The Misleading Lady (1932)
Direction: Stuart Walker. Screenplay: Adelaide Heilbron and Caroline Francke; from Charles W. Goddard and Paul Dickey’s play. Cast: Claudette Colbert, Edmund Lowe, Stuart Erwin, Robert Strange, George Meeker, Selena Royle, Curtis Cooksey, William Gargan, Nina Walker
While hardly a cinematic masterpiece, Paramount’s 1932 romantic comedy The Misleading Lady (filmed at New York’s Astoria [...]
Rain (1932)
Direction: Lewis Milestone. Screenplay: Maxwell Anderson; from John Colton and Clemence Randolph’s play, adapted from W. Somerset Maugham’s short story “Miss Thompson.” Cast: Joan Crawford, Walter Huston, William Gargan, Beulah Bondi, Guy Kibbee, Matt Moore, Walter Catlett
The first thing you notice in the credits of the 1932 United Artists version of Rain is that [...]
Way Out West (1930)
Direction: Fred Niblo. Screenplay: Byron Morgan and Alfred Block; dialogue by Alfred Block, Joe Farnham, Ralph Spence, and Henry Sharp. Cast: William Haines, Leila Hyams, Cliff Edwards, Polly Moran, Francis X. Bushman Jr. (aka Ralph Bushman), Charles Middleton, Vera Marsh
When a crooked carnival barker cheats a gang of tough cowboys in a [...]
The Great Gabbo (1929)
Direction: James Cruze. Screenplay: Story by Ben Hecht; Continuity and Dialogue by Hugh Herbert. Cast: Erich von Stroheim, Betty Compson, Donald Douglas, Marjorie Kane
The Great Gabbo is one terrific early talkie. Sure, the film is old and creaky, while its technical aspects are cheap and primitive. But the story, the music, and [...]
Downstairs (1932)
Direction: Monta Bell. Screenplay: Lenore Coffee and Melville Baker; from a story by John Gilbert. Cast: John Gilbert, Virginia Bruce, Paul Lukas, Olga Baclanova, Reginald Owen, Hedda Hopper, Bodil Rosing, Otto Hoffman, Karen Morley
Monta Bell’s seldom-seen drama Downstairs proves not only what a great actor John Gilbert was, but, quite contrary to legend, how [...]
Golden Dawn (1930)
Direction: Ray Enright. Screenplay: Walter Anthony; from Otto A. Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein II’s operetta. Cast: Walter Woolf, Vivienne Segal, Noah Beery, Alice Gentle, Dick Henderson, Lupino Lane, Edward Martindel, Marion Byron, Nina Quartero, Sojin, Otto Matieson, Julanne Johnston
Ray Enright’s early musical Golden Dawn should be filed under the "What Were They [...]
Blonde Venus (1932)
Direction: Josef von Sternberg. Screenplay: Jules Furthman and S. K. Lauren. Cast: Marlene Dietrich, Herbert Marshall, Cary Grant, Dickie Moore, Gene Morgan, Rita La Roy, Sidney Toler, Robert Emmett O’Connor, Hattie McDaniel
Blonde Venus is my favorite of the Marlene Dietrich-Josef von Sternberg collaborations. This melodrama simply has it all.
The film begins with the [...]
Applause (1929)
Direction: Rouben Mamoulian. Screenplay: Garrett Fort; from Beth Brown’s novel. Cast: Helen Morgan, Joan Peers, Fuller Mellish Jr., Jack Cameron, Henry Wadsworth, Roy Hargrave
Rouben Mamoulian was one of the most talented directors of all time. His early musical Applause proves it.
Applause stars stage legend Helen Morgan (above) as Kitty Darling, a chubby burlesque [...]
The new documentary Thou Shalt Not: Sex, Sin and Censorship in Pre-Code Hollywood and five Pre-Code films will be shown on Turner Classic Movies on Monday, March 3 (more details below).
The five racy Pre-Coders are: The Divorcee (1930), A Free Soul (1931), Night Nurse (right, 1931), Three on a Match (1932), and Female (1933). [...]
Mother love and melodrama in The Trespasser: Purnell Pratt, Gloria Swanson, and Robert Ames, who would die two years after this film was made.
Academy film scholar Cari Beauchamp will talk about the convoluted personal and professional relationship between actress Gloria Swanson and producer Joseph P. Kennedy (right) in a program featuring highlights from her upcoming [...]
"Mamoulian," a complete retrospective of Hollywood director Rouben Mamoulian (1897-1987), one of cinema’s greatest stylists and innovators, will run at the Film Forum from Friday, September 7 through Tuesday, September 18.
As per the Film Forum’s press release, Mamoulian was born in Tbilisi, Georgia, to an Armenian family. He worked at the Moscow Art Theater while [...]
New York City’s Film Forum, the institution that about a year ago presented the Paramount Before the Code film series, will have a Fox Before the Code (and Fox before it became 20th Century-Fox) series between Dec. 1-21.
The Pre-Code era went from about 1928, or the beginning of talking pictures, to mid-1934, before [...]
