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The Breening of Night Nurse, 1931

10/15/2017

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Barbara Stanwyck, Night Nurse, Great Breening Blogathon

This could take a while.

Night Nurse 1931, Great Breening Blogathon

Yeah, no.

Funny, but no.

What did I just say?

No problem.

7-year-old (uncredited) Marcia Mae Jones played one of the little girls.

Barbara Stanwyck Gets Dressed

The Plot
Standard fare for early Warner Bros. talkies, Night Nurse takes an unsentimental look at the life of a student nurse learning the ropes in a big city hospital. Young Lora Hart (Barbara Stanwyck) befriends kindly Dr. Bell (Charles Winninger) and streetwise classmate, Maloney (Joan Blondell) to become a professional health care worker to all walks of life, from immigrant mothers to bootleggers to society dames.

Naturally, this involves a lot of undressing.

After graduation, Nurse Hart takes a position in a private home to look after two young girls who are suffering from malnutrition. The doctor on the case, Dr. Ranger (Ralf Harolde), is a shady sort who twitches like a drug addict (which, now that I think about it, may be why the actor kept doing that) and forbids Hart from deviating from his strict feeding regimen. To complicate matters, the children's mother is a terrible drunk, who seems to be in a romance with both another terrible drunk, and a sober, but equally terrible chauffeur (Clark Gable), who has taken over the household. The children's rich father is long dead (we know not why, but have Suspicions) and a sister of theirs was killed in an automobile accident (see terrible chauffeur). Dr. Ranger and Clark Gable are plotting to starve the children to death and split their trust fund, presumably after getting drunk mom to walk off a building or something.

Lora and her boyfriend (Ben Lyon), an affable bootlegger she once treated for a gunshot wound in the ER on the down-low, foil the plan and save the girls.

The Breening: Code Violations in Order of Severity

VI. Costume: As nice as it is to see beautiful young girls in their foundation garments, the repetitive disrobing will just not do. Not only do the girls take off their own clothes, at least once Joan Blondell takes off Barbara Stanwyck's stockings. The film wind up shorter by several minutes, but nightgowns and personal space will serve the public better
I. Crimes Against the Law: Bootlegging and assault for sure; murder implied. Perhaps we could justify seeing the assaults -- Clark Gable socks Stanwyck on the chin; Stanwyck fends off mom's terrible drunk boyfriend, and slaps the drunk mom pretty good -- as necessary plot points. But a bootlegger for a boyfriend cannot stand. Make him a milkman. They need a milk bath later in the film anyway. The solution writes itself.

XII. Repellent Subjects: Cruelty to children is a big one, though oddly not as recurring a theme as nurse stripping. It's important to the plot, but we have to keep the mother out of it on the general principle of Morality. Moms are supposed to be nurturing, not neglectful drunks whose boyfriends plot to kill their kids for the inheritance. Let's just make it a vaguely menacing plot to cause unnamed harm to the family hatched by the chauffeur and make the mother an invalid.

There is also a Surgical Operation that is not only shown, but is unsuccessful. Not the way to respect authority. Just leave it out.
II Sex: Sex, sexual assault. Potato, potahto. Lose it. Some people in Hollywood still can't tell the difference.
III Vulgarity: A drunken mother with two boyfriends. Now that she's an invalid instead of a lush, make the rich playboy drunk a doting milquetoast and rope off Clark Gable as the only villain. It's easier that way.
V. Profanity: In the opening scenes at the hospital, a Chinese man is visited by his family. He's yelling at one of his sons in Chinese and the kid answers "Ah, Nuts!" Democratizing, yes; appropriate, no.

In Sum...

A 71 minute picture about half-naked nurses harassed by interns, drunken playboys, evil doctors, and wooed by bootleggers...

Before.

...becomes a wholesome tale of a plucky, fully-clothed nurse, her equally wholesome friend, and her milkman beau helping an invalid mother rescue her children from an evil servant. It should clock in at just under an hour.

After.

This post is my contribution to The Great Breening Blogathon, hosted by the Pure Entertainment Preservation Society.

There's a lot of moral protection going on over there, so I suggest you head over for a thorough cleansing pronto.

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Ear-Way Innay the UNNY-May

4/3/2015

7 Comments

It's the Depression: Let's put on a show!

Featuring

Ginger Rogers' Pig Latin
Aline MacMahon's delivery
Ned Sparks' enthusiasm
Busby Berkeley's bird's eye view
Warren William's drunken snob
Joan Blondell's big, blue, righteously angry eyes

So. Good.

Gold Diggers of 1933

I have no such thing as "favorite old movie," so when asked what mine is, I either deflect or go on too long in too many directions.

