High Tension (Allan Dwan, 1936)

Brian Donlevy and Glenda Farrell in High Tension

Cast: Brian Donlevy, Glenda Farrell, Norman Foster, Helen Wood, Robert McWade, Theodore von Eltz, Romaine Callender, Hattie McDaniel, Joe Sawyer, Murray Alper. Screenplay: Lou Breslau, Edward Eliscu, John Patrick, J. Robert Bren, Norman Houston. Cinematography: Barney McGill. Art direction: Duncan Cramer. Film editing: Louis R. Loeffler. 

High Tension is a lively little action comedy that comes in at 63 minutes, just right for the bottom half of a double feature. Brian Donlevy has the boisterous role of Steve Reardon, an underwater engineer for a transoceanic cable company who unwinds from his stressful job by getting drunk, telling tall tales of his undersea adventures, getting into fights, and messing around with his girlfriend, Edith McNeil (Glenda Farrell). It's a little hard to see why she puts up with Steve, let alone wants to marry him, except that she makes a good living writing pulp fiction based on those tall tales. Allan Dwan sets a nice pace for the movie, which puts Steve into a couple of knock-down, drag-out fights, one of which involves Steve and his opponent shoving a piano at each other in Edith's apartment. The more important fight, for the sake of the plot, comes when a couple of guys (one of them played by an unbilled Ward Bond) set upon him with the aim of picking his pocket. The movie's second lead, Eddie Mitchell (Norman Foster), manages to save the money that the thugs stole from Steve when he was knocked cold. Steve wakes up the next morning to find himself in bed with Eddie, who took him home for the night. It's the beginning of a beautiful friendship, with whatever homoerotic undertones you might want to find in it. Grateful for Eddie's help, and discovering that he has a degree from Caltech, Steve gets him a job with the company he works for and trains him to be his right hand man. Eventually, all this winds up with a some romantic complications, with Steve, who has broken up with Edith, putting the moves on Eddie's pretty secretary (Helen Wood), whom the shy Eddie secretly loves. And there's a big underwater rescue scene (done pretty much on the cheap) that sets everything straight again. The whole thing is quite watchable, except for the sexist and racist elements that don't go down as well today as they did in the '30s. Steve has to deal with his boss's prissy assistant, F. Willoughby Tuttle (Romaine Callender in a role probably written with Franklin Pangborn in mind), a prime example of the "pansy" stereotype that afflicted movies of the era. And Hattie McDaniel is cast as Edith's maid, unimaginatively named Hattie, a role that McDaniel plays with more sass and vigor than it deserves -- McDaniel was a true professional, and if you can overlook the stereotyping her performance is a delight. 

George Washington Slept Here (William Keighley, 1942)

Jack Benny, Ann Sheridan, and Hattie McDaniel in George Washington Slept Here

Cast: Jack Benny, Ann Sheridan, Charles Coburn, Percy Kilbride, Hattie McDaniel, William Tracy, Joyce Reynolds, Lee Patrick, Charles Dingle, John Emery, Douglas Croft, Harvey Stephens, Franklin Pangborn. Screenplay: Everett Freeman, based on a play by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman. Cinematography: Ernest Haller. Art direction: Max Parker. Film editing: Ralph Dawson. Music: Adolph Deutsch.

One of the running gags on Jack Benny's radio and TV shows was about how terrible his movie The Horn Blows at Midnight (Raoul Walsh, 1945) was. But that film, more a box office failure than a bad movie, has more to be said for it than George Washington Slept Here, a retread of one of Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman's lesser comedies, a play so forgotten -- except by amateur theatrical groups -- that it has never received a Broadway revival. When it came to performing in movies, Benny was always handicapped by his familiar radio personality, the skinflint who, when challenged by a stickup man, "Your money or your life," could be counted on to pause for a well-timed moment and say, "I'm thinking it over!" In adapting Kaufman and Hart's play for the screen, Everett Freeman actually switched the lead characters' roles to accommodate the Benny persona: In the play, the husband was the one eager to renovate a rundown 18th-century farmhouse, and the wife was the one who came up with wisecracking comments whenever the project teetered on disaster. But in the film, Benny is the long-suffering, wisecracking (and a little too frequently pratfalling) victim of his wife's passion for the antique. There's even an interpolated allusion to Benny's radio show when his character comments that something sounds worse than Phil Harris's orchestra -- a reference to the ongoing feud between Benny and his show's bandleader. Unfortunately, the whole film is a rather frantic spin on the familiar "money pit" comedy about building a dream house -- subsequent films like Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (H.C. Potter, 1948) and The Money Pit (Richard Benjamin, 1986) borrowed heavily from it. This is one of those films in which ordinarily sensible performers are forced to play characters who verge on idiocy -- poor Ann Sheridan, an underrated actress, has to behave like a nitwit in her efforts to keep the renovation happening, and Benny has to pretend to be jealous of her involvement with the antique dealer helping her with the project. Several characters have been lifted from the play -- the bratty Raymond, the preening summer stock actors -- without much justification for their presence in the plot. In short, it's a mess.

Judge Priest (John Ford, 1934)

Stepin Fetchit and Will Rogers in Judge Priest

Cast: Will Rogers, Tom Brown, Anita Louise, Stepin Fetchit, Hattie McDaniel, Henry B. Walthall, David Landau, Rochelle Hudson, Charley Grapewin, Berton Churchill. Screenplay: Dudley Nichols, Lamar Trotti, based on stories by Irvin S. Cobb. Cinematography: George Schneiderman. Art direction: William S. Darling. Film editing: Paul Weatherwax. Music: Samuel Kaylin.

