Wife vs. Secretary

Well, gosh, here's an oddity: One of those reviews where I can pinpoint right where and when I wrote it. 

I was living on Whidbey Island, which—at the time—had very little cable/internet service (I lived smack-dab in the middle of the island and "intermittent-net" only got to those residences on the North and South parts of the island closest to the mainland). I relied on a Hughes satellite dish system for the internet (and my first forays into the blogosphere), and I think the TV might have depended on rabbit-ears. But, I missed those old movies; I started a habit of renting DVD's from the library. But, here, I got to luxuriate in a cable experience.

Wife vs. Secretary (Clarence Brown, 1936) One of those forays off "The Rock" allowed me an evening of cable TV, and when I have a choice I head straight for Turner Classic Movies-easily the best channel for watching movies on the television dial. 

TCM treats the movies they show with respect--without commercial interruption, and in the proper theatrical aspect (widescreen if its a widescreen movie). They also show rare films, silent films, foreign films, things that any other channel with "movie" in its name wouldn't dare show in their efforts to cram as many commercials into each film as possible (Hello, AMC, you whore!)*

So, that night I had the chance to catch a movie I'd never heard of, called Wife vs. Secretary, which starred Clark Gable, Myrna Loy (as the "Wife") and Jean Harlow (as the "Secretary").

It was an M-G-M programmer, designed to exploit three of its biggest stars, and particularly Gable—the man is given so many loving close-ups, you actually begin to think he was being shot through gauze. Anyway, his V.S. Stanhope is a publishing tycoon, seeking to expand his properties—he's aggressive, a "man's man," and keeps terrible office-hours, seeing his loving, trusting wife only for an early breakfast and a late formal dinner party. 

His "Girl Friday" is Helen "Whitey" Wilson, a career-girl who keeps pace with Stanhope for the sheer exhilaration of seeing how fast the company can grow. That leaves her boy-friend a bit mopey, and considering he's played by a proto-Jimmy Stewart, that's saying quite a bit. An extended business trip to Cuba that leaves the Stanhope and Wilson drunk and in the same hotel room almost sparks a romance, but both of them are just sober enough to think it's a dumb idea. But that doesn't keep the wife and boyfriend from suspecting the worse. It's interesting to see a pretty standard melodrama done with such snap—the timing of the stars crackles.

Now, I said this was a programmer, Gable had been in three previous films with Loy and four with Harlow, so they were all old veterans, and the movie sails by with quick dialog, impossibly rich surroundings (it's M-G-M), quite a few sophisticated laughs, and a very old school lesson in morality and suspicions gone awry. But it all turns out right in the end, as long as the career-girl gives up her job and "settles down," that is. Retro-chauvinism aside, though, it's a fascinating look at a typical night at the movies from 1936, cranked out like an automobile, but with obvious care, a nice sheen, and only the best parts.

* My! Where did THAT come from? Well, a little history is in order for those of you showed up late. AMC started life—on October 1, 1984—as American Movie Classics, which had the innovative idea of running old movies commercial-free and unedited, and even (by the time I got around to it) in letter-boxed format for widescreen films (rather than using the widely available "pan-and-scan" versions that filled up a television screen but cut the amount of the movie's picture-image. When I first got addicted to AMC the host was broadcaster Nick Clooney, brother of Rosemary and father of George. But—and I did not know this at the time I wrote this—they faced severe competition when Ted Turner bought the M-G-M/Warner Brothers film library (AMC were showing quite a few of those movies, but not exclusively). By the time Turner Classic Movies started up, AMC was feeling the heat and, facing competition from TCM—as well as legal issues with TCM—the channel began taking commercials, first between films, and then interrupting their movies for them. By 2007, with the acquisition of the series "Mad Men," AmC started moving away from old movies and started pursuing original programming...where it stands today.

 

If you're wondering why Scorsese and Spielberg and being so vocal about TCM not changing under the aegis of Warner Brothers Discovery, it's because they've seen it happen before...with AMC.

Hell's Angels (1930)

Hell's Angels (Howard Hughes, James Whale, 1930) You watch Howard Hughes' production of Hell's Angels and you're struck by the almost multi-media aspect to it all. I like film's that employ different ways to tell a story—isn't that what the current deluge of CGI films is, really?—but Hell's Angels veers from format to format.

