The Office Wife airs on Turner Classic Movies today, May 23, at 2:45 pm EST

"Selling title, ay?" Lewis Stone asks his secretary. He’s talking about the latest book he wants his company to publish, The Office Wife, but he could just as well be referring to the Warner Brothers film of the same title in which he asks the question.

Based on a story by Faith Baldwin, directed by Lloyd Bacon and featuring Joan Blondell in her first feature release, which led directly to a long term contract with Warner Brothers, The Office Wife is a fun hour, even if it never quite feels like the hit that it was in the late Summer of 1930.

The movie took in over $18,000 in just two days when it premiered at the Winter Garden Theater, eclipsing a record set earlier that year by The Dawn Patrol. Months later, in early 1931, Warner Brothers would remind theater operators about its success in trade paper ads for not one, but two, films spun out of The Office Wife’s success: Big Business Girl with Loretta Young and Dorothy Mackaill follow-up Party Husband. Each was said to “put the reverse English on Office Wife.”

Two page spread promoting The Office Wife from Film Daily, September 9, 1930. Click to enlarge.

These were bright days in the career of Office Wife star Mackaill, whose best recalled success would come late the following year in the tropic set drama Safe in Hell. She was a top star at Warner Brothers and First National at this time and was cast in the lead of all types of films. While I like her best in dramatic scorchers like Safe in Hell, I’ve seen her play for laughs better than she manages in The Office Wife. She’s at her best in this one casting longing gazes at her boss after she’s fallen hard for him.

Maybe it’s all of those Hardy Family movies, but Lewis Stone seems a bit of stretch as that object of Mackaill’s affection. I think I’ve seen Stone dispense too much justice in Carvel, happily married to matronly Fay Holden, to do anything but laugh when he drops his robe to stand poolside in his swimming gear. (Though I must admit Judge Hardy is in better shape than I’d ever imagined!) Still, this was not a problem in 1930 when The Office Wife was released and Lewis Stone was still nearer his days as a romantic leading man than he was his future spent spouting morals to Mickey Rooney.

Judge Hardy's been pumping iron! Natalie Moorhead looks a bit sexier further down the page. Brooks Benedict at far left.

Stone is better than Mackaill in The Office Wife. She’s a bit too overeager in her earliest scenes, by design, but too much so. She improves deeper into the movie but I got the feeling that she wasn’t too interested in this one. Mackaill plays working girl Anne Murdock, quickly promoted to the private office of Stone’s publisher, Lawrence Fellowes, after Fellowes discovers that his previous secretary was secretly in love with him.

"You got this on your work,” supervisor McGowan (Hobart Bosworth) tells Anne after informing her of her promotion. “What I mean is, charm counts, but you got this on your brains. Don't forget that, Anne."

Brains yes, but it helps to hike the skirt up over the knees too.

Anne is dating an reporter about her own age, Ted (Walter Merrill), who really likes sleeping with the windows open and can’t stand woolen underwear. You have never seen anyone so full of himself contain his boasting to such mundane topics. I got the feeling that Anne just keeps him around because he amuses her.

Ted wants to marry Anne, an idea her sister, Katherine (Blondell), thinks is just terrible. "Ted wants a parking space for a couple of babies and a free laundry,” she tells her sister. “If you want to learn what the word lonesome is, take him on.”

"Maybe you think I couldn't hold him," Anne says.

"Not from the looks of the heel marks in that Ford of his," Katherine replies.

Here's the bathtub shot of Joan Blondell that you expected if you've seen this one before.

Blondell is good for a zinger every time she crops up. She dishes another good one over the phone to Ted, late in the movie, when he wonders why Fellowes is keeping Anne so late at work: "I’d hate to tell you, but I bet he's good at it." The fact that Mackaill seems a bit off in The Office Wife makes Blondell stand out all the more.

Time passes quickly—and how could it not in a movie just shy of an hour—and Anne becomes more attached to her boss. She’d be more than happy to send Ted on his way and fall into Fellowes’ arms, if not for one complicating factor: Mrs. Fellowes, played by Natalie Moorhead. She is excellent.

This post is getting smutty! The Judge undresses Natalie Moorhead.

Mrs. Fellowes had obviously married her husband for his money and is almost immediately shown playing around with another man (Brooks Benedict), yet the movie doesn’t turn us against her. The Fellowes marriage comes to an end under the most civilized of circumstances with Mrs. Fellowes even informing her husband that his secretary is in love with him. When Lawrence Fellowes mentions that a young reporter blocks his path to Anne, his wife honestly feels for him. An interesting relationship and a nice change from what was expected.

Finally, a shot of a wholesome American girl ... even if she really is from Yorkshire! Dorothy Mackaill in The Office Wife

The Office Wife was one of several films I sought out featuring Dorothy Mackaill after she knocked me over in Safe in Hell. It is not the movie I’d recommend to new Mackaill fans as an immediate follow-up--I’d point to Bright Lights (1930) or The Reckless Hour (1931) first. On the other hand, if you’re looking for more Joan Blondell, and despite the smaller part she is unquestionably the greater attraction today, then The Office Wife is for you.

A product of its time with much of the story revolving around office roles that would now be deemed sexist, its greatest attribute is its sterling dialogue, courtesy of screenwriter Charles Kenyon. Lots of saucy lines throughout and they are not all courtesy of Blondell’s character. Also features Blanche Friderici as a writer so masculine that her cigars are too strong for Stone! She is played for laughs in her brief role, but mostly at the expense of the working girls she is to write about in The Office Wife.

Stone shakes hands with Blanche Friderici who plays the writer hired on to write The Office Wife, even if she'd prefer to be writing stuff like Jim Tully!

The Office Wife is available on DVD-R from Warner Archive. It is paired with another Dorothy Mackaill feature, Party Husband (1931). Thanks very much if you purchase this double feature through my Amazon affiliate link. I also recommend WAC’s official Dorothy Mackaill double-feature, Bright Lights / The Reckless Hour. And, of course, Dorothy Mackaill in Safe in Hell, which I also wrote about HERE.

My friend Karen at Shadows and Satin selected The Office Wife as her pre-Code pick of the month. You can read her coverage HERE.

Mackaill moons.

Maybe it's the hair. Dorothy Mackaill and Lewis Stone

Warner Brothers promotional ad in Film Daily, November 10, 1930, mentions The Office Wife among others.

Work in progress.

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Want to talk about this? Visit the original article to leave a comment: The Office Wife (1930) Starring Dorothy Mackaill and Lewis Stone

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If it could grab a wider audience Tay Garnett’s Her Man would be considered a pre-Code essential. Populated by a variety of screen drunks, thinly veiled prostitutes, criminals, up to and including a murderer, and culminating with an all-out brawl that was, according to Film Daily, “generally conceded to be the best fracas ever shown on a screen” to that time, this first movie adaptation of the Frankie and Johnny ballad is every bit exciting today as it was when it was a critical and popular success in 1930.

“He was her man, but he done her wrong.”

Her Man features Ricardo Cortez as Johnnie, owner of a Havana* dive called the Thalia, and stars Helen Twelvetrees as Johnnie’s most prized possession, Frankie. With wild hair and a series of outfits that make you think Her Man’s designer was Cyndi Lauper, circa 1983, Twelvetrees tosses her head back, thrusts her chest out and swings her hips and shoulders while proudly trailing Cortez’ Johnnie through the mass of drunken sailors gathered on the streets outside of the Thalia and neighboring bars, each separated by race, on their way back to her room. “Look what I done for you,” Johnnie says, after discovering Frankie had given away part of that night’s take. “What was you when I found you?” He tells Frankie to stick by him and she’ll “be wearing silks and jewels some day,” adding, “Just trust me, baby.” The famous tune bearing their names plays in the background, their jazzy theme as much a character in the early portions of Her Man as “St. Louis Woman” is in pre-Code classic, Baby Face (1933).

Helen Twelvetrees and Ricardo Cortez as Frankie and Johnnie

* According to Peter Stanfield in Body and Soul: Jazz and Blues in American Film, 1927-63, Havana was only one of the possible settings, but the most identifiable in the end because of the inclusion of Morro Castle. Stanfield wrote that Garnett and Howard Higgin’s original script set Her Man at San Francisco’s Barbary Coast and post-release publicity turned the Thalia into a Parisian dive. In between the setting became Havana and then ”an unidentified island off the coast of America” (62). You get the picture though. Her Man is basically set in Any Dive, Near to the U.S.A.

As Peter Stanfield commented upon the film in a chapter about Frankie and Johnny adaptations in his Body and Soul, the challenge was “to maintain the story of Frankie and Johnny and not make it obvious that he is her pimp and she his prostitute” (60). But Johnnie had asked Frankie what she was when he had found her and then later Dan Keefe, the man who eventually comes between Frankie and Johnnie, dismisses her past: “If it’s what you’ve been that’s worrying you, forget it. The worst you ever done was to get by the only way you knew how.” So just what was Frankie doing by the time she met Dan Keefe?

Frankie, busted while hustling a Thalia patron.

On screen, at least, she engages in another type of hustle. She lures the male clientele of the Thalia, mostly hard-drinking sailors, to her side, tells her sob story and then picks their pockets after they drink the Mickey Finn that Johnnie directs his bartenders to serve them. While her Frankie is a willing enough employee in Her Man, the character played by Helen Twelvetrees in Panama Flo (1932) feels terrible when forced to take part in the exact same scam with hopes of raising enough cash to make it back to America. No such regrets here. Not until she becomes attracted to a handsome young sailor, Dan Keefe, played by Phillips Holmes.

After Dan spots her, joins her and sings her a song, Frankie, momentarily touched, catches herself and tells him, “Them kind of songs always gets me down. I guess its because they make me think, huh?” Dan tells her not to worry her pretty self over thinking and she snaps back, “Rules don’t stop no one from thinking,” adding, “I wish they could.” Dan begs Frankie to spill her troubles and so she begins her well rehearsed sob story:

“It's this life, it's killing me. Sometimes I think I can't stand it no longer. You know, I ain't never known nothing but dumps like this, I was born in one of them. How I hate 'em."

Watch your hands, Frankie! Helen Twelvetrees and Phillips Holmes

"Well, why don't you get out?" Dan asks.

"How far would I get? I ain’t no man. I wisht I was. Sometimes I think of--if I could get away off somewheres where there was green grass and trees and things. Where things was clean and good. Ah, gee. I could start all over again then. Things would be different.” She drops her head along with all of the enthusiasm that had been building to add, ”But there ain’t a chance.”

She’s cuddled up close to him as she spins her yarn, but Dan catches her wandering hand and pulls it from his pocket. “I’m sorry you did that,” he says of her attempt to rob him.

