugosi or John Carradine are seducing young women, but to a modern audience feeling a bit absurd because they are not seductive in the way we'd expect today.  This lacks that masculinity, and as a result it feels refreshing.  Countess Zelaska is a cooler murderer, someone who never waivers (I don't think I saw her blink the whole picture), but who also finds a bit of the camp value not from the dated horror, but from her melodramatic line readings.

This works for me-I liked Dracula's Daughter in a way I haven't felt about a lot of the Monster sequels (save the Frankenstein ones).  The film's lesbian undertones (they're there, with Countess Zelaska clearly struggling with her sexuality beyond-the-page) add a modern element to the film, and Gloria Holden can genuinely act.  The rest of the cast is tripe (though I have a soft spot for Edward van Sloan at this point he's shown up in so many of these pictures), but Holden keeps the movie together, and starts us out with a solid, well-constructed monster sequel, one that strangely doesn't seem to miss Bela Lugosi's distinctive energy.

Past Horror Month Reviews (Listed Chronologically): The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, The Raven, Werewolf of London, Son of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Mummy's Hand, The Wolf Man, Cat People, The Ghost of Frankenstein, The Mummy's Tomb, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, The House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Revenge of the Creature, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Blob, The Masque of the Red Death

OVP: San Francisco (1936)

Film: San Francisco (1936)

Stars: Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald, Spencer Tracy, Jack Holt

Director: WS van Dyke

Oscar History: 6 nominations/1 win (Best Picture, Director, Actor-Spencer Tracy, Original Story, Assistant Director, Sound Recording*)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

If you spend a lot of time on Film Twitter or the online awards circuit, you will find that one of the bigger conversations discussed is "category fraud."  This, for those unfamiliar, is when someone who is clearly a lead player tries for a supporting nomination because they think it will be easier to get the nomination.  The debate runs the gamut between clear cases of fraud (Rooney Mara in Carol comes to mind) to cases where it's more debatable (think Jennifer Lopez in Hustlers).  I'm not in favor of this, and as a general rule when we do our OVP acting write-ups, I make a point of docking one point from any lead performance committing category fraud.  But the opposite occasionally happens, and I will admit...I don't have quite the same problem with it.  This is when a supporting performance for some reason pushes for lead-it's less common, but it's a peculiarity throughout the Oscars.  Perhaps the most flagrant example of this happened the very first year of the supporting categories, when Spencer Tracy was nominated for lead actor...for a performance that clocks in at less than 15 minutes.

(Spoilers Ahead) San Francisco is about Mary Blake (MacDonald), a broke young woman who is trying to make it as a singer.  She encounters Blackie Norton (Gable), who (because she sings like Jeanette MacDonald) pretty much hires her on the spot.  The two start to fall in love, but there's an unease about how they picture domesticity-Mary wants to continue her career to greater heights, whereas Blackie wants her to continue to sing for his nightclub.  This causes a rift in their relationship, where Mary ends up engaged to another man.  The film culminates with a showdown as Mary tries to (against Blackie's wishes) save his club from financial ruin after she leaves it...only to have the 1906 San Francisco earthquake interrupt their fight, killing hundreds in the process, including Mary's new fiancee.  Mary & Blackie reunite, potentially as lovers but certainly as grateful friends, before the ruins of San Francisco morph into a then-modern day San Francisco.

The movie itself, I'll be honest, is a snore.  I love me some Clark Gable, but Jeanette MacDonald...is only good because she's not Nelson Eddy (who is the worst).  Sure she can sing, but her screen persona is so vacant & too wishy-washy.  She reminds me of an operatic Loretta Young, and that is not meant as a compliment.  The one impressive moment of the film is surely the earthquake, and yes-that's spectacular.  I honestly was floored by how it seemed to come out-of-nowhere (even though it had been regularly telegraphed), and in a world without CGI, it has a proper sense of danger & unrest.  If there was a Special Effects Oscar in 1936, San Francisco would've been an easy sell for the win.

But the nominations that did happen, I'm not onboard with.  Directing (and assistant directing) feels like the only thing that's worthwhile is the earthquake scene, but that's maybe 15 minutes of the movie-I can't get behind that.  The story itself is confusing, boring, and pretty repetitive.  I will say that the sound recording gets a thumbs up from me though-between the earthquake & MacDonald's crazy high notes, there's a lot of sound recording here, and I think it comes together well, if not as well as something like Gone with the Wind or The Wizard of Oz just a couple of years later.