It wasn't intentional. Hell's Angels began production—actual shooting—on October 31, 1927 and premiered on May 27th, 1930. In that time, directors were fired (Marshall Nielan),hired (James Whale was brought in to re-do whole sequences already shot, but this time in sound, making it his film directorial debut), the deaths of three stunt-pilots and a mechanic during the aerial sequences, and a considerable amount of footage staged and shot by producer Hughes himself, who flew overhead and radioed directions to the pilots—Hughes even performed a stunt his pilots considered too dangerous and, as they predicted, he ended up crashing while performing the stunt, fracturing his skull and requiring plastic surgery.

And...during the production of Hell's Angels, The Movies changed. Hughes, not wanting to be caught putting out an inferior product that was "behind the times" began to re-shoot sequences already filmed, so the film goes from silent to silent-tinted, to sound (the Whale sequences) and even to Technicolor—if 3-D was around, I'm sure Hughes would have done that, too. Plus, Hughes tinkered excessively in the editing room, re-cutting sequences to get the maximum jolt out of his footage and adding sound effects to silent sequences, further delaying its release. Then, because he was taking so much time, Darryl F. Zanuck had the window to produce a competing WWI flying film, The Dawn Patrol, directed by Howard Hawks—despite Hughes' attempt to sabotage the production by buying up all the vintage aircraft he could to stop the rival film, and, failing that, suing the production company for plagiarism. The strategy didn't work—not only was The Dawn Patrol released first and Hughes lost his lawsuit, but The Dawn Patrol won an Academy Award for best ORIGINAL screenplay.

There's a good reason for that. The story is slight, about two British brothers, the Rutledges—Roy (James Hall) and Monte (Ben Lyon), as different as Cain and Abel (which might have been the point).  Roy is a straight arrow, the "good" son of the Rutledge siblings. Monte, on the other—groping—hand is a bit of a lout, an incurable flirt and womanizer, he doesn't have much of a moral core, making him a good candidate for politics. On vacation in Europe from Oxford, Monte gets mixed up with the wife of Col. Baron von Kranz (Lucien Prival), who challenges the young upstart to a duel. Monte, never one to meet a challenge head-on, skips off back to Oxford, leaving Roy to take his place in a duel at dawn. Roy is wounded in the arm and returns to Oxford, where Monte is unrepentant, still living a life of boozing and hi-jinks and low-lifery. Why, even the thought of meeting a nice girl turns his stomach, as he excuses himself when Roy takes him to meet Helen.

*

Roy has fallen in love with Helen (Jean Harlow), a beautiful but slightly flighty girl, who is quite forward and, frankly, bowls him over. He is completely besotted, but, returning to campus, he meets Monte and their German drinking buddy, Karl (John Darrow) when they learn that Germany has declared war on France, ironic as Karl had earlier scoffed that the two nations would ever go to war. Oh, the naivete of students. Later, Karl is conscripted into the German Army. England becomes embroiled, and Roy enlists in the Royal Flying Corps. Helen is thrilled; Monte calls him a fool. But, Monte gets caught up in mob-fever and foolishly enlists on a dare...and the promise of a kiss from a girl helping recruitment.

Monte finally meets Roy's Helen at "Lady Randolph's Charity Ball"—and if one isn't already disoriented by the switching from silent film to sound and monochrome to tinted, then the Ball sequence must be a head-spinner. Filmed in Multicolor by printed in Technicolor, it is the only one presented in full-color—save for the tinted silent sequences in the film. Plus—as the film was made in the scandalous "pre-Code" era, Helen's dress may cause some raised eyebrows as it's completely backless and shows a lot of decolletage from all angles. It's probably why, as one can see from the various posters promoting the film, that Harlow is prominently featured, despite the fact that she may be only on-screen for all of 20 minutes.

For the sound sequences, the originally filmed, heavily accented Norwegian actress
Greta Nissen was bought off and replaced by 18 year old Jean Harlow in her first film
and in the only color sequences in her entire, short film career.

