Three on a Match (Mervyn LeRoy, 1932)

Bette Davis, Joan Blondell, and Ann Dvorak in Three on a Match

Cast: Joan Blondell, Ann Dvorak, Bette Davis, Warren William, Lyle Talbot, Humphrey Bogart, Allen Jenkins, Edward Arnold, Virginia Davis, Anne Shirley, Betty Carse, Buster Phelps. Screenplay: Lucien Hubbard, Kubec Glasmon, John Bright. Cinematography: Sol Polito. Art direction: Robert M. Haas. Film editing: Ray Curtiss.

This crisply directed and tightly edited Warner Bros. crime movie is almost too snugly put together. It runs for only a little over an hour and still manages to tell a pretty complex story that spans the years from 1919 to 1932 in the lives of three women as they grow from schoolgirls to adults. The "bad girl," Mary Keaton, is first played by Virginia Davis as a tomboy showing off her black bloomers on the monkey bars. She barely graduates from elementary school, then spends time in a reformatory before taking a job as a show girl, played by Joan Blondell. The "rich girl," Vivian Revere, played by Anne Shirley under her first screen name, Dawn O'Day, is a bit of a flirt, who confides in the boys that her bloomers are pink, but doesn't show them off. She grows up to be played by Ann Dvorak as a bored socialite married to Robert Kirkwood (Warren William) with whom she has an adorable (read: cloyingly cute) child (Buster Phelps), but runs off with a ne'er-do-well played by Lyle Talbot, who gets in trouble with the mob, headed by Ace (Edward Arnold) and his enforcer, Harve (Humphrey Bogart). The "smart girl," Ruth Westcott, starts out as the class valedictorian (Betty Carse) and goes to business school. Her story, even though she's played by Bette Davis, is the least interesting of the three. In fact, she seems to be there only to make it possible for the three women to light their cigarettes on one match, setting off the supposed curse on the third to catch the flame, who happens to be Mary. The result is that Dvorak, though her career never took off like that of Blondell or Davis, gets the juiciest part in the film and makes the most of it. Of course, Warners didn't know that Davis would become its biggest star, but anyone who decides to watch Three on a Match thinking it's a "Bette Davis movie" is going to be disappointed. Still, there are worse ways to spend an hour than watching formative moments in the careers of stars like Davis -- or for that matter, Bogart, in one of his first gangster roles.

The Public Enemy (William A. Wellman, 1931)

James Cagney in The Public Enemy

Cast: James Cagney, Edward Woods, Jean Harlow, Joan Blondell, Donald Cook, Leslie Fenton, Beryl Mercer, Robert Emmett O'Connor, Murray Kinnell, Mae Clarke, Mia Marvin. Screenplay: Kubec Glasmon, John Bright, Harvey F. Thew. Cinematography: Devereaux Jennings. Art direction: Max Parker. Film editing: Edward M. McDermott.

James Cagney has always seemed to me the movies' greatest loner, and the film that made him a star bears that out. The scene that brings it home for me is the one in which Cagney's Tom Powers is hiding out from the rival mob, and the woman named Jane (Mia Marvin) who looks after him gets him drunk and seduces him. In the morning, when he remembers that they had sex, he's shocked and slaps her, then storms out of the hideout. It's a less famous scene than the one in which he shoves a grapefruit in Mae Clarke's face, but that's partly because the scene with Jane was cut by the censors after the Production Code went into effect; it was restored only after the movie made it onto video. The two scenes are similar in suggesting that although Cagney's characters aren't exactly chaste, they don't connect with women except for their mothers, like Beryl Mercer's Ma in The Public Enemy or Margaret Wycherly's Ma Jarrett in White Heat (Raoul Walsh, 1949). Almost every major leading man of the 1930s and 1940s can be identified with his on-screen teamwork with a leading lady (or two): Cary Grant with Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy likewise, James Stewart with Jean Arthur or Margaret Sullavan, Clark Gable with Jean Harlow or Joan Crawford, Gary Cooper with Barbara Stanwyck or Marlene Dietrich, and so on. But Cagney never struck sparks with any of his leading ladies. He seems too coiled and defensive to give up any part of himself to a woman. In The Public Enemy, he's matched with Harlow, who does her best to thaw him out, but their scenes are not particularly memorable. In his private life, Cagney was notable for having married only once and having stayed married from 1922 till his death in 1986, without rumors of extramarital dalliance, something of an anomaly in Hollywood. The Public Enemy uses this enclosed quality of Cagney's to good effect, and it's a tribute to whoever made the decision to give him the lead -- claimants include director William A. Wellman and producer Darryl F. Zanuck -- after initially casting him in the secondary role of Matt Doyle, played by the now mostly forgotten Edward Woods. It's largely thanks to Cagney that The Public Enemy still hold up today, even though it has some of the stiffness and uncertainty of early talkies, especially when it comes to dialogue. Robert Emmett O'Connor, for example, who plays Paddy Ryan, tends to introduce long pauses between sentences when he's delivering his lines, as if afraid that the audience won't keep up with what he's saying.

