|
|
Post by Fading Fast on Sept 2, 2024 15:54:17 GMT
Rafter Romance from 1933 with Ginger Rogers, Norman Foster, George Sidney and Robert Benchley
After the Motion Picture Production Code was enforced in 1934, you can understand why silly "screwball" comedies got made, as Hollywood was trying to solve the unsolvable: how to make movies about casual sex when the code only allows for sex in marriage, and even that it doesn't much like.
So why would anyone make a pre-code screwball comedy?
The ridiculous premise in Rafter Romance, a precode screwball, is that two tenants – a man, played by Norman Foster, and a woman, played by Ginger Rogers – are forced by their limited funds to share an attic apartment where they never meet, as each one gets the apartment for a strict twelve hours a day (he works nights, she works days).
This silly idea came from their basically kind landlord, who has been carrying each one of them for several months because he doesn't have the heart to throw them out.
The landlord is a wonderful example of the willingness of precodes to reasonably honestly portray the variety of ethnicities that existed in America at that time: a variety that would be, other than for stock ethnic stereotypes, all but scrubbed out from movies once the code was enforced.
That is why, in Rafter Romance, a very ethnically Jewish landlord, George Sidney, is allowed to be a very ethnically Jewish landlord. Sidney and his wife use one Yiddish word after another (James Cagney would be proud[*]).
Thankfully, he's not an ugly stereotype, as he is a kind man who gives his tenants too much extra time to pay their rent.
Back in the silly story, Rogers and Foster – each irritated by the habits of his or her unseen roommate – begin playing meaner and meaner pranks on the other in their shared apartment. Eventually, they come to loathe each other even though they've never met.
Yet, while still not knowing who the other one is, they meet outside the building by accident and start dating. It's almost a reversed early version of Shop Around the Corner, which is an early version of You've Got Mail. Everything has antecedents.
From here, it's all a bunch of goofy pratfalls and misunderstandings, including some even dumber side stories about Rogers' boss, Robert Benchley, hitting on Rogers (not acceptable today, but he really comes across as harmless), and Foster, an aspiring artist, having an older female patron who is more interested in him as a gigolo than as a painter.
If you've ever seen a romcom, then Rafter Romance ends as expected after more misunderstandings and hurt feelings. If you haven't ever seen one, then don't choose this one as your first.
Once the code was enforced, this kind of silly movie would be an understandable effort to overcome censorship. Yet there is no reason to make this fluff during the precode era when Hollywood was allowed to make adult movies about sex, affairs, love, cheating, romance, and heartbreak.
* In the 1931 movie Taxi, as-Irish-as-they-come James Cagney, who in real life had grown up in NYC's ethnically mixed Lower East Side neighborhood, wonderfully serves as a translator for an Irish cop trying to understand an "old world" Jewish man speaking Yiddish. Cagney, clearly having real fun, speaks warp-speed Yiddish with the Jewish man. It's a wonderful scene of early and honest multiculturalism.
Cagney speaking Yiddish in Taxi:
|
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Sept 2, 2024 16:10:11 GMT
There were still conservative minded audiences in the precode era. And Ginger's mother Lela, who had strict control over her career, was always a conservative. Maybe this film was designed to appeal to people like that...?
I think the precode aspects are in evidence as glimpsed in the character of Rogers' lecherous boss (Benchley) and the patroness of the arts (Crews) who seems to have certain ideas in mind where Foster is concerned.
|
|
|
|
RKO
Sept 4, 2024 15:36:15 GMT
Post by jamesjazzguitar on Sept 4, 2024 15:36:15 GMT
There were still conservative minded audiences in the precode era. And Ginger's mother Lela, who had strict control over her career, was always a conservative. Maybe this film was designed to appeal to people like that...?
I think the precode aspects are in evidence as glimpsed in the character of Rogers' lecherous boss (Benchley) and the patroness of the arts (Crews) who seems to have certain ideas in mind where Foster is concerned. I didn't know that Roger's mom was conservative and had strict control over her career. I assume that control must have ended once Ginger was older since she agreed to film Primrose Path (RKO - 1940). |
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Sept 4, 2024 16:10:39 GMT
There were still conservative minded audiences in the precode era. And Ginger's mother Lela, who had strict control over her career, was always a conservative. Maybe this film was designed to appeal to people like that...?
