Good Morning, Eve!

One of the shorts that TCM ran as part of the Saturday morning block was the early three-strip Technicolor short Good Morning, Eve!.

Leon Errol stars as Adam, looking much too old and certainly not the stereotypically handsome sort or Adam you'd see in other Bible-themed movies. Of course, he's in the Garden of Eden with Eve (June MacCloy), and is tempted with a bite of the apple.

This time, however, the apple sends them out of paradise, if you will, by going on a tour of history. This is an excuse for some sight gags since Adam and Eve are people out of place, as well as an excuse for musical numbers since that's the sort of thing audiences back in 1934 would have loved.

Adam and Eve make a stop in ancient Rome under Nero (Vernon Dent), who is holding some sort of musical competition that allows Adam and Eve to enter since Nero is bored of the traditional competition where he's always declared the winner. There's also a rural-style quartet from the days before it was commonly called country music.

Second is a stop in the England of King Arthur, four years before Warner Bros. made The Adventures of Robin Hood. Finally, Adam and Eve make it to the present, and a beach full of nubile young women in bathing suits, before the ending that reveals....

There is naturally very little plot to Good Morning, Eve!. The humor is dad joke level, but the audiences would have been OK with such dumb humor around the musical numbers. What is the most interesting about the short is that it's one the earliest live-action examples of three-strip Technicolor, coming after maybe Service With a Smile and La Cucaracha as far as shorts completely in the new process. The print TCM showed is excellent, with stunning color:

Roast-Beef and Movies

A short that TCM ran as a TCM Extra in a time slot after something else that I watched recently was Roast-Beef and Movies.

A movie studio that's fallen on hard times is looking for new ideas and offers up to $100K for a movie they use. With that in mind, a would-be producer called Gus Parkyakaruks (George Givot, who is not the same actor who would be billed as "Parkyakaruks" in a string of movies from the late 1930s and 1940s) shows up together with two partners, one of whom is played by Curly Howard of the Three Stooges although none of the other stooges are here. Neiter is Ted Healy, who in this time frame would have been the "manager" of the Stooges, the short having been made in late 1933 and released to theaters in early 1934.

Most of the rest of the short is a sort of revue that shows the sort of "movie" that the producers wanted to make, although there's more to it than that. Eventually, the studio boss likes the idea behind the movie and offers Gus and his two partners a contract, but there's a catch that forms the humorous finale of the movie.

There are two things that are mildly interesting about Roast-Beef and Movies. One is the presence of Curly Howard (billed as Jerry Howard) without anybody else related to the Three Stooges. The other one is that the movie is in two-strip Technicolor. Now, Disney had already made a couple of animated shorts in three-strip. I'm not certain how much later the live-action three-strip shorts came out, although I've mentioned Warner Bros.' Service With a Smile from 1934 as a three-strip short with pretty vibrant color.

In any case, the reason for the two-strip Technicolor is because TCM wanted to reuse some musical dance numbers from a couple of earlier movies that had been filmed partially in two-strip. Something that was done in several movies in the early sound era was to have most of the movie in black and white, with Technicolor mostly for a musical finale; it's those numbers that are reused in Roast-Beef and Movies. Other than the Technicolor and Curly Howard, however, this short isn't particularly good.

Roast-Beef and Movies did, however, get a release to DVD as part of one the Classic Shorts from the Dream Factory box sets.

The Calico Dragon

One of the non-Popeye cartoons that TCM ran in the Saturday matinee block when they had cartoons was an old Hugh Harman-Rudolf Ising Happy Harmonies entry called The Calico Dragon.

As always, this being a one-reeler, it's not like there's a lot here. A little girl (I couldn't find the name of the actress voicing her) is in bed reading a fairy tale called "The Princess and the Dragon" to three of her stuffed animals: a human doll, a Scottish terrier dog, and a polka-do horse. After reading the story, the little girl goes to sleep.

At this point, the dolls come to life in what is presumably supposed to be a dream sequence, although it doesn't matter either way since this is a cartoon. The three characters head off to a mythical medieval-type land where there are still castles, and dragons for brave princes to fight. This particular dragon has three heads, and the main sight gag is how the three necks get knotted together, which is the way to kill the dragon. There's also the recurring theme of the cowardly dog.

One thing that will be immediately noticed is that, although The Calico Dragon is in color, it's not very vibrant color. That's because Disney had the exclusive contract to use the newer three-strip Technicolor in animation. Other animation had the choice of black-and-white (not uncommon through the late 1930s), two-strip Technicolor (as with this one), or other inferior color processes. Granted, it's not such a big deal in animation. After all, if the human and animal forms aren't supposed to be extremely lifelike, is it such a big deal if the color isn't either?