The Ball proves fateful, as sparks fly as soon as Helen and Monte meet, with Roy—who may be a straight arrow but is also decidedly not the most observant chap. Maybe it's all that color. But, while Roy is distracted by the host's demands, Monte gets to dance with Helen and the two get very close...to the point when Roy and Helen sneak off for a private chat, she confesses that she's thinking of Monte...and the stupid sap is actually pleased about it, thinking that it might cement their relationship and make them closer. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

While Roy is being escorted around and introduced to the hoi-polloi, Helen gets bored and asks Monte to drive her home. Monte—being a no-good heel—is only too happy to volunteer AND go up to Helen's apartment for a night-cap or be quite eager when Helen excuses herself with one of the most famous lines in Hollywood: "Would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable?" The robe she slips into may be more comfortable, but it has decidedly more material than what she was dressed in for the ball. Nevertheless, Monte is seduced—hey, he signed up for the RFC for less—and he spends the night, immediately regretting it the next morning. Helen and he have a fight when she tells him that she could never love someone as boring as Roy and she kicks him out. He slinks back to his post, waking Roy, telling him that he went to a bar after dropping off Helen and warning him about her, telling him "women are all the same!" Roy won't have any of it and slunks back to sleep, leaving Monte to contemplate just how low he can go by betraying his own brother. But, one begins to wonder where the film-makers' sympathies lie—with the louse Monte or the easily duped Roy?

What follows is the first action set-piece of the movie, as a German dirigible moves through cloudy skies on a planned bombing run to hit London. On board we find the Rutledge's friend Karl, who is given the assignment of being lowered beneath the cloaking cloud cover in a sky basket to find the target for the mission—Trafalgar Square. Karl, being an Oxford student has a change of heart and radios the ship to drop its munitions in a lake, exploding harmlessly—if spectacularly. The ship starts heading back to Germany under cloud-cover, while Karl is being winched back to the air-ship. What they don't count on, though, is three biplanes coming after them, in one of which is Roy and Monte.

The model work of the sequence is amazing, especially for the era and the blue-tinted nighttime scenes have a spooky glow to them. The shots on the planes are all studio shots, but they are well-managed and cut together seamlessly with the model-work.

As the German airship commander realizes that they are being pursued, he orders the engines at full-speed, but it's not enough to out-pace the fighter-planes. When he's told he needs to drop weight to increase the air-speed, the first thing he thinks of is the spy-basket with Karl still inside. Then, even more horrific, ballast is dropped as well as many volunteers of the lower ranks who jump to their deaths for "the Kaiser and the fatherland."

During the battle, two of the aircraft are shot down, including the one containing Roy and Monte, Roy managing to bank the bi-plane to an inelegant landing. They can only watch from the ground as the last bi-plane, its guns jammed, rams into the dirigible making it explode in the sky and crashing to the ground, narrowly avoiding the Rutledge brothers. 

Whew! Time for a 10 minute intermission.

Roy finds Helen working a bar and being very friendly with a supercilious Captain. The two insult each other and Helen upbraids Roy for making fun of her friend. Back at headquarters, Monte is feigning illness to get out of duty and one of the man substituting for him has been killed—"Somebody always gets it on the night patrol." But, Monte is sneered at for being a coward and he's given a speech—the longest of the movie—which Lyon delivers with a little too much Whalesian melodrama: "I'm not yellow! I can see things as they are, that's all. And I'm sick of this rotten business. Fools! Why do you let them kid you like this? What are you fighting for? Patriotism? Duty? Are you mad? Can't you see they're just words? Words caused by politicians and profiteers to convince you into fighting for them! What's a word compared with life? The only life you've got! I'll give 'em a word. Murder! That's what this dirty, rotten, politician war is! Murder! You know it as well as I do. Yellow, am I? You're the ones that are yellow! I've got guts to say what I think! You're afraid to say it! So afraid to be called yellow, you'll kill first! You fools! You poor, stupid fools!" 

Needless to say, no one is very impressed, especially Monte's commander. But good old Roy has a way around that—he volunteers himself and Monte for a suicide mission to cross enemy lines and destroy a munitions depot in advance of an assault by land forces. Thoughtful. But, Roy worries that he'll never see Helen again, so he goes to the bar to say good-bye, only to find her later at a speakeasy canoodling with that effete Captain from earlier. They get into a fight and Helen finally tells Roy that she never had any fun with him "and his high-minded ideals" and that the sight of him makes her sick. Devastated, Roy is led away by Monte who tells him to "don't take it so hard. Never love a woman, just make love TO her." It's only hours before their mission take-off at 3 am and the two get drunk before setting out.