Turner Classic Movies Alert:
For those living in the U.S., TCM will be showing three early talkies:
The musical The Vagabond Lover, starring the Elvis Presley of the late 1920s — in terms of popularity, that is — Rudy Vallee (if Elvis suffered from paralysis, he would have sung the way Vallee did). Also in the cast, [...]
One of the highlights of this year’s San Sebastián International Film Festival is a mouth-wateringly thorough Ernst Lubitsch Retrospective.
Besides the obligatory titles, such as the witty 1939 comedy of bright lights and Communism, Ninotchka, and the delightful 1934 version of The Merry Widow, the retrospective is also showcasing a large number of Lubitsch rarities [...]
Jewel Robbery (1932)
Direction: William Dieterle. Screenplay: Erwin C. Gelsey, from Ladislas Fodor’s 1931 play Ekszerrablás a Váci-uccában and Bertram Bloch’s English-language adaptation, Jewel Robbery. Cast: William Powell, Kay Francis, Helen Vinson, Hardie Albright, Alan Mowbray
TO SNATCH A THIEF
Film scholars consider the 1932 comedy Trouble in Paradise to be the best work of actress Kay [...]
The Barker (1928)
Direction: George Fitzmaurice. Screenplay: Benjamin Glazer; dialogue by Joseph Jackson; titles by Herman J. Mankiewicz, from Kenyon Nicholson’s 1927 play. Cast: Milton Sills, Dorothy Mackaill, Betty Compson, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
Who does your hair? Milton Sills is envious of Dorothy Mackaill’s modern chic bob.
FATHER KNOWS LESS
Recently restored by UCLA, The Barker is one [...]
One Hysterical Night (1929)
Direction: William James Craft. Screenplay: Earle Snell; dialogue by Reginald Denny. Cast: Reginald Denny, Nora Lane, E.J. Ratcliffe, Fritz Feld, Slim Summerville, Joyzelle, Jules Cowles, Walter Brennan, Margaret Campbell, Rolfe Sedan
MAD DULL BALLROOM
If nothing else, the silly (and mistitled) One Hysterical Night — Reginald Denny’s first all-talking vehicle — serves as [...]
Strange Interlude (1932)
Direction: Robert Z. Leonard. Screenplay: Bess Meredyth and C. Gardner Sullivan, from Eugene O’Neill’s play. Cast: Norma Shearer, Clark Gable, Alexander Kirkland, Ralph Morgan, May Robson, Robert Young, Maureen O’Sullivan, Henry B. Walthall, Mary Alden, Tad Alexander
LOVE IS A MUCH-FRUSTRATING THING
By Marcus Tucker of Shadow Waltz
With the advent of new technology comes [...]
“This region is stuffed with hard-boiled savage climbers, the lowest grade of political grafters, quacks not calculable as to number or variety … loafers, prostitutes, murderers and perverts. In the bland sunshine here they multiply like germs in the canal zone.” That’s author Theodore Dreiser referring not to Washington, D.C., or any other world capital, [...]
© A.M.P.A.S.
Background:
Maurine Dallas Watkins’s 1926 play Chicago was based on real-life murders committed by housewife Beulah Sheriff Annan and cabaret singer Belva Gaertner. In April 1924, Annan shot her lover in her own apartment. Some reports claim that while the man lay dying, Annan kept busy sipping cocktails and listening to a foxtrot recording [...]
Bachelor Apartment (1931)
Direction: Lowell Sherman. Screenplay: Story by John Howard Lawson; adaptation and dialogue by J. Walter Ruben. Cast: Lowell Sherman, Irene Dunne, Mae Murray, Ivan Lebedeff, Norman Kerry
GIRLS GONE MILD
Womanizing businessman Wayne Carter is hardly a looker, but he’s got them dollar bills. Loads of them. The only woman in New York City [...]
Janet Gaynor Centennial at UCLA: Servants’ Entrance with Lew Ayres, A Star Is Born with Fredric March, State Fair with Will Rogers, Lew Ayres, Sally Eilers, and Louise Dresser, The Young in Heart with Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Roland Young, Billie Burke, and Paulette Goddard, The Farmer Takes a Wife with Henry Fonda, Lucky Star with Charles Farrell, and Seventh Heaven with Charles Farrell
Universal (owner of the Paramount films of the studio era) has announced the release of the following box sets:
On April 4, three "Glamour Collection" sets:
The Carole Lombard Glamour Collection: Man of the World (1931), We’re Not Dressing (1934), Hands Across the Table (1935), The Princess Comes Across (1936), Love Before Breakfast (1936), and True [...]
While the Biennale is going at full (or at least semi-full) throttle in security-tight Venice, Los Angeles is currently offering its own lesser-known but surely no less fascinating — and considerably more relaxed — film festival. As per the description found on its website, Cinecon is a film convention-cum-festival where "cinephiles from across the nation [...]
September will belong to Greta Garbo: The Region 1 DVD (U.S. / Canada / U.S. territories) box set Garbo: The Signature Collection is scheduled to come out on September 6, 2005. The release has been timed to coincide with what would have been Garbo’s 100th birthday on September 18.
The ten-film, ten-disc set is divided [...]