However. Among the handful of pictures I can see any time in (almost) any mood, Gold Diggers of 1933 is high on that list. It's got everything: snappy dialog expertly delivered; beautiful girls in great clothes; weird Dr. Seussian musical numbers; and an adorably silly self-awareness that brings me joy every time.

The gold diggers in question are a group of girls trying to make a living in the show business: ingenue Polly Parker (Ruby Keeler), comedienne Trixie Lorraine (Aline MacMahon), torch singer Carol King (Joan Blondell), and hoofer Fay Fortune (Ginger Rogers). The film opens on Fay in dress rehearsal for a big musical number backed by a bunch of chorines dressed in nothing but their Sheer Energies and some strategically placed cardboard coins, singing "We're in the Money." Right in the middle of the number, a bunch of goons barge in and start breaking down sets and gathering coins, claiming the creditors are closing the show due to lack of payment.

This throws producer Barney Hopkins (Ned Sparks) into a rage and the girls out of work -- again -- this unnamed show being the latest in a series of productions they've rehearsed for but never opened in. Some weeks later, there is a rumor that Barney is casting for a new show! Great news for the girls and for Polly's crush across the way, a young composer and crooner called Brad Roberts (Dick Powell). Barney tells the girls all about this great new show. It's about the Depression, see, with men marching marching marching, can't you hear it? Brad starts playing a doleful march; Barney loves it. Polly thinks Barney should use Brad's music. Barney thinks so too, and Brad will do it if Barney gives Polly a feature role. There are parts for everyone, especially the comedienne, because it's a show about the Depression and it's going to go on for six months, easy!

That is, as soon as Barney gets the money.

Not to worry, Brad says, he can get them the $15,000 they need, no problem, as long as he doesn't have to appear on stage. The girls, presuming him to be just as poor as they are, think he's making a cruel joke. Everybody is annoyed and saddened, but when Brad shows up at Barney's office the next day with stacks of cash, all is forgiven. But the girls (especially Polly) fear that Brad is in trouble with the law or the mob or something: where else would anyone get that kind of money, and in such neat little piles, and why won't he appear in public?

Because Brad Roberts is in reality, Robert Bradford, the youngest son in a wealthy family whose fortune is held in trust by Brad's elder brother, Lawrence (Warren William), that's why. Brad/Robert wants to make it in the musical theater, a profession disdained by his class, and is living incognito on the poor side of town. So the show goes on, with Brad at the piano, Polly in the lead, and Busby Berkeley at the drawing board. On opening night, however, the "juvenile" lead gets an attack of lumbago (he's been a juvenile for 18 years) and Brad MUST go on in his stead, which he does. The show is a SENSATION but Brad is immediately recognized by a society reporter (Charles Lane), who rats him out in the newspaper the next day. Enter angry brother Lawrence and family lawyer, Faneul Peabody (Guy Kibbee), who insert themselves into Brad's happy life.

Now that we've met all the principal girls and boys, the rest of the film is about how each of them wind up with each other. Lawrence mistakes Carol for Polly, falls in love with her (Carol, not Polly); Trixie latches onto Faneul (who's an established big, fat sucker for showgirls) beating off Fay once or twice in the process; and the real Polly and Brad, already in love anyway, wait for all the dust to settle.

Along the way there are three more spectacular, bizarre musical numbers: "Petting in the Park," an irritating if catchy tune about furtive groping through all four seasons; "Waltz of the Shadows," an unmemorable love song accompanied by girls in white dresses making jaw-dropping, kaleidoscopic formations while playing neon violins; and the closer of all closers, "Remember My Forgotten Man," a ginormous blues extravaganza that explicates the plight of the Bonus Army in just under eight minutes.

If ever I taught a course on the Depression, I'd anchor it with this picture. It pulls you in with such affable, toe-tapping irony and shows you the door with another: the rousing dirge, a call to action that gives you hope and purpose. So entertaining, so silly, and so much to think about.

In God We Trust

This post is another contribution to The Pre-Code Blogathon, hosted by Shadows and Satin and Pre-Code.com. Read 'em all, why doncha?

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Birthday of the Week: Lyle Talbot

2/3/2014

4 Comments

Born Lisle Henderson in Pittsburgh, PA, February 8, 1902

Biography

The Entertainer, Lyle Talbot, Margaret Talbot

Read it.