“Well, what are you gonna do about it?” Frankie demands. Over at the piano Johnnie spots Frankie’s troubles and motions to the bartender to send over a couple of drinks: One spiked gin and one plain water masquerading as a gin for Frankie. But after Dan tells Frankie he isn’t going to do anything her soft spot returns and she knocks the drink from his hand just as he’s ready to slug it back.

Helen Twelvetrees and Phillips Holmes

Dan smells the spilled drink in his hands and looks up to Frankie, knowing what she has saved him from.

“Much obliged, sister,” Dan says, rising to leave and gather his sailor buddies, played by the comedy team of James Gleason and Harry Sweet, who were assuredly more funny in 1930 than they are today. This duo went over big in the trade papers of the time, but Her Man wound up the only time Gleason and Sweet appeared together on screen. Sweet subsequently directed Gleason in five comedy shorts co-starring each of the Gribbon brothers, Eddie and Harry, but Sweet's life was cut short in a 1933 plane crash. Gleason enjoyed a long and successful screen career as a character actor almost up until the time of his own death in 1959.

Holmes with his bumbling drunken pals played by James Gleason (left) and Harry Sweet (right).

Gleason and Sweet play a pair of fun loving drunks throughout Her Man, their peak moments coming courtesy of a “twenty dollar skimmer” stolen off the head of Franklin Pangborn, cast here as possibly the most unlikely tough guy in screen history. They defend their prize from a scruffy Slim Summerville, who appears in one scene, as a drunk, to smash down any hat he sees adorning any head, including Gleason and Sweet’s ill gotten pricey skimmer.

Franklin Pangborn, ready to brawl.

All of these drunken antics are only intended to bring a bit of levity to Her Man, but it’s a far more seriously portrayed alcoholic who serves as perhaps the heart and certainly the eyes of the film. Marjorie Rambeau, who had been a stage actress since the age of twelve and later appeared in a handful of silent films in the late teens (also her late teens) makes her talkie debut in Her Man as Annie, a perpetually sloshed middle-aged woman whose been working these hellholes for a very long time.

Marjorie Rambeau, late 1910s.

Back at that bar, where she’s served by another character actor favorite, Stanley Fields as Al the bartender, the younger girls all pick on Rambeau’s Annie for having to come back. Twelvetrees makes her first appearance as Frankie coming to Annie’s aid. “Lay off!” she barks to the other girls. “Can’t you two see the old bag is all in?” The others leave them together and Frankie tosses Annie some spare change, those missing earnings that Johnnie is soon angry over. “You’ve got the heebies bad. Grab yourself a couple of snorts,” Frankie says before departing to her next victim.

Meanwhile Annie and Al talk admirably of Frankie. Al calls Frankie “a grand little worker,” noting, “she’s the straightest dame in the joint.” Annie worries though. “When Frankie’s been working these joints as long as I have, believe me, she won’t be no bargain neither.” Annie does her best to look out for Frankie throughout Her Man, though the offer of a free drink from a neighboring hostess played by a raven-haired Thelma Todd nearly keeps Annie from assisting Frankie when she needs her most.

Marjorie Rambeau in Her Man

I had mentioned Annie as Her Man’s eyes. She sees all that happens in the Thalia from her barstool and none of it seems to surprise her. It’s during this first extended scene at the Thalia that she turns out to be the only person in the packed house to witness Johnnie murder rival saloon owner Red (Harry Betz). And Annie ain't squealing.

Jacob Krantz had become Ricardo Cortez as one of a few 1920’s silent screen rivals and heirs apparent to Rudolph Valentino. When talkies came he kept his screen name, as would his younger brother, the more celebrated cinematographer Stanley Cortez. Ricardo Cortez excelled at playing gangsters and other heavies throughout the pre-Code era and into the mid-thirties before transitioning to a successful career on Wall Street. He appeared in films sporadically throughout the 1940s and was a success when brought back by John Ford in a supporting role in 1958’s The Last Hurrah, in which Her Man co-star James Gleason also appeared.

Smirking Cortez, a sure sign of anger, with Helen Twelvetrees

Cortez faired well with critics as Johnnie in Her Man, but he’d soon have to weather a storm of publicity when his estranged wife, Alma Rubens, died in January 1931, just four months after Her Man was released. Rubens, a former silent screen beauty, was just 33 at the time of her death. A heroin addict who had just nationally serialized her story of addiction and recovery, there was a good deal of potentially negative backlash from which Cortez somehow emerged with an enhanced reputation and the sympathy of the public. His next film, Illicit, released in February 1931, a month after the death of Rubens. It would be the first of ten features he would appear in that year, including one of his best known, the original adaptation of The Maltese Falcon which saw him star as Sam Spade.

Johnnie takes aim. Ricardo Cortez.

For those familiar with Cortez’ seedier characters of the era, add Johnnie from Her Man to that list and put a circle around it. Johnnie wears each of Cortez’ top expressions throughout Her Man, the smirk and the scowl, with emphasis on the former as there is often menace behind a Cortez smile. He carries around a small blade, practically a pen knife, that he constantly fingers and sometimes uses to blow off steam by repeatedly stabbing it into surfaces such as his bar. But after he allows rival Red into the Thalia and eavesdrops on his attempt to lure Frankie away (“Listen, baby. I can show you more real sugar than Johnnie had ever thought of.”), it’s a much larger switchblade that Johnnie draws from his inside pocket and launches across the distracted bar into Red’s back. After breaking up the fight that he had a couple of his boys stage as his alibi, he grabs Frankie to leave and stops to apologize to police for not knowing anything about the murder. He catches himself playing with his little blade and almost fumbles it as he quickly hides it back in his pocket.

Ricardo Cortez with Thelma Todd

No doubt Johnnie believes that he loves Frankie, though he mostly he values her as his top earner. But, as if witnessing the murder and his all-around crookedness weren’t enough, we’re also made aware of Johnnie’s relationship with the statuesque Todd, who leaves us wanting more, as another piece of evidence clearing Frankie of any wrongdoing once she falls for Phillips Holmes’ sailor, Dan Keefe.

Holmes, mocked the following year by Andre Sennwald of the New York Times for not presenting a believable physical challenge to Walter Huston in Night Court, manages to convince audiences that he can take on an entire bar filled with Johnnie’s soused sympathizers in Her Man. Fists fly, bodies propel through the air, one poor fellow is even power-slammed across a table by Holmes. Backed into a corner Holmes rips a table from the floor and uses it as a weapon, slamming the table top over the head of anyone within reach, before using it as a shield to protect he and Frankie from the oncoming barrage of drunken wild men. The climactic brawl, which comes to a creative ending highlighted by Rambeau’s celebratory cackles, lives up the hype, which was more or less universal in period reviews.

Phillips Holmes in action!

But that is Dan Keefe unhinged. Holmes and Twelvetrees enjoy their best scenes together on their own, falling in love on the beach after celebrating her inaugural “boithday” over the candles of a cupcake and, for the sake of moralists seeking more concrete redemption, inside a church where Frankie mimics Dan’s prayer and looks all the more solemn thanks to Twelvetrees’ sad down-slanting eyes.

Here it is again, Helen Twelvetrees by George Bradshaw Crandall, on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, October 23, 1926.

Even in the looser atmosphere that existed before the Production Code was enforced the script for Her Man required several rewrites to get past the Studio Relations Committee, the movie monitor during the pre-Code era. Once cleared it still faced issues with some local censors. Pathe even pulled the movie from playing in Canada because so many cuts were otherwise demanded. Their loss.

Critics greeted Her Man with near universal praise, the New York Times being the only naysayer I could track down. The Times ripped Twelvetrees for overacting and called the film, “a hodgepodge of sentimentality plastered on thickly.” They even had the nerve to knock the celebrated climax, concluding their own review by mentioning, “there is a prodigiously energetic brawl that is only remarkable for its obviously staged situations.”

The majority of the blurbs below were taken from this 2-page ad found inside Film Daily, September 23, 1930. Click to enlarge.

On the other hand was everybody else. Exhibitor’s Herald proclaimed Her Man “different” and Hollywood Reporter went two steps further calling it, “Different—beautiful and exciting.” Variety seconds that stating, “The picture is almost continuously full of action,” while Jimmy Starr of the Los Angeles Record more specifically wrote of, “The greatest fight sequence I have ever seen.” Motion Picture News adds, “The fight is a thriller from start to finish,” while Louella Parsons congratulated Helen Twelvetrees on her success, praising her performance and all at once remarking that Her Man was, “A lucky break because the picture is so good that it has attracted attention all over the country.”

Proof of that widespread appeal comes courtesy of Cari Beauchamp in her book about the Hollywood years of Joseph P. Kennedy, who ran Pathe Exchange at the time of Her Man. Beauchamp wrote that Her Man brought in $800,000 at the box office (310).

Pages 2 and 3 of a 3-page promo for Her Man inside of Film Daily. Click to enlarge.

Photoplay Magazine named Her Man one of their Best Pictures of the Month and additionally cited Twelvetrees for having given one of the Best Performances that month. To give an idea of what was playing alongside Her Man, other films named by Photoplay in that November 1930 issue were The Big Trail, Outward Bound, Liliom, The Sea Wolf, The Spoilers, Half Shot at Sunrise and Sweet Kitty Bellairs. Her Man was called “a grand piece of work,” and praised as, “a talking picture with all of the color, drama and vivid action of the best old-time silents.”

Her Man was huge. It’s success unfortunately pigeonholed Helen Twelvetrees into a career of weepy repeat performances, best recalled today, if at all, in Millie (1931), because of its widely available video release. If you have yet to bump into Miss Twelvetrees, then I came across a great comparison of her to Pathe stablemate of the period Constance Bennett in an entry by Richard Griffith in the 1976 collection Movies and Methods:

“But her [Twelvetrees] regret was too lachrymose — the game was hardly worth the candle if you had to cry that much to win. Constance Bennett’s method of achieving the same end was far more reassuring” (114).

While the extremely weepy Millie is better known, Her Man is the better movie. Given the current popularity of films of the pre-Code era, especially its most sinful hits, this 1930 charmer is way too hard to find. I couldn’t even figure out who holds the rights to it today, though my best guess is Sony via Columbia Pictures by way of a mid-30s sale.

Her Man had it’s greatest modern exposure by way of a pair of clips included in A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995). While Phillips Holmes, as Dan Keefe, is shown storming towards his ultimate confrontation with Cortez’ Johnnie, Scorsese remarks that the “myth of the static camera has been dispelled now that so many films of the period have been rediscovered.” But despite this one very high profile fan Her Man has yet to gain anywhere near the exposure of wider seen titles of the period.

