After cunningly disguising a terrific Delmar Daves collection under the title “Warner Romance Classics,” those crafty folks at Warner Home Video have slipped out a highly cinephilic selection of early William Wellman films under the title “Forbidden Hollywood, Volume 3.” The highlight of the batch is the 1931 “Other Men’s Women,” a drama from 1931 that allows Wellman, an early master of the bromance, to recreate the love triangle of “Wings” against a railroading background; his two classic social realist studies of 1933, “Wild Boys of the Road” and “Heroes for Sale,” are not far behind. For me, the minor films in the bunch are the female centered ones, “The Purchase Price” with Barbara Stanwyck (1932), “Frisco Jenny” with Ruth Chatterton (1932) and “Midnight Mary” with Loretta Young (1933); Wellman usually got better results by feminizing his macho heroes (is there any other director who got John Wayne to cry on screen?) than by putting pants on his ladies (Louise Brooks in “Beggars of Life,” Dorothy Coonan in “Wild Boys”). Details here in the New York Times.
Dave, I think I disagree. But let me clarify: I mean fluidity of motion among the people. Speed, collision and spatial fragmentation is indeed his ballgame.
On the question of lowlife, I fundamentally disagree. I love those Green films, but there’s something in the Wellman movies that seems less self-conscious to me, more lifeworn.
NS, I love all three of Brown’s movies. He was, as Dave says, a great stylist, and he was also a daring social commentator with a strong leftist bent. And, there is nothing else in 30s cinema – or almost any other era, for that matter – like Frances Dee’s character in BLOOD MONEY. Or the astonishing cut to the series of drawings after the overseer’s death in HELL’S HIGHWAY. Or the shocking and suddenly hilarious ending of QUICK MILLIONS.
James, I know that Brown punched Thalberg in the nose and was taken off THE DEVIL IS A SISSY. Never heard the ANGELS story, but it makes sense that he would have ended up at Grand National. I have read his treatment of THIEVES LIKE US, and it’s pretty terrific.
And let us not forget the abundant pre-Code Warners oeuvre of Archie Mayo, whose LIFE OF JIMMY DOLAN and MAYOR OF HELL (33) are tough as nails. DOORWAY TO HELL (30) was Cagney’s second film (based on a Rowland Brown story). And SVENGALI (31), starring Drew Barrymore’s real-life grandad, is gloriously expressionistic. CONVENTION CITY (33) is the London After Midnight of Warners pre-Code fanatics.
Of the Archie Mayo films, I would like to see Five Star Final on DVD. Life of Jimmy Dolan is more interesting than its better known remake They Made Me a Criminal (with a young John Wayne playing the intimidated prizefight contest victim that Louis Jean Heydt plays in the remake). Mayor of Hell is on DVD in one of the Warner Home Video packages. So is the fascinating Black Legion with Bogey and Dick Foran getting seduced by an ersatz KKK.
James, FIVE STAR FINAL is by Mervyn LeRoy.
It is indeed, Kent, thanks.
And there are several other Mervyn LeRoy films I’d like to see on DVD — Big City Blues, Hard to Handle, Elmer the Great, etc.
The Warner Archives website claims that Wichita is presented in its original aspect ratio (which should be ‘Scope), yet this preview looks cropped and, curiously, stretched:
http://www.wbshop.com/Wichita-+EST-MOD/1000088084,default,pd.html?cgid=EXCLARCHIVE
Is there anyone here who has purchased this title (or other ‘Scope titles) from the WB Archives who can comment?
This conversation about Roland Brown is kind trippy — like overhearing the exchanges of a benign Cabal, like Goethe on the benign conspiracies of the Freemasons in “Wilhelm Meister.”)
Are any Roland Brown actually available –anywhere? Where HAVE they ever been available in recent decades?
FLUIDLTY NOT AS CONTINUITY BUT AS — SPEED! That’s
good too. Very jazzy exhanges.
Can’t wait to advance to step one or two of this ecvstattic esopterica and see “Heroes for Sales.”
HARD TO HANDLE is good, maybe a little disappointing given the subject matter.
dm mentioned the pace of NOTHING SACRED and A STAR IS BORN. I agree, but I’ve never really liked either film so much. After the early 30s, Wellman was hit and miss. Then he hit a kind of stride again in the 50s.
I actually like Wellman’s version of A STAR IS BORN better than the Garland-Mason opus that everyone else favors. Pure Hollywood soap opera at its finest. I must say I was underwhelmed by NOTHING SACRED, however.
Alex, HELL’S HIGHWAY is Warners and turns up from time to time on TCM. BLOOD MONEY has started to show on Fox. Now it’s time to badger them about QUICK MILLIONS. On the Wellman front, I do find those early 30s films ecvstattic, but not so esopteric.