Opening Night (John Cassavetes, 1977)

Gena Rowlands in Opening Night

Cast: Gena Rowlands, John Cassavetes, Ben Gazzara, Joan Blondell, Paul Stewart, Zohra Lampert, Laura Johnson, John Tuell. Screenplay: John Cassavetes. Cinematography: Al Ruban. Production design: Brian Ryman. Film editing: Tom Cornwell. Music: Bo Harwood.

If at some moments you're uncertain whether what's happening in Opening Night is taking place on-stage or off-, that's the point. Gena Rowlands's Myrtle Gordon is no longer able, in part (but not entirely) because of her alcoholism, to distinguish art from life. This, to me, is John Cassavetes's most accessible film -- which is ironic, since it was a critical and commercial disaster on its initial release in the United States. Cassavetes was unable to find an American distributor for the film, and it didn't get one until two years after his death. Myrtle is struggling through the New Haven tryouts for a play called The Second Woman, which is about the difficulties the character she's playing has with getting older. After one performance, a hyped-up young fan all but assaults her with adoration, but then, as Myrtle's limousine pulls away from the theater, the fan is struck by a car and killed as Myrtle looks back in horror. The fan's death precipitates a breakdown: Myrtle acts up on stage, objecting to a scene in which her co-star and former lover Maurice (Cassavetes) slaps her, arguing with the playwright (Joan Blondell, in a role that was first offered to Bette Davis) that the play's preoccupation with aging is wrong-headed, fighting with her director, Manny (Ben Gazzara), and breaking character on stage during performances. She also begins to see the young woman who was killed, sometimes explaining the vision away as an actress's technique for getting into character, but eventually resorting to consultations with spiritualists. Rowlands is simply phenomenal throughout the film, a performance that must be seen. But Opening Night is overlong at 144 minutes, and it has some of its writer-director's too-loose improvisatory qualities, especially in the scene in which the play finally opens on Broadway and Myrtle and Maurice improvise the final act to the great amusement of the audience, turning the opening night into a hit. In fact, it doesn't seem nearly as hilarious as that audience finds it, and Myrtle's transition from falling-down drunk at the beginning of the opening night performance into quick-witted improviser is hardly convincing. But it's a mistake to try to put any Cassavetes story into a conventional context; he's doing his own thing, and you either appreciate it or you don't. Look for Cassavetes regulars Peter Falk and Seymour Cassel, along with his friend Peter Bogdanovich, in the crowd at the opening night.

Footlight Parade (Lloyd Bacon, 1933)

Chester Kent: James Cagney
Nan Prescott: Joan Blondell
Bea Thorn: Ruby Keeler
Scotty Blair: Dick Powell
Francis: Frank McHugh
Silas Gould: Guy Kibbee
Harriet Gould: Ruth Donnelly
Bowers: Hugh Herbert
Vivian Rich: Claire Dodd

Director: Lloyd Bacon
Screenplay: Manuel Seff, James Seymour
Cinematography: George Barnes
Art direction: Anton Grot, Jack Okey
Film editing: George Amy
Choreography: Busby Berkeley