Which brings us back to Spencer Tracy.  Tracy's nomination is genuinely confusing.  His priest is a chauvinist (a trope for the actor), one who condemns MacDonald for dressing too provocatively in one scene.  But he's also barely there, and pretty much an afterthought (I didn't include him in the writeup for a reason)-if he weren't Spencer Tracy, you wouldn't notice this character.  I'm at a loss on how this happened.  If MGM wanted a lead actor for San Francisco, Gable was right there and a big star.  If they wanted Tracy for a film, he was considerably more engaging in Fury, which was also an MGM property and one that was nominated for a writing Oscar so it was in the Academy's purview.  I'm not confused as to why Tracy was marketed as lead (it would take until the 1970's before we'd more regularly start seeing leading actors attempt supporting nominations on the regular), but I'm baffled as to why the Academy bought it.

OVP: The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936)

Film: The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936)

Stars: Fred MacMurray, Sylvia Sidney, Henry Fonda, Fred Stone, Beulah Bondi

Director: Henry Hathaway

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Song-"A Melody from the Sky")

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Sylvia Sidney-click here to learn more about Ms. Sidney (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As I've mentioned a few times in this series, Sylvia Sidney's time as a major player in Hollywood was quite short, even if her career lasted many decades.  So we are now entering the third of our three 1936 films starring Sidney during the peak of her career (our last one will be in 1937), and the only one of the films this month we'll watch that was filmed in color, Technicolor in fact (the process had just started to happen in feature-length films less than a year before the movie's release with 1935's Becky Sharp).  Trail of the Lonesome Pine was a hit, and a big deal for Sidney, but despite three big name stars, I have to admit that this movie has a sentimental place for me because it was the favorite film of my grandfather.  A man who was not short on opinions, but rarely talked about the movies he liked (though he did go to the movies every year on his anniversary), this was the first movie he remembered seeing as a teenager, and oh how he would wax on about The Trail of the Lonesome Pine.  So while I was thinking of Ms. Sidney, my first thought for this movie kept being "this is the movie I would hear about so much in my childhood" & am excited to finally put a film with a name.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is a love triangle between June (Sidney), her cousin Dave (Fonda), and Jack Hale (MacMurray).  June & Dave live in the backwoods of Kentucky, where their family the Tollivers have a longstanding feud with the Falins, but are content with the way things are.  When Jack comes into town, he offers both the Falins & the Tollivers enormous sums of money to mine their land, but in the process June begins to fall for Jack.  Dave, in his anger, attacks a Falin, and this sets off the feud between the two, which culminates in two Tolliver deaths: June's younger brother Buddie (played by Our Gang regular Spanky McFarland), and then eventually Dave, who is shot in the back & afterward ends the feud.  Some synopses of the movie indicate that Jack & June then engaged, but either I have a scene missing on my DVD or I totally missed a plot point (or, more likely, people who have read the book interpreted the ending was the same as the novel even though the movie has more ambiguity), as while it's obvious that's what is likely going to happen, the movie ends rather somberly with Dave's death.

The picture itself is sluggish & a bit saccharine (with due respect to my grandpa, he tended to like saccharine films/television-he was not an "edgy" man by any stretch-and so I get why he enjoyed the movie).  It's beautiful, of course.  The color cinematography, though in its infancy (it doesn't really utilize it to its full effects with rather drab costuming), is glorious, particularly the shots of the old mill, but that doesn't make up for a so-so storyline, and under-performances from MacMurray & Fonda, both of whom I generally like.  Sidney, our star of the month, once again doesn't necessarily give us a great performance, but she firmly establishes she has star presence.  Her gigantic eyes & kewpie doll face are magnetic, and I kept rooting for her throughout.

The film won one Oscar nomination, but it was weirdly not for Cinematography (they didn't give nominations to color films then, and a different movie won the special prize), but for Best Original Song.  The movie has two original songs, and for some reason the Academy went with the one that has almost no bearing on the film itself, "A Melody from the Sky," sung briefly about halfway through the film by a side character with no real connection to the movie.  Meanwhile, "Twilight on the Trail" is a much catchier number that shows up repeatedly through the film, including at both the funeral scenes, and would go on to be a huge hit.  I...don't have an explanation here-"Twilight on the Trail" is the better number, better-used, & is far more famous today, and yet they went with the other song.  It's proof that the Music Branch has always done its own thing.

Sabotage (1936)

Film: Sabotage (1936)

Stars: Sylvia Sidney, Oscar Homolka, Desmond Tester, John Loder

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Sylvia Sidney-click here to learn more about Ms. Sidney (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles. 