Another vote alongside Kent for QUICK MILLIONS.
And, yes, HELL’S HIGHWAY is an RKO, owned by Time-Warner, and does show up on TCM from time to time.
Wellman also ought to be cited for his silent “Beggars of Life” (1928, Paramount), a “wild boys and one girl (Richard Arlen, Wallace Beery, Louise Brooks) of the road” movie that intriguingly blends rowdiness, lyricism, and delicately expressed emotions (many of them from macho beefcake goofball Beery, no less).
michaelgsmith: As I noted upthread, a couple of other random choices I tried on the archive site also played in incorrect aspect ratio. I hope WB will address this at some point. I’d be wary of ordering until I was certain, especially at 20 bucks a pop.
As much as my humble nature quails at naked self-promotion, I’d like to offer up the following stabs I’ve taken at Wild Bill courtesy of Cinema Scope and Moving Image Source:
http://www.cinema-scope.com/cs30/feat_tracy_wellman.html
http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/rare-bird-20090217
And Miguel, as you’ll see, I take great issue with your appraisal of Gallant Journey!
Talking about thirties’s flicks, I’d like to see released on DVD the Ben Hecht/Charles Mac artur film such as THE SCOUNDREL or CRIME WITHOUT PASSION. I was quite disappointed with ANGELS OVER BROADWAY when I watched it again. I think Ulmer’s CLUB HAVANA is much better. Other thirties and pre-codes films that deserve release are THUNDERBOLT (ok, its 29), A MAN’S CASTLE (we talked about it in another thread) and Walsh’s THE BOWERY.
I dunno, Shawn. In most of the Chatterton vehicles I’ve seen, from the truly dreadful “Madame X” (largely reprised in the tired denouement of “Frisco Jenny”) to “Girl’s Dormitory,” she’s a Broadway diva with excessive enunciation. In the Wellman films, she’s a man-hungry aggressor who carries herself like a professional wrestler, closer to Mae West and Tallulah Bankhead than Ethel Barrymore, as David Hare pointed out in his witty post. She’s another example of the gender-bending that goes on in many of Wellman’s pre-code films, the flipside to Louise Brooks in “Beggars of Life” and Dorothy Coonan in “Wild Boys.”
Throwing caution to the wind, I’ve decided to test the Warner Archives waters, ordering Cary Grant’s “Room for One More,” a charmer that inexplicably has been unseen and unavailable for years. (A plus: Betsy Drake is in it.) So, thanks to Lang for suggesting the site (which was new to me). Next up (if “Room” looks good): Conrad’s “My Blood Runs Cold.”
Dave, I know what you mean, and I’ve always had a Chatterton problem. I think Wyler makes her presence workable in DODSWORTH, but it’s not quite right – she’s not the breathtaking beauty that everyone is falling for throughout the movie. In fact, that’s an extra, painful dimension of the movie. But I don’t really agree with you about her in FRISCO JENNY. First of all, she supposed to be mannish, tough, non-nonsense. That’s what the part calls for. But I didn’t think there was much excessive emoting in that in that final phase of the movie, and the excessive enunciation seemed to be minimized.
BEAST OF THE CITY is part of the Warner Archive.
Brown: QUICK MILLIONS is definitely Brown’s best film and a masterpiece, quite possibly the best gangster movie of the thirties, on a par with SCARFACE and amazingly “modern” for 1931 — it seems decades ahead of its time. Brown seems to have deliberately avoided everything that makes so many films of the time, even good ones, look and sound dated.And yes, that great ending! I haven’t seen it in ages but I’ll never forget the shock of my first viewing back in the seventies at the New School, thanks to Bill Everson.
Re WICHITA. The clip that michaelgsmith mentioned yesterday is squeezed anamorphic on a standard 1.33:1 screen frame. And they ask us to watch it to check that the film is in the correct aspect ratio!It may just be a mistake but I wouldn’t buy the film unless I was sure it is indeed in CinemaScope.
The Archive website is pretty wonky. I’d disregard the clips for now and take it on faith, as WB usually delivers (and will I trust accept returns if it doesn’t in this instance). I’ve ordered WICHITA and will report back.
jbryant, sorry for not reading the thread more closely. It’s hard sometimes to keep up!
I’m very curious about Wichita but I guess I’ll wait to hear what Robert says before ordering.
Jean-Pierre, what’s that amazing line at the end of QUICK MILLIONS after the curtain’s been pulled? “Society people have the best weddings, but we get all the swell funerals.” Or something like that.