The Happy Harmonies shorts are also fairly tame. It wasn't until things like Merrie Melodies over at Warner Bros. in the early 1940s, or the Tom and Jerry shorts MGM put out, that cartoons started to get the stereotypical cartoon violence that we all think of today. In the 1930s, most cartoons were a lot less cynical and had a lot more singing and dancing.

I looked it up on Amazon, and I didn't see any Happy Harmonies box sets for sale, which rather surprises me. Considering that many other series got Warner Archives-type box sets, one would think that Warner Home Video might have released such a set. But apparently they only got a laserdisc release back in the early 1990s.

A heads-up on The Viking

A year or so ago, TCM ran the silent The Viking, which I very briefly mentioned before another airing many years ago. I watched it during my blogging hiatus, but didn't blog about it because I don't think it's available on DVD. I notice that it's getting another TCM airing tomorrow at 9:15 AM, so here are my several months old slightly hazy thoughs on the movie.

Donald Crisp, who would become an elder character actor once sound came, plays Leif Ericsson, but more on him later. The Vikings, as you may know, raided various coastal areas, notably in England. On one of those trips an English nobleman, Lord Alwin (LeRoy Mason) is captured. When they get back to the Norse lands, Alwin is bought by Helga (Pauline Starke), who also happens to be the nominal foster child of Leif, although she's old enough that she could be considered an independent adult, at least in the modern days. I don't know what widowed or spinster Viking women did.

In any case, since Helga is the lead woman in the movie, all the men of a marriageable bent wind up in love with her. This includes not only Leif, but also Alwin, who by now has already shown his courage and could be useful if he had been born a Viking; third, there's Egil the Black, who is the sailing master on Leif's ocean voyages. Egil is the bad guy of the piece, getting involved in a sword fight with Alwin early in the movie, and another one with Leif as part of the film's climax.

The other plotline involves Leif Ericsson and his father, Eric the Red. Eric hates Christians, and has vowed to kill any he meets. He's also got a fairly prominent place in Norse society, having discovered Greenland. Leif would like to go farther than Greenland (as you probably know from history, he wound up on the northern tip of the island of Newfoundland), but needs resources for a voyage. He's about to get them from Dad... until Dad finds out that Leif has converted to Christianity! Not only is Dad going to disown him, but he's going to have to beat a hasty retreat. Not only do Egil and Alwin go on the voyage, but Helga stows away too.

If you don't know much about this movie, that probably has to do with the fact of who produced it: the Technicolor Corporation. They were constantly trying to perfect their color film processes, and in addition to licensing their cameras for use by the normal studios, they made a few films of their own in order to advertise the improvements. Becky Sharp was one, which introduced the three-strip process to feature films; there's also the short The Flag about Betsy Ross. But the company weren't movie distributors, and so had to get a studio to distribute it for them, in this case MGM, hence the MGM lion at the start. But as I understand it MGM didn't get ownership rights, which would explain why it doesn't seem to have gotten a DVD release that I can find.

As for the movie, it's a fairly silly story, but certainly entertaining enough. The color is up there with all the other two-strip Technicolor movies, which means that the print is in OK shape, but Technicolor hadn't perfected the process yet. Anything other than red or blue-green will look off. In any case, it's definitely worth at least one viewing.

The Warner Bros. Revue of 1929

The advent of talking pictures threw Hollywood into a tizzy, as many people who had no stage acting experience needed time to learn how to do dialog naturally for the cameras; some people of course had voices or thick accents that didn't translate well to talking pictures. MGM made a movie called The Hollywood Revue as a sort of screen test for most of its contract stars (the major exception being Greta Garbo). Warner Bros. responded with Show of Shows.

Frank Fay is the master of ceremonies here, following a prologue of an execution scene that looks like it could have come from A Tale of Two Cities but as far as I know didn't. Fay thinks he's got a lot of talent, and wants to do a musical number or two. But it's his job to introduce the other acts, with somebody else certain to stop him if he does try to sing.

Warner Bros. used most of its contract players here, like MGM did, although I have to admit that a lot of them I didn't recognize, such as Richard Barthelmess. A few are identified, notably a young Myrna Loy whom I also didn't recognize in her first number, a song asking "What Became of the Floradora Boy", the "Floradora Girl" being a Gay Nineties chorus girl and soon-to-be subject of a Marion Davies movie. John Barrymore is also instantly recognizable giving a soliloquy from Shakespeare's Henry VI Part III.

