The Other Contender For Best Picture Of 1930-31

I've been shoveling snow instead of words this morning, with more of the same after lunch. While you're waiting for my next brilliant missive from the ether, why not check out Charlie Chaplin's City Lights? You've seen M (here), now see its stiffest competition for 1931's top prize.



Here are the links for parts 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8

Happy Birthday, Irene Dunne

Today is Irene Dunne's birthday. Already a star in 1931, with an Oscar nomination and best picture (Cimarron) to her credit, the work we now know her for—the comedies she made with Cary Grant—is still a few years up the road.

Actually, audiences in 1931 would have been surprised to learn Dunne is best remembered as a comedienne; so would Dunne, for that matter. She was primarily a singer and dramatic actress and didn't do her first comedy until 1936, one of Katie's and my favorites, Theodora Goes Wild. At an age (38) when a flop might end her career, Dunne was so unsure of her ability to do comedy that she fled the country for a couple of months, hoping the studio would recast the part (those were the days of long-term contracts when even stars had little control over what they played) then reluctantly consented when it didn't. She needn't have worried—Theodora Goes Wild was a big hit and she received her second of five Oscar nominations (she never won).

Comedy, she later said, "demands more timing, pace, shading and subtlety of emphasis. It is difficult to learn but once it is acquired it can be easily slowed down and becomes an excellent foundation for dramatic acting."

Cary Grant said she was the sweetest-smelling actress he ever worked with. Unfortunately, my copy of The Awful Truth doesn't come with a scratch-and-sniff card, so I'll have to take his word for it. I can say she is one of the sweetest actresses to watch I've ever seen.

The wallpaper, by the way, is courtesy of Sylvie. Toddle over to "Divas—The Site" and check out some others.

And now one last picture of Irene Dunne—and some guy you may or may not recognize.

The Monkey's Back ...

... and there's gonna be trouble, hey la hey la. At least that's what Katie-Bar-The-Door is singing down in the kitchen as she searches the cabinets for breakfast. We flew back late last night into the front edge of a storm that promises to dump twenty inches of snow by Sunday morning. Cannibalism may be on the menu. Stay tuned.

I'm just getting reoriented to the internet and blogging but I'll post my entry on Little Caesar and The Public Enemy as soon as it's ready. Unlike most of my friends, when I'm on the road, I have no internet capability—or try not to—so I'm way behind reading comments, news and the blogs I follow.

I see that Waterloo Bridge is showing early strength in the contest for the last nomination for best picture of 1931-32. This would only come as a surprise to someone who hasn't seen the movie. It really does stand head and shoulders above its better known remake.

Anyway, you have until December 24 to cast your vote.

Now I'm off to catch a squirrel for my breakfast.

No Blogging This Week, But A New Poll

Katie-Bar-The-Door and I are celebrating our twentieth wedding anniversary on Wednesday and will be quite busy for the next few days as a result, so no blogging this week. But I've left you a new poll to compensate: "Looking ahead to 1931-32, four movies will definitely get Katie nominations for best picture—À Nous La Liberté, Frankenstein, Grand Hotel and Scarface. Which movie should get the fifth nomination?"

Your choices, with a brief description of each:

The Champ—Wallace Beery won half an Oscar for his portrayal of a washed-up alcoholic boxer. Co-starred child actor Jackie Cooper at his wailing and weeping best.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—Fredric March won the other half of the best actor Oscar for his dual role as the stuff-shirt Dr. Jekyll and his libidinous alter ego, Mr. Hyde. For my money, the best version of this story, which is saying something considering John Barrymore and Spencer Tracy also did classic takes on this Robert Louis Stevenson tale. Strong support from a young Miriam Hopkins as one of his victims.

Freaks—Tod Browning (Dracula) directed this cult horror classic about circus performers and the so-called "normal" people who prey on them. By the end, you'll be asking yourself "who are the real freaks in this tale?"

The Guardsman—A rare screen appearance by the husband and wife team, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, The Guardsman is a comedy about marital jealousy, with Lunt pretending to be another man so he can test his wife's fidelity. Roland Young (Topper) provides topnotch support.

Mädchen In Uniform—German-language story of a schoolgirl who develops a romantic attachment to her female teacher, one of the first movies to explicitly (and sensitively) address the subject of homosexuality.

Marius—First leg of the so-called "Fanny Trilogy," this is a French-language romantic comedy about a young man who can't decide between love and wanderlust. Marcel Pagnol wrote it, Alexander Korda directed.

