Algiers (1938)

A Paris jewel thief (Charles Boyer) hides in the Casbah of Algiers, outside the reach of the authorities. There he is safe, but also a prisoner. He takes a shine to lovely tourist Gaby (Hedy Lamarr). Will love bloom?

It’s hard not to compare this film with Casablanca. There are many parallels. Exotic North Africa location, problematic love story, and elements of danger and intrigue. The later film was certainly inspired by the first. Warner Brothers even wanted Lamarr to play Ilsa but MGM refused to loan her. When Casablanca’s screenwriter tried to explain Casablanca’s plot, he finally exclaimed "Oh, what the hell! It's going to be a lot of shit like 'Algiers'!" The similarities are many but the differences are legion.

Old friend Alan Hale has a sizable role. I remember seeing him in a film when I was young and was convinced he was The Skipper. It’s too bad there never was an Alan Hale III in film and TV. Prolific character actor Gene Lockhart also lurks in the Casbah underbelly. Daughter June is pushing a hundred and still occasionally does voice work. Leonid Kinskey has a very small part. Some may remember him as Sasha in Casablanca, so there we go again.

Algiers is based on the French film Pépé le Moko from way back in the previous year. True to form, the producers tried to destroy every copy of the previous work. I tried to find a translation of the lead character’s name, but the best I could do was “Pepe the Moko”. The Looney Tunes character Pepe le Pew is based on Boyer’s performance.

While Casablanca is so much better in so many ways, let’s not lose sight of the fact that Algiers is not Casablanca. And Algiers is not a bad film. Some of the scenes are stilted and awkward, and the accents and poor audio quality made it hard to follow sometimes, but the story holds up well. It’s a fair watch, so long as you don’t keep comparing it to a vastly superior work. AMRU 3.

Room Service (1938)

Stage producer Gordon Miller (Groucho Marx) is scamming the hotel where his acting troupe is staying, while trying to find a financial backer right up to opening night. The writer shows up to play the Zeppo character.

This is the first Marx Brothers film not specifically written for them, and it shows. Apart from a couple thrown in bits, there is very little of the Marx Brother style. No Margaret Dumont, and little verbal wordplay or insult comedy. They didn’t even give Groucho a funny name. But when compared to earlier films, it does have a more conventional story line. For a screwball comedy, that is.

The premise is that the play has no financier, the writer arrives looking for his payout, they’ve racked up huge bills, and the hotel is being audited. In other words, zany antics ensue. Lucille Ball has a sizable role, even if they give her little funny to say. Ann Miller appears for no other reason than to give the playwright a love interest. She was fifteen at the time. Why does this keep happening?

Room Service is a lesser Marx Brothers film, and the only one they did for RKO. I can’t say I laughed audibly at any time, but it is by no means unwatchable. Thank god they didn’t include a boring harp solo. AMRU 3.

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

When the good King Richard is taken captive during the crusades, his treacherous brother Prince John (Claude Rains) does what all monarchs do and seizes control. He taxes the poor Saxons to the brink of starvation while Robin Hood (Errol Flynn) makes friends. Oh, and steals from the rich. Stuff like that.

Our villains hatch a plan to capture Robin by holding an archery competition. They would arrest the winner, who would obviously be Robin Hood. Seeing the obvious trap, Robin hatches a plan of his own. He will win the competition but when they try to capture him, he will try to run away. Despite the plan’s brilliance, it doesn’t go off all that well. It is up to pretty Lady Marion (Olivia de Havilland) and daring swashbuckling action to rescue him.

Claude Rains is delightful as the tyrannical Prince John, and Basil Rathbone seemed born to play Sir Guy. For the record, Alan Rickman played the Sheriff, not Sir Guy. Skipper’s Dad Alan Hale played Little John in this and the 1922 version. Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., son of the 1922 Robin Hood, turned down the lead role because he didn’t want to be remembered as his father’s son. Too bad because if he were successful, he might be remembered as something other than his father’s son.

The effect of having arrows stuck into extras was accomplished by having an archer ACTUALLY SHOOT ARROWS AT THEM! They were paid $150 per arrow that hit them. Where is OSHA when you need them? The character Much is the catalyst of the story, being saved by Robin after arrest for killing the King’s deer. After that point he is mostly comic relief. The much older Una O’Connor played his comedic love interest. Friar Tuck too is mostly comic relief, as is Little John. Will Scarlet is mostly forgotten.

