Ladies' Man (Lothar Mendes, 1931)

Kay Francis and William Powell in Ladies' Man

Cast: William Powell, Kay Francis, Carole Lombard, Olive Tell, Gilbert Emery, Martin Burton, John Holland, Frank Atkinson, Maude Turner Gordon. Screenplay: Herman J. Mankiewicz, based on a novel by Rupert Hughes. Cinematography: Victor Milner. Costume design: Travis Banton. Music: Karl Hajos, Herman Hand, John Leipold.

With his receding hairline, big nose, and dubious chin, William Powell has always seemed to me an unlikely leading man, but he made quite a go of it teaming with actresses like Myrna Loy, Kay Francis, and Carole Lombard. But even Powell felt he was miscast as Jamie Darricott, the handsome gigolo of Ladies' Man who dines and wines the society matron Mrs. Fendley (Olive Tell), taking her, fashionably late, to the opera -- she muses that she's always wondered if Tosca really has a first act. He's performing a necessary service: Her banker husband, Horace (Gilbert Emery), is more devoted to making money than to being married, so even he tolerates Darricott's services -- at least for a while. Trouble starts when Rachel Fendley (Lombard), their daughter, takes a fancy to Darricott. Up to that point, Ladies' Man has been a passable sophisticated comedy of manners, but then Darricott meets Norma Page (Francis) and they fall in love. For a while the film turns into a romantic comedy tinged with farce, as Rachel tries to get Darricott away from Norma. And then it gets serious: Horace Fendley decides that he can't tolerate Darricott's involvement with both his wife and his daughter, and he threatens Darricott's life. This muddle of tones and genres is only made messier by miscasting, which extends beyond Powell's unsuitability for the role. Lombard tries at first to be suave and icy, affecting that hoity-toity mid-Atlantic accent actors used to resort to when playing uppercrust roles. Fortunately, she's allowed to loosen up in a scene when she gets drunk and confronts Norma and Darricott at a nightclub. It's not a good drunk scene, but at least it's closer to the free and funny Lombard we cherish. Francis comes across better in a thankless role: She has to pretend to be put off by Darricott's being a gigolo, but then be swept off her feet by him overnight. In short, it's a movie that a lot of top talent, including screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz's, isn't strong enough to save.

 

One Way Passage (Tay Garnett, 1932)

Kay Francis and William Powell in One Way Passage

Cast: William Powell, Kay Francis, Aline MacMahon, Frank McHugh, Warren Hymer, Frederick Burton, Roscoe Karns, Herbert Mundin. Screenplay: Wilson Mizner, Joseph Jackson, Robert Lord. Cinematography: Robert Kurrie. Art direction: Anton Grot. Film editing: Ralph Dawson.

One Way Passage is a small gem that won an Oscar for best story by Robert Lord, though the story is by no means the best thing about it. It is, for example, a prime demonstration of romantic movie chemistry in its teaming of Kay Francis and William Powell. She plays a woman dying of MHM (Mysterious Hollywood Malady), and he's a convicted murderer who is going to be hanged at San Quentin. They meet in a somewhat seedy bar in Hong Kong. She bumps into him and makes him spill his drink, and when they exchange glances it's love at first sight. If you ever want to know what the phrase "acting with the eyes" means, just check out that scene. When they part, they smash their glasses and leave the stems crossed on the bar -- a gesture that becomes a motif through the film, even providing a near-perfect ending for it. They meet again soon, boarding a ship bound for San Francisco, though she's accompanied by her doctor (Frederick Burton) and he by the cop (Warren Hymer) taking him to his doom. The rest is just a matter of working out ways to keep their fatal secrets from each other as their romance blossoms. And if that were all there were to it, One Way Passage really wouldn't be much of a movie. Fortunately, there's as much larceny as love on board, with the introduction of con artist Barrel House Betty (the wonderful Aline MacMahon), who is posing as the Comtesse Barilhaus and is aided by a lightfingered lush known as Skippy (Frank McHugh); they seem to have fleeced their way around the world. A romance even develops between Betty and the cop as a comic counterpart to the main one. The screenplay by Wilson Mizner (who was something of a con artist himself) and Joseph Jackson gives us some salty tough talk dialogue to offset the romantic melodrama of the main plot. (Mizner and Jackson probably deserved the Oscar at least as much as Lord, but at the time, the Academy treated story and screenplay as two discrete categories.) The Production Code would probably have forced the screenwriters to tell us more about the murder Powell's character committed, but all we get is a suggestion that the victim had it coming to him. That everything in the movie comes in at only a little over an hour -- 67 minutes -- is another reason to cherish One Way Passage.