That mission is the highlight of the movie—a spectacularly filmed bombing run followed by an aerial dogfight filmed (except for insert shots of firing guns and damage) entirely in the air—no rear-projection screens—and the many aircraft dotting the frame like gnats. Whether the munitions explosions are real-size and large models, it's incredible action filmed mostly from the air, debris and smoke flying up to the camera lens.

Lasting some 20 minutes, t's a technical marvel of a sequence between the positioning of the planes high above spectacular clouds to the explosions done on the ground. Very impressive—and scary!—are the in-cabin views of pilots shot during the battle as they wheel out of control and fall away from the action above. As it's Pre-Code, there are scenes of pilots in their burning cabins that are horrific, and the language is surprisingly rough and wouldn't have passed censors in films 10, 20, even 30 years later (it would end up with a PG rating today.

But, what lingers is the nihilistic, decadent pall that runs throughout the film (except for an elaborate last shot that has the British overtaking a German bunker in triumph—because, after all, you gotta end on a high note). Bad guys get away with murder, women can't be trusted, the virtuous are taken advantage of—more than one time Roy takes a bullet for Monte—and heroism and patriotism, they really are just words in Hell's Angels. There is no glamour in the sacrificing of lives.

War really is Hell in Hell's Angels.

A shot from Martin Scorsese's The Aviator showing Howard Hughes 

(Leonardo DiCaprio) endlessly watching Hell's Angels.

* Stanley Kubrick listed Hell's Angels as one of his favorite films in 1962.  One can see that film's influence in the opening duel of Barry Lyndon.

The Public Enemy

The Public Enemy (William Wellman, 1931) "Learn your lines, find your mark, look 'em in the eye and tell 'em the truth." That was James Cagney's recipe for good acting, succinct, humble, with plenty of lee-way to find your own path, and completely shy of the mark when it came to talking about how he did it. This gangster film was Cagney's first starring role—in fact, up until two weeks before filming, Edward Woods (who plays Tom Powers' best friend) was going to play the lead. But, there was something about the little guy with the bantam rooster's brio that made director William Wellman turn the tables on the roles.

It's the story of a rotten kid from a good family with all the contrary instincts to look out for a number one—himself—who has no moral compunctions about anybody else, that leads him down a precariously slippery slope at a time in history when society was providing an excellent opportunity for taking advantages of loop-holes in the law and morality. Pretty soon, "Tommy" is a booze-runner during Prohibition, and anybody getting in his way, even some he'd pledged loyalty to earlier, would find their way on the wrong end of his fist or the business end of his gun (and curiously, Cagney's Powers employs both the same way, with a forward thrust of the arm, as if fist and firearm were interchangeable).

It's a pretty standard morality—or immorality—tale. But, you watch Cagney do it his way and you never forget it. He's extremely charismatic, and like James Dean, does so in a way that separates him from everybody else. Where the rest of the cast—in one of the early talkies—is ramrod-stiff and talking with fine e-lo-cu-tion, Cagney is loose in everything, wrapping himself around furniture, spitting out his slang dialogue, and if there's a little dead-air, he throws in a little wise-crack in word or gesture for good measure. He's encouraged by Wellman, who takes a lot of chances in this pre-Code drama ("Did he just say what I think he said?" "Is that gesture in the credits what I think it means?"), and who sets up the tenor of the times in one masterful shot from a street corner's vantage-point, moving from a distillery to a corner-bar, following a pole of beer-buckets that crosses the path of a Salvation Army band. Wellman liked to play it rough—they used real bullets in a shot where masonry is picked off close to Cagney's head, and when Cagney is hit by the actor playing his sanctimonious brother, Cagney goes down like a ton of bricks—because Wellman told the other actor to clobber him, breaking a tooth in the process. And there's the famous grapefruit-in-the-face shot (making Mae Clarke something of a legend extending far beyond her career), that Wellman came up with—because he always imagined doing that to his own wife, who habitually ate half a grapefruit in the morning.