Monkey Business—The Marx Brothers stow away aboard a transatlantic ocean liner. Sample dialogue: Captain: "One of them goes around with a black moustache." Groucho: "So do I; if I had my choice, I'd go around with a little blonde."

The Music Box—Probably the best of Laurel and Hardy's two-reel comedy shorts, the boys retell the story of Sisyphus, only this time with a piano instead of a large rock. Won an Oscar for best short subject and was included in the National Film Registry in 1997.

Shanghai Express—"It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily." So saith Marlene Dietrich in the fourth of her seven collaborations with director Josef von Sternberg. This time she plays a prostitute who toys with the man who threw her over way back when. Oh, wait, that's the plot of all the Dietrich-von Sternberg movies. No matter. It's beautiful to look at.

The Smiling Lieutenant—An early Lubitsch musical comedy starring Maurice Chevalier as an army lieutenant who loves Claudette Colbert but unwittingly gets himself engaged to marry a young princess (Miriam Hopkins).

Waterloo Bridge—A prostitute falls in love with a naive soldier during World War I. The pre-Code Mae Clarke version, not the expurgated Vivian Leigh version.

You've got two weeks rather than the usual one to respond, so plenty of time to research your choices. As Thomas Jefferson said, "Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government; whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights." Which if you squint and don't think too much about it, somehow vaguely applies. So have at it.

More Chaplin: One A.M. (1916)

Another of Chaplin's better efforts for Mutual, 1916's One A.M. Except for a cab driver at the beginning, this is purely a solo effort—Chaplin comes home drunk and tries to get himself to bed. One of the best examples of Chaplin's physical comedy.

Charlie Chaplin Collection 4-One AM
Uploaded by silentclassics. - Full seasons and entire episodes online.

Early Chaplin: The Immigrant (1917)

A number of early Charles Chaplin two-reel comedy shorts are available on the internet for free (and legally, too). The Immigrant, released June 17, 1917, was the eleventh of twelve shorts he made for Mutual Pictures and is considered by many to be the best short he ever made. The Library of Congress included it in the National Film Registry in 1998.

In it you will see many of Chaplin's signature elements, including a damsel in distress (here, Edna Purviance, who made more movies with Chaplin than any other actress), the poor being pushed around and, of course, Chaplin as The Tramp.

Best Actor Of 1930-31: Charles Chaplin (City Lights)

As with the best director award, the contest for best actor of 1930-31 is a virtual tie, so much so I drafted the spine of three different essays as I tried the award on first Edward G. Robinson then James Cagney before settling finally on Charles Chaplin.

In so choosing, I have the benefit of 20-20 foresight—I know both Cagney and Robinson have Katie Awards in their future—but even without that foreknowledge, I have to say, if I had been a voter in 1931 faced with these choices, I would have no doubt looked at both Cagney and Robinson as promising, if exciting, newcomers while regarding Chaplin as an overdue legend who had turned in the best work of his career. Either way, I think Chaplin is the right choice for best actor of the year.

The chief complaint about Chaplin is that he was sentimental—excessively or affectedly appealing to emotions, in his case, pathos and romance. He wore his heart on his sleeve and manipulated the emotions of his audience as well; he is decidedly un-modern in that regard. We prefer our comedy served cynical these days, and when we look back at the great comics of the Silent Era, it's Buster Keaton most now prefer.

It doesn't help Chaplin's cause to mention that what he did—the silent Tramp—is strictly a product of its time and cannot be equated with anything we'd see in a 21st century movie. Cagney, Robinson and Keaton could step right off a 1931 screen into a 2009 movie and without altering their styles or personas become stars today, while Chaplin would have to mine unexplored talents to make the transition.

I've written at length about Chaplin before (and no doubt will again) so I won't bludgeon you with all of it again. But I will say I think when we measure Chaplin strictly in terms of how he fits in or fails to fit in with our current tastes, we're shortchanging Chaplin the actor. That a guy who didn't speak and used title card sparingly could make us feel as well as laugh is a real testament to his talent as an actor. When the fictional Norma Desmond claimed, "We didn't need dialogue—we had faces," it was more a rationalization than a statement of fact, but in Chaplin's case, it was literally true. Charlie Chaplin was to Charles Chaplin (take a look at City Lights' credits to see the distinction) what John Wayne was to John Ford or Robert DeNiro was to Martin Scorsese—an actor who could interpret and perfectly execute the vision of his director as together they made some of the greatest movies in Hollywood history.

