Acteurist oeuvre-view – Clara Bow – Part 11: LOVE AMONG THE MILLIONAIRES (1930) & NO LIMIT (1931)

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Two more Tuttles for our penultimate Clara Bow episode, a couple of odd genre experiments: “musical romance” Love Among the Millionaires (1930) combines a star-crossed-lovers melodrama with comedy bits featuring vaudeville and future Broadway child star Mitzi Green and a lot of random songs; while No Limit (1931) offers gambling dens, stickup men, pratfalls, redemptive romance, New York location shots, an automat scene, Thelma Todd, and everything else you could want in a movie, according to Dave. We also engage in some bittersweet speculation about what Clara’s career would have been like if David O. Selznick had got his way and cast her as the female lead in What Price Hollywood? (the first A Star is Born), and she’d been taken under Pando S. Berman’s wing at RKO along with Katharine Hepburn (who was only two years younger). 

 

Time Codes:

0h 01m 00s:                              LOVE AMONG THE MILLIONAIRES (1930) [dir. Frank Tuttle]

0h 33m 21s:                              NO LIMIT (1931) [dir. Frank Tuttle]

                                     

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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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Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Warner Brothers – 1936: THREE MEN ON A HORSE & THE PETRIFIED FOREST

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For Warner Bros., 1936, we take a look at two stage-to-film adaptations: Three Men on a Horse, a Warners-style farce about gangsters, discontented suburbanites, and the power of greeting card poetry, and The Petrified Forest, a drama by Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert E. Sherwood about gangsters, disillusioned novelists, and the allure of French poetry. We discuss the studio’s handling of suburban satire and Leslie Howard’s handling of the role of thematic spokesman. It’s an all-star episode, with the other players including Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart (in his first important film role), stage star Sam Levene, Warners comedy stalwarts Frank McHugh, Joan Blondell, and Guy Kibbee, Eddie Anderson in a pre-fame appearance, and Lorenz brother Teddy Hart in a well-deserved Screen Actors Guild award-winning performance. And it doesn’t end there. As Bette Davis would say in The Petrified Forest, “It’s a little bit crazy!”  

Time Codes:

0h 01m 00s:                  Three Men on Horse [dir. Mervyn Leroy]

0h 29m 13s:                  The Petrified Forest [dir. Archie Mayo]

           

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Warner Brothers Story by Clive Hirschhorn

                                   

+++

* 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 – The Tarkovskyan Reflector – MIRROR (1975) & NOSTALGHIA (1983)

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In this Special Subject episode, we try to get a handle on Andrei Tarkovsky by looking at a couple of our favourites, in which Tarkovsky tries to get a handle on his mother (and faith, and memory, and guilt, and nostalgia, and the nature of womanhood, and the possibility of human connection): Mirror (1975) and Nostalghia (1983). We talk Tarkovskyan dream and “reality”; the interweaving of autobiography and fiction, representations of your own death, different kinds of doubles, mystical dogs, and amazing hair. 

Time Codes:

0h 01m 00s:                  MIRROR (1975) [dir. Andrei Tarkovsky]             

0h 59m 00s:                  NOSTALGHIA (1983) [dir. Andrei Tarkovsky]                                                   

+++

* 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 10: THE SATURDAY NIGHT KID (1929) & TRUE TO THE NAVY (1930)

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In this week of our (slightly-out-of-order) Oeuvre-view of Clara Bow’s career, The Saturday Night Kid (1929), directed by A. Edward Sutherland, is paired with True to the Navy (1930), directed by Frank Tuttle. We see two starkly contrasting Claras separated by just seven months: in Sutherland’s working-class drama, she’s heroic but bad-tempered, burdened with a flighty love interest, a manager who has it in for her (Edna May Oliver), and a snake of a sister (pre-stardom Jean Arthur interpreting realism as “shrill and whiney”). In Tuttle’s comedy, she’s a soda fountain girl who scams sailors with her boss, which leads to complications when she falls for a handsome gob played by Fredric March (who decides to introduce Method acting into this broad slapstick comedy for some reason). Elfin Clara gets involved in some satisfying brawls and tells off gangsters with a temerity that equally tiny Barbara Stanwyck would soon make her trademark. Obviously, this is what you had to do in Brooklyn. Also of note: a brief but impactful appearance by an uncredited Louise Beavers.

 

Time Codes:

0h 01m 00s:                  The Saturday Night Kid (1929) [dir. A. Edward Sutherland]          

0h 19m 47s:                  True to The Navy (1930) [dir. Frank Tuttle]

                                       

+++

* 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 »