We will be doing a weekend of Hitchcock starting today with another edition of "Sunday Leftovers" tomorrow which happens to coincide with the weekend we look at Sylvia Sidney, our Star of the Month's, connection to the Master of Suspense.  Sidney in 1936 was a very big deal, in fact according to some reports she was the highest-paid actress in Hollywood, commanding some $80,000 for her 8-week production of this movie (about $1.5 million today, not bad for two months on the job).  The actress has stated in interviews that she adored working with Hitchcock, though he treated her "like an idiot," so another case where he wasn't exactly respecting his leading woman.  Still, Sabotage is hard to argue with when it comes to the finished product-as someone who wasn't really feeling Sidney's demeanor last week with Fury, I was totally captivated with what she did with Hitchcock in this taut thriller.

(Spoilers Ahead) Sabotage (not to be confused with Hitchcock's Saboteur) is based on the novel The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad (another confusing angle-Hitch also made a movie called Secret Agent which we reviewed last month).  Sidney plays Mrs. Verloc (I don't think they ever actually say her first name), a woman in a tough marriage to Karl (Homolka) that she puts up with because it provides some financial help for her kid brother Stevie (Tester).  Karl is up to no good, as he is helping a terrorist group execute attacks all across London, though his commitment to these criminals is rocky.  Initially we think Mrs. Verloc's friend Ted (Loder) is just trying to flirt with a married woman, but we soon realize that he's a member of Scotland Yard, and in fact is tailing Karl, assuming (correctly) that he has something to do with the power grid attack at the beginning of the film.  The movie hits a climactic point when Karl, caught in a trap (Ted is about to realize that Karl has a bomb) sends Stevie to deliver the bomb on a bus, but Stevie, a young man, gets distracted & dies in the explosion.  This causes Mrs. Verloc to see Karl for who he really is, and in a fight she stabs him with a steak knife.  The ending is bittersweet, as Mrs. Verloc gets away with the death (it was in self-defense...for the most part), but she loses her kid brother, and she & Ted head off to a melancholy romance.

The movie is atypical for Hitchcock, who while he frequently would kill off adults in his films, sometimes giving us truly rough endings, it's rare that children appear in his films & end up dead.  Hitchcock himself would later say on The Dick Cavett Show that this was a huge error (even if it was true to the source), and wished that he had let the Stevie character somehow survive the crash.  It does, however, make for terrific drama.  I was certain that Stevie would run off of the bus, escaping death, and when he doesn't, it's a shock that elevates the remainder of the film.  As a result, this is a surprise success for me, and one of the better Hitchcock films of the 1930's.

As for Sidney, after a boring start (this is not the kind of Hitchcock film that puts the woman in the center), she nails the back half of the movie.  She uses her gigantic saucer eyes to totally capture the mood of the film, acting with her face as she begins to understand the true motives of both Karl & Ted. Karl's death scene is the true virtuoso.  While it's meant for us as the audience to take away that Mrs. Verloc committed the murder in self-defense, there's just enough doubt in Sidney's expression to make a modern audience question this...wondering if this was an expression of her grief over losing her brother rather than just a "they both reached for the knife" situation.  Either way, Sidney plays to her strengths here & gives me hope we'll have some better roles for her as we move away from Hitchcock into some of her other high-profile films.

OVP: Fury (1936)

Film: Fury (1936)

Stars: Sylvia Sidney, Spencer Tracy, Walter Abel, Bruce Cabot, Walter Brennan

Director: Fritz Lang

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Story)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Sylvia Sidney-click here to learn more about Ms. Sidney (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles. 

We will give Sylvia Sidney her due in a second & kick off her month below, but I cannot ignore the fact that this film feels weirdly prescient immediately after watching it.  I tend to write these articles, especially "Saturdays with the Stars" weeks, if not occasionally months, in advance of when they publish (I have only missed one Saturday in two years, and I had pneumonia & 103-degree fever when that happened, and I am not breaking that streak again).  As a result, I watched Fury days after the terrorist attack on the Capitol on January 6th.  I suspect (and hope) that is not old news for you even though it was a month ago that it happened (I would like to think that such an attack on democracy would not wither out of the news cycle so quickly), but it's bizarre to watch a film like this after such an attack, as it's really, really similar in some ways to what happened on January 6th.