But most of what we get is song and dance numbers that go on for a long time. For people watching 90 years on, a lot of it will be dated at best, and slow at worst. Frank Fay is nowhere near the level of Jack Benny in The Hollywood Revue, and as far as I can tell he didn't become a particularly big star.

The one highlight of Show of Shows is the two-strip Technicolor number, a Chinese-themed song starring Loy (much more recognizable here) and Nick Lucas, and introduced by Rin Tin Tin (seriously). The color is quite good for two-strip.

If you're curious for a time capsule of 1929, I think I'd recommend The Hollywood Revue or even The King of Jazz (although if memory serves, that's actually from 1930), and save Show of Shows for later. But I'm still glad I finally watched it. Having been released by Warner Bros., it's no surprise that the movie is available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive collection.

The King of Kings (1927)

Back on Easter, TCM ran a whole bunch of religious-themed movies. One that I made it a point to put on the DVR since I hadn't done a post on it before is the 1927 silent version of The King of Kings. It's available on a two-disc set from Criterion, so I finally got around to watching it to do a post on it.

The movie starts off with a two-strip Techniolor scene that isn't out of the Bible. Mary Magdalene (Jacqueline Logan) is in the sinning portion of her life, living it up with a bunch of Romans at a party that has a feast and a leopard among other things. She's irritated, however, that her boyfriend Judas Iscariot (Joseph Schildkraut) isn't there. She's informed that Judas has taken up with this carpenter from Nazareth, whom some people are treating as a messiah. So she sets of to find Judas and win her away from the carpenter.

Of course, the carpenter is Jesus (H.B. Warner, who was past 50 when he made this even though Jesus is generally considered to have been in his early to mid 30s when he was crucified). And if you know your Bible stories you'll know that Mary Magdalene winds up falling in with Jesus rather than winning Judas back for herself. As for Judas, you'll recall that his fate is to betray Jesus for 30 pieces of silver.

Anyhow, the Jesus in this movie performs various of the miracles that were depicted in the Bible, with director Cecil B. DeMille using intertitles containing verses from the Gospels, all meticulously cited. (The intertitles for establishing scenes use new material.) Among the miracles are the Lazarus story, healing the afflicted and making the blind see again. Other non-miracle portions of the Bible used are the famous stoning of the adulteress scene, as well as Jesus helping Peter (Ernest Torrence) pay his taxes by catching a fish with a coin in its mouth. DeMille strays from the Bible by having the Romans react by trying to catch fish themselves in the hopes that those fish will similarly have coins in their mouths!

Jesus ultimately makes it to Jerusalem, since that's where he's supposed to be crucified. He finds that the temple has been taken over by a corrupt group of rabbis led by Caiaphas (Joseph Schildkraut's real-life father Rudolph). The Romans, led by Pontious Pilate (Victor Varconi), want to find this meddlesome messiah, and finding him a threat to Roman authority, crucify him, only for Jesus to be resurrected on the third day.

The King of Kings is one of those movies that's a bit more difficult to judge, largely because it's based on material that would be very well-known anywhere in the western world. The movie is very well-made for the most part, although at times it gets close to going over the top. Jesus is presented using lighting that makes him almost glow -- we get the point already, although it's hard to avoid when you've got a character who as the son of God is supposed to be perfect.

The one flaw I found is that the movie really began to drag. There were actually two versions: a general release print that ran about 112 minutes, and a roadshow version that clocks in at about 156 minutes. TCM ran the latter, and I couldn't help but think the story could have been told in the shorter run time. (The Criterion release apparently contains both prints.)

For anybody who has in interest in Biblical movies, I can't see why they wouldn't find this an excellent addition to the genre.

The King of Jazz

A few weeks back, TCM ran the restored print of The King of Jazz as part of a night of movies with John Boles. I hadn't seen it before, so I DVRed it and watched it.

This is a difficult movie to review, because it's not a traditional movie with a plot, but instead a revue, with a few comedy numbers and a lot of songs, and the music for those songs provided by Paul Whiteman and his band. Whiteman had become known as the "King of Jazz", in what I'd have to guess was an act of self-promotion the way Eddie Muller calls himself the "King of Noir". In any case, Whiteman introduces several songs in styles popular at the time, and a couple that have stood the test of time.

The first in this latter group has to be "Rhapsody in Blue". I had forgotten that Whiteman commissioned this song from George Gershwin, and it became one of the Whitman band's signature tunes, so it's only natural that it should show up here. Among the spectacular parts of this number is the giant grand piano which , when the lid is opened, reveals several members of the orchestra. The camera angles rival Busby Berkeley, although this came a few years before 42nd Street.