The Adventures of Robin Hood is a fun romp. The story is so well worn that it’s a bit threadbare, but we can’t blame the most famous version for that. It was a lot of fun. Goodbye, Olivia, and good job. AMRU 4.

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938)

A radio station is looking for a Little Miss America, a girl to sing while pitching bran flakes, and little Rebecca (Shirley Temple) is exactly who they are looking for. But step-dad Uncle Charlie thinks they are passing on her so he deposits her with her dead mom’s sister who will have nothing to do with this show business talk. There she learns to love country life and becomes friends with the neighbor (Randolph Scott!) who is searching for that little girl his incompetent assistant allowed to leave the studio before signing a bran flakes contract.

Our incompetent assistant is played by Jack Haley, whom some may remember as the Tin Man. Haley himself said that if it wasn’t for that role, nobody would remember him at all, and I tend to agree. Gloria Stuart played the ingenue/love interest. She was also Old Rose in Titanic. She lived to be a hundred. Also here is dancer Bill Robinson. Bojangles was a great and innovative tap dancer prior to making films. He was paired with Temple for three movies and eeked out a modicum of Hollywood fame.

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm is a remake of the Mary Pickford film of the same name. I understand many of Temple’s films were Pickford remakes. Pickford, who frequently played roles much younger than she, was 25 years old when making the original version compared to ten for Temple. Temple was up for the role of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, but didn’t get it. She remembered that as a lost opportunity to step out of Pickford’s shadow and do her own films. I wonder if Pickford auditioned.

Early in the film there was a sassy receptionist that I thought was going to be a major character. She wasn’t but I found out why all her scenes were sitting down. At 4’11 she was actually shorter than Shirley. I thought step-dad was going to be a gruff but amiable character but they went in the opposite direction with him. I forget that Demarest didn’t play likable much prior to My Three Sons.

I was looking for another film to see and I wasn’t motivated by anything on the DVR or streaming. I popped on TCM just before the beginning of Rebecca and decided to give it a chance. I Hadn’t seen a Shirley Temple film front to back, maybe ever, so I gave it a try. No part of it was terrible so I ended up seeing the whole film.

Maybe sacrilegious to say but little Shirley was charming, kinda cute, but only talented because she was young. Nobody marveled at her skill and as she matured she outgrew her specialness. Hollywood didn’t turn its back on her any more than she had nothing left to offer. In the end Rebecca was upbeat, well composed, and somewhat charming, but I won’t go out of my way to see another. Well made cotton candy is still cotton candy. AMRU 3.

“I never get nervous. I'm very self-reliant.”

The Terror of Tiny Town (1938)

The Villain Bat Haines plays two ranches off each other so he can rustle cattle from both sides. Oh, and everybody are dwarfs.

This low budget exploitation flic was inspired when the producer overheard someone saying "if this economy doesn't turn around, we'll have to start making pictures with midgets." The result is a film with little value beyond this novelty.

Many little people in films of this era sport thick Austrian accents. Hollywood apparently put out word that they were hiring and they didn't need much encouragement what with racial purity being on the march.

While the majority of the cast lacked acting talent, our hero (Billy Curtis) had better than fair horsemanship skills. His physicality was noticeable compared to the rest of the cast, who had difficulty with the full sized set. They rode ponies and Curtis being tall for a dwarf (4’2”) seemed over sized on his mount. His love interest, if IMDb is to be believed, celebrated her 101st birthday in January.

I felt a few of the actors appeared to be children, and I discovered that I wasn’t too far off. Fern Formica (that cannot possibly be her real name) would have been thirteen when the film was released, making her randy barroom song all that more inappropriate.

Poor acting, throw-away story, and bad diction. Other than the actors short stature and the films short run time, The Terror of Tiny Town has little to offer. AMRU 2.5.

Holiday (1938)

Johnny Case (Cary Grant) and Julia Seton meet, fall in love, and decide to marry while on vacation. Then the movie begins and they get to know each other. Turns out Julia is rich. Like Seton family rich, and she has ideas of poor Johnny Case following in old dad’s footsteps in business. But Johnny is a bit of a non-conformist and wants to play things his own way. Sorda like Julia’s non-conformist sister (Katharine Hepburn).

I wrote recently that I had grown tired of Rom-Coms, and wanted to avoid them for a while. But Holiday was already on the DVR so I knew it would be watched at some point. Lucky for me, George Cukor did Rom-Coms better than most and Holiday is a winner.