(Spoilers Ahead) Here's what I mean.  We have a film about a guy-named-Joe (Tracy, and oh god, I just realized the main character is named Joe).  He's in love with a girl named Katherine (Sidney) and for reasons that aren't really clear, they have to spend a year apart.  As Joe is returning to Katherine, whom he is engaged to & will soon marry, he is stopped (by Walter Brennan in a small role, and why is it that I can never tell how old Walter Brennan is supposed to be?), and accused of the kidnapping of a child that has taken place nearby.  Joe fits the description of the kidnapper, specifically his love of peanuts, and is arrested.  The townspeople catch word of Joe, and start gossiping, working themselves up into a fury, eventually creating a mob that storms a government (based on lies that they've heard about Joe), and destroy the building, with no regard for whether or not the lies are true, or if Joe is actually guilty.

Eerie, right?  The rest of the film obviously isn't as connected to real life, as it turns out that Joe is really alive, but wants revenge, and lets the townspeople go to trial for his murder, but is convinced by Katherine (when she understands he's still alive), to free them before they're convicted of murder & hanged.  The film itself is good, but I'll admit right now it's too close to reality for me to be able to judge it properly.  I'm going with three stars because it's compelling (I was screaming at one point at the screen), and Tracy is solid in the lead, but the ending is disappointing (Fritz Lang hated the ending, as it pretty much exonerates the townspeople for their hand in Joe's attempted murder), and I was honestly so shocked by the similarities it threw me off from appreciating the film properly.

I don't want to neglect Sylvia Sidney here, as we only have four Saturday's in a short month to be able to invest in her.  In 1936, when Fury was made, she was just coming off of a divorce after a marriage to Bennett Cerf (if you've ever watched old reruns of What's My Line? you know who Cerf is), and was a pretty big deal.  She'd largely taken over the perch at Paramount that Clara Bow had once sat in, despite the two actresses having little in common in their onscreen personas, and was smartly playing opposite a lot of major leading men of the era, stoking her popularity in the process (audiences were enamored with her saucer-like eyes).  It was about this time that she started to become the most highly-paid woman in Hollywood, though her position at that perch was short-lived.  Sidney's a weird actress to profile for this series, as I alluded to when we kicked off our month devoted to her as she was very famous for a brief period of time (essentially just 1936 & 1937), and then took long sabbaticals from acting that were broken up by memorable movies.  This month we're going to just focus on those two years, but tell as much of her story as possible.  Here, she's serviceable-her character is badly written (as is much of the third act, which is where she gets a lot of her screen-time), but she has enough of a glow to her that I'm curious what she'll be like as we move into next week, and one of her biggest classics.

OVP: The General Died at Dawn (1936)

Film: The General Died at Dawn (1936)

Stars: Gary Cooper, Madeleine Carroll, Akim Tamiroff

Director: Lewis Milestone

Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Supporting Actor-Akim Tamiroff, Score, Cinematography)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Madeleine Carroll-click here to learn more about Ms. Carroll (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Madeleine Carroll's career in movies was relatively brief, and we'll talk about the end of it next week a little bit, but her two pairings with Alfred Hitchcock made her a marketable star in America, and as a result she signed a contract with Paramount, becoming the first really important British actress to get a star contract from a major studio.  This led, of course, to her working with the pride-and-joy of the Paramount lot, Gary Cooper, in The General Died at Dawn, our picture today.

(Spoilers Ahead) The plot of The General Died at Dawn is confusing.  Essentially what the movie is about is O'Hara (Cooper), a man living in a war-ravaged China, attempting to give ammunitions to the peasants to fight General Yang (Tamiroff), who is mad & acts as a tyrant in the countryside.  Judy's (Carroll) father is in league with Yang, and she's essentially tasked to "distract" him (i.e. use her feminine wiles to get after Cooper), but in the process of course falls in love with him.  In the end, Yang & Judy's father both die (the latter dying literally at O'Hara's hands, and yet the romance still remains a thing), and the ammunitions are saved.

The General Died at Dawn shouldn't work.  This is a film that is incredibly convoluted, with a tacked-on love story & nondescript character actors playing their parts as two-dimensionally as possible...but it does.  The film is moody, often disjointed, but that works in its favor somehow.  There's a madcap aspect to it, as if we're meant to be confused alongside Cooper's O'Hara that I liked about the movie, and it's way better than it has any right to be.

Part of that are the performances.  Carroll is great here, as is Cooper (and both are jaw-droppingly gorgeous).  Carroll, as we've seen this month, is an actress whose glamour & beauty got in the way of her getting to play a part to its fullest (the directors wanted to bring forward her looks more than her performance), but Milestone doesn't do that.  He actually allows Carroll to get some real acting in, and while she's tasked with a ridiculous part (the scenes where she essentially writes off her father are so bizarre), she shows she has the talent to sell an offbeat part to the audience.