City Lights begins as a showcase for Chaplin's talents as a slapstick comedian, reminding you that in terms of grace and timing he was rivaled only by Keaton and Curly Howard. As the picture opens, the homeless Tramp (Chaplin) awakes in the lap of the ironically-named statue "Peace and Prosperity" and proceeds to make a mockery of the dedication ceremony, first dangling on a sword stuck up a hole in his britches, then thumbing his nose at the gathered dignitaries (and clearly at the age of sound movies as well). It was the sort of effortless slapstick he had perfected early in his career, first under the direction of Mack Sennett, then on his own at the Essanay and Mutual studios, as graceful as a ballet dance, as precise as a Swiss clock.

Indeed, to a degree City Lights is a series of sequences —a suicidal million- aire, a dinner at a swanky nightclub, a prize fight between the 5'5" Chaplin and his heavyweight opponent—that would have worked just as well as two-reel shorts.

Chaplin also reminds you in that first reel that the Tramp is not all the sweetness I think we tend to remember him for. He can also be pompous, such as when he admires a bronze nude (or pretends not to), angry (at a pair of newspaper boys who tease him) and cowardly (when the laborer he is taking to task turns out to be well over six feet). His shortcomings work as comedy though as Chaplin juxtaposes the Tramp's carefully-preserved dignity with his straitened circumstances.

But Chaplin also puts on display his gift for pathos and romance when in the second reel he introduces a girl—there's always a girl—in this case the blind flower seller (Virginia Cherrill) who mistakes the Tramp for a millionaire. The Tramp's hopefully hopeless longing links all the episodes together as he tries both to maintain the facade and pay for the operation that will restore the girl's sight.

It's this inevitable development in a Chaplin plot—the introduction of a damsel in need—that I suspect most often leads Chaplin's critics to call him sentimental, and I will concede that in a film such as The Kid (a film that I love by the way), Chaplin the filmmaker is sentimental, equating Edna Purviance's unwed mother with the Madonna, for example. But here in City Lights, I would argue while the Tramp is motivated by sentimentality, Chaplin sees clearly—even in the famous ending which I won't reveal here—a distinction that may not mean much to some, but which is important to me, anyway.

Chaplin the director is aiming for the truth even if the Tramp, like the blind flower girl, can't quite see it clearly. And it's Chaplin the actor who makes this dual vision work.

Postscript: If it makes you feel any better, while Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney turned in exciting, groundbreaking performances in 1930 and 1931, respectively, both had far better work in them, and when twenty years from now all the Katie Awards have been handed out and are gathering dust on the mythical mantlepieces of history's greatest actors, you'll know Cagney and Robinson won for the best work of their careers, not merely the first great performance they gave. In any event, in a couple of days I'll post my notes on Cagney and Robinson as the essay "A Gangland Double Feature."

Credit Where Credit Is Due: The wallpaper at the top of the article is by Sylvie whose work can be downloaded here. The artwork titled "Chaplin vs. Keaton" is by Damian Blake. You can check him out here.

Carole Lombard, Or Should I Say Jane Peters?

Thingy of the blog Pondering Life wondered aloud yesterday when Carole Lombard will crash this party, which prompted a bit of research on my part. Turns out she could have crashed this party at pretty much any time. Did you know she made her first movie in 1921 at the age of 13? I didn't anyway, but she did, a small part as a tomboy under her birth name, Jane Peters, in a silent romance/caper flick called A Perfect Crime.

That's Jane Peters there on her knees.

Lombard made 78 movies before her untimely death in 1942 at the age of 34. At least four of those movies will require special attention: Howard Hawks's Twentieth Century, which along with Frank Capra's It Happened One Night, gave us the screwball comedy; My Man Godfrey, Lombard's only Oscar nomination, and arguably William Powell's finest role; Nothing Sacred, another screwball classic co-starring Fredric March; and her last film, Ernst Lubitsch's To Be Or Not To Be, which personally, I think is Lombard's best performance.

In the meantime, something to dream about:

Poll Winner Cagney Sez: "Dig Me Up, Coach, I'm Ready To Play!"

The results are in for this week's Monkey Movie poll, Which of these Katie nominees for best actor of 1930-31 would make the biggest splash if he were in his prime today? Arguments could be made for each of the contenders, James Cagney, Charles Chaplin and Edward G. Robinson, but for the twenty participants who voted, the issue was never in doubt.

"Made it, Ma! Top of the world!" crowed the exuberant Cagney at an afternoon press conference. "My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you and I thank you!"