Dave, I’ll have to go back and look at a couple of those early Chattertons again.
MADAME X is truly awful but it’s a special case: almost everything about it is awful, and for years I wondered if the blame belonged to the director, Lionel Barrymore. Then a couple years ago I saw another Barrymore-directed early talkie, HIS GLORIOUS NIGHT, and that was awful too. Since he never directed anything after the early sound era, I can’t really judge, but these two are really bad, even given the problems of 1928-29.
I never thought I’d spend days arguing about Ruth Chatterton! My point, such as it was, is that Wellman doesn’t seem that comfortable with women (after all, here’s a director whose two most anthologized moments, from “Public Enemy” and “Nothing Sacred,” involve highly theatrical acts of violence against same) and in these early films, he can often be seen trying to mold them into men. For me, Chatterton has her best film role in “Dodsworth,” which was her first film as a character actress rather than the female lead; Wyler turns her affectations into a key element of her character.
Let’s just agree that Lionel Barrymore was one bad director and let it go at that.
Kent, that’s the line as I recall it, except that I remember it as dialog between two gangsters, the second one going: “Yea but we have all the swell funerals.” Or something like that. It’s been a long time since I saw it. It came after the sober exchange: “Your elbow is in my rib.” –”It ain’t my elbow.” And Tracy’s hat rolling out of the car as they drive by the church. That movie was really cool!
Yes, J-P, WICHITA is in CinemaScope (on the Warners DVD)–I received my copy yesterday. What a great film!
It’s great news, Jonathan. I’ll order it immediately!
“Let’s just agree that Lionel Barrymore was one bad director and let it go at that.”
I’d still love to see what he did with ROGUE SONG
BLOOD MONEY is a film I searched for years & was well worth it.Even today it’s an eye opener.As for THUNDERBOLT, I can only imagine the little attention it receives is due to the difficulty in finding a copy.For me it’s superior to UNDERWORLD and may be the first great American talkie. Anyone who loves Sternberg is bound to be astonished.Thanks to Rosenbaum’s alternate 100 for peaking my interest in it. Mike K
In The Men That Made the Movies, I get the impression that part of Dorothy Coogan’s appeal to Wellman was that she looked like a boy. For whatever that’s worth re Dave’s comment about Wellman’s not seeming comfortable with women.
Dave K makes a strong case – Wellman’s certainly no Wyler when it comes to directing women. “So Big”, a female centric story (Edna Ferber novel), is fairly middling(despite the tease of Barbara Stanwyck and Bette Davis sharing the screen – if I recall they share a scene but never a frame). Though I’d again reference “Westward the Women” as a source to potentially formulate a rebuttal.
Always felt that Hawks tended to masculize his women as well – though generally to better effect.
THUNDERBOLT is odd for Sternberg in that it’s carried by a larger-than-life male lead, as opposed to (in most other cases) Sternberg films where the men basically exist to have their masculinity nullified or parodied.
As remarkable as it is, Sternberg didn’t take long to master sound – the layers of sound in SHANGHAI EXPRESS make THUNDERBOLT, and every other 1st-year talkie look downright primitive, almost as if sound had been re-introduced in 1932.
Rowland Brown box set! RIGHT ON!
In the dream library of great unmade films is a Rowland Brown adaptation of RED HARVEST. (next to Bernado Bertolucci’s, which I guess would be a remake in this parallel timeline.) Brown was never attached to that project, but I love to imagine what he could have done with it.
And as for the guy who claimed to have seen this full and uncut version of The Public Enemy with additional footage, and then could’nt be bothered to describe what was differant? C’mon, man. What’d they show the next night, the director’s cut of The Magnificent Ambersons or the recently rediscovered full Metropolis? Don’t drop hints about how you saw some mythical unedited version without offering any examples. That reeks of hoaxing.
Regarding the Chatterton/Wellman-and-women controversy, there’s no doubt that Wellman was more comfortable making movies about men than movies about women. I guess you could say that many of the women in his movies are abstractions, but I believe you could say the same about a lot of movies made by a many other people during the same period in which he worked, and that often seems to be a result of the writing: the director’s the one who gives dimension to the women. If we’re just talking about those stunning, vibrant early 30s movies as opposed to the rest of his career, then I guess I don’t agree, Mae Clarke aside. Stanwyck and Blondell in NIGHT NURSE are formidable presences. They both put me in mind of the heroine of the Val Lewton novel NO BED OF HER OWN. Chatterton in FRISCO JENNY seems very close to that conception also – driven to a very tough pragmatism by economic necessity. I also like Dorothy Mackaill in SAFE IN HELL and although I haven’t seen it in years, I have good memories of Mary Brien in THE MAN I LOVE. And Mary Astor in OTHER MEN’S WOMEN, rightfully singled out by Dave, is a creation of real beauty and power. I don’t want to make a big deal out of it – he spent most of the rest of his career making movies in which women played an extremely minimal role, with the odd exception here and there. But I like the women in those movies more than, for instance, Stanwyck’s character in THE MIRACLE WOMAN.