Helen Twelvetrees

Someone has posted the final six and a half minutes of Her Man to YouTube. While this clip does reveal the ending it also shows the ballyhooed fight scene in full. If you can’t get your hands on a copy these few minutes will certainly send you hunting for one!

If you do have a copy I recommend pairing it with Safe in Hell (1931) for a few hours of dark tropic grit and sin. It’s hard to believe that Her Man was produced over a year before Safe in Hell, but that just goes to prove how dead-on Scorsese was in naming it as an example of how much some of these early films did move. There are plenty of other movies of the period that sit still and easily live up to the very myth he proclaims shattered, and so the always active Her Man winds up feeling like it would have been produced at least a couple of years after it was.

Ahead of its time. Exciting. Shocking. Still very worthwhile.

Marjorie Rambeau as Annie with Helen Twelvetrees

Sources

• Beauchamp, Cari. Joseph P. Kennedy Presents: His Hollywood Years. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.
• Griffith, Richard. “Cycles and Genres.” Movies and Methods: Vol. I. Ed. Bill Nichols. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California, 1976.
• Parsons, Louella O. “’Her Man’ Star for New Movie.” St. Petersburg Times 26 Nov 1930: 17. Google News. Web. 18 May 2013.
• Stanfield, Peter. Body and Soul: Jazz and Blues in American Film, 1927-63 University of Illinois Press, 2005.

Pathe ad in Film Daily, December 12, 1930

Cortez scowl. Still not happy.

Phillips Holmes about to go on a rampage.

Pathe pushes its top stars in Photoplay, December 1930

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Frankie Darro of No Greater Glory, which already aired, and The Mayor of Hell, coming later in May.

A couple of new discoveries I had mentioned in Part 1 that I have already enjoyed this month include King Vidor’s An American Romance (1944), the rare two hour film that I wish had been longer, and Frankie Darro along with some other familiar youthful faces in Frank Borzage’s No Greater Glory (1934). Fantastic job of hosting by Illeana Douglas on that last one as well as 1933’s Alice in Wonderland, which I still need to watch beyond her intro. Hopefully you caught Lee Tracy in Washington Merry-Go-Round (1932) on Monday afternoon—if you did you might enjoy my look at that title from THIS previous post (lots of background info).

And now, May 16 and beyond, but first, the usual reminder of my East Coast bias:

These picks are based upon Turner Classic Movies' US schedule (most also air in Canada). Any times mentioned are all EST because that's what TCM uses inside my Now Playing Guide and that's what I use when I set the clocks here on Long Island. The days are TCM's own slightly screwy time periods, typically beginning at 6 am and working through to the following morning at the same time.

Elissa Landi

The fifth Seitz movie is My Dear Miss Aldrich (1937) at 11 am EST and also counts as the first of a six-movie Maureen O’Sullivan birthday marathon (born 1911). Not a Tarzan among them. TCM instead airs a wide range of O’Sullivan titles dating from 1937 through 1965, including the horse racing film Sporting Blood (1940) and the film noir favorite Where Danger Lives (1950).

Early Saturday morning, May 18, I’ll finally get to catch The George Raft Story (1961), featuring Ray Danton as Raft. Later that morning The Falcon series continues as well as the noon-time run of Randolph Scott Westerns: A goodie this week with Scott and Joel McCrea in Sam Peckinpah’s Ride the High Country (1962).

Bride of Frankenstein (1935) is the TCM Essential at 8 pm EST that same Saturday night and it’s followed by another favorite, Charles Laughton in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933). Both of those titles are part of a four-movie celebration of Laughton's real-life wife, Elsa Lanchester, who also happens to be the most humorous of Henry’s collection of Queens. Those two titles are followed by Lanchester in Murder by Death (1976) and Passport to Destiny (1944).

Sunday night, May 19, TCM airs the double-feature Jesse James (1939) with Tyrone Power and Henry Fonda, and brings Fonda back immediately after with The Return of Frank James (1940). That pairing begins at 8 Eastern. Judex returns to Sunday Silents.

Daytime Monday, May 20, brings a Jimmy Stewart birthday marathon (born 1908). Seven movies total dating 1936 to 1965 and including Academy Award winning Best Picture You Can’t Take It With You (1938), Frank Borzage’s The Mortal Storm (1940), and the Anthony Mann Western Winchester ‘73 (1950), among others.

Robert Montgomery

Little Caesar (1931) brings out the TCM Tough Guys that night at 8 and reminds me that I’ve yet to make good on my promise to cover this classic gangster title as of yet. I won’t get to it before the 21st either, but here are a bunch of other old gangster films I’ve previously covered and here’s Laura’s post on Little Caesar at Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings, which I believe includes links to some other bloggers coverage from about that same time—check the date, that’s when I should have posted mine!

If you have insomnia that night, though any form of recording technology will do as well, don’t miss early prison flick The Big House (1930) with Chester Morris and Wallace Beery at 4:30 that morning, slightly before sun-up May 22.

No birthday, but a wide ranging four movie marathon of Ronald Colman movies on Wednesday the 22nd, beginning at 7 am EST with 1924 Silent Her Night of Romance starring Constance Talmadge and ending with the bizarre The Story of Mankind (1957), airing that morning at 11:45. That’s followed by four with Anne Baxter, also for no special occasion that I’m aware of.

Thursday morning, May 23, begins with the can’t miss documentary Without Lying Down about early screenwriter Frances Marion at 6 am EST. It bookends a group of 8 early titles, all 1929-1931, with the wonderful Complicated Women documentary, based on Mick La Salle’s even more wonderful book, at 7 pm.

The movies in between read like my customer history at Warner Archive: Mary Pickford in Coquette (1929) at 7 am; Norma Shearer in The Last of Mrs. Cheyney at 8:30; Willard Mack’s The Voice of the City, starring Mack with the gone-too-soon Robert Ames, at 10:15 am; More Norma Shearer in the classic The Divorcee at 11:45 am; a new one to me in The Life of the Party (1930), with Winnie Lightner and Irene Delroy, at 1:15 pm; 2:45 pm EST kicks off a double-feature starring site-favorite Dorothy Mackaill in The Office Wife (1930) and then Kept Husbands (1931) at 4 pm—Be sure to DVR these if you’ve only seen her in Safe in Hell (1931); then a huge cast of soon-to-be MGM favorites in the messy but enjoyable The Secret Six (1931) winds things up at 5:30.

Great day! Because of the quirks of my recommendations this month (Two parts; no Now Playing Guide; etc.) I didn’t do my Short Guide, but if I were to recommend any day for you to call in sick, May 23 would be it!

And wow, Harold Lloyd shorts and features run that entire night beginning at 8 pm with the classic Safety Last! (1923). Okay, sick day, DVR space and lots of coffee called for on May 23.

All right, I don’t know how you or your DVR are going to manage this one, but I suggest you get up early on Friday, May 24 for three more pre-Code titles featuring strong women: Joan Crawford in Sadie McKee (1934) at 6 am EST; Ruth Chatterton in Lilly Turner (1933) at 7:45 am—I just caught this one earlier this month and I loved it! Hope to cover it soon, once I return to a more regular writing schedule. If you want to know more about it now do check out Karen Burroughs Hannsberry's post at shadowsandsatin, where she made it her TCM pick-of-the-month for April (must have been when I watched!); Lilly Turner is followed by Irene Dunne in Ann Vickers (1933) at 9 that morning.

Beginning at 6 am Saturday, May 25, and running right through til early Tuesday morning, May 28, is TCM’s annual 3-day, 72 hour Memorial Day marathon of war movies. Lots of the usual titles airing.

Diana Wynyard, star of Men Must Fight

It’s not my cup of tea, but I know 1945’s The Enchanted Cottage wins new fans every time TCM airs it. It plays on TCM at 11:15 EST the morning of Tuesday, May 28. I’m more partial to the movie coming on after it, 1947’s Desire Me, a twisted post-War romance featuring Greer Garson with Robert Mitchum and Richard Hart.

TCM celebrates Bob Hope’s birthday (born 1903) on Wednesday, May 29, with an 8 movie marathon of all 1950s and ‘60s titles.

It’s disaster night beginning at 8 pm on the 29th with 1953’s Titanic followed by a favorite of mine, In Old Chicago (1938), at 10 pm. TCM jams The Hurricane (1937) in between, but if you’re recording these to watch later then try to watch San Francisco (1936), which airs later at 2 am EST, right before In Old Chicago. The later movie from Fox is pretty clearly an attempt to cash in on the success of the earlier MGM title. Both are excellent though and each contains exciting disaster sequences.

Top of the World, the 1992 James Cagney documentary, begins the day, Thursday, May 30. It’s followed by pre-Code favorite The Mayor of Hell (1933), starring Cagney, but really putting a shine on Frankie Darro. I somehow haven’t covered this title yet, but it was written about recently by my buddy Danny at Pre-Code.com. TCM does exactly what I would wish it to do when it next airs the 1938 remake Crime School, starring Humphrey Bogart, but I’d have love to have seen them take the next natural step and air the next version, 1939’s Hell’s Kitchen, after that. But they don’t.

That said, TCM does spend the entire day of the 30th showing pairs of originals and remakes! The other pairings: Two Against the World (1932) and more Bogie in One Fatal Hour (1936); The classic Libeled Lady (1936) with Jean Harlow, William Powell, Myrna Loy and Spencer Tracy, followed by remake Easy to Wed (1946); and Five Came Back (1939) followed by Back From Eternity (1956). An intriguing day. I just hope I don’t sit down for one, doze off and wake up at the close of a remake. Could get confusing!

Not much for me on Friday, May 31, but I do want to catch Anthony Asquith’s The Way to the Stars aka Johnny in the Clouds (1945). The only thing keeping my Netflix subscription active in recent times has been their collection of (mostly) 1970s British mini-series. As I’ve run through them I’ve also begun to pull out previously neglected British films of the 1940s that I had recorded for safe-keeping. This title, to more or less steal the IMDb summary, about life on a British bomber base from the start of the Battle of Britain, appears to be right up one of my most recent alleys.

William Powell, Myrna Loy, Jean Harlow and Spencer Tracy in Libeled Lady. May 30 on TCM.

Good news: My June 2012 edition of TCM’s Now Playing Guide has arrived! While I’m not overjoyed by Star of the Month selections Eleanor Parker for June or Paul Henreid for July, I’m sure TCM will more than make up for that once I start digging through the schedules a little better and unearthing any new-to-me '30s nuggets.

I see that the selections for August’s Summer Under the Stars programming has recently slipped out as well. While I much prefer the 2012 crop of stars to those chosen for 2013, that isn't intended to cast a negative pall upon these latest choices--I have a feeling I’ll be clinging to 2012 as my favorite line-up for a long time! And I am looking forward to days for Mickey Rooney (August 13) and Glenda Farrell (August 29).

