Moss Rose (Gregory Ratoff, 1947)

Vincent Price and Ethel Barrymore in Moss Rose

Cast: Peggy Cummins, Victor Mature, Ethel Barrymore, Vincent Price, Margo Woode, George Zucco, Patricia Medina, Rhys Williams. Screenplay: Niven Busch, Jules Furthman, Tom Reed, based on a novel by Joseph Shearing. Cinematography: Joseph MacDonald. Art direction: Richard Day, Mark-Lee Kirk. Film editing: James B. Clark. Music: David Buttolph. 

Ethel was my favorite Barrymore, not so given to posing and scene-hogging as her brothers John and Lionel, and she's by far the best thing about Moss Rose. It's a somewhat rickety whodunit set in Victorian London, in which a pretty chorus girl  blackmails a wealthy man, but not for money. Instead, she wants to fulfill her dream of living like a fine lady. Peggy Cummins plays Belle Adair (née Rose Lynton), who sees Michael Drego (Victor Mature) coming out of the room of her friend Daisy Arrow (Margo Woode), a fellow lady of the chorus who lives in the same lodging house. When Belle enters Daisy's room, she finds her dead. But during the official inquiry, led by Police Inspector Clinner (a nice, silky performance by Vincent Price), Belle doesn't let on about seeing Drego. Instead, she seeks him out and presents him with her audacious (if improbable) demand: If he'll let her pretend to be a lady and be received in his home -- he lives in the family estate with his mother, Lady Margaret Drego (Barrymore) -- she'll keep mum about seeing him at the crime scene. The plan is complicated by the announcement of the impending marriage of Drego to the socially prominent Audrey Ashton (Patricia Medina). But somehow Drego is persuaded to go through with Belle's scheme, and he takes her home to meet his mother and, as it turns out, his fiancée. Belle drops her stage name and is introduced as Rose. Meanwhile, Clinner is still on the job of trying to find out who killed Daisy. It's a promising setup, but it's undone by questionable casting, slack direction, and confused writing. The beefy Mature is scarcely credible as an English gentleman, though his lack of an accent and his rough edges are explained by his being taken from his home as child and raised in Canada. Cummins, who was Irish, struggles with the cockney accent of Belle and the "proper" one of Rose, especially when she has to switch between the two. Gregory Ratoff, who was best known as a comic character actor, never distinguished himself as a director, despite numerous attempts. His best outing as director was the 1939 Intermezzo, which marked Ingrid Bergman's American debut and was produced by David O. Selznick, who loved directing his directors. The script for Moss Rose is marred by abrupt leaps and inconsistencies in point of view. It begins with Rose on a train, introducing the story in voiceover, and then flashes back to the events above, with her occasionally narrating what happened between scenes. But having established Rose's as the film's point of view, it sometimes breaks away to see things she couldn't have witnessed, like the scene in which Clinner questions Lady Margaret about moss roses -- a rose in a bible was left at the scene of Daisy's murder. Establishing Rose as the point of view also takes away some of the logic of the character and undermines the film's suspense: After all, if Drego is a murderer, and one so little concerned about being caught that he leaves obvious clues at the crime scene, shouldn't she be more worried about putting herself in harm's way by seeking him out and meeting him in secret?  

What Price Hollywood? (George Cukor, 1932)

Bradley Cooper is reportedly directing a remake of A Star Is Born in which he and Lady Gaga will take the roles played by Fredric March and Janet Gaynor in 1937, James Mason and Judy Garland in 1954, and Kris Kristofferson and Barbra Streisand in 1976. So maybe it's a good time to check out the ur-Star Is Born, What Price Hollywood?, that was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by George Cukor in 1932. The name is different but the plot's the same: A successful man in the entertainment business discovers a young woman whom he helps become a star, but as her career ascends, his personal problems send him into a tailspin.* The idea for the film is a natural in a Hollywood that had become increasingly conscious of its own myth, and many real-life analogs have been found in the history of the industry. Selznick commissioned Adela Rogers St. Johns, a former reporter for Photoplay and the Hearst newspapers, to write the story for the film, and various other hands turned it into a screenplay, though St. Johns and Jane Murfin claimed most of the credit when they were nominated for an Oscar for best original story. The film begins with a touch of screwball comedy when Max Carey (Lowell Sherman), an alcoholic director, encounters Mary Evans (Constance Bennett), a waitress at the Brown Derby looking for her chance to break into the movies. After some funny scenes involving Max's drunkenness and Mary's initial ineptness as an actress, the movie unfortunately begins to get serious. Though it's clear Mary really loves Max, when she becomes a big star she marries a society polo player, Lonny Borden (Neil Hamilton), after a somewhat cutesy courtship. But Borden is unhappy being "Mr. Mary Evans," and eventually storms out, though she's pregnant. Meanwhile, Max's decline continues, and after Mary rescues him from the drunk tank and promises to rehabilitate him, he shoots himself, thereby embroiling her in a headline-making scandal. But then Borden returns to apologize and all is well again. What keeps the film alive despite its clichés are the performances. Bennett is quite charming, and Sherman clearly models Max on John Barrymore, whom he knew well: He was married to Helene Costello, whose sister, Dolores, was Barrymore's third wife. The supporting cast includes Gregory Ratoff as the producer of Mary's films, Louise Beavers as (of course) her maid, and Eddie Anderson as Max's chauffeur -- five years before he became famous as Jack Benny's chauffeur, Rochester, on radio.  

*As if there were any doubt, there's a clear link between What Price Hollywood? and at least the first A Star Is Born in that both were produced by Selznick. RKO, which released What Price Hollywood?, threatened to sue Selznick over the similarities, but decided against it. Selznick also asked Cukor to direct the 1937 film, but Cukor declined, so William A. Wellman took it on. But then Cukor went on to direct the 1954 Star Is Born. I don't think there's any direct connection between What Price Hollywood? and the 1976 version, produced by Streisand and Jon Peters and directed by Frank Pierson, but the lineage by then was obvious.