I think the precode aspects are in evidence as glimpsed in the character of Rogers' lecherous boss (Benchley) and the patroness of the arts (Crews) who seems to have certain ideas in mind where Foster is concerned. I didn't know that Roger's mom was conservative and had strict control over her career. I assume that control must have ended once Ginger was older since she agreed to film Primrose Path (RKO - 1940).
The Warner Brothers melodrama THE HARD WAY is allegedly based on Lela's backstage relationship with Ginger. |
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Sept 10, 2024 14:25:53 GMT
This neglected film is from 1950.
Speak up now or forever hold your peace
Claudette Colbert is cast as a distressed concert pianist in this above average psychological noir released thru RKO. She has been told some unsavory things about herself, things she is almost too afraid to face. There is a scene where she sits with the man she was supposed to marry (Robert Ryan, in a sympathetic role) and says: “what happens to people in cases of amnesia, when they go blank…do they do things they’d never do as their normal selves…something awful?” This is foreshadowing, because a bit later she will be accused of murder.
The film opens on what is supposed to be Colbert’s happy wedding day to Ryan. But during the ceremony, they’ve been interrupted by claims that Colbert cannot wed Ryan, because she’s already married to someone else. The twist is that if she’s a bigamist, she is certainly unaware of this. The ceremony is abruptly postponed while a doting aunt (Jane Cowl) pacifies the guests, so Colbert and Ryan can investigate Colbert’s supposed other marriage.
It’s an intriguing way to start a motion picture. We are misdirected in the opening scenes, since Ryan is given some humorous details to play regarding his suit; and Colbert is afraid to see him before walking down the aisle as she is superstitious. An unsuspecting viewer may think this will be a romcom or a mild drama, the type the actress played many times before with Fred MacMurray or Ray Milland during her days as a contract player at Paramount. But these softer more pleasant scenes soon give way to the horror that she may have had a terrible lapse in memory.
Of course, as they investigate her other alleged marriage in another town, there are all sorts of ‘witnesses’ who remember her first marriage. This includes a justice of the peace (Percy Helton) and a hotel chambermaid (Vivian Vance in her screen debut). Not to mention the man (Dave Barbour) who is said to be her husband, a man she’s never met before.
All of these people are in on a con that is being orchestrated by Colbert’s family attorney (Philip Ober, husband of Vivian Vance). For reasons not initially clear, Ober’s character is out for revenge against the family, due to an old grudge he still harbors against Colbert’s now deceased father, a judge. I didn’t quite understand how Ober managed to hide his motives during the entire time he’s worked for the family. Surely Colbert’s character couldn’t have been so gullible or easily fooled by such a man without glomming on to his true feelings about her, her late father and the estate.
I also thought it was a little too easy that all those people in the other town had such convincing stories, to support the false notion of Colbert’s phony first marriage. Though, I will say the supporting cast does a decent enough job conveying a huge scam.
In a way this is like two Ingrid Bergman movies rolled into one. It’s a touch of GASLIGHT, in that Colbert’s character is being set up to think she has lost her grip on what is real; and it is also a touch of SPELLBOUND, with the possible amnesia angle.
As if this isn’t enough, she starts to go off the rails when it seems as if she is not telling the truth. The second half of the narrative has her locked up in a sanitarium, a la THE SNAKE PIT, while Ryan continues to dig for clues to prove her story, that she was not married before and hasn’t lost a grip on reality. Incidentally, Colbert took the role after it had originally been intended for Ida Lupino.
Contemporary reviewers were a bit harsh about the more far-fetched aspects of the plot. But the goal with these kinds of films was to give audiences bonafide suspense, something more than what they might find on radio or television in its infancy. In that regard, I think the film succeeds. Colbert’s earlier venture, SLEEP MY LOVE, where she also spends portions of the melodrama dealing with something that may or may not be true, would make a good double feature with THE SECRET FURY.
|
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Sept 14, 2024 14:21:41 GMT
This neglected film is from 1934.