By August I should have all of my current time-consuming projects completed, in which case I look forward to blogging near daily about the Summer Under the Stars selections as I did last year.

Back in a few days with an article about an old movie. Most likely something with Helen Twelvetrees unless I bump into something different that I can’t resist writing about between now and then!

PS: Collectors, you may want to check out my updated guide to the 1934 Brown & Williamson set of Golden Grain tobacco cards. I recently acquired a big batch of these and have added 25 images to the Gallery. Just need another 3 to have the entire set on display!

PPS: Did you know you can access complete movie card galleries by clicking on any card* shown on this page? If you like the look of one of the cards just click on it to head over to a gallery of that entire set. *Exception: Dorothy Mackaill, I haven't made a page for that set yet.

See you soon,
Cliff

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Want to talk about this? Visit the original article to leave a comment: Part 2: May 2013 TCM Preview – A Look Inside My Now Playing Guide

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This article was written as part of The Mary Astor Blogathon being hosted by Tales of the Easily Distracted and Silver Screenings. Be sure to click the Blogathon banner to find your way to dozens of articles by other bloggers about Mary Astor and her movies, most better recalled than this one! My selection ties in with continuing coverage of the actor Louis Wolheim. The Sin Ship was the first film Wolheim directed and the final title he would star in prior to his death on February 18, 1931.

Anyone who has ever seen Louis Wolheim’s face understands that you don’t mess with him. Not on screen where it’s impossible not to cast him as the tough guy. His Captain Sam McVeigh of The Sin Ship is no exception.

“I don’t say no prayers, I don’t hit no cripples, and I don’t fall in love,” he tells first mate, Charlie (Hugh Herbert), shortly before falling for a woman who sets him straight in mind, body and soul.

Louis Wolheim

When he first spots Mary Astor, dressed in white alongside her minister husband (Ian Keith), McVeigh tells Charlie, as though he were shopping from a catalogue, “That’s the kind I like.” Charlie soon adds, “A little pretty for the likes of us.”

The minister catches up to McVeigh inside a seedy bar and begs passage on his boat. McVeigh, with the beauty still on his mind and now visible just outside of the bar, agrees. Once on board he sends Charlie up to hustle the pretty woman down to his cabin, presumably for tea.

When Charlie leaves McVeigh locks the door behind him. “Why did you do that?” she asks him, already knowing the answer.

McVeigh makes his play. Louis Wolheim and Mary Astor.

“Oh, just a little idea of mine,” he says, offering a drink quite a bit harder than tea, suggesting it might “put some red blood in them white veins of yours.” She calmly demands that he open the door.

“Oh, don’t be so innocent. Say, I’ve been dealing with women all of my life, all over the world. And I ain’t never found one different from another.” She once more requests to be let go. “Say, you must think I’m a big chump,” he tells her. “Did you think that I was letting you and that husband of yours ride free cause I’m getting holy?”

After a bit more banter fails to change McVeigh’s mind, she says, “I know what’s wrong with you. You’re soaked in liquor. Your mind is warped.” The good preacher’s wife finally escapes the situation by shaming the hardboiled captain: “You’re an animal, you have no fine feelings. Clean up your mind, your body, your soul. Then you’ll think better. You’ll live better.”

Striking a nerve.

His head drops. He places the key to his cabin on the table and tells her to get out. “Women are not all like, Captain,” she says as she takes the key.

With that, the beast is tamed. But as Astor returns to Keith we immediately learn that the Captain was worshipping a false idol.

She shuts the door behind herself and begins to giggle. Our minister seems a bit too nasty when he greets her. She lights a cigarette and tells him what happened. “McVeigh, our noble captain, just pulled the Hairy Ape gag—on me!” She thinks it’s a riot, and surely so does anyone else in the audience who realizes that Astor just named the Eugene O’Neill play that brought fame to Wolheim on Broadway nearly a decade earlier.

“So I pulled the outraged, good woman gag on him,” she tells her husband. “Did I put on an act. Gosh, I almost believed it myself. And he fell for it!”

The preacher and his wife revealed as Smiley Marsden and Frisco Kitty! Ian Keith and Mary Astor.

Keith, reverting to his more normal character, scolds her. “Wouldn’t be so good if he found out that you’re Frisco Kitty and these clothes are phony,” he says, tugging at his holy garb. “You seem to forget that they’re looking for Mr. Smiley Marsden, the man that cracked the Liberty National Bank in Seattle, accompanied by his dear wife.”

The next morning a new Captain McVeigh unleashes himself on his crew. His clean white shirt inspires one of his men to remark, “Maybe he thinks he’s going to croak.” That must have brought some groans from Wolheim fans attending what was his final, posthumous, performance in 1931.

The respectable couple finds a new man the next morning. White shirt and all!

The remainder of The Sin Ship is about McVeigh’s reformation and Frisco Kitty’s slow acceptance of him and her desire to retain the “fine and good” feeling that this reformed McVeigh has in turn brought to her. Ian Keith’s Smiley is the obstacle for each of them.

The new McVeigh treats Preacher Smiley with as much respect as he does his wife, accepting that he cannot have the woman that he loves. And the real Smiley keeps his wife, Frisco Kitty, from completely turning over that new leaf for herself for as long as he possibly can.

The Sin Ship features Wolheim as directed by Wolheim. It was the only film he was able to direct before his death, early in 1931, two months before the movie was released. The cast is small, with the odd triangle between Wolheim, Astor and Keith filling most of the movie and Hugh Herbert, slightly pre-Woo woo antics, attempting to provide comedy relief in a more straight-laced manner than we soon become accustomed to. Besides McVeigh’s half dozen or so crew members, there is really only one additional character of any consequence in The Sin Ship.

Wolheim and Hugh Herbert in a scene that reminded me of almost any episode of The Honeymooners. To the moon, Hugh!

About half of the film takes place on board McVeigh’s ship and, according to Film Daily, RKO hired out speedboats at $500 per day to keep other ships from interrupting their work in the area of Catalina Island where they filmed.

Louis Wolheim had worked with Mary Astor previously in Lewis Milestone’s Two Arabian Knights, a successful silent film from 1927, but The Sin Ship came during a period of Astor’s career of which she held little recollection.

Astor’s first husband, Kenneth Hawks (brother of Howard Hawks), had died at work on a film early in 1930. Astor wrote that at that time she “had to dispose of money anxieties and accept a contract for which I had little enthusiasm” (Astor 88). That was the RKO deal that led to The Sin Ship, one of eight “B” films she made that year—”all of them pretty bad”—six at RKO and two on loan. Happier days were on the immediate horizon for Astor, who married second husband, Dr. Franklyn Thorpe, in June 1931, just a couple of months after The Sin Ship’s release. The former silent star with the tough start in talkies caught back on once and for all with the 1932 MGM release Red Dust, starring Clark Gable and Jean Harlow.

A slightly younger Mary Astor. Mid to late 1920s on this 5" X 7" fan photo.

The Sin Ship came and went. Despite Miss Astor including it amongst the “pretty bad” it has its moments. Wolheim, likely concentrating more on his directorial duties, gives the weakest of the three main performances, though anyone would have been hard-pressed to believably carry off the quick shift in his character’s outlook. Keith, the former stage actor perhaps best recalled today for playing Joan Blondell’s alcoholic husband in film noir classic Nightmare Alley (1947), has the juiciest role as Astor’s villainous husband. Astor would have benefitted from a few extra scenes in full Frisco Kitty mode, but her character manages to be a bit more believable in her evolution than Wolheim’s does.

Film Daily called The Sin Ship “mild entertainment” that got by on the “action stuff.” Photoplay concluded that it “doesn’t stand up” and remarked that Wolheim once more proved the difficulty in splitting yourself between acting and directing. The Sin Ship fared better in Motion Picture, who remarked, “a lively time is had by all,” but warned, “it would grieve us to see Louis go down the chute which has swallowed so many other players with a yen to direct.”

While there can be little doubt that had he survived Louis Wolheim would have become one of the great character actors of the 1930s, The Sin Ship leaves us to wonder if he would have directed more movies. Just prior to his death Picture Play said no, reporting that Wolheim “had made up his mind to stick to acting.” It’s an enjoyable movie, a good enough story with colorful characters, but Wolheim’s touch doesn’t distinguish itself in any way beyond perhaps wondering if it may have turned out better in someone else’s hands.

The death of Wolheim seems to have doomed The Sin Ship. RKO does not appear to have thrown much, if any, force behind promoting it. It accumulated middling reviews, which usually didn’t even bother to mention the death of its star and director, while playing across the country throughout half of 1931. Once it was gone, so was Wolheim. For a time.

The Sin Ship has never had a video release. Screen captures on this page were taken from a previous airing on Turner Classic Movies. Please check the top area of TCM's page for The Sin Ship for any scheduled future air dates (none as of this writing).

Sources

• Astor, Mary. A Life on Film. First British Edition. London: W.H. Allen, 1973.
• Schallert, Edwin and Elza. "Hollywood High Lights." Picture Play March 1931: 31.

Hugh Herbert meets the classic Wolheim profile.

Louis Wolheim and Mary Astor

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Good Sunday morning to you!

Sorry there hasn't been a torrent of new posts lately, but I've been busy on the back end trying to solve some nuts and bolts business and blogging issues.

You can skip right to the new movie card Gallery HERE, but I know a few fellow sellers and bloggers do like to hear about challenges on those fronts, so a few brief paragraphs before the official intro to the new gallery.

eBay dropped off a cliff over the past couple of months and judging by the terrible traffic numbers that they've been delivering to my listings I'm pretty sure that's not my fault. Still, it is my fault if I do nothing. I've selectively decreased my presence on the site and am deep into testing a new ecommerce solution for this site. Barring any unforeseen snags I am hoping to premiere a new and improved version of the Immortal Ephemera Store within the next month or so.

On top of that Google managed to target the sloppiest page it could find on this site and suspend my ability to serve Google AdSense ads on all Immortal Ephemera pages. Apparently I'm not delivering value. I disagree, but figure I'd better do some work before trying to reason with a Google bot.

The Google trouble may wind up a blessing in disguise as I have since deactivated some 350 combined posts and pages across Immortal Ephemera that I felt were no longer up to snuff. I discovered that as I transitioned between running the old html version of the site and my first heavy dose of blogging circa 2009 I sent out a lot of junk. To those who've been around awhile, sorry 'bout that! Anyway, there's a lot less clutter on the site as of today. So far no change in traffic--all the good stuff is still here.

Plenty more work to do though before I appeal my case and try to grab back some of that bonus Google money.