But, it's Cagney that's the Big Show. Watch the scene where he stands in the rain, luxuriantly eyeing his next targets, the guys who gunned down his buddy in the street. With murder on his mind, a smirk comes over his face, that turns into a fierce grin, then disappears into a grimace as he moves forward and walks right into the camera, like a ball of fire that can never be put out. 

Cagney's so good, he's scary.  

Cagney's Tom Powers with murder on his mind—that not even a downpour can douse.

Libeled Lady

Libeled Lady (Jack Conway, 1936) This must be a favorite of some programmer at Turner Classic Movies, as it seems to show up on its schedule every single month without fail. It is an M-G-M confection, designed to be another pairing of William Powell and Myrna Loy (they made fifteen movies together in all), whose chemistry in "The Thin Man" series guaranteed box-office rewards.  

There was another woman in the mix, however. Powell's off-screen love, Jean Harlow, wanted to be in the film as well, and it is at this point, one should explain the plot, as slight as it is.

Heiress Connie Allenbury (Loy) is accused by the sensational headline-seeking newspaper, The New York Evening Star of being the home-wrecker in a prominent socialite divorce. She isn't and so sues the paper for libel to the tune of five million dollars. This will break the paper and so managing editor Warren Haggerty (Spencer Tracy) tries to convince Ms. Allenbury to call off the suit, which she refuses to do on principle and out of spite. There's no way the paper can produce evidence to the truth of the matter, and no way that they can defend themselves against the charge. So, just like they did with the original story, they have to manufacture the evidence.

Haggerty calls in associate Bill Chandler (Powell), former reporter, to produce the evidence by having him stalk Allenbury, harrass her and serial-seduce her so they can catch her in "the act" (well, of course, and I'm a little brutal in my description of the plan because it is the modern-day equivalent for what was considered a "screwball" situation in a 30's comedy—it actually shows what a creep Tracy's character is when you think of it like that). This necessitates Chandler getting married to Haggerty's fiancée Gladys Benton, so that there will be "another woman" wronged by any potential romance between Chandler and Allenbury. It's a gambit Gladys resists violently, then eventually favors because she's been engaged to Haggerty so long she thinks he may have forgotten where he kept the receipt for the ring, and maybe this might jar him into matrimony, and also pay more attention to her than the paper (Haggerty suffers from "Walter Burns Syndrome"). That's a lot to hang on a hair-brained scheme based on deceipt, but I suspect these people drink a little.

So Chandler goes off to try and woo the heiress, a team of photographers in tow to catch anything "in the act." But, Connie proves herself immune to his charms...especially when he's putting on airs, as he suspects is necessary with Connie. She rebuffs him. She finds him more attractive for his grace when he's exposed in his own flummery, like pretending to be a great "angler" and ending up fish-less, soaked to the bone and looking like a fool. As she's inclined to not give gold-diggers the time of day, this willingness to look like a total fool has some appeal. The plot wouldn't go anywhere if it didn't. 

And let's face it, it's William Powell. Even if she weren't married to him in an alternate movie series timeline, the pairing of Loy and Powell seems only natural. Her sophistication combined with a cynic's viewpoint (played charmingly, of course) was the perfect off-set to Powell's breezy charm (with a boy's sense of impropriety. Once established, Powell never gave a line reading that didn't seem to originate straight from his brain (something that can be said for Tracy, as well). Both actors could play variations on their themes, but only had to make minor tweaks in inflections and manner to make the part their own, once engaged.

The revelation here is Jean Harlow. She crackles in her role, with a natural gift for comedy. She had wanted to play the Loy part, the studio balked, and she compromised, taking the less romantic role (with less time with Powell), but more material to sink her teeth into. Her Gladys is a hoot, and her confrontation scene with Powell and Loy, where the two co-conspirators try to out-lie each other is screwball gold.

The cast was aided by one of M-G-M's more utilitarian directors, Jack Conway, who (according to Loy) usually had one direction: "faster." Conway doesn't do anything fancy, except make sure the material was optimized and the actors in focus. Conway was not an "auteur" with fancy camera moves and direction that called attention to itself.  But he was a stalwart, who brought things in on time and on-budget and that could cut reasonably well. The budget was up on the screen and that pleased his studio bosses—who liked to think they were in control of the movies and the bottom line. And he kept the actors happy, which may be the secret to good comedy in the first place.