Her name’s Trigger
We must use the term “classic film” loosely, because not everything produced during the golden age of Hollywood is a bonafide classic. Some of these films are more forgettable than others. On the motion picture resume for Katharine Hepburn, this is one of the more forgettable titles; if not forgettable, then certainly it can be considered one of the most embarrassing pictures she made.
During her tenure at RKO in the 1930s, Hepburn was often put in period pictures. Some of them were hits, like LITTLE WOMEN and MARY OF SCOTLAND; and others didn’t do so well. To vary her output a bit, producer Pandro Berman cast the actress in this rural story about a poor and barely literate mountain girl named Trigger.
The story had been purchased by the studio from its author, Lula Vollmer, a noted playwright who’d had a modest hit with it on Broadway in late 1927 and early 1928. George Cukor, whose career on Broadway was red hot in the 1920s before he went to Hollywood and eventually did films with Hepburn, helmed the stage production, which was called ‘Trigger.’ Theatrical actress Claiborne Foster played the lead. Incidentally, Foster appeared in a string of popular plays but never made the transition to movies. She later became a dramatist, and one of her own Broadway plays was adapted for a TV anthology program, giving Claiborne her only credit, as a writer, on the IMDb.
Anyway, back to Hepburn and ‘Trigger’ which was re-titled SPITFIRE before release by RKO. When the studio purchased the rights, the idea was to star Dorothy Jordan and Joel McCrea who’d just done ONE MAN’S JOURNEY together. But Jordan was replaced by Hepburn and McCrea dropped out.
Robert Young was then borrowed from MGM; and the other male lead was played by Ralph Bellamy, borrowed from Columbia. Though Bellamy was top-billed in countless B programmers, he was usually a second lead in prestigious ‘A’ fare.
RKO shot the exteriors on location in the San Jacinto mountains, meant to stand in for North Carolina. Production ran over schedule, which interfered with Hepburn’s plans to take another role. Hepburn was unable to wriggle out of this assignment, and did the necessary retakes, earning a bonus for the additional time she spent on the set.
I am sure Hepburn knew she was miscast as a backwoods gal believed to be a witch. Since this is a precode, her character’s flirtatious behavior is played up. But because this is also supposed to be a story about the evils of mob violence, she can’t really be a witch, but instead is a misunderstood faith healer.
Basically, there is a lot of cornpone hooey thrown in with a generous dose of hillbilly stereotypes to fool the audience into thinking this is how people in a certain part of the country act.
It’s all rather cringe by modern standards, but Hepburn is no slouch, so she does render a somewhat convincing portrait of a girl that just wants to be believed and loved by others. In addition to Hepburn, Young and Bellamy, the premise is bolstered by supporting work from Will Geer (using a slightly different stage name); and Sara Haden who is the only performer in the movie that appeared in the earlier Broadway version.
|
|
|
|
Post by Fading Fast on Sept 14, 2024 14:38:28 GMT
Spitfire from 1934 with Katherine Hepburn, Ralph Bellamy and Robert Young
There are two things to talk about regarding Spitfire, the movie itself and the decision to cast Katherine Hepburn in the lead role. Let's start with the movie.
Hepburn plays a young Ozark mountain hillbilly woman who lives alone in a shack. She supports herself by doing laundry for others. Hepburn's character believes in a mix of traditional Christianity, faith healing, and some "mountain" logic and ways.
She'll pray for you as she's throwing rocks at you to get off the path that runs through her property. She's a contradiction of ideas and beliefs, backed up by high spirits and raw intelligence, but with no past parental guidance and, seemingly, little education.
Owing to her faith healing, some of the locals think she's a witch, while others defend her, but even her friends know she is a combustible mix.
Two "outsiders," the head engineer and his assistant, played respectively by Ralph Bellamy and Robert Young, from the local dam project, take an interest in "wild child" Hepburn.
Young is married, a fact he conveniently keeps from Hepburn as he pursues her romantically. Single Bellamy, however, while also attracted to her, has a more sincere interest in her as a person in need of some help or, at least, direction in life.
The plot has Hepburn falling for Young, until his wife shows up. There's also a secondary plot about Hepburn stealing, albeit with good intentions, a baby that's not being cared for properly by his hillbilly parents.
As a result, the climax – no spoilers coming – has Hepburn's ability to stay in the mountain community in doubt. This, though, is not a plot-driven movie at all. The only point of Spitfire is to showcase the hillbilly culture through one smart and wild woman, Hepburn.
To educated men like Young and Bellamy, Hepburn seems as if she's come from mankind's past. Her speech, mannerisms, ideas, and hygiene – her entire way of life – are all but foreign to these men and, one assumes, to much of the movie-going public, even in the 1930s.
The bridge between the two worlds is, of course, sex. Hepburn might be "uncivilized," but she's also young, vibrant and pretty - something not lost on either man. It's a thin thread, though, for a movie plot.
It's thinner still owing to the casting of Hepburn. Raised in an upper-class Connecticut family and having graduated from Bryn Mawr, Hepburn's entire being speaks education and elitism. Her real-life posh voice sounds like a mix of high-toned breeding, and condescension.
Why anyone thought to cast her as an uncouth and uneducated hillbilly is one of those Tinseltown mysteries for the ages. Her attempt at a hillbilly accent in the movie is hilarious.
The accent makes her sound as if she has a Jawbreaker candy stuck in her throat. The resulting voice is a mix of lock-jaw Wasp and mountain-garbled syllables that changes repeatedly throughout as even "The Great Kate" drops the accent off and on.
Her looks as well – thin boned, refined and healthy – are the antithesis of hillbilly. Bette Davis or Aline MacMahon could have pulled it off, but Hepburn can't run that far from her gene pool.
Today, Spitfire is just a Hollywood curio. It's 1930s Tinseltown's attempt to showcase an exaggerated version of the hillbilly subculture to mainstream America. It might even have worked okay if they hadn't chosen the least hillbilly woman on earth to represent the mountain people.
If there's a theme or message in the movie, it's that if Hepburn and, by proxy, the hillbillies, were properly educated, they could have bright futures. But as things stand, she and they are lost – proud and strong willed – but lost to modern civilization. |
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Sept 14, 2024 14:54:26 GMT
Why anyone thought to cast (Hepburn) as an uncouth and uneducated hillbilly is one of those Tinseltown mysteries for the ages. Her attempt at a hillbilly accent in the movie is hilarious.
The accent makes her sound as if she has a Jawbreaker candy stuck in her throat. The resulting voice is a mix of lock-jaw Wasp and mountain-garbled syllables that changes repeatedly...
But I got the feeling you wanted to like the film or at least find something of value in it.
Incidentally, Aline MacMahon whom you mentioned in your review would play a backwoods mother in Sam Goldwyn's ROSEANNA MCCOY (1949) which chronicled the feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys.
|
|
|
|
Post by Fading Fast on Sept 14, 2024 15:28:42 GMT
It was not in any way the worst movie I've ever seen or even the worst precode. Parts of it were interesting. With a new writing team and new lead, there was the potential for a decent movie in it.
I had a friend I met in my career who grew up in that culture (circa 1980s) and she did talk about how "she got out." She wasn't dismissive of where she came from, she was just frank about its values and culture. Somehow or other, she knew early on she wanted to join what we think of as more mainstream America and she fought her way to get there - and did.
|
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Sept 14, 2024 16:50:26 GMT
It was not in any way the worst movie I've ever seen or even the worst precode. Parts of it were interesting. With a new writing team and new lead, there was the potential for a decent movie in it.
I had a friend I met in my career who grew up in that culture (circa 1980s) and she did talk about how "she got out." She wasn't dismissive of where she came from, she was just frank about its values and culture. Somehow or other, she knew early on she wanted to join what we think of as more mainstream America and she fought her way to get there - and did.
I bet Hepburn was chosen because she was a tomboy at heart, and RKO execs probably thought she could handle the outdoor scenes better than Dorothy Jordan. But as you said, she was from a very polished upscale background and this character and its surroundings were completely foreign to her. Obviously, actresses have to act, that is their stock in trade, and sometimes they will be assigned roles quite different from their own upbringing. But she needed to find something in the character that she could relate to, and I don't think she did.
Incidentally, in my review I said the story was set in North Carolina because playwright Lula Vollmer set most of her stories there, as it is where she grew up. Did RKO switch the setting to the Ozarks as you indicated? I thought they sort of generalized it without giving us a specific locale. But I might have missed something in the movie. |
|
|
|
RKO
Sept 14, 2024 18:14:00 GMT
Post by Fading Fast on Sept 14, 2024 18:14:00 GMT
I wrote my comments over a month ago when I saw the movie, and I don't remember what prompted me to say the Ozarks.
I just checked on my three primary sources that I use to cross check - AFI, Wikipedia and IMDB - and there's nothing about location that I saw on the first two, but I did find this on IMDB, but it is from another reviewer and not the main information page, so he/she could be wrong:
Two who don't fear here are a pair of engineers sent to the Ozarks to build a railroad, Ralph Bellamy and Robert Young.
So in the end, I don't remember and I could quite possibly be wrong. The funny thing is my friend I noted is from North Carolina and not the Ozarks.
|
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Sept 23, 2024 10:23:26 GMT
This neglected film is from 1937.
Do you take this reporter?
Six years after THE FRONT PAGE had made its way to movie screens, and three years before its remake HIS GIRL FRIDAY, in which one character’s gender was changed to facilitate a love story, RKO produced this raucous romcom. Gene Raymond and Ann Sothern play rival reporters who have considerable trouble getting from I love you / I hate you to I do. The duo had already been paired up by the studio a few times, so they were very comfortable together on screen. The result is an even more playful collaboration that veers from thoughtful to joyously absurd.
Sothern would also star in another romcom at RKO in ’37 called THERE GOES THE GROOM— that time she teamed up with Burgess Meredith. But her best work during this phase of her career was with Raymond. Though the two stars had plenty of musical talent, there are no musical offerings this time. The focus is strictly on the newspaper reporter plot, and the obstacles that seem to prevent them from getting hitched.
One of the obstacles is Sothern’s boss, portrayed with wild glee by Richard Lane. He schemes and conspires with another reporter on his staff (Frank Jenks) to keep the lovebirds from marrying.
In the film’s uproarious opening sequence, we see how the couple’s wedding is stopped by a phony shooting in which two actors hired by Lane disrupt the nuptials. The “killer” wife runs off and Sothern chases after her for the story. Raymond is not pleased that he’s been jilted, and Sothern soon learns there was no real shooting.
When Sothern goes crawling back to Raymond, he wants nothing to do with her and has now taken up with an ethnic dancer. Beautiful Joan Woodbury is cast as the dancer, and during a sensational scene at a nightclub she performs a Toreador number.
Sothern shows up at the club to push her way back into Raymond’s life, and here is when they get embroiled in another shooting that involves the club’s owner (Bradley Page). The altercation is real. Page has offed his former business associate, and he intends to also murder the man’s beautiful widow (Marla Shelton) who is due profits from the club.
A bit later, when Sothern shows up at Shelton’s hotel room, Shelton has just been shot. Sothern is quickly mixed up in the situation and takes a bullet herself! Naturally, this is where Raymond realizes he still does love Sothern and still does want to marry her. However, Sothern’s boss will try once again to break them up, but he does not succeed. After another misunderstanding, the pair reconcile and finally tie the knot.
Some of the hotel scenes in the last part of the story are elaborately staged. The camera follows characters down long hallways, outside doors, over balcony railings and in through French doors. The sets are beautifully constructed for this motion picture, and all the actors look quite beautiful.
RKO’s finished product is as polished and as good as anything MGM was turning out at this time. I did like how despite some of the seriousness of the crimes committed, the writer gave Raymond fun bits impersonating a Frenchman when trying to investigate who shot the two ladies. Gene Raymond was an underrated talent who deserves more credit as a leading man, musician and comedian.
|
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Oct 3, 2024 13:56:26 GMT
This neglected film is from 1941.
Will she choose Tom or Dick or Harry?
Ginger Rogers is the star of this RKO romcom. But she is not playing a title character. This production arrived in theaters, fresh on the heels of her Oscar-winning triumph as Kitty Foyle.
The title characters are played by a trio of nice looking gents whose acting styles couldn’t be more different! As the suave millionaire boyfriend with a stiff upper lip we have Alan Marshal; as the bohemian motorbike rider we have Burgess Meredith; and as the conservative salesman we have George Murphy, a song-and-dance man who in real-life became a politician.
So one has to wonder how a gal like phone operator Janie (Rogers) would become attracted to three such disparate types of the male species. And what they would all see in her. I guess she just has “it” whatever “it” may be, and she soon finds herself on the receiving end of marriage proposals from each one of them.
There are some charming sequences where she imagines her future with each guy. A lot of creative direction from Garson Kanin and distinctive cinematography by Merritt Gerstad has been put into those sequences, and they are a highlight of the film. It’s clear Miss Rogers and her leading men are having a field day with the material, playing something outside-the-box.
I have to give screenwriter Paul Jarrico credit for keeping us guessing till the end which guy our heroine will choose. Ultimately she makes a somewhat unlikely choice (most working class girls would want to marry a millionaire, right?). But I think we’re meant to understand that she is a free spirit and has to be with the guy who is most in tune with the beat of her gypsy heart.
|
|
|
|
Post by topbilled on Oct 10, 2024 14:36:14 GMT
This neglected film is from 1953.
Two wives
Certainly melodramatic in spots, THE BIGAMIST is a drama directed by Ida Lupino that also features her in one of the lead roles. She plays the unsuspecting wife of a man (Edmond O’Brien) who happens to have another wife at the same time. Hence the title.
Though the story is a bit sensational, it is still an absorbing drama that presents a unique triangle. Things get messy when the women find out they’ve been duped. Playing the other wife is Joan Fontaine, who in real-life was married to Miss Lupino’s cowriter and ex-husband Collier Young.
In some ways, the story seems like a clever re-working of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘The Scarlet Letter.’ Only this time the adulterer is male, and expertly played by O’Brien. For the most part, his character's indiscretions are not made public but kept private.
At first, the only person who suspects his double life is a social worker (Edmund Gwenn) whose job it is to investigate O’Brien and Fontaine, when Fontaine is not able to have a child and wants to adopt.
Of course, it is heartbreaking for her when she later learns that O’Brien already has a child with Lupino. As the plot unfolds, we watch the ramifications of the man’s betrayal play out. He has married two women in two different towns, one in San Francisco (Fontaine) and one in Los Angeles (Lupino). The women are from different economic classes. Fontaine’s character is ritzier, while Lupino is a working class gal. O’Brien couldn’t have fallen for two more different women if he tried!
It takes awhile before each wife find outs that the other one exits. Lupino’s direction carefully builds the suspense. This approach succeeds in causing us to wonder how the cad will eventually be undone and what the ladies will do. (They end up going to court over the matter.)
The last act of the movie is when they gradually come to the realization that their husband is a bigamist. As a result of his secret now being exposed, they each evolve from naive to knowledgeable– perhaps emerging stronger because of it.
Ida Lupino and Joan Fontaine give impressive performances as the wives, and it is easy to sympathize with both ladies. Enlivening the proceedings are some of the era’s best character actors: Jane Darwell as a cleaning lady; and Edmund Gwenn, already mentioned above, as the social worker who catches on to O’Brien’s duplicitous ways and outs him.
|
|
|
|
Post by sagebrush on Oct 11, 2024 10:58:04 GMT
This neglected film is from 1953.
Two wives
Edmond O'Brien is one an actor whose films I will watch simply because his name appears in the credits. He is always interesting, no matter how large or small the role is. |
|