Some services I've tested recently - BigCommerce. I liked much of what I saw during my trial, and they were even kind enough to extend me another 15 days on top of the trial time, but in the end I decided that the eBay integration wasn't tight enough for me. At the beginning of my extended trial I stumbled across the service that I most likely will be transitioning too: WooCommerce, which has much improved since I'd last tried it. Another interesting trial was to a service I will not be using in the short term, but really do hope improves enough to pay for in the near future: StichLabs. Stitch syncs items between multiple selling venues. I tried it using Ecwid, Etsy and Amazon. Unfortunately the Ecwid integration did not work. But I see they've recently added eBay and list WooCommerce as coming soon, so I hope to give them another go over the summer.

So the past few weeks have been spent on new projects, surprise projects and time creating a slew of new eBay listings to try and generate some cash on hand. I miss being able to write every night, but do get a somewhat twisted kick out of trying to solve these other problems too.

But enough gripes, you're not on board for that.

I'd mentioned I was busy creating some new eBay listings. Well, I tried to use my bean and went out of my way to bring in some cards for which I had not yet created galleries on the site. Two birds, one stone. That's the true point of this li'l bulletin, and so:

Click HERE to view the brand new guide to the 1934 Godfrey Phillips Film Stars tobacco card set of 50. Besides the usual notes and text checklist there's a brand new gallery picturing both sides of each of the 50 cards from this set. Here's George Raft to whet your appetite:

I broke the set pictured and listed the singles for sale on eBay where they run from $1.75 up to $8 for the Shirley Temple card. You can view the listings HERE.

Some updates on old Galleries:
Someone was kind enough to email an image of our missing Joker from the 1932 P.G. Wenger set of L.A. Olympics playing cards. Who could it be? Who else--Joe E. Brown. You can check out that page HERE.

And, courtesy of Jim Davis, come two more 1934 Cracker Jack Mystery Club images: Myrna Loy and that same Joe E. Brown. The Cracker Jack page is HERE.

I will be back sometime soon with Part 2 of my TCM preview covering May 15-31. Either just before or right after that, but most definitely on May 8, I will be writing about The Sin Ship (1931) for the Mary Astor Blogathon.

Have a great day and a wonderful start to your week. Talk to you in just few days--
Cliff

All content © Immortal Ephemera

Want to talk about this? Visit the original article to leave a comment: Odds and Ends: A New Godfrey Phillips Gallery

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May 13

Before descending into a death-of-print diatribe, I will say I miss my May issue of Now Playing very much. Frankly, as I sit down to write this I have as little an idea of what’s playing on Turner Classic Movies tomorrow as I do for May 31. We’re playing this preview by ear!

Without my copy of Now Playing I’m left with nothing to circle. No pages to dog ear or stick Post-its into the corners of. No center page to fall out mid-month.

So as we fly by the seat of my pants, my selections and recommendations made in an entirely linear fashion thanks to THIS page at TCM.com, I apologize in advance for any can’t misses I may miss or daytime themes that escape me. My mind doesn’t work the same online. With that little paper guide in my hand I can be precise. Set it down, look something up, proclaim Eureka! and tell you about the back-to-back Aline MacMahon movies running on May 3 (I do that anyway). Taking the process online some sort of ADD that I’d never been aware of kicks in and I become a scrolling zombie (though I don't fare too poorly below).

Thankfully though I know a good movie when I see it. I’ll do my best.

And to the folks at any magazine fulfillment house, guys, I’ll keep on renewing my paper subscription because the day I buy a Kindle is the day I lose all reading comprehension. Let’s just work on those processing times on your end. I’m assuming it’s not done by hand these days.

The Disclaimer

These picks are based upon Turner Classic Movies' US schedule (most also air in Canada). Any times mentioned are all EST because that's what TCM uses inside my Now Playing Guide and that's what I use when I set the clocks here on Long Island. The days are TCM's own slightly screwy time periods, typically beginning at 6 am and working through to the following morning at the same time.

TCM in May, Long Version

Wednesday, May 1 sees TCM daytime celebrate Glenn Ford’s birthday (1916-2006) with a marathon of 8 movies between 6:15 am and 8 pm. TCM continues to make oldies fans such as myself happy with a marathon of six Priscilla Lane movies beginning at 8 that same night.

The morning of May 2 includes a handful of movies featuring a few of my favorite stars including the excellent The Mystery of Mr. X (1934) featuring Elizabeth Allan with Robert Montgomery at 7:15 am, followed by a pair featuring Ricardo Cortez, I Am a Thief (1935) at 9 am and Ricardo’s Perry Mason entry, The Curse of the Black Cat (1936) at 10:15. An American Romance (1944) with Brian Donlevy looks intriguing late that night at 1:45 am.

I love TCM daytime for Friday, May 3. Most would be content to celebrate Bing Crosby’s birthday (1903-1977), and TCM does so with three titles in the afternoon. But where TCM excels is in inviting fans of Aline MacMahon (1899-1991), Beaulah Bondi (1889-1981) and Mary Astor (1906-1987), three others born May 3, to the party as well.

It’s Aline MacMahon’s day early—and I’m so happy she was remembered--with The Heart of New York (1932) and Side Streets (1934) set as candles. I briefly mentioned Side Streets featuring MacMahon with Paul Kelly and Ann Dvorak in a recent entry. Don’t forget to record it at 8:15 am. Up next, two with Beulah Bondi, Two Alone (1934), which sounds like a juicy youth pre-Code featuring Jean Parker and Tom Brown, at 9:30 am followed by The Captain Is A Lady (1940) at 11. Mary Astor is (under?) represented by A Successful Calamity (1932) at 12:15 and Man of Iron (1935) at 1:30. After that the Bing trio kicks off with Pennies from Heaven (1936) at 2:45 pm followed by a couple of his ‘50s classics. Lots of ‘30s titles playing on TCM that night as well with a rare showing of Paramount’s all-star Alice in Wonderland at 8 pm and, speaking of youth films, Columbia’s No Greater Glory (1934), a Frank Borzage title about German street gangs starring Andy Hardy’s Beezy, George P. Breakston, with site faves Frankie Darro and Jackie Searl.

Advice: Empty your DVR and have it ready to go on May 3!

The Falcon continues to roll on Saturday mornings with George Sanders in The Falcon Takes Over (1942) playing at 10:45 on May 4. That night TCM plays the three most popular Busby Berkeley pre-Code musicals beginning with Gold Diggers of 1933 at 8, followed by James Cagney in Footlight Parade at 10 and, the big one, 42nd Street at midnight. All from 1933, whatta year!

More Aline MacMahon! With Joan Blondell and Ruby Keeler on this original GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 Still Photo

I thought TCM would short-shrift my favorite Fox stars, Tyrone Power (1914-1958) and Alice Faye (1915-1998), on their mutual May 5 birthday (Happy birthday to my Dad too!), but they pull out the okay Rose of Washington Square (1939), also starring Al Jolson, and plug it right into the prime 8 pm EST time slot. Well done!

Even though they were never co-stars Monday, May 6 features some big birthdays too with a pair of Rudolph Valentino (1895-1926) movies airing early, The Sheik (1921) at 6:45 am followed by Four Horsemen of the Apolocalypse (1921) at 8:15, and then two from Orson Welles (1915-1985), beginning at 11 with The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) and then The Lady from Shanghai (1948). Then, and somebody at TCM must like him a lot more than I do, three starring Stewart Granger (1913-1993), who to this date remains the most puzzling selection I’ve ever experienced as a TCM Star of the Month—while the date of that honor escapes me the one positive is that the choice gave me hope for a bunch of my favorite lesser stars ever since! Boarding our time machine back to when these titles first ran I think the aging Valentino fan would be okay with seeing Rudy share his day with that whippersnapper Orson, but Stewart Granger? Agree with the selection or not, I should reiterate that it’s days like this that make TCM the best television channel ever. I’m sure there are some Granger fans that I’ve insulted shrugging their shoulders over my excitement about that Aline MacMahon double feature back on May 3!

Wrapping up the 6th, a couple of early ‘40s titles that I love air that night, Boom Town (1940) with Gable, Tracy at Claudette Colbert at 9:30 pm and Errol Flynn as Gentleman Jim (1942) at 2:15 am.

More Flynn on Tuesday, May 7 with Virginia City (1940) at 10 am and more Gable too, this time paired with Joan Crawford, following at noon in Strange Cargo (1940). Priscilla Lane fans who enjoyed Brother Rat at 8 back on May 1 can settle in for sequel Brother Rat and a Baby (1940) on the 7th at 5 pm. That’s followed by another title I’ve semi-recently covered, Little Men (1940) at 6:30 pm. The Tough Guys theme, which takes over in lieu of a Star of the Month, seems to ratchet up the film noir action that evening with The Asphalt Jungle (1950) at 8, followed by dark classics Crossfire (1947) and Out of the Past (1947).

On Wednesday, May 8 Judy Garland morning seems to segue into Dirk Bogarde afternoon with I Could Go On Singing (1963) the linking title at 12:45 pm. I know some think I love my Mickey Rooney more than I should, but I’ve got to point you to another Busby Berkeley musical, Babes on Broadway (1941), starring Judy and the Mick that morning at 9:15 am. Fun stuff!

Mickey and Judy perform on radio, not in BABES ON BROADWAY, but 1939 predecessor BABES IN ARMS. The radio performance was from 1941 though as this press photo is date stamped.

International film fans will be happier than I am with TCM’s May 9 daytime marathon of movies starring Alain Delon - Six titles air between 6 am and 7:15 pm.

Big movies under the sun on Friday, May 10. A run, in fact, of Best Actor Oscar winning performances ranging from 1936-1942 and 6 am to 8 pm by my clock. Our winners, and thus the lineup as it begins at 6: Victor McLaglen in The Informer (1935); Paul Muni in The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936); Spencer Tracy in Captains Courageous (1937); Tracy again, back-to-back, as Father Flanagan with that Rooney character in Boys Town (1938); Robert Donat in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939); James Stewart in the Philadelphia Story (1940); and, capping the afternoon, Gary Cooper in High Noon (1941). I’ll trade you the entire month of February on TCM for this lineup every May 10!

Tom Conway crops up alongside real-life brother George Sanders in that Saturday’s Falcon entry, The Falcon’s Brother (1942). Conway takes over as series lead going forward. Set your DVR’s of Josef von Sternberg’s 1935 Dostoevsky adaptation, Crime and Punishment just prior to the Falcon at 9:15 am. Peter Lorre is fantastic in it and Marian Marsh arguably gives her best performance. Also with Edward Arnold. The TCM Essential that evening is How Green Was My Valley (1941), which I recently glowed over HERE.