The film won three Oscar nominations, to varying reviews.  The Score is fine if unimpressive (sturdy, standard-fare action movie from the 1930's sort of bounce), but the real winner is the cinematography.  Victor Milner's work here is some of the best I've seen from the mid-1930's, atmospheric & cool.  It recalls in some ways what we'd eventually get from Gregg Toland in The Long Voyage Home and Citizen Kane (though not quite that sophisticated)-using the lighting in a way you didn't really see in 1930's cinema, and it's genuinely impressive.  The film's third nomination is for Akim Tamiroff, and yes, he's sporting yellowface onscreen.  Even discounting the significant racism involved, Tamiroff's work here is rudimentary-he gives Yang very little other than a sense of menace, and there's no nuance or personality in what he's doing.  This was the first year of the supporting categories at the Oscars, and thankfully they quickly started picking better work than this.

Secret Agent (1936)

Film: Secret Agent (1936)

Stars: John Gielgud, Peter Lorre, Madeleine Carroll, Robert Young

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Madeleine Carroll-click here to learn more about Ms. Carroll (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Madeleine Carroll is one of the least known (if not truly the least known) of the women we're going to profile this year for our third season of Saturdays with the Stars.  But she holds a distinction shared by just a handful of these women, and that is that she actually starred in two Alfred Hitchcock films.  Last week we talked about her complicated relationship with Hitchcock (at one point he put handcuffs on her that literally resulted in her getting welts on her wrists in The 39 Steps), but it's undeniable that that film made her a star, and it made sense (by 1930's logic) for her to reunite quickly after with Hitchcock and her leading man Robert Donat in another thriller (if it ain't broke...).  Unfortunately, Donat wasn't well at the time (he suffered from severe asthma that inhibited his leading man potential), and so with Secret Agent we got Hitch, Madeleine, and John Gielgud, an unlikely (and ill-suited) replacement for Donat in our second Hitchcock film this month.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows Edgar Brodie (Gielgud), a member of the British army, who has been pronounced dead in the newspapers by mistake, and therefore is the perfect person to undertake a spy mission.  He is hired by a man named "R" who wants him to find a German agent who is working against British interests in the Middle East.  He is partnered with the "General" (Lorre), who is not a general but is a hired killer, and a heartless, eccentric one at that.  Brodie, now under the guise of "Ashenden" is also assigned a wife named Elsa (Carroll), who despises him at first (or so it seems), and is interested in this caper due to the thrill of it, not realizing that it comes with a cost; she spends much of her time, despite being "married" to Ashenden flirting with playboy Marvin (Young), who doesn't seem to mind that the women he's chasing has a husband.  Ashenden & the General initially think a mountaineer is the spy, killing him in a harrowing scene atop a mountain, but then they learn he isn't the spy (which causes Elsa to be despondent over her involvement in killing an innocent man).  We finally learn, after she leaves, that Marvin is the secret agent, and aboard a train there is a standoff between the four, with both Marvin & the General killed, and Ashenden & Elsa, now in love, quitting the espionage business and instead pursuing a real marriage.

The movie is conventional.  While modern audiences will initially wonder if Lorre is the double agent due to his long history of playing double-crossers, it's pretty apparent as the movie goes that it'll be Young (otherwise why is he there?).  Secret Agent was not as well-received as The 39 Steps, and it's not difficult to understand why.  The twists are routine, and while the camerawork is inventive (particularly the murder of the mountaineer, and a strange crime scene involving an organist), that doesn't solve the biggest problem in the movie-the casting of Gielgud.

Gielgud apparently disliked this film, thinking that Robert Young got the better part of the two men, and while he's wrong (Peter Lorre is the only person giving a great performance here, and completely steals the picture), he is correct that he was a horrible fit for this.  Hitchcock's leading men need to be everyday guys stuck in extraordinary circumstances, and while Gielgud was a fine actor, he was not great at playing an "average chap."  His chemistry with Carroll isn't as good as hers with Donat, as both feel stilted & she gets on much better with Young (who of the two actors in general I'd never prefer, but is better here even if he's nowhere near as good as Lorre).  As a result, Secret Agent is a miss, and it's easy to see why Carroll never worked with Hitchcock again.  Next week, we're going to move away from Madeleine's relationship with Hitchcock, and watch what happens as she takes full advantage of her new stardom in America.