Busby Berkeley's great trifecta of 1933 also includes 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon) and Gold Diggers of 1933 (Mervyn LeRoy). Footlight Parade is the least distinguished of the three by virtue of having the most inane of plots, but it also has a blazingly wonderful performance by James Cagney as the harried impresario Chester Kent, who creates "prologues" for movies -- live action musical numbers designed to precede feature films, a phenomenon that survives today only at Radio City Music Hall. Cagney not only gets to display his typical volcanic persona but also gets to strut his stuff as a dancer. As in other early Berkeley films, the great mad production numbers are not spread throughout but instead clustered at the end. First comes "Honeymoon Hotel," which is a string of double entendres about the fact that people have sex in hotels, and aren't necessarily newlyweds: e.g., everyone registers as "Mr. and Mrs. Smith." Then there's the lavish "By a Waterfall," which anticipates (and excels) the swimming pool numbers that Berkeley would later craft for Esther Williams at MGM. And finally, Chester Kent gets to save the show by going on for a lead dancer who comes down with stage fright in the "Shanghai Lil," number with Ruby Keeler in yellowface, dancing on the top of waterfront bars with Cagney -- her clunky, anxious tapping is an odd mixture with Cagney's stiff-legged style. (We are fortunately spared one of Kent's more appalling ideas, a musical number about slavery in which the female dancers would appear in blackface and be captured by the male dancers.) The whole thing is good, mildly ribald pre-Code stuff: Joan Blondell's Nan, who crushes on Chester Kent, introduces the predatory Vivian Rich by "accidentally" almost pronouncing her last name with a B, and comments that as long as there are sidewalks, Vivian will never be without a job.

Dames (Ray Enright, Busby Berkeley, 1934)

Mabel Anderson: Joan Blondell
Jimmy Higgens: Dick Powell
Barbara Hemingway: Ruby Keeler
Mathilda Hemingway: Zasu Pitts
Horace Hemingway: Guy Kibbee
Ezra Ounce: Hugh Herbert
Bulger: Arthur Vinton

Director: Ray Enright, Busby Berkeley
Screenplay: Delmer Daves, Robert Lord
Cinematography: George Barnes, Sidney Hickox, Sol Polito
Art direction: Robert M. Haas, Willy Pogany
Film editing: Harold McLernon
Music: Heinz Roemheld

Utterly inane and completely delightful, Dames is mostly a showcase for three great Busby Berkeley dance spectacles, each giddier and more kaleidoscopic than the one that went before. The big numbers -- "The Girl at the Ironing Board," "I Only Have Eyes for You," and the title song -- are clustered at the end of the film, the supposed (if impossible) production numbers in a Broadway musical. Until we get to them, there's a lot of nonsense about multimillionaire Ezra Ounce's moral crusade and his cousin Horace Hemingway's kowtowing to Ounce in order to get a sizable chunk of his millions, which involves keeping his daughter, Barbara, from marrying her 13th cousin, Jimmy, who is banking on his ability to put on the big show, which supposedly offends Ounce's moral code. Got that? Fortunately, the bluenoses are played by such grand grotesques as Hugh Herbert, Guy Kibbee, and Zasu Pitts, and there's a lot of silliness about Ezra Ounce's hiccup cure, which is something like 70 percent alcohol. There's also the invaluable Joan Blondell as a chorus girl on the make. Unfortunately, we also get a couple of songs from Dick Powell, in his sappy tenor avatar, and some clunky tap-dancing from Ruby Keeler. But Berkeley's extravaganzas are worth the wait, including the title number, which features chorus girls riding a miniature Ferris wheel. Standing. Backward.

The Crowd Roars (Howard Hawks, 1932)

James Cagney in The Crowd Roars

Joe Greer: James Cagney
Lee Merrick: Ann Dvorak
Anne Scott: Joan Blondell
Eddie Greer: Eric Linden
Spud Connors: Frank McHugh
Pop Greer: Guy Kibbee

Director: Howard Hawks
Screenplay: John Bright, Niven Busch, Kubec Glasmon
Based on a story by Howard Hawks and Seton I. Miller
Cinematography: Sidney Hickox, John Stumar
Film editing: Thomas Pratt