The Entertainer: Movies, Magic and My Father's Twentieth Century,
By Margaret Talbot
Riverhead, 2012

Beautiful Rogue

Turns out I have seen a surprising number of films that star or feature Lyle Talbot. Perhaps this isn't such a huge surprise, as I am crazy for pre-Code pictures, and having been one of the original horses in the Warner Bros. stable, the man made about 8-12 films a year for that outfit. Talbot could play sniveling, smoldering, or sophisticated, or all of the above all at once, with a dash of dastardly.

Talbot began a career in theater as a magician's assistant, carny, and performer in traveling tent shows throughout the Midwest while still a teenager. He learned to act on the road and eventually wound up in Hollywood, where handsome young men with theater experience could work in talking pictures. Talbot signed with Warner Bros., with other regulars, Joan Blondell, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, Ann Dvorak, and Warren William, and churned out (as noted) a lot of movies every year.

Perhaps because of this, Talbot was one of the founding members of the Screen Actors Guild, a labor union formed to protect actors from the hard hours, grueling production schedules, and multi-year contracts with invasive terms fostered by the major studios. Warner Bros. in particular (and ironically, given the "every man" theme of so many of their stories) was one of the most notoriously exploitative places to work.

Although he never quite reached star status, Lyle Talbot worked steadily in motion pictures throughout the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, then made a successful transition to television, appearing in everything from The Life of Riley to Who's the Boss?, with a long, recurring role on about 70 of the 50,000 episodes of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. The man worked and worked.

He also married a lot and drank a lot, and yes, he was in a bunch of Ed Wood, Jr. movies.

Last year, the AFI Silver Theater in Silver Spring, Maryland ran a mini-festival of Talbot's early films to celebrate the publication of Margaret Talbot’s book, The Entertainer, which is part memoir, part biography of her father's life and career. Having just bought the book and devoured it, I went to listen to Margaret Talbot talk and to see one of my favorite pictures, Three on a Match, which I'd never seen on the big screen. As I wrote at the time, her book is a real page-turner. It covers the entire landscape of American popular entertainment of the 20th century — her father’s century — with a journalist’s detail and a child’s affection.

His is a fascinating story...and now it's available in paperback. Buy it for his birthday.

Favorite Five

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Good Night, Nurse

1/24/2014

4 Comments

Spoiler: There's not really a whole lot of smiling in this picture.

Cry 'Havoc' (1943)

You know what's wrong with kids today? They never get a chance to see a picture like this by accident on a Saturday afternoon or on a Late Late Show on a local UHF station. That's how I first saw Cry 'Havoc' , sometime in the mid-1970s, when there were still people in my family who had actual memories of World War II, either fighting in it or seeing movies like this in the theaters when they came out.

Except for a handful of atmospheric men and fewer barbs, this film is strangely like The Women. All the main characters are women: nurses and volunteers at a military hospital in Bataan, how they cope with each other, the wounded, their dwindling resources, and eventual surrender to the Japanese. Margaret Sullavan and Fay Bainter are two army nurses struggling to keep up with the ever-increasing stream of wounded. They recruit a handful of civilian women from among hundreds of refugees encamped not far away to help out: two students, a factory manager, a waitress (Ann Sothern), a Southern Belle (Diana Lewis, from Asbury Park, not Alabama, and soon-to-be Mrs. William Powell), a burlesque performer (Joan Blondell, who else?), and a fashion writer (Ella Raines).

The cast is kind of a cavalcade of Tier 2 and Tier 3 stars of the day (1943), except possibly for Margaret Sullavan, who may have been the biggest star in the cast and whom I've always loved in spite of those stupid bangs. Joan Blondell, who turns out to be adorable in work clothes, was not the draw she used to be by then, and Marsha Hunt (the sweet, skinny thing) was hitting her stride as a strong supporting actress.

Cry 'Havoc' was the film adaptation of an unsuccessful Broadway play called Proof Through the Night, starring Carol Channing (?!), that only ran for two months. I can imagine the play being fairly plodding without the benefit of close-ups and medium shots, or the occasional explosion. Many of the scenes in this movie are very stagey, in fact, with only the barracks, the communications hut, and kitchen serving as backdrop to the women's stories. There are a few outdoor shots of, well, havoc, but much of the real drama is indoors. There are friendships and rivalries and real conversations in this picture; Ann Sothern in particular is wonderfully cagey and natural.

It's a very affecting and effective movie that's well worth a look.

Points of Interest

Fay Bainter was my age when she made this picture, which is a little sobering.
No one does bearlike, working-class comfort like Connie Gilchrist, "Aw, c'mon kid, take a rest."
I have been using a version of this Ann Sothern comeback for years; now I know where I stole it from:

Marsha Hunt: We got plenty to be thankful for.
Ann Sothern: Yeah? Name six.