 

Jewel Robbery (William Dieterle, 1932)

Kay Francis and William Powell in Jewel Robbery

Cast: William Powell, Kay Francis, Helen Vinson, Hardie Albright, Alan Mowbray, André Luguet, Henry Kolker, Spencer Charters, Lee Kohlmar, Clarence Wilson. Screenplay: Erwin Gelsey, based on a play by Ladislas Fodor and a translation by Bertram Bloch. Cinematography: Robert Kurrle. Art direction: Robert M. Haas. Film editing: Ralph Dawson. Music: Bernhard Kaun.

Jewel Robbery is a perfect storm of what would be taboos under the Production Code: Not only does it condone adultery and let crime go unpunished, but it also allows William Powell's jewel thief -- pardon me, robber -- to slip a cigarette laced with an uncommonly potent strain of cannabis to the jewelry store guard, thereby violating the forthcoming ban on drug references in movies. (We are assured that, after a case of the giggles, the guard will fall sound asleep to wake refreshed with no hangover but the munchies.) The adulteress is Baroness Teri (Kay Francis), a golddigger who has married the aging Baron von Horhenfels (Henry Kolker) for his money, while carrying on a liaison with the much younger cabinet member Paul (Hardie Albright). Unfortunately, as Teri tells her confidante Marianne (Helen Vinson), Paul is a bit of a bore. She makes the best of it, however, swanning around in gowns designed by Orry-Kelly that defy the law of gravity and raking in the jewels her husband provides. Which leads her to the jewelry store that is about to be robbed and to the robber himself, with whom she swiftly falls in love. The rest is a story of crime and absence of punishment that ends well for Teri and her thief -- uh, robber. Francis and Powell were never better, and there's a good deal of charm and wit to the film. It could have been directed with a lighter touch: William Dieterle is better known for the somewhat stuffy biopics The Story of Louis Pasteur (1935), The Life of Emile Zola (1937), and Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet (1940), and he doesn't have the Viennese insouciance that the script needs. But he lets his actors provide that, with good results.

Double Harness (John Cromwell, 1933)

Ann Harding and William Powell in Double Harness

Cast: Ann Harding, William Powell, Lucile Browne, Henry Stephenson, Lilian Bond, George Meeker, Reginald Owen, Kay Hammond, Leigh Allen, Hugh Huntley, Wallis Clark, Fred Santley. Screenplay: Jane Murfin, based on a play by Edward Poor Montgomery. Cinematography: J. Roy Hunt. Art direction: Charles M. Kirk, Van Nest Polglase. Film editing: George Nichols Jr.