Carole Lombard alert for Sunday morning, May 12, with Columbia’s Lady by Choice (1934) early on at 6 am. Two starring Barbara Stanwyck later that morning with the classic Stella Dallas (1937) at 9 am, followed by William Wellman’s So Big (1932) at 11. I highly recommend TCM’s 8 o’clock movie that night as they travel with Rosalind Russell, and later Jack Carson, through the first half of the 20th Century in Roughly Speaking (1945). The ups and downs and an independent minded woman between the wars, very entertaining! The Sunday night silents intrigue me: a group of 1916 Judex serial entries from Louis Feuillade. This will be my first encounter.

TCM airs nine Laurel and Hardy shorts on the morning of Monday, May 13, including several of the Spanish language versions they played a few months back. I’m excited to see TCM correct an oversight from their November political schedule when they air Washington Merry-Go-Round (1932) (Yeah, that one is bolded--finally someone will read it!) starring Lee Tracy at 2:15 pm - Definitely reminiscent of, if not an influence on, Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1941). Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) alert that night at 10:15 pm.

Nice back-to-back opening the morning of Tuesday, May 14 with Richard Dix in the Oscar-winning Best Picture Cimarron (1931) at 6:15 am followed by George Stevens’ epic Giant (1956) at 8:30 running straight through til lunch time. Stevens picked up his own Academy Award directing that one which only seems to grow better with each passing year. Go behind the scenes with Broadway hopefuls Ginger, Lucy and Kate in Gregory La Cava’s classic Stage Door at 2:15 pm and then be entertained in grand style by the classic musical Show Boat (1936) after at 4 that afternoon. More tough guys that night.

An eight movie Joseph Cotten (1905-1994) birthday celebration takes over the daytime Wednesday, May 15 beginning with 1941’s Lydia at 6:30 am and working chronologically through to 1967’s Jack of Diamonds at 6 pm. With a stop for The Third Man (1949) included that morning at 9:30.

Part 2: May 16-31, continues HERE.

Well, this seems to be going pretty well so far. Maybe I won't renew my Now Playing subscription next Spring!

But I am going to cut it short for tonight. It’s getting late and there is no way I can get this to you by Wednesday’s breakfast if I work all the way through to the 31st. But I’ll be back in a day or two with either a second post or an alert that I’ve amended May 16-31 to the bottom of this post. Hope you don’t mind.

Also very sad to read reports that we've lost one of our few remaining major stars of classic Hollywood. The Deanna Durbin Society has announced that Deanna Durbin has recently died at age 91. More to come on that I’m sure, but for now here is the New York Times obituary followed by the best collectible image of Miss Durbin that I could find:

I'm sure TCM will soon announce a Deanna Durbin tribute. I'll also add that information to this page, if and when it comes.

Talk to you real soon!
Cliff

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Want to talk about this? Visit the original article to leave a comment: May 2013 TCM Preview – A Look Inside My Now Playing Guide

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Mr. Dick asks David, “Do you remember the date that King Charles the first had his head cut off?”

Mr. Dick rises from his seat and skips over to the giant kite that he’s made to fly with David.

I haven’t seen Lennox Pawle, the actor who plays Mr. Dick in MGM’s 1935 adaptation of David Copperfield, in any of his other movies. It’s only a small handful of titles, but does include a role in The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931) and bit roles in both Mata Hari (1931) and his final movie, Sylvia Scarlett (1935), which I have seen, but can't recall Pawle. I'm sure I'll bump into Mr. Pawle again--I'll be looking next time--but until that day Mr. Dick will more than suffice.

I’ve been curious about him ever since I wrote about David Copperfield and judging by the Pawle searches on this site every time Turner Classic Movies airs that movie, some others are wondering about him as well.

I included a brief biography of Pawle in my Copperfield post, and unfortunately I don’t have much to add to the story beyond a better grasp of those original details.

John Lennox Pawle was born at Marylebone, Middlesex, England on April 27, 1871, the son of John Christopher Pawle, a London solicitor, and his wife, Maria. You can find a brief (three pages) summary of Pawle milestones as gathered from various historical documents at Archive.org.

Lennox Pawle with Freddie Bartholomew and Edna May Oliver in David Copperfield

Before becoming an actor Lennox Pawle worked as a newspaper reporter and is said to have owned a racing newspaper at some later date.

He began his acting career at Sarah Thorne’s Dramatic School some time around 1890. His stage debut came later that decade in Ticklish Times. Pawle gained experience in London, where before the turn of the century he was already known as a comic actor, and eventually became a member of Maude Adams’ Playhouse company.

Lennox Pawle arrived in America in 1910 to play in the Liebler Company’s production of Pomander Walk. Pawle played a retired butler, Brooks-Hoskyns, in the hit play by Lionel N. Parker, who soon provided George Arliss with his signature role in 1911's Disreali. Pomander Walk must have been very popular as well because the Brooklyn Eagle was still referencing it to spark memories of Pawle some seventeen years later!

Pawle also scored on Broadway as a lovable old bookseller in Charles Frohman’s revival of Liberty Hall in 1913.

Perhaps Pawle’s greatest round of press coverage came in another play by Parker, The Highway of Life, an adaptation of David Copperfield performed in modern dress and centering upon Pawle's part of Mr. Micawber. One newspaper claimed this was the first time Micawber had been played in America since 1851! Parker’s daughter Dorothy also appeared in the play as Little Em'ly.

Edgar Kent, Dorothy Parker and Lennox Pawle in Pomander Walk, 1911

Pawle married Dorothy Parker when they returned to England in 1914. It was Pawle’s second (possibly third) marriage, after having been granted a divorce from Janet Mary Pawle in 1909. Parker, who as I mentioned in my Copperfield article was not that Dorothy Parker, eventually left Pawle behind in America to return to England in 1924. She remarried after Pawle’s death in 1936.

Lennox Pawle remained in England during the years of the First World War, but returned to Broadway in 1919 to play in the opera Monsieur Beaucaire. I assume it must have had a comic role for him to play. Towards the end of the war he had appeared in a few British films and made his American movie debut as Samuel Pepys in J. Stuart Blackton’s The Glorious Adventure (1922).

Lennox Pawle, at far right, as Samuel Pepys in The Glorious Adventure (1922). From Motion Picture, July 1922.

Pawle remained busy on Broadway throughout the 1920s. He made his return to the movies in 1929, appearing in three titles for Fox Films in that single year: Married in Hollywood, The Sky Hawk, a aviation film which gained him some press notice, and for Raoul Walsh in Hot for Paris. Then it was back to Broadway for a part in Florenz Ziegfeld’s production of Simple Simon, a Rodgers and Hart musical comedy, in 1930.

Pawle next appeared in the two 1931 films for MGM, The Sin of Madelon Claudet and Mata Hari, before finishing off his Broadway career in Collision, a flop lasting just seven performances.

Pawle received plenty of positive notices for his small part as Mr. Dick in David Copperfield, but unfortunately he would only appear in Fox’s The Gay Deception and in a small role as a drunk in Sylvia Scarlett before a cerebral hemorrhage took his life, February 22, 1936.

Lennox Pawle's part in David Copperfield is small. Most people remember the movie for W.C. Fields though Freddie Bartholomew, Edna May Oliver and a host of others will gain mention before Pawle as well. And deservedly so. The movie is filled with a cast that seem to have jumped from Dickens' pages to come to life for MGM. But no character makes me smile more than Pawle's simple Mr. Dick, described by Oliver's Aunt Betsey as, "the most friendly creature in existence.” It's impossible to watch David Copperfield without coming away wondering, who was that guy?

"An old and intimate friend."

He was, like many of his contemporaries, somebody whose career has largely slipped from memory. A stage actor of some prominence in the 1910s and '20s, who died before he could really make his mark in Hollywood. He only made it into the movies a dozen times, and a few of those are lost or forgotten. But we have Mr. Dick, and that's enough.

“Don’t pretend to be wool gathering when you’re as sharp as a surgeon’s lancet.” - Aunt Betsey to Mr. Dick

Pawle had the following correspondence between himself and a theatrical manager, Robert Arthur, published in the “Era Annual for 1908.” Those letters in their entirety:

Lennox Pawle in Liberty Hall, 1913

Green Club Room, October 8, 1902
Dear Mr. Robert Arthur,
If you saw me in pantomime you wouldn’t pay me £30 a week.
Yours faithfully,
Lennox Pawle

Sources

• ”A Panto. Proposal.” Sunday Times (Perth, WA: 1902-1954) 1 Mar 1908: 18. Trove. Web. 27 Apr 2013.
• ”Lennox Pawle Has Important Role in Cort Theater Farce.” Daily Star 17 Aug 1927: 5. Old Fulton NY Post Cards. Web. 27 Apr 2013.
• ”Micawber as a Stage Character.” Brooklyn Daily Eagle 15 Nov 1914: 13. Old Fulton NY Post Cards. Web. 27 Apr 2013.

"Your common sense is invaluable," says Edna May Oliver to Lennox Pawle in David Copperfield

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More gangsters and G-men, but this time the focus is on the teenage son of our ruthless killer.

1941 still photo picturing Gene Reynolds and Edward Arnold in The Penalty.

Roosty (Gene Reynolds) is the doting son of Public Enemy #1, Martin “Stuff” Nelson (Edward Arnold), a vicious gangster whose fatherly advice includes shooting lessons (”Never let a guy get closer than four paces”) and an entrepreneurial outlook (“My racket is a business. And I got a big stake in it. Including a nine year jolt I spent in stir. But that’s part of the overhead.”).

I should point out that this now obscure 1941 production from MGM has nothing to do with the much better recalled Lon Chaney film of the same title from 1920.

This movie was based on a 1938 play by Martin Berkeley. Berkeley is notorious for later emerging as top name dropper to the House Un-American Activities Committee, but no doubt fondly recalled by ‘50s science fiction fans for his work on the scripts of genre classics such as Revenge of the Creature, Tarantula (both 1955) and The Deadly Mantis (1957). His play Roosty, from which The Penalty was based, lasted a little over a week at the Lyceum Theatre. The Broadway buzz at that time was all for Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, which opened at the Morosco the very same night, having moved in after a brief run earlier that month at another theatre. The papers gave Our Town the headlines; Roosty managed a mention.

Edward Arnold as "Stuff" Nelson

While Berkeley actually was an MGM employee by the time of The Penalty, Harry Ruskin and John C. Higgins worked on this screenplay. The basic idea of Berkeley’s play, which saw the son of a gangster paroled to a farm, remained intact, but the film seems to split the story more definitively in two than the play had originally presented it. In fact, the first 35 minutes of The Penalty is entirely a gangster movie. After that all of the action shifts to the farm, which appears to have been the main setting of the theatrical production.

