1936 - THE GENERAL DIED AT DAWN, great title crummy film

Considering all of the talent involved in this film it should have been a whole lot better.  Gary Cooper is one of those "soldier of fortune" types they like in the movies.  He's supposed to deliver a bunch of money to an arms dealer in Shanghai. The people of a Chinese providence are under the thumb of an evil Chinese warlord called General Yang, played by Armenian actor Akim Tamaroff.  The plan is to start a civil war to throw Yang out of power.

Cooper runs into trouble when he gets mixed up with the beautiful English actress Madeline Carroll  and her father improbably played by comedic actor Porter Hall.  Throw in William Frawley, Fred Mertz of I Love Lucy fame, as a perennially drunk arms dealer and you have a very unusual cast to say the least.

The General Died At Dawn was directed by Lewis Milestone in his prime, photographed by one of Paramount's best cinematographers Victor Milner,  who in this film shot glamorous close ups of Madeline Carroll.  The film was written by leftie playwright Clifford Odets and not very well.  The screenplay seems like a poorly written stage play with actors entering and exiting the camera frame like they were on a proscenium stage.  The stuff that comes out of the mouths of these characters almost boarders on the ridiculous.  I think Clifford Odets the noted New York playwright would have been very critical of Clifford Odets the Hollywood screenwriter.  The General Died At Dawn has a particularly ridiculous end.

 

The running time is 98 minutes.