Double Harness is a rather brittle comedy of manners that might be better known if it hadn't vanished for years, owing to a dispute between producer Merian C. Cooper and RKO. Because it was withheld from release until Turner Classic Movies obtained the rights to it in 2007, we had one less opportunity to see Ann Harding, once expected to become a major Hollywood star on the strength of her looks and her stage-trained voice, the latter a great asset in the early years of talking pictures. Harding gives a good performance in Double Harness, but she lacked the vivid personality of actresses of the period who became bigger stars, like Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and Barbara Stanwyck, so her career never quite took off. She plays Joan Colby, member of a well-to-do family that finds itself on the skids in the depression, so that she and her giddy sister, Valerie (Lucile Browne), need to marry well in order to regain status. Valerie does marry, but her spendthrift ways keep her on the hunt for money to pay the debts she hides from her husband. Joan is taken with John Fletcher (William Powell), heir to a successful shipping company but more interested in playing polo than in running the business -- or in getting married. Joan overcomes the latter obstacle by a trick: She arranges for her father (Henry Stephenson) to discover her in Fletcher's apartment, which she has more or less moved into, one night. Fletcher does the right thing and marries her, unaware that he's been tricked, but he and Joan also come to an agreement that they will divorce after a suitable period of time elapses. Naturally, they begin to fall more deeply in love, as Fletcher begins to realize that Joan has not only made life more pleasant for him, she has also begun to take a hand in his shipping business. But then Valerie spills the beans about how Joan had tricked Fletcher into marrying her, and an old flame of his, Monica Page (Lilian Bond), takes advantage of his anger and tries to snare him for herself. And so on to the anticipated outcome. Double Harness is a little too arch and stagey for its own good, and the idea that a man might have to marry a young woman because she's found in his apartment at night was a little old-fashioned even at the time, but Harding and Powell do what they can with the material.

Manhattan Melodrama (W.S. Van Dyke, 1934)

Clark Gable and William Powell in Manhattan Meldodrama

Cast: Clark Gable, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Leo Carrillo, Nat Pendleton, George Sidney, Isabel Jewell, Muriel Evans, Thomas E. Jackson, Isabelle Keith, Frank Conroy, Noel Madison, Jimmy Butler, Mickey Rooney, Shirley Ross. Screenplay: Oliver H.P. Garrett, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Arthur Caesar. Cinematography: James Wong Howe. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: Ben Lewis. Music: William Axt.

This is the movie that John Dillinger saw before he was shot down outside the theater. It's the one in which Mickey Rooney grows up to be Clark Gable. It's the first film to team William Powell and Myrna Loy, months before they became Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man (with the same director, W.S. Van Dyke). It's the one in which Shirley Ross sings Rodgers and Hart's "Blue Moon" with Hart's original lyrics, "The Bad in Every Man." It was made before the Production Code took effect, so there's no dodging the implication that Eleanor (Loy) is Blackie Gallagher's (Gable) mistress before she marries Jim Wade (Powell), leading to a crucial plot point. Manhattan Melodrama is, to say the least, of historical interest even if it's not really a very good movie. It can pass for one, however, because of Gable and Powell and Loy, James Wong Howe's cinematography, and some clever lines. It won an Oscar for Arthur Caesar's story, though what it really deserved was some kind of award for truth in labeling: In melodrama, characters do things in service of the plot, and not in the way real human beings behave. We are asked to believe that two very different boys, one a hedonistic rascal, the other studious and virtuous, would become close friends and remain so even after the former grows up to be a gangster and the latter a district attorney with high political ambitions. And that they would remain close friends after the gangster's mistress leaves him and marries the D.A. And that the gangster would sacrifice himself, going blithely to the electric chair after his old friend has convicted him of murder. Life may not be like that, but Manhattan Melodrama certainly is. 

The Thin Man (W.S. Van Dyke, 1934)

Myrna Loy and William Powell in The Thin Man

Nick Charles: William Powell
Nora Charles: Myrna Loy
Dorothy Wynant: Maureen O'Sullivan
Guild: Nat Pendleton
Mimi Wynant Jorgenson: Minna Gombell
MacCaulay: Porter Hall
Tommy: Henry Wadsworth
Gilbert Wynant: William Henry
Nunheim: Harold Huber
Chris Jorgenson: Cesar Romero
Julia Woolf: Natalie Moorhead
Morelli: Edward Brophy
Claude Wynant: Edward Ellis
Tanner: Cyril Thornton