Harold S. Bucquet, primarily associated with the Dr. Kildare series, directed The Penalty. The movie features Kildare’s own Dr. Gillespie, Lionel Barrymore, co-billed with his old sparring partner from Oscar winner You Can’t Take It With You (1936), Edward Arnold. The two great character actors share but a single scene in The Penalty and Barrymore doesn’t even show up until nearly the 50-minute mark! When he does he’s crusty to an extreme, filled with curses of dag rattit and folksy observations such as this one:

“City people dream about coming to the country. And country people squawk about wanting to go and live in the city. And they’re both right! Except the country people that want to go to the city is all crazy.”

Lionel Barrymore with Gene Reynolds. Gloria DeHaven in the back seat.

Barrymore’s most extended scene is his first. It comes with the actor, who had broken his hip a few years before, comfortably set in a chair spouting off in typical fashion. After that the poor guy is propped up and leaned in a host of not quite convenient settings that make you wish the studio would have just issued him a paid leave. In addition to Barrymore's lack of mobility I don't think I've ever noticed his arthritis as much as I had in The Penalty, especially in that first scene where he grasps his pipe inside his crooked fingers, waving it for emphasis. He's all knuckles. Old Lionel is broken here, but he still commands his every scene and puts on a bit extra just to make sure. It’s amazing that he will appear in more than two dozen movies over the next eleven years!

The pose captured on this original publicity still is not actually in the film. Left to right: Gene Reynolds, Edward Arnold, Lionel Barrymore. I've wanted to see The Penalty ever since I first came across this image.

Edward Arnold gets the most interesting role in The Penalty as gangster Martin Nelson, who gains his colorful nickname through his trademark phrase, “That’s the stuff.” Arnold rules this movie in the early going, splitting time between robbing banks and offering advice to his son, whom, give Arnold's Stuff this much credit, he imagines setting up in legitimate business after one last big score. Arnold is such a force that it isn’t even a stretch to believe he has the loyalties of beautiful Veda Ann Borg as his moll. At least for as long as he keeps her in chocolates and furs.

Veda Ann Borg, pining for more fur, with Edward Arnold

After the gangster portion of the film plays out Stuff’s son, Roosty, faces the judge, played by busy character actor Grant Mitchell. He paroles the boy to a farm at the request of G-man Craig (Richard Lane), who wants to use Roosty as bait to capture Stuff. For $22.50 a month—and a chance at a grand prize of $7,500 if Stuff gets captured on his farm—Ted McCormick (Robert Sterling) is happy to have Roosty lend a hand. The payout alone may just save the farm.

Roosty meets Ted’s girl, Katherine Logan (Marsha Hunt), when he tries to run away that first night. By the next morning, after establishing his feud with a particularly nasty gander called Charlie, Roosty begins the slow adjustment to farm life. The movie fails in the pacing of that adjustment.

Robert Sterling gives Gene Reynolds a lesson in corn

The most jarring moment of The Penalty comes after Roosty tries to rob the Logans in one scene, only to be found bragging to Ted about winning the debating contest at school in the next. What just happened? Schoolboy Roosty is too big of a surprise, even when it is mentioned that a few weeks have passed. Those few weeks should have been our movie. But Roosty is properly conflicted when the time comes to make the ultimate decision about his future.

Part of me wishes Frankie Darro had been a few years younger and available for Roosty. The other part says Gene Reynolds is okay, if a bit obnoxious in the part.

But then Roosty is obnoxious, at least when dealing with G-Men and hick farmers, and Reynolds is pretty funny when spouting outlandish lies with absolute conviction. Reynolds, who had played Ty Power as a boy in In Old Chicago (1937), was stuck behind Mickey Rooney in MGM’s stable. He shows up in support in Boys Town (1938) and a couple of the Andy Hardy movies, but saw his acting career fizzle when war service interrupted soon after The Penalty. He appeared in a few movies after the war, then in the ‘50s and ‘60s made several TV appearances. In that medium he made the switch from actor to writer-director-producer and achieved his greatest fame—along with six Emmys plus other awards—for his work on programs such as M*A*S*H and Lou Grant.

While I really wish The Penalty had remained a gangster movie and broken off to follow Edward Arnold’s Stuff instead of Gene Reynolds’ Roosty, it still managed to entertain when it turned lighter and stuck to the farm.

According to the Office of War Information records via the AFI notes found on TCM’s page for the film, The Penalty was "disapproved for all export" by the Los Angeles censor board in 1943 because "it is lawless throughout, with killings, juvenile delinquency, and other undesirable features." Well, The Penalty didn’t offer up quite that much sin, but it certainly didn’t adhere to the post Production Code formula of glamorizing the G-men at the expense of the gangsters. While movies were getting darker, and Arnold himself had already appeared in Johnny Apollo (1940), The Penalty has an earlier feel to it. The Penalty is a gangster movie softened by its move to the country and offering up our morality lesson by keeping the focus on Roosty rather than Stuff Nelson.

Gene Reynolds and Marsha Hunt

Forget the billing, Gene Reynolds is the star of The Penalty. Edward Arnold co-stars for the first half of the film with a fun supporting performance by Veda Ann Borg as his moll. Richard Lane’s FBI agent is most prevalent in this portion of the movie. When we move to the farm Robert Sterling shares the most time with Reynolds’ Roosty. Emma Dunn has a few scenes as Sterling’s mother and Marsha Hunt plays his girlfriend. Hunt’s sister is played by 15-year-old Gloria DeHaven and Barrymore plays grandfather to the girls. Grant Mitchell has his single scene dividing the two parts of the movie. Also worth noting the passing through of a very youthful Phil Silvers as a messenger on Arnold’s grapevine.

Phil Silvers and Edward Arnold

That cast alone makes The Penalty worthwhile. If you’re tuning in for hardboiled gangster action you’re going to hate the second half of the movie. But if you’re ready to have a few laughs after all of the killing is over, then The Penalty provides some fun scenes and dialogue inside the overall botched job of portraying Roosty’s growth.

The Penalty aired on Turner Classic Movies a few days prior to this writing. The screen captures illustrating this post were grabbed off of my home recording. The Penalty has never had a video release. Yet another title I can easily imagine coming from Warner Archive at a future date. I’ll update this space if it ever does.

Charlie

An inviting target

Charlie goes for it.

Score!

One angry "eagle."

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At 50 minutes I was in no rush to get to Bullets for O’Hara. It sat on my DVR for a few weeks after Turner Classic Movies had aired it, until just a few nights ago when I was dead-tired come bedtime yet still wanted to squeeze in a movie before nodding off.

It was junk, but it was fun junk. O’Hara stretched far enough to make little sense in a few spots, but like many a B movie it crammed so much action into its super-short running time that I couldn’t fail to be entertained.

Joan Perry and Roger Pryor in Bullets for O'Hara

Bullets for O’Hara had the feel of a series entry, and recognizing stars Roger Pryor and Joan Perry from two separate Lone Wolf entries it seemed a plausible notion. But no, there are no additional O’Hara movies from Warner Brothers. Bullets for O’Hara did, however, turn out to be a remake of a movie from just a few years earlier, Public Enemy’s Wife (1936).

I had a copy of that one in the stack of homemade DVDs gathering dust beside my DVD player.

I watched Public Enemy’s Wife Friday night and before I had gotten through the opening credits I realized that my planned post for Bullets for O’Hara now linked directly to my previous article about G Men (1935). Public Enemy’s Wife was not only part of the brief cycle of G-man movies that G Men had begun the previous year, but it paired two of Cagney’s G Men co-stars, Robert Armstrong and Margaret Lindsay, with his real life pal and Public Enemy’s Wife star Pat O’Brien.

Pat O'Brien and Margaret Lindsay in Public Enemy's Wife

“Gee, man!” is the impressed reply of Lindsay’s maid (Bernice Pilot) to O’Brien and Armstrong when they flash their badges to her at the door.

“Yeah, two of them,” Armstrong shoots back.

I was surprised to find Armstrong much more effective in Public Enemy’s Wife than he had been in the otherwise superior G Men.

Armstrong's character ranked over Cagney's in G Men, but he came across as almost childish at times while sparring with Cagney and was as hard for me to like as he was for Cagney’s character to tolerate. In Public Enemy’s Wife, as O’Brien’s sidekick, Armstrong doesn’t have as much to do but manages to come across as a likable guy when he does. He even gets off a few genuinely funny lines, including that crack to Lindsay’s maid, and manages to be a strong, somewhat silent presence at O’Brien’s side.

Robert Armstrong and Pat O'Brien in Public Enemy's Wife

Lindsay is Lindsay. Effectively icy. Joan Perry brings more of a flair to the part in Bullets for O’Hara, but Lindsay plays it with her typical petulance until a crying jag finally reveals some vulnerability and warms her to O’Brien and audience alike. She’s allowed to be much harder than Perry in her earlier scenes, but unlike Perry in the remake, our detective quickly drops his suspicion of Margaret Lindsay’s character.

Suspicion for what? For involvement in the criminal doings of her husband, portrayed by Cesar Romero opposite Lindsay in the 1936 film and Anthony Quinn with Perry in ‘41. Each movie begins very differently only to wind up in spots so identical that several minutes of footage originally seen in Public Enemy’s Wife can be seen again in Bullets for O’Hara.

Blonde Lindsay

In Public Enemy’s Wife we meet Lindsay’s Judith Maroc working the prison switchboards as she serves a sentence as Romero’s criminal accomplice. She’s called away from her work to meet with the warden, O’Brien and Armstrong alongside him, and is granted her freedom. The warden (Addison Richards) informs her that her husband would like a few words with her before she goes.

Judith is as bitter towards her husband as she had been with the G-men back in the warden's office. Romero’s Gene Maroc, serving a life sentence, warns Judith that she remains forever his and promises that if she ever gets mixed up with another man he will get to them and kill him. He even had her jailed alongside him to keep her free from other men. She tells him that she plans on a divorce as soon as possible.

Cesar Romero

The formerly blonde Judith Maroc resurfaces at the Palm Royal Hotel as a brunette soon engaged to wealthy playboy Tommy McKay (Dick Foran), of the Marrying McKays. O’Brien and Armstrong are, coincidentally, on the scene and spot her immediately. O’Brien’s G-man, Lee Laird, had his suspicions of Judith, but gets over them early after deciding to use Judith and Tommy’s wedding as bait to lure the now escaped Maroc out of hiding.

Roger Pryor’s Detective Mike O’Hara is much more suspicious of Joan Perry’s Pat Van Dyne in the later movie despite the fact that Perry is much more amiable in the role than Lindsay, whose character almost certainly had a more sinister past.

Bullets for O’Hara opens with a crime to set Quinn’s Tony on the run. It’s a doozie that stretches the imagination, but is just wild enough to get you involved with what is to follow.