The margin of Cagney's win was as startling as it was decisive: 20 votes for Cagney, zero for Chaplin, zero for Robinson. That's right, 20-to-nothing. Those are the sort of numbers you'd expect to see in a petty dictator's plebiscite.

Allegations of voter intimidation and poll fraud were promptly dismissed with a couple of slaps across the kisser.

"Asking questions again, huh?" snarled Cagney. "Listen, someday you're gonna stick your nose in, you're gonna get something in it. You been reading a lot of stuff about 'Crime don't pay,'" he added. "Don't be a sucker! That's for yaps and small-timers on shoestrings. Not for people like us. Never steal anything small, I say!"

Cagney was exhumed from his final resting place as soon as the poll closed, breathing his first air above ground in more than twenty years.

"Those dirty rats!" he said without hesitation when asked what he disliked most about being dead. "I mean, sure, there's bugs, decomposition, the worm that doth corrupt—and just try getting a table at La Botte! But those dirty rats are the worst."

While sometimes hard to handle, Cagney admitted death had its moments. "They paid tribute to a bad man," he said, "by electing me the mayor of hell, winner take all. Everyone in that torrid zone knew me as Jimmy the Gent," he said, "even the seven little Foys, and though each dawn I died, it was something of a sinner's holiday, the time of my life."

Married forty-four years in life, Cagney was a lady killer in death, making time for other men's women, and even becoming involved with a strawberry blonde. "I was her man," he said, "just boy meets girl, and it was something to sing about until I found out the bride came C.O.D. I told her, 'Love me or leave me.' So she left.

"After that, I went a little blonde crazy—now she was a midsummer night's dream!"

When not chasing women, Cagney made powerful friends in the afterlife. "My advice?" he said. "At the doorway to hell, shake hands with the devil. Otherwise, run for cover!"

Attempts to work Yankee Doodle Dandy and Arizona Bushwhackers into his victory speech proved unsuitable for a family-friendly blog and were dropped.

After the poll results were announced, a subdued Edward G. Robinson said, "Mother of mercy! Is this the end of Rico?" then spent another ten minutes trying to explain who "Rico" was. Charlie Chaplin just twitched his moustache, doffed his hat and walked off into the sunset.

Legendary director Martin Scorsese immediately signed Cagney to a three-picture deal worth in excess of $60 million, by far the biggest payday of Cagney's career. "In terms of talent," Scorsese said, "Jimmy buries the competition."

"I'm ripe for a comeback!" said a beaming, if somewhat dazed and gamey Cagney. "I smell—Oscar, that is!"

Ronald Colman's Katie-Winning Performance In Bulldog Drummond Now Available On Hulu

The title of the post pretty much says it all, doesn't it. Ronald Colman was my choice for best actor of 1929-30 for his lead role in the mystery Bulldog Drummond. To review it for this blog, I had to buy the movie on VHS tape for 48¢, but you can see it now (with limited commercial interruption) on Hulu—or better yet, right here.

In case you've forgotten what I had to say on the subject, here are some excerpts from my essay:

The story, ostensibly a mystery, is mostly an excuse for some lighthearted fun. Capt. Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond—mustered out of the army at the end of World War I, and "too rich to work, too intelligent to play, much"—is bored with his aimless existence. "I wish somebody would throw a bomb and wake this place up," he grouses at the funereal gentleman's club where he passes his days. On a lark, he places an advertisement in the London Times seeking adventure. "Legitimate, if possible, but crime of humorous description, no objection. Reply at once." And replies he receives, piles of them.
...
For Colman, the result was a smash hit, an Oscar nomination and a long, successful career.
...
Bulldog Drummond is mostly a comedic mystery, the kind where the hero pauses to make a wisecrack in the face of certain death, but make no mistake, Drummond is as quick with a gun as he is with a quip and in a scene more reminiscent of Quentin Tarantino than early Hollywood, strangles one of his adversaries with his bare hands.

Admittedly, the eighty year old film creaks with the burdens of early sound technology and a supporting cast uncomfortable speaking lines for the first time, and it may be difficult to appreciate it looking backward through the prism of all that came after but without it, we may never have enjoyed all the fun-stupid movies it influenced and it was certainly highly-regarded in its day. In addition to a pair of Oscar nods, the New York Times, the National Board of Review and Film Daily magazine all included Bulldog Drummond on their lists of the ten best movies of 1929.

Anyway, judge for yourself. Without further ado, Ronald Colman in Bulldog Drummond: