The Nuisance was very good, I just saw it too. It has to be one of Tracy's best roles - you almost feel for the guy!He actually shows some conflict here, and some heart. I did like him. I think your review is absolutely on target - I've never been a fan of Madge Evans, but she really did a great job in this one!
Wendy, it's true at the end of the film one is rooting for him! You must check Madge in the two other films I mentioned
I got some bootleg Paramount pre-coders from a guy on ebay a while back. One was Ladies Love Brutes (1930) starring Mary Astor and George Bancroft in the respective title roles. It definitely belongs in the 'primitive talkie' category. Bancroft plays a construction contractor who does the steel work on New York skyscrapers. Although he's made millions, he's shunned by the society elite of NYC, and is determined to crash in. Mary Astor is a society lady (no surprise there) waiting for a divorce from Frederic March (in a very diminutive role). Her subtle swooning vis-vis Bancroft's cave-man demeanor is gold...and possibly the only thing that's subtle about the whole film.
Not having seen any of Bancroft's star-making performances, he struck me as an odd choice for a leading man. The film is clearly his vehicle. He gives a sympathy-milking portrayal akin to Wallace Beery's Polakai in the movie Flesh, if anyone has seen that. It's all pretty ham-fisted, but I did feel a little more forgiving upon second viewing.
"Immorality may be fun, but it isn't fun enough to take the place of one hundred percent virtue and three square meals a day."
Goodnight Basington
Jacks, I just saw Flesh for the first time last week. I was blown away by Beery, he has never been a 'like' for me, because of his heavy handedness and hammy mannerisms. This guy was completely different...a strong, slightly dense and moral man. Karen Morely was another revelation, I'd only seen her as the plain Charlotte Lucas in the 1940 Pride and Prejudice. Two complete turnarounds!
I thank Miss Goddess for telling me about the movie Flesh - its a super movie. I'm really glad you liked it too. Beery's just wonderful in it. I think it's Karen Morley's best, I always wondered why she didn't get better roles...she always intrigues me, no matter how small the role.
Yesterday I watched Exstacy with Hedy Lamarr, I've started reading a book on Hedy and this is where she started in movies, I've written it up fully on our foreign films thread.
Today I watched the zippy Two Seconds, a precode that fits nicely into 80 minutes and grabs you as soon as it starts. It starts inside an execution chamber, the Two Seconds of the title being the time it takes the brain to die on the electric chair, in that time your life flits before your eyes. Edward G Robinson plays Johnny Allen a regular guy, a rivetter who works on the skyscrapers and gets a good wage every week. He goes one night to a dance hall were you have to pay ten cents to dance with a girl. From here his fortunes change, there's a well filmed fall from a skyscraper, very realistic and a descent into depression and madness. A good film from Mervyn Le Roy and Robinson, Vivienne Osbourne is brilliant as Shirley and Preston Foster good as Johnny's mate Bud. Guy Kibbee has a small part as a bookkeeper.
Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself - Charlie Chaplin
OK, so just call me Debbie Downer for my cheap shot at Beery. SORRY, I TAKE IT ALL BACK!!!
I wanted to write more about George Bancroft this morning, but ran out of time. If you look at the title cards for Ladies Love Brutes, Bancroft's name is HUGE written at the top of the screen, while Mary Astor and Frederic March's names appear at the bottom, less than half the size. [Mary and Frederic who?] The film is completely written around his character; he's the one who goes through changes while the others remain more or less one-dimensional (with the exception of Astor, who acts circles around everyone). He's the average Joe we're supposed to identify with. Even with all that behind him, his performance is still pretty underwhelming. I guess it's just interesting that Paramount, during this brief, goofy period when the medium was getting re-defined for sound, decided to put him out there as one of their leading men.
Still scratching my head, I looked at the 20th Century pre-coder Blood Money (1933), also a starring vehicle for Bancroft, where he plays a somewhat morally-compromised bail bondsman. But poor George, the film is memorable not because of him, but because of the two women in his life, a HOT Judith Anderson (yes you heard right) and Sandra Dee as a crazy-as-a-fox klepto- and nympho-maniac. His arsenal of acting tricks seems to have gone from two to four, but there I go getting catty again.
So anyway, looking back at these films from today, his star status is still somewhat baffling to me. The only thing I can think of is this: If there's an actress who's radiantly beautiful and the question arises, "Can she act?" the answer from at least half the audience is, "Who cares?" With Bancroft, he's a mountain of a man and he knows it. He just needs to stand in the paint like Shaq, deliver his lines and let all the other bodies circle around him like lesser planets.
He does get third billing in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, playing the newspaper editor who sics Jean Arthur on Longfellow Deeds. That film is a veritable 'Who's Who' of thirties character actors. [Franklin Pangborn plays a tailor with two lines!]. Bancroft gets a lot of screen time and plays it with complexity and tons more personality.
I guess this turned out to be more of a "People of Film" post. Speaking of which, I adore Karen Morely, and yes, I wish we had more of her to look at today. She has a very good part in Arsene Lupin (1932).
"Immorality may be fun, but it isn't fun enough to take the place of one hundred percent virtue and three square meals a day."
Goodnight Basington
You're not alone in wondering about George Bancroft's odd stardom, Nitrate, but after coming across Blood Money some time ago and more recently Underworld (1927), I guess I can see what effect he may have had on the public thanks to movies like those two. (I completely agree about the remarkable Judith Anderson's power in her debut performance as Bancroft's strong right arm. Frances Dee was a revelation in that part in the film as a refined young woman addicted to the adrenalin rush of danger).
In his memoir, Moving Pictures, Budd Schulberg, son of Paramount executive B. P. Schulberg, told a story that illustrates what happened to George Bancroft to make him so mysterious to us today.
"To say that fame went to his head is understatement," Schulberg wrote. "Like fire down a cotton suit it spread to his chest, his pelvis, and down to his toes. As Underworld drew rave notices and lines around the block from New York to Rome, George Bancroft began to talk differently, walk differently, eat differently, think differently. I could see it in the way he drove through the main studio gate...giving a little flip of the hand [that] was not so much patronizing as what one would expect of a British monarch..."
Evelyn Brent, Bancroft's co-star three times, described him as having "the reactions of a little boy. I don't mean he was retarded (which usually means tht the speaker thinks the person is semi-retarded)." During Bancroft's worst swell-headed days, he actually pretended he didn't know who Brent was when he met her socially, though the actress remained fond of the big fool.
In Lynn Kear and James King's biography of Brent, Evelyn Brent: The Life and Films of Hollywood's Lady Crook, the authors recounted one day that Brent recalled vividly. During filming one day, she and Brent were having lunch together with friends and they were discussing Underworld, the best film that either of them ever made under the direction of Joseph von Sternberg. "Do you realize why we were as good as we were in Underworld?" Brent said, "Because we had a damn good director." He said, "No. It was because in the love scenes I always thought of my mother." Does that make sense? Brent and her friends almost fell off their chairs trying to comprehend that one and trying to suppress their laughter.
James Card, the former film curator at George Eastman House thought that Bancroft's unlikely stardom was because he was "the Charles Bronson of the pre-dialogue era, he was probably the very first of the screen villains who managed to have something really likable about him...Bancroft had a visual laugh so hearty and robust that one felt sure it was being heard, though the film [Underworld] was silent. His craggy, rugged features would fragment into the merriest of laughter...Then casting that smooth British performer Clive Brook as the gentleman drunk taken over by the gangster, he achieved contrast to the beefy, extroverted American Attila."
Budd Schulberg also recounted one time when George Bancroft, who had begun to speak of himself in the third person (always a bad sign, ego-wise) and who was collecting a huge weekly salary at a time when others were being cut. One day he stupidly refused to obey his director's orders that he fall down after being shot by the villain. "One bullet can't kill Bancroft!" he bellowed. Eventually the scene was completed, but George, who had begun life as an Annapolis grad, was lucky when he could find work as a day player before finding his footing again in the industry as a character actor, often as one of several gunsels or a cowpoke of some sort, as he played in Stagecoach (1939). I've always liked him in Young Tom Edison (1940) as Mickey Rooney's chronically enraged and indignant father.
Bancroft must have done alright despite the vicissitudes of fame. In 1942, he retired to become a rancher, a pursuit he stayed with until his death in 1956.
Thanks for connecting those dots, Moira. I've got to get a hold of some of Buddy Schulberg's writings. He pops up in a number of my documentaries. I like his disposition on camera.
Regarding Bancroft, along the proverbial "pride-goes-before-a-fall" timeline, he must have been at the height of his delusions when he made Ladies Love Brutes, poor sap. I haven't seen the other films you mentioned, but at least in Mr. Deeds, he seems to have gotten over himself somewhat. Or maybe that was Capra's expert handling.
"Immorality may be fun, but it isn't fun enough to take the place of one hundred percent virtue and three square meals a day."