Anthony Quinn and Joan Perry in Bullets for O'Hara

Quinn and Perry seem like any ordinary honeymooning couple for the first few moments of Bullets for O’Hara. They are visiting a friendly couple they had recently met, and everybody, Quinn and Perry included, seem like good people. And Perry is good, completely innocent, but Quinn is soon carrying out his plans to rob their hosts.

Dick Purcell plays Quinn’s right hand man in O’Hara, a nice wink since he actually played the same part to Romero in Public Enemy’s Wife!

On their way out Quinn remembers the bonds he left in his host’s safe. By the time the safe is open Tony is pointing his gun into the man's ribs. The other guests and Perry return just in time to see Tony wind up his robbery and drag his stunned wife along with him. Perry’s Pat is just as shocked as everyone else, but it takes Pryor’s Detective O’Hara forever to believe her.

Roger Pryor

With O'Hara and others catching up to him on board a train, Tony leaves Pat behind and makes his escape.

At this point both movies converge with each springing the same trick on the villain in hope of capturing him: Our leading lady winds up married to the star detective, figuring that the spurned husband can be taken into custody when he undoubtedly shows up to to spoil the ceremony before it can ever be completed. The ruse goes bad each time when the vengeful husband is scared off at the last minute by a car's backfire and wedding vows are completed by each of our antagonistic couples.

Despite the scenes playing nearly identically from here, Public Enemy’s Wife winds to a much more enjoyable conclusion because it isn’t forced to stretch the story as far as the budget conscious Bullets for O’Hara does.

Margaret Lindsay cuts the wire in Public Enemy's Wife

While Margaret Lindsay’s background as a switchboard operator wasn’t necessary to believe Judith’s trick with the phone line, the addition of the Dick Foran character as her fiance really helps to put over the climax because it enables O’Brien to remain anonymous to Romero. They completely do away with the Foran character in Bullets for O’Hara and allow Quinn to be aware of Pryor before we reach the big scene. So Romero has no idea who the pair of singing drunks are in Public Enemy’s Wife, whereas Bullets for O’Hara leaves us to suppose Quinn just can’t recognize Pryor. Two pair of very similar flat feet wind up the giveaway.

Joan Perry cuts the wire in Bullets for O'Hara. Amazing, but in a few moments the same repairmen from Public Enemy's Wife will show up five years later to discover the same wire on the ground.

Both movies are entertaining, but Public Enemy’s Wife obviously has a bit more behind it. It includes a stronger cast, plus better presentation of the same story; better pace despite being twenty minutes longer; better in most every way.

Bullets for O’Hara piles up the implausibilities, but offers a slightly more menacing villain in Quinn over Romero and a more dynamic, though one dimensional, leading lady in Joan Perry. While I prefer Pat O’Brien as a second lead, he is miles ahead of Roger Pryor as the star of this story. Pryor seems a tough sell as the star of anything, though I did enjoy him during spurts of O’Hara.

Public Enemy’s Wife seemed to do good business back in 1936, being held over at the Strand in New York, and also receiving positive to strong reviews at that time.

“Only a moderate strain on our credulity,” said Life Magazine, while Liberty said it was, “Never quite believable,” though each source admitted it was exciting. Well, if Public Enemy’s Wife was hard to believe, I can only imagine how these same reviewers would feel about Bullets for O’Hara five years later.

The New York Sun thought Public Enemy’s Wife less impressive than Warner’s previous underworld forays and called it, “a minor version of Mary Burns, Fugitive.” But the New York World-Telegram, commenting upon Warner’s “special flair” for racketeer stories praised it for being “played at precisely the right pitch for underworld melodrama.” Hollywood Spectator went further, calling Public Enemy’s Wife, “one of the best examples of sustained suspense we have had in a long time.”

While that goes too far, my own recent experience leads me to say Public Enemy’s Wife makes for a good pairing with G Men, while Bullets for O’Hara is a nice way to spend a little time, just a little, soon after enjoying Public Enemy’s Wife. If by some chance you don't enjoy Public Enemy's Wife, well, then I would advise skipping the remake.

Both movies were Warner Brothers releases based on a story by P.J. Wolfson. Public Enemy’s Wife was directed by Nick Grinde and opened in New York, July 8, 1936. William K. Howard, of the aforementioned Mary Burns, Fugitive, as well as a few other interesting early ‘30s titles, directed Bullets for O’Hara. It also had a summer premier, July 19, 1941.

Unfortunately, you’re going to have to check your own past recordings to locate a copy of either Public Enemy’s Wife or Bullets for O’Hara.

Neither has ever had a video release, nor can I locate copies through my Find Old Movies search engine or even on YouTube! Both of my copies originally came off of Turner Classic Movies, though neither is scheduled to air in the immediate future as of the time of this writing. Given that each movie was a Warner Brothers release I’d imagine that the Warner Archive will at least release Public Enemy’s Wife some time in the future.

Source

• “Public Enemy’s Wife.” Motion Picture Review Digest (Jan-Dec 1936): 86. Internet Archive. Web. 19 Apr 2013.

Roger Pryor and Joan Perry of Bullets for O'Hara

Pat O'Brien and Margaret Lindsay in Public Enemy's Wife

Leftovers: I noticed a few interesting links inside the cast of Bullets for O’Hara: Anthony Quinn was married to Cecil B. De Mille’s adopted daughter, Katherine DeMille, at the time of Bullets for O’Hara. DeMille had appeared in Belle of the Nineties (1934) which is the most likely place for you to have seen O’Hara star Roger Pryor before.

Pryor later appeared in The Lone Wolf Meets a Lady (1940) at Columbia, while co-star Joan Perry starred opposite Warren William in the previous entry of that same series, The Lone Wolf Strikes (1940). Perry was a regular at Columbia until a few weeks after the release of Bullets for O’Hara, a Warner Brothers release, when she married Columbia head Harry Cohn. They remained married until his death in 1958.

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Odds and Ends

Click to jump ahead:

1. Cracker Jacks
2. Site Updates
3. Blogathons
4. Lee Tracy

Cracker Jacks

It's becoming quite the coordinated effort, but I updated the Cracker Jack Mystery Club page tonight with information pulled together from Jim Davis and other sources.

Cracker Jack promoted this as a 32 card set back in 1934, but we've now identified 33 different Cracker Jack cards.

You can see 27 different in the gallery on the updated Cracker Jack page ... and we're going to try to get that number up a little more sometime soon.

Site Updates

If you haven't bumped into an Immortal Ephemera gallery over the past couple of weeks you'll notice a slightly different display on that Cracker Jack page. I put a little money into the site recently and one of the enhancements was social sharing and commenting for Gallery images.

I could actually activate this feature site wide, but that seemed potentially distracting. I thought it would be best to restrict these social features to the gallery pages.

That goes not only for the Cracker Jack pages, but for all of my movie card and collectibles galleries and on the individual Site Index pages where all of the articles and images are collected per page for individual film stars.

Speaking of those Site Index pages, they are the one area that I'm still working on after changing the appearance of the website. I've stripped a lot of junk off of those index pages (no more eBay/Amazon ads or filler text) and am currently working my way through the reformatting.

They run alphabetically, by first name (yes, imperfect). So far I've updated through Gregory Peck, so I have a ways to go.

The galleries are my favorite element of these pages as they collect all of the images I've tagged to that star throughout the web site and together create a sort of star-by-star checklist that may be handy to collectors. Check out Claudette Colbert's page for a pretty full example.

Also doing a lot of work in the Immortal Ephemera Store section of the site. Besides the general overhaul that came when I upgraded the site, I recently re-indexed all of the cards and collectibles in the shop. I also reactivated breadcrumbs on the store pages.

Hopefully this makes it easier for you to find certain products while shopping.

I've also begun a mass re-pricing of all goods in the store. I've already significantly lowered prices on all tobacco cards issued by Gallaher and Carreras with plans to attack the Godfrey Phillips section as soon as I publish this post tonight.

Cagney Blogathon

I've taken part in Blogathons before, but I'm not sure I've ever so fully embraced a topic such as I have James Cagney. It's made for an enjoyable week of reading and I'm not quite done yet!

I hadn't planned on it when I began reading on Monday, but I'm determined to read, comment upon and Tweet every post in the Blogathon. I've got seven more to go and I'm not quite sure what to do when I get done!

Though my income taxes would probably be the correct answer. Gulp! Got to get going on that, huh?

... And then there's the Mary Astor Blogathon, coming soon!

Lee Tracy

After a busy week of blogging, blog reading and working on all of those behind the scenes Immortal Ephemera tinkerings described above, I wound up with a couple of gaps in my weekly birthday calendar.

I took a breather earlier today to get a few days ahead and almost immediately spotted April 14 as the anniversary of Lee Tracy's birth. It's a shame it's a Sunday, but I'm already hoping Turner Classic Movie runs a birthday marathon for motor mouth Tracy next April 14, when the date falls upon a Monday.

While I still haven't gotten to my planned post about The Nuisance (1933), which became my favorite Lee Tracy as soon as I saw it, I did mention a fair bit about him in my articles about two of his other strong pre-Code titles, The Half Naked Truth and Washington Merry-Go-Round (both 1932).

The Lee Tracy biography, in short:

Tracy was born April 14, 1898 in Atlanta, GA. He made it to Broadway via the Vaudeville circuit in 1924 for The Best Man and had his biggest early theatrical hit in the part of Hildy Johnson in The Front Page in 1928. It was a perfect fit for Tracy who made his first foray into the movies in 1929 and would come to specialize in fast talking journalists and hucksters.

His best remembered movie part is probably as John Barrymore's agent in Dinner at Eight (1933), though horror fans will surely cite his reporter in 1932's Doctor X. He also starred opposite Jean Harlow in Bombshell (1933), perfectly cast yet again as a publicist. But Lee Tracy is the sole star of his most enjoyable movies, including the three I already named above plus others such as Clear All Wires! (1933) and, the first movie I ever really noticed him in, Blessed Event (1932).

Lee Tracy appeared in a number of movies in each 1932 and 1933, but an incident that took place while on location for Viva Villa! not only got him kicked off that film, but stalled his career.

Always one of these in the room with Tracy

But Lee Tracy continued to work, first in Hollywood "B's," then back to Broadway and eventually in numerous television appearances throughout the 1950s and early '60s.

On Broadway he eventually scored another hit in 1960's The Best Man and was called upon to play the same part, that of a dying ex-President, in the 1964 film adaptation starring Henry Fonda and Cliff Robertson. Tracy received Best Supporting Actor nominations from both the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards for his film portrayal.

Lee Tracy died of liver cancer, October 18, 1968, at age 70.

I'll be back in a couple of days after I finish up my taxes. Oh, what a way to finish: Death (Tracy's) and taxes (mine). Talk to you soon--
Cliff

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