Acteurist oeuvre-view – Clara Bow – Part 3: THE PRIMROSE PATH (1925) & FREE TO LOVE (1925)

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In this Clara Bow Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, two crime films from 1925: The Primrose Path, directed by Harry O. Hoyt and produced by Hunt Stromberg for Arrow Film Corporation (which folded the following year); and Free to Love, another Schulberg production, directed by Frank O’Connor. The Primrose Path, a bizarre mishmash of Griffith and gangsters, gives us Clara as a showgirl with a heart of gold, but with very little to do. The more interesting Free to Love finally allows Clara to be the hero of the movie. As an orphan and wrongly convicted ex-con who wants to devote herself to helping other unfortunates, she finds herself thwarted by a sort of minor Batman villain who happens to be the father of her betrothed. Clara’s emotions shine through even the dopey plot and wretched print.

 

Time Codes:

0h 01m 00s:                            The Primrose Path  (1925) [dir. Harry O. Hoyt]   

0h 21m 01s:                            Free to Love (1925) [dir. Frank O’Connor]

               

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* Check out our Complete Upcoming Schedule – now projected to the end of our Lilli Palmer series in 2024

*Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Find Elise’s latest film piece on Billy Wilder and 1930s Romantic Comedy

*And Read lots of Elise’s Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.*

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Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Paramount – 1935: PRIVATE WORLDS & PETER IBBETSON

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Paramount, 1935: we have two very unusual and very different movies, which nevertheless share the theme of private worlds and the possibility of communication between them. First up is Gregory La Cava’s Private Worlds, about the inner lives of psychiatrists and the permeable boundary between sanity and insanity. It stars Claudette Colbert as Dr. Jane Everest and Charles Boyer as her chauvinistic boss and secret crush. Next, Henry Hathaway’s fantasy melodrama Peter Ibbetson, which treats love as a shared mental world in ways that anticipate Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, while the camera falls in love with Gary Cooper’s sweaty, suffering face. 

Time Codes:

0h 0m 00s:                              PRIVATE WORLDS (dir. Gregory LaCava)       

0h 46m 40s:                            PETER IBBETSON (dir. Henry Hathaway)

               

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* Check out our Complete Upcoming Schedule – now projected to the end of our Lilli Palmer series in 2024

* Find Elise’s latest film piece on Billy Wilder and 1930s Romantic Comedy

*And Read lots of Elise’s Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.*

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Special Subject – Imitations of Life – IMITATION OF LIFE (1934), IMITATION OF LIFE (1959) and Imitation of Life (1933 novel by Fannie Hurst)

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It’s our epic episode on the three Imitations of Life! Hear us discuss Fannie Hurst’s massively popular 1933 novel and its two popular film adaptations: John M. Stahl’s restrained 1934 version, the first Hollywood movie to look seriously, if cautiously, at the impact of white supremacy and racial inequality in America, and Douglas Sirk’s strategically lurid, early civil rights-era version, from 1959. We attempt to thoroughly debunk the “trash” reputation of Hurst’s eccentric, elaborately written, and harrowing novel, which not only addresses white supremacy but also harpoons the nuclear family and the American religion of success, while putting mother-daughter emotional ambivalence at its imaginative center. We then go on to discuss some of the reasons for the changes from page to screen, and a blatantly political addition to the story in the original Stahl script that didn’t make it past the censors. Warning for as much disturbing content as you can imagine this topic occasioning, and then some. 

Time Codes:

0h 0m 00s:              Imitation of Life (novel by Fannie Hurst)

1h 04m 35s:            IMITATION OF LIFE (1934 – dir. John M. Stahl)

1h 57m 48s:            IMITATION OF LIFE (1959 – dir. Douglas Sirk)

               

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* Check out our Complete Upcoming Episode Schedule (now projected into 2023)

* Find Elise’s latest film piece on Billy Wilder and 1930s Romantic Comedy

*And Read lots of Elise’s Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.*

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

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Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Universal – 1934: THE BLACK CAT and ONE MORE RIVER

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A stunning episode of The Studios, Year by Year: a great year for Universal, 1934, gives us The Black Cat, the one big studio success of Edgar G. Ulmer, icon of marginal filmmaking; and James Whale’s under-discussed One More River, based on the novel by John Galsworthy. Elise concocts a reading to justify her early, confused understanding of The Black Cat as being about WWII rather than WWI. Then we continue to weave our auteur theory about Whale’s interest in women’s experience of oppression related to sexual shame. As the Year of the Code continues, two more movies that should never have gotten made: Satan worshipping, flaying old friends alive, virgin sacrifice, marital rape, striking wives with riding crops, and executing demonic cats with knives is what Universal is all about in 1934. And wait for next episode, when we tell you what the original script of Stahl’s Imitation of Life included to trigger Breen! 

 

Time Codes:

0h 01m 00s:            The Back Cat [dir. Edgar G. Ulmer]

0h 44m 58s:            One More River [dir. James Whale]

               

+++

* Check out our Complete Upcoming Episode Schedule (now projected into 2023)

* Find Elise’s latest film piece on Billy Wilder and 1930s Romantic Comedy

*And Read lots of Elise’s Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.*

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

Theme Music:

“What’s Yr Take on Cassavetes?” – Le Tigre

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