The "Hawksian woman," able to crack wise and exhibit grace under pressure as well as any man, is one of the glories of Hollywood movies. Actresses as various as Katharine Hepburn, Jean Arthur, Rosalind Russell, Lauren Bacall, Joanne Dru, and Angie Dickinson held their own with domineering males like Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, and John Wayne, among others. So when I saw that TCM had scheduled a Howard Hawks film I hadn't seen starring James Cagney and Joan Blondell, I thought I knew what I was in for. If anyone could take down a peg the Cagney who became famous for abusing Mae Clarke with half a grapefruit in The Public Enemy (William A. Wellman, 1931) it would be Blondell, Warners' likable tough girl. Blondell never got the chance in The Public Enemy, in which she's linked up with Edward Woods instead of Cagney. Well, here's another missed opportunity: Though Blondell gets top billing with Cagney, he's paired off with Ann Dvorak; Blondell gets the forgettable (and forgotten) juvenile Eric Linden instead. And Dvorak's character is no Hawksian woman: Instead of toughing it out with a wisecrack when Cagney's character dumps her, she goes into hysterics. So instead of the witty battle of the sexes we have come to expect from Hawks, in The Crowd Roars we get a passable and sometimes exciting action movie about race car drivers, with a little romantic entanglement thrown in to bridge the well-shot and well-staged racing scenes. Cagney's Joe Greer is a champion race car driver -- he's won at Indianapolis three times -- who goes home to find that his kid brother, Eddie, wants to follow in his footsteps. So Joe takes Eddie back to L.A. with him, where he's been living without benefit of wedlock -- this is a pre-Code film -- with Lee Merrick. Initially he tries to hide his relationship with Lee to protect the younger man's morals -- to "keep him off of booze and women," as he puts it -- but truth will out. When he decides to break up with Lee, she enlists her friend Anne in a revenge plot: Anne will frustrate Joe's puritanical scheme by seducing Eddie. This doesn't work out: Anne and Eddie fall in love. Meanwhile, Joe and Eddie compete in a race in which Joe's sidekick Spud is killed in a flaming crash -- there's a remarkable series of scenes in which drivers, including Joe, drop out of the race because they're nauseated by having to repeatedly pass the crash site with its smell of burning flesh. Eddie wins the race and goes on to become the star driver that Joe was, while Joe hits the bottle and the skids. Redemption and reconciliation of course ensue. None of this is new and all of it is predictable, but Hawks knows how to pump up the action when everything gets soppy. As for the Hawksian woman, she will have to wait until 1934 and Twentieth Century for Carole Lombard to give her the first satisfactory outing.

Topper Returns (Roy Del Ruth, 1941)

This silly B-picture was just the thing to unwind with after the heaviness of the last couple of posts. It's the second of two sequels to the original Topper (Norman Z. McLeod, 1937), about a stuffy banker beset by sexy ghosts. But it doesn't have much in common with the first movie other than Roland Young as Topper and Billie Burke as his fluttery, suspicious wife who mistakes his odd behavior for infidelity when the ghosts start teasing him. Cary Grant and Constance Bennett were the mischievous ghosts in the first film, but Grant jumped ship before the first sequel, Topper Takes a Trip (McLeod, 1938), after which Bennett bailed out too. This time the sexy ghost is Joan Blondell, whose character, Gail Richards, is murdered by mistake: The intended victim was her friend, Ann Carrington (Carole Landis), heir to a large fortune. Once she passes over, the ectoplasmic Gail enlists Topper, of all people, in helping solve her murder. Young is, as always, a delight -- one of the greatest comic actors ever to be underemployed by Hollywood -- but he doesn't have a lot to do this time except be shoved around by the invisible Gail as they search for clues in the creepy mansion where she was murdered. Mrs. Topper shows up, too, accompanied by her maid (Patsy Kelly) and the chauffeur, played by Eddie Anderson, billed as Eddie "Rochester" Anderson because of his fame as the eponymous chauffeur on Jack Benny's radio show. Even though he's called "Eddie" by Topper and "Edward" by Mrs. Topper, he manages to slip in a line about how he wants his old job with Mr. Benny back. Although Anderson is given some stereotypical moments predicated on the old gag that black people are afraid of ghosts, and there's a tedious slapstick bit involving a sea lion (oh, don't ask), he's treated as more of a comic equal in the film than African American actors usually were, matching wisecrack for wisecrack. There are also some funny moments with Donald MacBride as a particularly addled police detective. The whole thing is laced through with topical gags that have lost their edge: Rafaela Ottiano plays a sinister housekeeper modeled on Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940), and if you don't get the joke immediately be sure that someone will refer to her as "Rebecca," even though her character's name is Lillian. The movie is also a reminder of how pervasive radio once was in popular culture: In addition to Anderson's reference to Jack Benny, there are also quips about Orson Welles's "War of the Worlds" broadcast, and a radio giveaway show called "Pot o' Gold" in which people won the jackpot if they answered their randomly dialed telephone.