OVP: Libeled Lady (1936)

Film: Libeled Lady (1936)
Stars: Jean Harlow, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy, Walter Connolly
Director: Jack Conway
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Picture)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Jean Harlow-click here to learn more about Ms. Harlow (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

By the mid-1930's, Jean Harlow was one of the biggest stars in America.  On the MGM lot, she was worth more to the studio by the time that Libeled Lady came out than Joan Crawford or Norma Shearer, the two women who had basically bankrolled the company for years.  She had managed to float her way through two husbands since the last time we had discussed her in Red Dust, and was at the time madly in love with William Powell, who would be her costar in the film.  The movie would be a gargantuan hit for MGM, making nearly $3 million at the Box Office during the height of the Depression, and further cementing Harlow as the most valuable asset on the MGM lot.  As we're about to see, though, that distinction would be (to pardon the expression) short-lived.  But first, Libeled Lady.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is basically one of those madcap screwball comedies that went extinct the second Cary Grant met Alfred Hitchcock, but it's a pip.  Jean Harlow plays Gladys, a frequently jilted bride whose fiancé Warren (Tracy) is constantly putting his newspaper's needs ahead of hers.  In the opening scenes, we find out that his paper has printed a libelous lawsuit about Connie Allenbury (Loy), the daughter of his rival newspaper's chief James Allenbury (Connolly).  Connie sues Warren's paper for $5 million, but he can't afford to pay this kind of money, so he enlists the help of famed lothario Bill Chandler (Powell) to woo Connie after marrying Gladys in a sham marriage, so it looks like Connie has been romancing another woman's husband.  The problems ensue when both Connie AND Gladys fall for Bill's line, while Bill only loves Connie.  The film's final moments are a series of coincidences and one ups-manship, with ultimately Gladys ending up back with Warren and Connie & Bill reunited despite their differences.

Libeled Lady is marvelous.  It's hard to judge because when you put Powell & Loy together you expect The Thin Man (though they actually made 14 movies together in their time in the spotlight), and this isn't quite as sparkling as that, but it's hard to compare any movie to The Thin Man.  The film is hilarious, with some great physical comedy and some ace comedic work.  It's a testament to Harlow that put against an acting titan like Tracy, and two Grade-A comedians such as Loy & Powell that she pretty much steals the picture as the "dumb blonde who isn't so dumb."  As a result, I kind of loved Libeled Lady in a way I wasn't expecting-this is the sort of film I'd probably give a 4.5 star rating to (but we don't do halves here), but as there are parts where the one-liners could have popped a little bit more, I'm going to lean to four stars, though I reserve the right to change my mind about that in the future.

The movie would, sadly, be one of the last high-water marks of Harlow's career.  She would make just two more pictures, Personal Property and Saratoga, both big hits, before she died in 1937 from kidney failure at the age of only 26.  Because of her youth and beauty, and how we never got to see her grow old, urban legends still persist about Harlow (chiefly that she died as a result of the hair dye that created the platinum blonde look she'd make iconic, though this has been proven to be false).  As we've found this month, though, there was a really good comedienne and actress beyond those famous locks, and it's a pity for us all that we didn't get to see what her growing power at MGM might have meant for her future career-perhaps some of the star turns that still awaited her fellow MGM players Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo could have been hers?  We will never know.  Next month, we'll spring ahead into the 1940's to take a look at a different starlet, one who was just as blonde as Harlow, but it was two other assets that insured her immortal status in Classical Hollywood.

OVP: Cain and Mabel (1936)

Film: Cain and Mabel (1936)
Stars: Marion Davies, Clark Gable, Allen Jenkins, Roscoe Karns, Walter Catlett
Director: Lloyd Bacon
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Dance Direction)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

I sometimes watch movies and can't concentrate.  This is occasionally because I'm bored or because I am insisting that I am capable of doing two things at once when one of them involves a movie (spoiler alert: I can't), but there are times where I'm distracted by what's going on onscreen.  This was the case recently when I saw Cain and Mabel, a forgettable boxing musical (that wasn't a typo, it's actually a boxing musical), about a vaudeville star who falls in love with a boxer at first for the tabloids, and then for herself.  The distracting part was that it starred Marion Davies, far more famous for her off-screen romance with William Randolph Hearst, and I couldn't help but spend most of the film thinking of Citizen Kane, comparing every little dance number to her more famous fictional counterpart.