John Ford's Judge Priest fits neatly into that period, roughly from 1915 (the year of D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation) to 1939 (the year of David O. Selznick's* Gone With the Wind), when Hollywood filmmakers were catering to audiences in the American South, eager for validation that their "lost cause" had been sacred and not the act of treason that it really was. So it's not surprising to find in the cast of Judge Priest both an actor from Griffith's film, Henry B. Walthall, and one from Selznick's, Hattie McDaniel. Ford's film, in which there's a joke about lynching and which concludes with a rousing performance of "Dixie" complete with waving of the Confederate battle flag, is hard to watch today, except for its historical interest, not only as an example of what movie audiences tolerated in 1934, but also for its glimpses of a then much-loved star, Will Rogers, and his occasional film sidekick, Stepin Fetchit, a comedian who was attacked as an Uncle Tom, but whose work has since been re-evaluated and appreciated for its skill. Judge Priest is also one of the few films in which McDaniel was allowed to sing, a talent she possessed in abundance. Otherwise, it's pretty wince-inducing.

*Yes, Victor Fleming was the credited director of GWTW, but if ever a movie deserved to be credited mainly to its producer, it's that one.

The Great Lie (Edmund Goulding, 1941)

The Great Lie (Edmund Goulding, 1941)

Cast: Bette Davis, Mary Astor, George Brent, Hattie McDaniel, Lucile Watson, Jerome Cowan. Screenplay: Lenore J. Coffee, based on a novel by Polan Banks. Cinematography: Tony Gaudio. Art direction: Carl Jules Weyl. Music: Max Steiner.

Show Boat (James Whale, 1936)

Productions of Show Boat over the years are almost a barometer of the changes in racial attitudes. In the original 1927 Broadway production, for example, the opening song, "Cotton Blossom," sung by dock workers, contained the line "Niggers all work on the Mississippi." The 1936 film changed the offensive word to "Darkies," which today is only somewhat less offensive, so contemporary performances usually change the line to "Here we all work on the Mississippi." Today, we wince when Irene Dunne as Magnolia appears in blackface to sing "Gallivantin' Aroun'," a number created for the film, and we have to acknowledge that minstrelsy was still prevalent well into the mid-20th century. But Show Boat also presents structural problems. It is front-loaded with its best Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II songs: In the original production, "Make Believe," "Ol' Man River," "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man," "Life Upon the Wicked Stage," and "You Are Love" all appear in Act I, leaving only "Why Do I Love You?" and "Bill" for Act II, among reprises of some of the other songs plus some oldies like "After the Ball." The film doesn't solve that problem: In fact, it omits "Life Upon the Wicked Stage" and "Why Do I Love You?" entirely, except as background music. It replaces them with a few new songs, including "I Have the Room Above You," a duet for Magnolia and Gaylord Ravenal (Allan Jones), and "Ah Still Suits Me," a somewhat too racially stereotyped duet for Joe (Paul Robeson) and Queenie (Hattie McDaniel), but they're still part of the first half of the film. And the plot seems to dwindle off into anticlimax after Gaylord leaves Magnolia. But James Whale's film version is one of the most successful translations of an admittedly imperfect stage musical to the screen. One reason is that it gives us a chance to see two legendary performers, Paul Robeson and Helen Morgan. Robeson's version of "Ol' Man River" is not only splendidly sung, but Whale also gives it a magnificent staging, beautifully filmed by John J. Mescall, that emphasizes the backbreaking toil that Robeson's Joe sings about. Morgan's performance as Julie makes me wish that Kern and Hammerstein had given her more songs, but her "Bill" is extraordinarily touching, and "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" becomes, after her introduction, a lively ensemble number for her, Dunne, McDaniel, and Robeson. It's also good to see McDaniel in a role that gives her a chance to sing -- she began her career as a singer. Too bad that Queenie's big number, "Queenie's Ballyhoo," was cut from the film. MGM remade Show Boat in 1951, with Kathryn Grayson as Magnolia, Howard Keel as Gaylord, and Ava Gardner as Julie, under the direction of George Sidney. Lena Horne wanted to play Julie, but the studio chickened out, fearing the reaction in the South. (Gardner's singing was dubbed by Annette Warren.) MGM also tried to suppress the 1936 film, which is vastly superior. Fortunately, it failed.

True Confession (Wesley Ruggles, 1937)

A somewhat too frantic screwball comedy, True Confession plays fast and loose not only with the legal profession but also to an extent with the careers of its stars. Fred MacMurray plays Kenneth Bartlett, a lawyer who insists on defending only those he thinks are really innocent, which gives him some trouble when his wife, Helen (Carole Lombard), goes on trial for murder. She's a would-be writer who can't always be trusted to tell the truth, so even though she didn't commit the crime, she winds up saying she did and pleading self-defense. Meanwhile, the trial is being watched by Charley Jasper (John Barrymore), an alcoholic loon who knows who really did the deed. None of these people make much sense, especially Barrymore, who seems at times to be reprising his earlier, far more successful performance as Oscar Jaffe opposite Lombard's Lily Garland (aka Mildred Plotka) in Twentieth Century (Howard Hawks, 1934). Alcohol had taken a serious toll on Barrymore, who was 55 when he made this film; he looks 70. Lombard was better, more controlled in her comic flights in Twentieth Century, too. Here she verges on grating at times. Comparisons are seldom fair, but it has to be said that the difference between the two films has to be that the earlier and better one was directed by Hawks from a screenplay by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, and True Confession was directed by Wesley Ruggles from a screenplay by Claude Binyon based on a French farce. Still, there's some fun to be had here, and the cast includes such stars from the golden age of character actors as Una Merkel being giddy, Porter Hall being irascible, Edgar Kennedy doing multiple face-palms, and Hattie McDaniel playing one of her always watchable (if regrettable) roles as the maid.