Worth mentioning that a clip from OTHER MEN’S WOMEN – the scene where Cagney does a little dance across the room – figures in Jean-Pierre Gorin’s beautiful ROUTINE PLEASURES.
JJ, I read the script for Bertolucci’s RED HARVEST, and it wasn’t too impressive. It’s been a long time and I won’t be able to describe it, but it’s not a hoax. Personally, I think RED HARVEST lives on the page, but that it’s so schematic as to be almost unfilmable. Thus the many quasi-adaptations over the years that have worked around the edges of the novel. A new version of THE GLASS KEY – that’s something I’d like to see.
Some important and/or interesting female characters/performances in Wellman’s post-Code career:
Lupino THE LIGHT THAT FAILED
Lombard NOTHING SACRED
Stanwyck THE GREAT MAN’S LADY
Baxter YELLOW SKY
Trevor THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY
Bondi THE TRACK OF THE CAT
(I am personally averse to Rogers in ROXIE HART, but she’s the star focus).
Nonetheless, several of Wellman’s greatest films had all-male casts.
Kent, I assure you, your authenticity is not in question!
(And personally I would love to read that script someday…)
Y’know, I remember you mentioned this a long time ago on Glenn Kenny’s old website. I agree, Red Harvest probably would’nt fully work, but I’d still love to have seen what someone like Brown and esp. Bertolucci in full Scarfiotti / Storaro / unbridled 70s mode could have done with it. Some beutiful and unforgettable images, at the very least. (And I suspect that whatever pre-production planning Storaro might have done for Red Harvest probably ended up being used, in some form, for Dick Tracy.)
Anyway, we’ve got Miller’s Crossing, which is enough. : )
P.S.: I’m not saying there IS’NT some kind of longer, uncensored version of Public Enemy floating around (although the published version of the script lines up pretty closely with the cut released on DVD, if my memory serves correctly), it just drives me crazy when people make these mysterious, cryptic claims–”Oh, yes, I saw Scorsese’s 4 1/2 director’s hour cut of Gangs Of New York, it was brilliant, so much better then the release version. No, I can’t tell you anything that was differant about it, or why it was better, it just was…”
We have MILLER’S CROSSING…and LAST MAN STANDING, YOJIMBO, A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, an so on and so forth.
People are always talking about longer cuts. I guess this is partly due to the whole “director’s cut” as marketing tool idea, but I think it’s also based on the dream of something more hidden away, and the supposition that if something is good, the longer the better. I was with Monte Hellman once and someone asked him about “the legendary 4-hour version of TWO-LANE BLACKTOP,” and are there any plans to show it. He laughed, and said, “If you’re referring to the rough cut, no, there are no plans to show it.” This is often the case. Rumor spreads about Malick’s 7-hour rough cut of THE THIN RED LINE, and everyone wonders: who are the privileged souls who were able to see it? Meanwhile, he was undoubtedly obligated to deliver something closer to the running time of the released film, and that’s also part of the process, the reality of filmmaking. In the case of THE PUBLIC ENEMY, I think it’s a few trims specified by the censors.
Don’t think so. This is pretty peculiar to Wellman. Can you think of another WB director with so many examples of transvestism in his work, including the drag acts in “Wild Boys of the Road” (both male and female)? Clara Bow spends much of “Wings” in military drag (a picture that climaxes with Buddy Rogers kissing the dying Richard Arlen on the lips), and Joe E. Brown’s cheerleader in “Eleven Men and a Girl” might at the least be considered, um, ambiguous.
I’m not saying Wellman was a big closet case or anything; just that gender is at least a fluid as concept in his films as in (to cite a couple of recurring examples in this group) Wilder and Mankiewicz.
That shot of Cagney entering the dance hall in “Other Men’s Women” is brilliant — he strips off his overalls to reveal a tuxedo underneath, and then spins across the room into the arms of his waiting girlfriend. I haven’t seen the Gorin film, but I used it in the PBS doc on Clint Eastwood that I wrote in 2000 (Cagney is CE’s favorite actor). Interestingly, one of the restored trims in the (incomplete) pre-code version of “Public Enemy” has a very gay tailor taking the measure of Cagney’s inseam. The tailor drops down out of frame and Cagney seems to be enjoying himself immensely.
