1939 - MIDNIGHT, a classic 30's comedy

Midnight is usually considered one of the high points of sophisticated 1930's comedy.  The technical credits of this film are impeccable.  Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett in the screenwriter phase of their careers were considered one of Paramount's top writing teams.  The director Mitchell Leisen was at home with comedies.  The cinematographer was Charles Lang Jr., one of Hollywood's best who worked about 50 years amassing an impressive lest of credits.  

 

The cast as is typical with these comedies set in Europe, is a bunch of American actors who don't bother with any of those pesky European accents.  Claudette Colbert who was sort of French played a gold digger who shows up in Paris with no money but is wearing a stunning evening dress.  Don Ameche is the penniless cab drive who falls in love with her.  However Colbert doesn't want to get involved with him since he is poor.  After many plot manipulations she ends up at the mansion of a barely sober John Barrymore playing a rich aristocrat.  After even more plot manipulations Colbert has a shot at marrying a rich French guy named what else, "Jacques."  Ameche shows up to stop her.  Will true love win out in the end?  Well this is a comedy.

 

Midnight has a lot of clever stuff and some funny scenes. How could it not considering all the talent involved.  However the film is kind of dated.  After about 80 years of every type of Hollywood comedy made, the film doesn't really age all that well.  This is an example of an original film being done in by all the subsequent films that followed it which essentially used many of the same plot points.

 

The film is worth a look I guess.  But considering it's high reputation Midnight was a rather disappointing viewing experience.

The running time is 94 minutes.

1937 - EASY LIVING, an excellent Preston Sturges comedy

Preston Sturges wrote but didn't direct this film but his humor is all over it.  Easy Living has all of the Sturges touches which include the screwball characters, the slapstick humor and the amusing dialog.   

Easy Living starts with a rich banker throwing his wife's mink out the window of his townhouse to spite her.  The mink lands on top of a woman heading to work at a magazine called "The Boys Constant Companion," an amusing reference to "Boys Life" magazine that was published by the Boy Scouts of America for many years.  Since it's a comedy and one written by Sturges the whole  plot leads up to near collapse of the American banking system.

30's comedy legend Jean Arthur is the working woman who suddenly finds herself with a mink coat and the friendship of a rich banker played by another 30's staple actor Edward Arnold,  yelling his way through the film.  Arnold's son is played by Ray Milland in an early role and Luis Alberni plays some character named Louis Louis of the hotel Louis. You get the picture

 

The film was directed by Mitchell Leisen  who made some good films for Paramount and was the nemesis of then writer Billy Wilder who accused him of ruining his screenplays, a rather ridiculous charge.  The film is well paced and Leisen does bring a kind of elegant professional style to Easy Living.

 

Easy Living is definitely a high water mark for a 30's comedy and hold up very well during this recent viewing.

The running time is 88 minutes, a high recommedation.

1938 - THE BIG BROADCAST OF 1938, or what passes for entertainment in 1938

 Even at 90 minutes this film was a chore to sit through.  Paramount had done a few of these "Big Broadcast" films where they mixed radio personalities with their contract players.  They usually had to stick some kind of a plot in these films, in this case it's a race between two ocean liners, The S.S. Colossal and the S.S. Gigantic.

W. C. Fields gets top billing in the cast, this was Fields last picture for Paramount.  Apparently Fields was somewhat of a challenge to work with on this film.  There are a number of what I would call strange acts in this film.  Shep Fields and his Rippling Rhythm Orchestra.  Metropolitan Opera Singer Kristen Flagstad belting out Brunnhilde’s Battle Cry.  The grating Martha Raye performing "Mama, That Moon is Here Again." Probably the best song is "Thanks for the Memory" sung by Bob Hope and Shirley Ross.  In fact this was Bob Hope's first appearance on film I believe,  he has that easy going charm and humor that carried him through a long career.