The other is "Happy Feet". It opens with a pair of dancing shoes in stop-motion animation (at least, I think it's stop-motion), followed by some lavish dancing as well as the novelty dancing of Al Norman, who has to be one of the most frighteningly flexible dancers you'll ever see. There's also a dispute with Whiteman and the MC discussing whether it's the music or the dancing that puts a song over, resolved rather humorously.

Other highlights are the appearances of the Rhythm Boys, one of whose members was a very young Bing Crosby at the beginning of his career. There's also a skit about a boss being caught in flagrante delicto that has a great punchline. But most noteworthy of all would have to be the two-strip Technicolor. The restoration looks extrememly good, although there is a few minutes of footage missing, replaced by black and white stills, or photos moved like in a Ken Burns documentary. (Ugh.)

The King of Jazz is well worth a watch for anybody who's a fan of early color and early musicals (or this type of music in general).

Over the Counter

On one of the movies I DVRed recently, TCM had a fair amount of time left in the time slot, so they ran the two-reeler Over the Counter. As far as I can tell, it's available as one of the shorts on the first volume of Classic Shorts from the Dream Factory.

This one has a silly premise that's just an excues for a bunch of musical numbers. Mr. Drake (Sidney Toler) is a department store owner who is told by his assistant (Franklin Pangborn) that Drake's son (Emerson Treacy) has come up with an idea to boost business. He's going to replace the regular shop assistants with chorus girls in skimpy outfits, the idea being that wives can drop off their husbands at the "check your husband" station the way people would check their hats or coats at a nightclub. This will allow the wives to spend more, while the husbands are thrilled by those pretty ladies! Apparently wives overspending has been a thing for going on 90 years now.

Another idea has the store setting up "sporting" events of women trying to buy sale items, which I suppose is a precursor of the current free-for-all on Black Friday and even Thanksgiving night now that stores are getting a head start on the Christmas season. Cue some more musical numbers. Eventually Dad, perving on all those lovely ladies, decides that his son's idea has quite some merit, surprise surprise.

The songs are forgettable, but there are some interesting things about Over the Counter. One is the presence of Toler and Pangborn. The other one is that the short was done in two-strip Technicolor. I suppose it was cheaper to experiment with color on the shorts rather than the features, and since the idea o department store chorus girls is so unreal, having colors that aren't quite real isn't nearly as distracting. Besides, the pinks work well for the neon sign of the "Check Your Husband" counter.

Even if it's nothing particularly great, I'm glad I saw this one, just for how wacky and pre-Code it is.

Hell's Angels

Another movie I watched off my DVR recently that's available on DVD is Hell's Angels.

This one is relatively formulaic, although it's a good formula. Sensible Roy (James Hall) and passionate Monte (Ben Lyon) are brothers and students at Oxford with their German classmate Karl (John Darrow) circa 1914. As you can guess from the year, the Great War (it wasn't World War I yet during the storyline and the movie was released in 1930 so even then there was no World War II) is about to start, splitting the brothers and Karl. Karl gets drafted into the German forces, while Roy and Monte sign up for the air corps.

Meanwhile, Roy and Monte meet Helen (Jean Harlow), both falling in love with her and providing romantic tension. Roy loves Helen although the feeling isn't mutual; she wants somebody more passionate. But that someone doesn't seem to be Monte.

Karl takes part -- very reluctantly -- in a zeppelin attack on London, while Roy and Monte wind up in France. Monte, in order to redeem himself after being declared a coward, takes on a dangerous mission with his brother that would have both of them declared spies if their plane gets shot down.

There's not much to say about Hell's Angels, I suppose, that I couldn't say about any other war movie. I don't think I can even say it created any of the tropes, since there were buddy war movies like Wings and Two Arabian Knights that had already been made. Having said that, however, Hell's Angels is still pretty good.

For one thing, there's that zeppelin attack. It goes on too long, but a lot of it is pretty harrowing. Especially when the movie decides it's going to propagandize by showing the Germans to be monsters during the scene. I couldn't help but think of the character in 49th Parallel who just wanted to be a baker and bake bread.

There's also a two-strip Technicolor scene that, as I understand it, has the only surviving color footage of Jean Harlow. At first it surprised me that they'd use a soldiers' ball for the big Technicolor scene, but then I'd guess there were technical limitations on using it for any of the outdoor or flight scenes. The color, I thought, was quite good for two-strip.

The aerial scenes are also quite good. Howard Hughes assembled a ridiculous number of aircraft and pilots to do the aerial scenes, and the quality shows. It's as good as anything you'll see in Wings.

Finally, there's the ending, which I won't give away, but it's realistic and handled well. Overall, I can certainly recommend Hell's Angels.