Interesting how many good films have been quite clearly and somewhat closely inspired by RED HARVEST while we have no actual adaptation.
Nanni Moretti’s comp lit brother Franco once guffawed at me for suggesting that a Bertolucci film of HARVEST might not have been any good — he thought Bertolucci too soft, a good point I think (even to this Bertolucci fan).
Might Rowland Brown — a complete unnown to me beyond the discussion at this thread– have been one to make a good hardguy film out of HARVEST?
Even as a big fan of Noel Langley’s great and nearly forgotten ’52 PICKWICK PAPERS, one of favorite dropped projects has got to be Wellles unmade PICKWICK. (Indeed, Langley use his actors as fullm, and nearly full, figure in his frames much as did the early Welles. Right up there with the Olivier, Leigh, Welles, Welles/Korda production of WAR AND PEACE, described in one 1943 Variety as stymied by Chruchhills refusal to provide RAF air transport into the land of the hatred patron for the project’s spectacular aspirations — Stalin.
About RED HARVEST, there is short documentary movie AN INJURY TO ONE by Travis Wilkerson that has background of Hammett novel, true story of Butte, Montana copper miner strike and murder of union organizer, ruin of Butte, Hammett’s assignment there as strike breaker from detective agency and turning to left wing politics after. Very interesting movie. I think it was student film, but still very good movie.
Dave stated:
Interestingly, one of the restored trims in the (incomplete) pre-code version of “Public Enemy” has a very gay tailor taking the measure of Cagney’s inseam.
—
While the other scenes you point out are interesting as per Wellman’s work, the Public Enemy bit could also be considered yet another example of the gay subtext that seems to exist in nearly all of the Warner gangster pictures, despite the director and not only the pre-code era (Little Caesar, Angels with Dirty Faces, Roaring Twenties, Each Dawn I Die, et. al.).
I think it is interesting that what happens to women in Wellman films seems to happen to attractive women (from Mae Clarke’s grapefruit face in Public Enemy, to Loretta Young’s abrupt and violent death in Heroes For Sale, to poor Dorothy Coonan’s fate on the train in Wild Boys of the Road), while the moms and plain girls usually come off unscathed (e.g. Aline MacMahon in Heroes For Sale).
Junko, In his biography of his father, Paul Robeson Jr. writes that once when asked why he took so long to turn on Stalin and Communism, he said a long time passed before he could imagine anything worse than the Jim Crow South he’d known had been for Blacks. As political crucible, I suspect that Hammett’s Butte experience was analogous to Robeson’s.
Dave, I’d thought you meant “abstraction” in a more general sense (as in male fantasy), the gender thing aside. I suppose you’re right, although that stuff was sort of in the air – SYLVIA SCARLETT, THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR and SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS a few years later. But it’s pretty deeply ingrained in those Wellman films.
I’d forgotten that Cagney sheds his uniform in that scene. Cagney was also John Cassavetes’ favorite actor.
Junko, thanks for the reminder about the Wilkerson movie. Not a student project, but made on an extremely low budget.
Alex, you just blew my mind with the revelation that Franco Moretti and Nanni Moretti are brothers !!! What a family !
Wasn’t Cagney also Kubrick’s favorite actor?
I caught a portion of Other Men’s Women the other night on TCM for the first time in a few years, and even at that early point in Cagney’s career, he seems both more dynamic and more natural than the leads. Small wonder he was became a leading man almost immediately thereafter (though it’s sort of amazing that Wellman didn’t realize Cagney should play Tom Powers in Public Enemy until rehearsals had begun with Edward Woods in the part).
“he was became?” Aw, you know what I meant.
Getting documented facts about Dashiell Hammett is difficult. Was he ever really in Montana? There is no clear record. Pinkerton, where Hammett worked 1915-1921, says all its records of Hammett were lost in a fire. Lillian “The World’s Biggest Liar” Hellman says that Hammett told her many years later that Hammett had been asked to assasinate IWW head Frank Little – and had refused.
Little was murdered in 1917. Hammett published Red Harvest in magazines in 1927. All of Hammett’s fiction was published in 1922-1934; he had writer’s block after that. The first clear evidence of Hammett’s involvement with Communism is 1937 – he was enormously active in Communist causes from that time on. It is very unclear that Red Harvest, or any other Hammett fiction, is the work of a Marxist writer. Gangsters were a huge entertainment craze in 1927: Sternberg made Underworld that year, following the vast smash gangster play “Broadway” (1926). Red Harvest is full of gangsters and political corruption; labor issues are present, but play a not extensive minor role.
Cagney should be everybody’s favorite actor