 

The finale of this film features a supposedly big production number called “The Waltz Lives On," which isn't much of a big production number.  Really in the 1930's only Warner Brother's studios and Busby Berkley could pull something like this off.  The number comes off as second rate, in fact the whole movie is sort of second rate.

 

The film was written by a whole lot of writers, never a good sign,  Frederick Hazlitt Brennan, Russel Crouse, Walter DeLeon, Ken Englund, Howard Lindsay and Francis Martin.  

The running time is 91 minutes. 

1941 - I WANTED WINGS, Army Air Force film with a ridiculous plot.

This film was made as a tribute to the Army Air Corps and shows what is involved in training men to become pilots for the upcoming war.  This film also has one of the most ridiculous soap operatic plots that takes any sincerity the film is trying to promote and crashes it into the ground not unlike some of the pilots during their training.

Ray Milland is the rich kid trying to prove himself by enlisting in the Air Corps.  William Holden looking very young is the grease monkey mechanic hoping to better his social standing.  Veronica Lake is the bad girl they both get involved with.  The plot has Lake attempting to ruin the career of Milland if he doesn't marry her.  To keep Milland out of trouble Holden marries her instead which leads to all sorts of complications.  It ends up with Lake stowing away on Milland's bomber during a training mission in a very ridiculous climax.

As a film production I Wanted Wings looks great.  The special effects, photography and for the most part the acting aren't bad.  But man oh man what a ridiculous story line.  Veronica Lake as the bad girl is hot and this ridiculous part made her a box office star for a brief period during the 1940's.

Needless to say a film as dumb as this made a lot of money.  Never under estimate the movie going public. 

135 minutes, amazingly three screenwriters were involved with this, Sig Herzig, Beirne Lay Jr. and future James Bond screenwriter Richard Maibaum.

1934 - EARL CARROLL'S MURDER AT THE VANITIES, asks the question, who the hell is Earl Carroll?

OK, Earl Carroll was a Broadway songwriter and producer who staged musical revues in New York and Los Angeles.  Apparently he was known for hiring lots of pretty chorus girls and dressing than in costumes that showed as much skin as possible.  Carroll was known for forcing women to audition for parts in his revues in the nude. Apparently a real classy guy.

Since having near naked women wasn't going to be enough to sell the film to the public,  Paramount decided to make a film of Earl Carroll's Vanities but must have realized that they needed to actually have a plot in the film.    Exactly why Paramount decided on a musical murder mystery will in itself probably always remain a mystery.

The director who had to deal with this mess was a studio guy names Mitchell Leisen.  He does a good job orchestrating the rather ridiculous musical numbers with the murder mystery.  Leisen also had to cope with some strange casting choices.  Jackie Oakie is the stage manager who is in a friendly rivalry with Victor McLaglen as the cop trying to solve the murders.  McLaglen usually played dumb Irish soldiers for John Ford, but in this picture he looks rather dapper in his tux and bowler hat.  Oakie was always an actor who didn't know how to keep himself under control, but he's not to bad in this film.

The main lead in the film is some Danish crooner named Carl Brisson who struggles to act about as much as he struggles to sing.  Brisson actually worked with Hitchcock on a couple of his silent films.

Probably what the film is known for today if it's known at all are a couple of the musical numbers.

The first "Sweet Marijuana" is kind of a ridiculous song with stereotypical dancers in flamenco costumes singing about how marijuana puts them to sleep!

The other number is some bizarre version of the Hungarian Rhapsody.  The number starts out with Liszt singing about how he would someday like to see his composition performed properly.

It then turns into an orchestral performance of the rhapsody, which then turns into Duke Ellington and his orchestra performing a swing version of it.

All of this foolishness ends with a Liszt lookalike coming out with a machine gun killing everyone.

 

When all is said and done and the murder mystery is solved and the chorus girls have put their clothes on.   Murder At The Vanities is pretty stupid stuff even for 1934.

Written by Carey Wilson, Joseph Gollomb, Sam Hellman and Jack Cunningham.  The running time is 89 minutes.