Director: W.S. Van Dyke
Screenplay: Albert Hackett, Frances Goodrich
Based on a novel by Dashiell Hammett
Cinematography: James Wong Howe
Art direction: Cedric Gibbons
Film editing: Robert Kern
Music: William Axt

I have seen W.S. Van Dyke's The Thin Man several times before, and I recently read Dashiell Hammett's novel, but I still couldn't remember whodunit. Even now, I'm not sure why and how the killer did things the way they were done. Which is, I think, because it doesn't really matter: The mystery is secondary to the banter of Nick and Nora and the eccentricity of the characters they encounter as her world of privilege marries with his world of cops and lowlifes. Most of the best mysteries, by which I mean those of Hammett and Raymond Chandler, are about atmosphere rather than crime: Those who want to try to solve the mystery along with the detective should read other writers who are more involved with planting clues and red herrings. The Thin Man may have benefited from MGM's lack of interest in the project, which could have been swamped with the kind of second-guessing from the front office that often stifled the studio's films. Instead, it was treated as a routine programmer whose stars, William Powell and Myrna Loy, were second-tier and whose director, known as "One-Take Woody" Van Dyke, was known for getting things done quick and dirty -- filming took only 16 days. But Powell and Loy became first-tier stars, and the movie earned four Oscar nominations (picture, actor, director, and screenplay) and was followed by five sequels. Powell has often struck me as a surprising star, with his big nose and his dubious chin, and I used to have trouble distinguishing him from Melvyn Douglas. Even now, if you asked me to say without hesitating whether it was Powell or Douglas in My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava, 1936), or Douglas or Powell in Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939), I might stumble a bit. But he had undeniable chemistry with Loy, so much so that they got re-teamed in movies outside the Thin Man series like The Great Ziegfeld (Robert Z. Leonard, 1936), Libeled Lady (Jack Conway, 1936), and others. The Thin Man also has a little more zip and zest than some of the films made after the Production Code clamped down, though Nick and Nora, like other married couples, were forced into twin beds. They still drink to an unholy excess, of course.

My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava, 1936)

I don't know if director Gregory La Cava and screenwriters Morrie Ryskind and Eric Hatch intentionally set out to subvert the paradigm of the romantic screwball comedy in My Man Godfrey, but they did. It has all the familiar elements of the genre: the "meet-cute," the fallings-in and fallings-out, and the eventual happily-ever-after ending. And it is certainly one of the funniest members of the genre. William Powell is his usual suave and sophisticated self, and nobody except Lucille Ball ever played the beautiful nitwit better than Carole Lombard. But are Godfrey (Powell) and Irene (Lombard) really made for each other? Isn't there something really amiss at the ending, when Irene all but railroads Godfrey into marriage? Knowing that marriage is an inevitability in the genre, I kept wanting Godfrey to pair off with Molly (Jean Dixon), the wisecracking housemaid who conceals her love for him. And even Cornelia (Gail Patrick), the shrew Godfrey has tamed, seems like a better fit in the long run than Irene, with her fake faints and tears. The film gives us no hint that Irene has grown up enough to deserve Godfrey. Or is that asking too much of a film obviously derived from the formula? Perhaps it's just better to take it for what it is, and to enjoy the wonderful performances by Alice Brady, Eugene Pallette, Alan Mowbray, and Mischa Auer, and the always-welcome Franklin Pangborn doing his usual fussy, exasperated bit. A lot could be written, and probably has been, about how the film reflects the slow emergence from the Depression, with its scavenger-hunting socialites looking for a "forgotten man." a figure that only three years earlier, in Gold Diggers of 1933 (Mervyn LeRoy), had been treated with something like reverence in the production number "Remember My Forgotten Man." Had sensibilities been so hardened over time that the victims of the Depression could be treated so lightly? In any case, My Man Godfrey was a big hit, and was the first movie to have Oscar nominations -- for Powell, Lombard, Auer, and Brady -- in all four acting categories. It was also nominated for director and screenplay, though not for best picture.