Over the summer, when I wasn't blogging because I was taking care of Dad with his hip fracture, I watched a several movies off my DVR that I don't think are on DVD at all, figuring I'd probably never blog about them anyway. I actually have a couple of features that I watched recently that are on DVD that I could blog about, but thanks in part to doing more overtime at work and then the time difference of the World Cup soccer havnig me record the US matches and watch them when I get home, there have been a couple of days that I haven't felt the energy to do a full-length post on something I watched recently. So instead, I'll more briefly mention a couple of movies that probably ought to be on box sets. Either that, or whoever has the rights to Warner Home Video ought to put everything in the Warner Archive in part of some streaming service, and then include movies like these that aren't going to make much money otherwise.
The first is Don't Tell the Wife, which is in many ways a great example of the sort of B movies that RKO made back in the days before World War II, when B movies were a big thing. There aren't really any stars here, although some people went on to become big. Lynne Overman is nominally the male lead, as a man married to a woman (Una Merkel) who is sick and tired of his schemes to get rich quick. Unfortunately for her, sme of his friends, who are clearly on the wrong side of the law, have come up with another one. These include character actors Guinn "Big Boy" Williams and William Demarest. They get Overman in on the scheme, and bring in a dupe (Guy Kibbee) to play the part of the honest company leader who doesn't realize he's got a bunch of crooks backing him. It's all over in a little over an hour. There's nothing particularly great about it, but there are all those character actors. One I haven't mentioned is Lucille Ball, who has a small role as a secretary at the company.
I also watched Boulder Dam, which was made over at Warner Bros. and is fairly typical of the sort of B movie that Warner Bros. put out in the mid-1930s. The star here is tragic Ross Alexander, in what isn't a light romantic comedy role for him. Instead, he's playing a mechanic at a car company in Detroit. He gets in a dispute with his boss, and as in Days of Heaven, Alexander's character accidentally kills his boss, sending him out on the road. Alexander eventually ends up near Las Vegas, where the Hoover Dam is being built. Since they didn't have Social Security at the time the dam was being built, it was easier for him to get a job on one of the many work crews without being recognized as a wanted man. He even winds up with a girlfriend (Patricia Ellis). But then somebody from his past shows up and his happiness is threatened. Being a post-Code, things are resolved somewhat differently than Warner Bros. might have done in the pre-Code era. But there's still some understated social commentary in this one.
Both movies are definitely worth a watch, and it's a shame that there's rather less interest in streaming so many of these old movies, considering you'd think they're not going to make any money just sitting in the vaults. I wonder if there are issues with converting them to a format suitable for streaming on any of the subscription sites -- the format that would have been required for running on TV 10 years ago in the days before streaming internet might not be something that would work so well with streaming. After all, the conversion for showing on TV isn't just a DVD. But then, I think a lot of these old movies show up in the Watch TCM app after airing on TCM, which means it probably shouldn't be as big of an issue to have them in a library for a subscription streaming site.
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