(Spoilers Ahead) This ended up being a bit unfair to Davies, as it's not really appropriate to spend a movie trying to see if the leading lady specifically is talented, and not just well-suited for this part, but honestly the movie itself is a pretty forgettable trifle.  The film follows an almost ludicrously cliched plotline (even for 1936), with Davies playing Mabel O'Dare, a down-on-her-luck aspiring dancer who catches her big break after a random diva has a tirade and the chorus girl off the street gets her spot.  She practices every single day, and eventually drives her downstairs neighbor Larry Cain (Gable) crazy by continually tapping on the ceiling all night long, but the two of them are paired up to gain publicity for their respective careers, and suddenly they start falling for each other.  The movie's climax is them headed to be married, and then whisked away to live in happiness, but their PR teams leak it to the press, having both parties assuming the other one was truly "just in it for the fame."  The film ends with Gable losing his boxing match, but winning his girl (and also, with it, a stack of cash as she in anger bet all of her fortune on his opponent).

It's a silly movie, as far as silly movies go, but there's a lot of problems because that thing I was looking for with Davies-talent-isn't as apparent as it should be; she's not very good in this movie.  Don't get me wrong here-I think that history has exaggerated her pitfalls, particularly in terms of acting ability as she has solid comedic chops even if she's no Kate Hepburn or Constance Bennett, but she's not a very good dancer.  When she becomes a headliner, it feels like when everyone was trying to say Katherine McPhee was better than Megan Hilty on Smash-she's not special just because you say "she's special."  It's worth noting that Gable isn't particularly good either, and is about as convincing as a boxer as Rue McClanahan, but Davies is more problematic both because Gable at that point had proven he was a major talent and because of the film's sole Oscar nomination.

It was only for a few years (I'm curious if anyone knows why they eliminated Dance Direction as a category-Choreography could have run as long as they had Song Score, at least), but the dancing was the only nod for this film, and it's kind of comically bad compared to pretty much everything else that was happening then.  In an age where Eleanor Powell and Fred Astaire are your competition, you have to be a supernova in order to compare, and Davies is merely adequate in terms of her timing and dancing.  Like I said, she had comedic skills, but the dancing here by a professional marker is genuinely bad-she's regularly outdone by her partners and by the chorus line, and you don't really understand why someone would be paying for her to be the headliner compared to a truly accomplished hoofer.  It's a mean focus, and admittedly I probably didn't go into this movie with a great attitude, but my impression of Davies after this film is that Orson Welles had it right.

Those are my thoughts-how about yours?  Has anyone out there already seen Cain and Mabel?  If not, what do you think of Davies in general?  And who was the best Golden Age Hollywood dancer?  Share below!

OVP: General Spanky (1936)

Film: General Spanky (1936)
Stars: Spanky McFarland, Phillips Holmes, Ralph Morgan, Irving Pichel, Carl Switzer, Louise Beavers
Director: Fred Newmeyer and Gordon Douglas
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Sound Recording)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Ooph, when it comes to early cinema, there's dated and then there's "wow-that just happened."  I try as much as I can to assume the best intent and escape outside of what is clearly a heinous moment in American history when I see a movie, but sometimes it's hard to assume the best, and that was probably the case with General Spanky, one of the stranger nominees I've noticed in the early years of the Academy (then again, Suicide Squad made it this year so AMPAS never totally grows out of "guess what's actually Oscar-nominated?").  The first Our Gang feature film ever made, and a Box Office disappointment, it scored a random nomination for Best Sound Recording but is more marred in its troubling racial politics.

(Spoilers Ahead) For those unfamiliar, the film centers around some of the more beloved figures in the Our Gang universe, though instead of the He-Man-Woman-Haters-Club, we get them in the days of the old Confederacy, and while a couple of members of the gang are randomly in the background, we really only focus on Alfalfa, Buckwheat, and Spanky in the titular role.  Spanky, a shoeshine boy who outsmarts most everyone around him either through guise or cuteness, comes across Buckwheat after he runs away from his master (Buckwheat being a slave in this narrative), and then they come across a kindly Captain Marsh (Holmes), who takes them in but is a confederate soldier who objects to the Civil War, drawing much ire from those around him.  In the end, he is nearly killed but Spanky saves the day by befriending a general who pardons Captain Marsh.  The film is filled with a number of hijinks and physical comedy up until that point.

I get that it's all in good fun, and there are some site gags that work (McFarland in particular was a solid child actor with definite on-screen charisma).  But for me it was weird and always a bit disconcerting to see the children marching around, being in danger, in what was an actual war.  Particularly concerning was watching the treatment of Buckwheat, some eighty years after the end of the war, being portrayed as a gimmick and a minstrel-type figure.  There's one scene where the little boy goes around asking people to be his master that feels like something out of The Birth of a Nation-it's repugnant, and impossible to get past even if you're aware that the movie is over 80 years old at this point.  Even in 1936 it feels like they should have known better.