Goodnight Basington
I have seen various pre-codes recently. First, Tonight or Never (1931, M. LeRoy), Gloria Swanson's first talkie. It's an adaptation of a Broadway play produced by Samuel Goldwyn. Goldwyn hired a large part of the Broadway cast to star opposite Gloria and allowed a group of actors to make their debuts on the screen. Among them, Melvyn Douglas shows already a considerable talent and poise for a newcomer (hard to believe he was actually one!). The eccentric Ferdinand Gottschalk and the master butler Robert Greig were also appearing for the first time. This (naughty) comedy follows a capricious prima donna played by Gloria Swanson as she is appearing in the Venice opera for the first time. She has a group of followers around her, including the Budapest opera manager, her lover. Alas, she is bored and has never known real love. One day, she notices a mysterious stranger (M. Douglas) under her window, every night. He appears to be the gigolo of an old countess (A. Skipworth). Nevertheless, the diva is attracted by him... The film shows its stagey origin. But Gloria manages to avoid the declamatory tone used by many silent divas in their first talkie. She plays the part slightly over the top, in keeping with the character. She is greatly helped by her partners who had played their roles many times before. For the costumes, Goldwyn hired no less than Coco Chanel. Alas, some of Gloria's dresses are not quite successful. One of them makes her look like Anita Ekberg. Overall it's a fairly good comedy.
Then I watched Two Seconds (1932, M. LeRoy) with EG Robinson. It proved a brilliant little film with a top-notch performance from Robinson. He works as a sky-scrapper builder with his friend Bud. Life is quite boring with the usual evening out in dingy bars and dodgy dancing halls until he meets Shirley (V. Osborne). This cheap 5 cents-a dance-girl manages to convince him she is on the level. After taking him to a speakeasy and getting him drunk, she takes him to a judge of the peace. She marries him while he is barely conscious. Afterwards, his life takes a bad turn. He loses his friend and has a nervous breakdown. He ends up a murderer. The slow descent into hell was brilliantly played by Robinson who reaches some incredible heights of acting as he is facing the jury. It's a small film, but Robinson gives it incredible power.
moirafinnie wrote:You're not alone in wondering about George Bancroft's odd stardom, Nitrate,
In Lynn Kear and James King's biography of Brent, Evelyn Brent: The Life and Films of Hollywood's Lady Crook, the authors recounted one day that Brent recalled vividly. During filming one day, she and Brent were having lunch together with friends and they were discussing Underworld, the best film that either of them ever made under the direction of Joseph von Sternberg. "Do you realize why we were as good as we were in Underworld?" Brent said, "Because we had a damn good director." He said, "No. It was because in the love scenes I always thought of my mother."
I read it in John Kobal's People Will Talk. Brent tells the same story and said that Bancroft was quite slow-witted (to say the least). It also tallies with Sternberg's own account of Bancroft in his memoirs. It just shows that Sternberg's direction could do miracles with any actor. Underworld is also one of Clive Brook's best performances. This kind of performance was obtained with a lot of bullying on the director's part. But, the result is quite something.
Good point about von Sternberg, Christine. I'd read that in Kobal's interview with Evelyn Brent too, and I wonder what your impression of the actress was after you finished reading that segment of People Will Talk? My impression of Evelyn Brent off-screen presented by John Kobal was quite different from the aware and intelligent person who came across in the well-researched Lynn Kear and James King biography. Kobal's encounter seemed to reveal a person whose rather wan off-screen presence needed a von Sternberg to animate her, as she shimmered in The Last Command and was a sultry, conflicted figure in Underworld, while Kear and King made me feel that Brent was a person whose inner turmoil and chaotic background made her long career (1914-1950) distinctive--even though she went from stardom to bit parts in that period after her truly grueling youth before the cameras.
Before reading this book, I had the impression that the dour-faced Evelyn Brent was certainly tough but rather dumb, but when used as a decorative object (the tiny woman had a face and figure that seemed streamlined by an art deco illustrator), could be remarkably effective. Now whenever I come across her many bit parts and leads in poverty row films, she has a resonance I can't ignore. I can't say I "like her" but she is striking.
I rather like the Kobal interview. When Brent talked to him, she had been away from the screen for many years. So I guess, everything was quite a distant memory for her. According to Louise Brooks (with her sharp tongue), Brent was a useless actress who only knew how to pose with her hands on her hips (or something to that effect). I guess she probably needed a tough director like Sternberg. I haven't read the new Brent biography, so I cannot comment.
Saw Buster Keaton "The General" for the 2nd time this year on Turner Classic Movies.
One of my favorites Silent Movies that Buster Keaton done in his legendary career.
Here's some great photos:
It's so greatly done, fast paced, fantastic action scenes, nice story, and most of all its shows Keaton at his very best. I wished I have a copy of this in DVD format.