This was the beginning of the “Katharine Hepburn is Box Office Poison” era that started with Bringing Up Baby earlier in the year, and studio execs were concerned. The studio boss wanted to preemptively take out an ad in Variety asking “What is wrong with Katharine Hepburn?” but she warned that people might tell him. The movie didn’t fare well financially, likely because Johnny wanting to be a vagabond didn’t play well during the depression.

Holiday is a delightful film mostly because how likable the characters are. Not just Cary and Kate, but also Kate’s brother and Johnny’s friends, the Potters. Johnny’s plan didn’t make much sense to me but that didn’t matter. I liked him, and his friends. And in a Rom-Com, that’s all we can hope for.

“Johnny, when two people love each other as much as you do, anything that keeps them apart must be wrong.”

A Christmas Carol (1938)

Grumpy old man is grumpy ... blah blah Ghosts blah blah Spirit of Christmas. Ok, one more time.

It's impossible for me to not compare this Hollywood version to the 1935 edition I just finished, so I won't try. Here is a slightly more complete retelling with an apparently larger budget. Still sparse on the effects, but they did manage some green screen and wire work to show Scrooge and Ghost fly. But despite the more details, as well as a few new ones, the run time is just about as short: 69 minutes. This was done by cutting some key dialog. No "boiled in his own pudding", no "more gravy than grave about you", no "Long past? No, your past", some of my favorite lines.

A worse sin still is the actors rushing through the dialog they kept in. Dickens' prose is wonderful, meant to be savored, and doing this for the purpose of limiting the runtime is nothing short of an abomination. They try to build more of a relationship between Bob Cratchit and Nephew Fred. Additionally Cratchit is fired on Christmas Eve, not just grumbled at. Also Scrooge calls in the police when he first sees Marley's ghost. I can't imagine what purpose that scene served.

Scrooge (Reginald Owen) looked like an outcast from Whoville, with a foolish tuft of hair atop his bald head. He is not at all intimidating as the unrepentant miser. Also, The Ghost of Christmas Past (Ann Rutherford) was too hot, not a frequent complaint from me. The GCP is described in the story like an indistinct angel, both male and female, both old and young. The only pronoun used in it's regard is "Him". Casting a very distinct, very attractive young woman was a choice I take issue with. Rufferford would later play Scarlett's sister.

The Cratchit's were a family affair. Bob played by veteran character actor Gene Lockhart, his wife by real-life wife Kathleen, and even a daughter was played by future Lost In Space mom June. Leo G. Carroll played the ghost of Marley. Fans may remember him from Tarantula and a bunch of Hitchcock films.

This version of A Christmas Carol was not terrible, but it could have been so much more. Acting styles and rushed dialog kept the audience from taking the story too seriously. And it really irks me when a certain YouTube lists channel declares it the third best Christmas movie all time when it's not even the third best version of A Christmas Carol! But to give it credit, the sets and dramatic effects were improved from the previous version. And at least they titled the film after the story. AMRU 3.

Bringing Up Baby (1938)

David (Cary Grant) is an awkward anthropologist desperate for a million dollar grant from an old rich lady. His efforts to impress the lady's lawyer is sabotaged by the eccentric Susan (Katharine Hepburn). She takes a fancy to him and manipulates him to miss all appointments, including his own wedding. Oh, yea, and she has a pet leopard.

There are a couple things strange about this film, which may have played into its commercial failure. One is the complete lack of an identifiable protagonist. Everyone is nuts. I didn't think It Happened One Night fit the Screwball Comedy title. It was simply a well done RomCom. Bringing Up Baby, however, is about as screwball as they get. Nobody is sane.

Secondly, there is a traditional role reversal between Grant and Hepburn. It is her money and crazy, manipulative behavior that ensnares the screen candy Grant. She is the fast talking smart aleck. Taking into consideration Hepburn's pantsuit public image, you can read what you wish into that.

Grant's David was modeled after Harold Lloyd's "Glasses Character", and Christopher Reeve based his version of Clark Kent after Grant. Hawks hired vaudevillians to work with Hepburn's comic timing, a skill that would server her well.

Bringing Up Baby was a box office disaster. Director Howard Hawks was fired from his next gig, Hepburn was released and labeled "Box Office Poison", and Grant, well he always comes out on top. It was from rereleases and television that it earned its reputation. For me, it was amusing enough, but the over the top style was a bit of a turn off. Still, AMRU 3.5.

"Because I just went gay all of a sudden!"

Child Bride (1938)

The marriage of under aged girls in the Ozarks is a terrible problem. Who will spread the word regarding this awful practice? I know, an exploitation film will!

Eleven year old girl (Shirley Mills) is eyed by an evil bootlegger. Righteous school-marm campaigns for legal reform. Nudie swim, tar and feather, confrontation, crisis averted, roll credits.

Like so many early exploitation films, they tantalize audiences with what they pretend to condemn. Here, it's young Jennie in the buff. And the famous skinny dip scene was both significantly long and, as the MST3K folks said, disturbing. In fact, because of those comments in particular, I was hesitant to watch this thing. But I am curious about the old "pre-code" films (not one, I know), and Amazon Prime had it available, so what the hell. But like MST3k, I too should have skipped it.

From an acting/story/dialog standpoint, it was more than a little sub-par. Take into considering the poor audio and video quality of the public domain copy, not the best viewing experience. Following the story line or even telling some of the actors apart proved to be a chore. But the sets looked authentic enough, which is to say they even totally failed at totally failing at absolutely everything.

But if you feel weird ogling the 11 year old Jennie, rest assured that at the time of filming actress Shirley Mills was the ripe old age of twelve. Not entertaining, not historically significant, not even titillating. The best thing I can say was that it wasn't painful. AMRU 2.

The Lady Vanishes (1938)

I must catch up. I've fallen way behind with my blogging. I have five more after this and more to come. Besides, it's hard to post on a movie you watched four weeks ago ...

There's this lady, see, and then she vanishes. Here's what the title doesn't tell you, though. When she disappears, she's on a train. They should have called it The Lady Vanishes on a Train. That would answer all questions.

We start with the train socked in by an avalanche. Travellers are forced to stay the night in a humble inn overrun with guests. We meet a young American woman travelling to see her fiancee, an overbearing musicologist (Michael Redgrave) who is studying local music, a pair of cricket fans trying to get back to London to see an important match, a "married couple" trying to stay anonymous, and the old Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty).

A potted plant, meant for our Miss Froy, hits young Iris (Margaret Lockwood) instead, but isn't hurt too badly. She boards the train and meets up with Miss Froy and has a cup of tea. She falls asleep and when she wakes, Miss Froy is nowhere to be found and other travelers deny ever seeing her. The musicologist who annoyed her back at the inn now decides he believes her. Perhaps he saw her in better light. Anyhow, a brain surgeon who happens to be on the train finds the case to be fascinating and decides to help explain the disappearance. The blow to the head made her think she saw the lady from the inn on the train. See? That explains everything. Pretty Iris and annoying musicologist don't seem to think so. They go on a hunt for the answer. That's where the story description ends. Have fun seeing how it all pans out.

Michael Redgrave is the dad of Vanessa and Lynn, showing where they get their tall gene. The two cricket fans (who could love such a horrible, horrible sport?) were so popular they appeared as background characters in two other movies. They were kinda amusing, as was the story. The end was more than a bit ridiculous, but as a whole this was a very pleasing movie. Perhaps more so if you pretend you don't know if Miss Froy was imagined or not. AMRU 3.5.

"I've no regrets. I've been everywhere and done everything. I've eaten caviar at Cannes, sausage rolls at the dogs. I've played baccarat at Biarritz and darts with the rural dean. What is there left for me but marriage?"

You Can't Take it With You (1938)

The winner of Best Picture and Best Director, this offbeat comedy is about a family that chooses to do what they want over what they should do. How they have enough money to buy food is a mystery.

The story centers around young Alice (Jean Arthur) being the rebel of the family (she actually has a "job"!) and falling in love with owners son, Tony (James Stewart). The problem is that Tony's company is trying to evict Alice and her band of nuts from the family homestead. Drew's great-uncle Lionel Barrymore plays grandpa. 

Because of the sentimentality of Frank Capra's films, they were sometimes labeled "Capra-corn". Here is a great example. There were interesting scenes and clever dialog, but come on! I think they went a little bit over the top trying to show how eccentric they were. Characters wrestling, throwing darts, painting, doing ballet, while fireworks were being set off, all at the same time! Reminds me of my old dorm room days. And in the end, all problems are solved by singing "Polly Wolly Doodle". Maybe this makes sense during a depression. I hope I don't find out. 

One thing that struck me was the ages of the characters. Young Alice was played by 38 year old Jean Arthur. Her big sister was played by 15 year old Ann Miller. And Gramps was only 22 years Jean's senior. But it worked. Lionel looked to be 100, Jean Arthur could have easily passed for 24, and Ann Miller didn't look like any teen. 

Nice to watch once, but wholly unremarkable. Frank got a best picture, but not from me. AMRU 3.