Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – MGM – 1936: WIFE VS SECRETARY & LIBELED LADY

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MGM, 1936: the studio of stars, glamour, and conservatism. Or so goes our thesis, which we attempt to complicate by taking a close look at two movies that make romantic rivals of Jean Harlow and Myrna Loy: Clarence Brown’s melodrama Wife vs.Secretary and Jack Conway’s atypical screwball comedy Libeled Lady. Indubitably the protagonist of the former and top-billed in the latter’s star-fest, Harlow plays class underdogs that lend a pointed populism to MGM’s aspirational fantasies. We examine MGM’s representation of options for career women in Wife vs. Secretary and find it open to a subversive reading. 

 

Time Codes:

0h 01m 00s:                  WIFE VS SECRETARY (dir. Clarence Brown)

0h 50m 00s:                  LIBELED LADY (dir. Jack Conway)     

           

Studio Film Capsules provided by The MGM Story by John Douglas Eames

                                   

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* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

*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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Acteurist oeuvre-view – Clara Bow – Part 9: THE WILD PARTY (1929) & DANGEROUS CURVES (1929)

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In this week’s Clara Bow Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, we’re finally there: Clara’s first two sound films, both from 1929. First, we engage in an extensive analysis of Dorothy Arzner’s The Wild Party, Clara’s talkie debut. The star plays a college girl rebelling against the Victorian strictures on campus sexuality, but yearning for the loftier aims of her studious roommate and the handsome new anthropology professor (played by Fredric March). One of 1929’s great films, The Wild Party is a winning mixture of Austenesque coming-of-age moral trajectory and polymorphously perverse sensuality that only Bow and Arzner could pull off. But then, we get something much odder: Lothar Mendes’ Dangerous Curves takes two tendencies of the Bow persona, her active heroism and her comic pathos, to their logical extremes. The result this produces at the movie’s climax has to be seen to be believed. (Hint: it involves risking death in a clown suit.) But is Mendes crazy enough to pull off this crazy plot? And can the leads form a convincing romantic union after the sexlessness that’s been imposed on them? 

 

Time Codes:

0h 01m 00s:                  THE WILD PARTY (1929) [dir. Dorothy Arzner]

0h 55m 43s:                  DANGEROUS CURVES (1929) [dir. Lothar Mendes]

                       

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* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

*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.*

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

Check out this episode!

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Special Subject – Distributed by Eagle-Lion – WATERLOO ROAD (1945), I SEE A DARK STRANGER (1946), THE OCTOBER MAN (1947) & THE BLUE LAMP (1950)

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We look at four noirish British films distributed in the United States by Eagle-Lion: Waterloo Road (1945, directed by Sidney Gilliat), I See a Dark Stranger (1946, directed by Frank Launder), The October Man (1947, directed by Roy Ward Baker), and The Blue Lamp (1950, directed by Basil Dearden). We explore the mental and physical landscape of wartime and postwar England and such subjects as militant Irish politics, English policing, and scapegoating as dramatic structure and social reality, and evaluate the performance of Dirk Bogarde’s hair. 

 

Time Codes:

0h 01m 00s:                  Brief Eagle-Lion Preamble

0h 04m 56s:                  WATERLOO ROAD (1945) [dir. Sidney Gilliat]   

0h 30m 46s:                  I SEE A DARK STRANGER (1946) [dir. Frank Launder]

0h 58m 20s:                  THE OCTOBER MAN (1947) [dir. Roy Ward Baker]

1h 22m 16s:                  THE BLUE LAMP (1950) [dir. Basil Dearden]                         

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* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

*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.*

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

Check out this episode!

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Acteurist oeuvre-view – Clara Bow – Part 8: HULA (1927) & GET YOUR MAN (1927)

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In this week’s Clara Bow Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, two of Clara’s best directors, Victor Fleming and Dorothy Arzner, present us with two very different versions of Clara that are both nevertheless logical developments of her persona. In Fleming’s Hula (1927), Clara is a wild child of nature and a real loose cannon, pitted against “civilized” ladies who are far more destructive, with another (Hawaiian) colonial setting. In Arzner’s Get Your Man (1927), a much more restrained Clara is an American heiress in France who finds herself romantically thwarted, not by British honour this time, but by European aristocratic codes. Neither are any match for her, of course. We discuss Clara’s signature desiring gaze, Clive Brook’s sweaty manliness, Buddy Rogers’ sulky callowness, and cute dog scenes. 

 

Time Codes:

0h 01m 00s:                  HULA (1927) [dir. Victor Fleming]

0h 46m 41s:                 GET YOUR MAN (1927) [dir. Dorothy Arzner]                          

+++

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

*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.*

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

Check out this episode!

Read Full Post »