The film received a sole Oscar nomination, for Best Sound Recording, and I have to admit I'm still a little thrown as to what nabs early films like this random sound citations.  There's no obvious gimmick or work on display here, though Elmer Reguse would eventually become something of an Oscar staple (8 nominations in total).  Perhaps it was for the many outdoors scenes or the large amount of onscreen music involved?  Either way, I'm hoping there's better.

Those are my thoughts on this movie-what about yours?  Are you with me that it's a bit troubling, even if you get that it's of a time-and-place?  Do you ever find other movies whose politics you just can't move past?  And who was your favorite member of the Our Gang films-share in the comments!

OVP: Born to Dance (1936)

Film: Born to Dance (1936)
Stars: Eleanor Powell, James Stewart, Virginia Bruce, Una Merkel, Sid Silvers, Buddy Ebsen
Director: Roy Del Ruth
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Dance Direction, Original Song-"I've Got You Under My Skin")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

While the rest of America was watching the Super Bowl, I was instead trying to find a bit more room on my DVR for more of 31 Days of Oscar (side note: I know that I'm going to hear a lot of "greatest game of all time" today but I can't really watch football be played anymore without thinking about how cultural icons like Tom Brady and Russell Wilson eventually will succumb to CTE at some point in their lives, and how this sport really needs to be retired alongside of boxing, so it's not even fun for the commercials now, though Lady Gaga killed it at halftime, which I did watch).  Anyway, the movie I chose as my side note was an early hit in the MGM stable of movies, so early in fact that not only does Jimmy Stewart star in a musical here, but he does so without top billing.  The film, your standard "romance while dreaming of stardom" film, is light and spry even as it's highly predictable, and was a wonderful Sunday evening treat.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows Ted (Stewart) a sailor on leave from the Navy (he's just about to finish up a tour of duty), who along with two of his buddies Gunny (Silvers) and Mush (Ebsen), are going on-shore trying to find a little bit of action with some NYC women.  There they each find a bit of romance, with the film's focus primarily being on Nora (Powell), Ted's romantic partner, and then later on a Broadway star Lucy James (Bruce) who tries (in vain) to win Ted away from Nora.  In the meantime, we get a lot of musical numbers and some wise-cracking from Jenny (Merkel, because who else are you going to pick as a wise-cracking sidekick to a female lead in 1936?).  The film, while formulaic, moves along at a deeply brisk pace for 106 minutes of movie (usually movies of this era felt shorter, but this one doesn't need to be as it's so quick), and we get some wonderful movie moments.

It's hard to imagine this, but at one point Cole Porter classics were, in fact, originals, and we get that here with "Easy to Love" and "Swingin' the Jinx Away" being performed for the first time.  Best of all is "I've Got You Under My Skin," which would become a Sinatra standard late in his career, but here is sang oddly enough for the first time by Virginia Bruce.  Bruce is a brilliant vocalist and all, but I don't recall ever seeing an Oscar-nominated song sang by "the other woman" when you aren't expected to feel anything for her (this isn't really an Eponine situation-Bruce eventually tries to get our leading lady fired).  It gives a strange aura to a song you know is a classic-it makes it seem more like a naughty seduction rather than a straight-forward love song, and considering at that point in the movie you want Stewart to end up with Powell, it's just odd.  The song and the moment are still great, but it's not what you'd expect, and considering we all know this song by heart, it's fascinating to look at where it came from originally.

The movie's other Oscar nomination was in the now defunct "Dance Direction," a category that only existed for a few years in the 1930's before largely being forgotten (choreographers never again getting their due outside the random Honorary Award to Michael Kidd).  The dancing, considering both Powell and Ebsen are amongst the cast, is sublime-the final number, including some bizarre but brilliant moves from Ebsen and then a show-stopping, heart-pounding number from Powell (who makes up for a rather routine leading woman charm with moves that would make Ann Miller say "wow"-particularly her tapping through a wave of trombones), is a particular highlight.  This is in the same era as Astaire-and-Rogers, so I make no promises in terms of who ultimately wins the OVP, but know that this is in the running.

Other than that, it's a charming, delightful film and it's fun to see Stewart, who was headlining films at this point but wasn't a "headliner" (if that makes sense) being forced into some positions we aren't used to seeing him (dancing, singing, and occasionally being a slight horndog).  All-in-all, I'd highly recommend it, and pronounce both of its Oscar nominations more than well-earned.