Sally

Over the weekend I watched Sally off of my DVR. It's available via the Warner Archive, so I feel OK doing a full-length post.

Sally, played by Broadway star Marilyn Miller doing a reprise of the Broadway role, is a New York waitress who likes to practice her dance steps while she works, something which unsurprisingly causes all sorts of problems. She meets impresario Otis Hooper (T. Roy Barnes), but loses her chance at getting a job with him, as well as losing her job as a waitress, when she spills a tray full of food on him.

She's not the only one who's distraught; also unhappy is Blair Farell (Alexander Gray). He's a wealthy young man from one of those Long Island families, who has been looking through the big plate glass window at the front of the restaurant to watch Sally, whom he doesn't even know. He's just infatuated with her. Of course, he's engaged to wone of the society daughters out on the Island.

Anyhow, Sally gets a job at a restaurant out on Long Island, along with her friend Connie (Joe E. Brown), who is a deposed royal from some Eastern European family. He's working as a waiter, but he keeps up the trappings of being a royal, not letting high society know what he's been reduced to. Blair meets Sally there and tells her his love for her. Meanwhile, Hooper also meets Sally there, and gives her a second chance when it turns out some Russian woman who was supposed to dance at the party where Blair's engagement is going to be annouced had to back out; Sally can pretend to be that woman. Of course, Blair recognizes Sally; Connie had an issue with the woman Sally is supposed to be playing; and Blair's engagement is announced.

It's all high society pre-42nd Street musical piffle. A lot of the early talkie musicals had poor, threadbare plots, and this one is no different. There are interesting things in the movie, however. Joe E. Brown gets some physical comedy scenes, notably helping an old guy up a ladder. There's also the song, "Look for the Silver Lining", sung, if not that well, by Miller and Gray. But perhaps most interesting is that the movie was apparently originally released entirely in two-strip Technicolor. Unfortunately, only most of one dance number at the party out on Long Island survives in color, and that bit is for the most part surprisingly well-preserved. The rest of the movie looks slightly off, in that the black and white looks different from most other movies of the era, which I think is a sign of how the movie was in fact originally filmed in color, which had much brighter lighting needs.

Overall, I'm not certain Sally is for the average film fan. Certainly, if I wanted to introduce people to films from this era, this isn't the movie I'd pick. Even just one year later, in 1930, movies had vastly advanced in terms of the use of sound. But for people who like early musicals, Sally is well worth a watch. Especially when you consider that Miller didn't make too many movies.

The Phantom of the Opera (1925/1929)

Tonight's Silent Sunday Nights feature on TCM is The Phantom of the Opera, a movie I actually haven't done a full-length post on before. It comes up overnight at 12:45 AM.

Lon Chaney Sr. plays the phantom, but more on that in a bit. The opera here is the Paris Opera, where there are rumors of a ghost. Young Christine (Mary Philbin), however, doesn't seem to care. She's an understudy trying to make her way up the ladder of success, with the help of a masked singing tutor. She's also got a boyfriend in Raoul (Norman Kerry). Eventually, Christine does become a success, and wants to learn more aboutg her tutor. So she follows him, discovering that he goes to the depths beneath the opera house, eventually following him to his lair several stories underground. It's at this point that she removes the mask and discovers he's horribly disfigured! Her tutor is the phantom!

Now, the Phantom doesn't want his secret revealed for obvious reasons, but he makes a deal with Christine: he'll release her if she vows never to see Raoul again. Stupid move on both their parts. He should know that Christine is going to want to see Raoul, and Christine should probably have figured that based on the Phantom's insane lodgings, she needs to be more careful than she's going to be. She meets Raoul again (naturally) at the Masked Ball and plans to run away with him -- but only after one more performance. That's the stupid move. The Phantom has overheard them, and needless to say he's pissed. So he kidnaps Christine in the middle of the performance!

I don't think a brief synopsis like the above can really do a movie like The Phantom of the Opera justice. The story is well done, especially Chaney's acting, since he was good at all these horror types. The cinematography is excellent. Some of the scenes were tinted, as was not uncommon during the silent era. Also, the Masked Ball sequence was done in two-strip Technicolor, which gives it a slightly eerie feel since the film stock always looks different to me from the standard black-and-white film used in movies of the day and because the colors aren't particularly accurate.

There have also been various prints of this movie out there. Apparently there was more than one cut done before the movie went into wide release at the end of 1925. But then talkies came about, and some scenes were re-shot to turn the film into a partial talkie; it's with these new scenes that TCM has generally shown the movie -- that's probably the print most commonly available, and the version I've seen. There are also a lot of different scores, since many silent movies didn't have specific music associated with them. That probably shouldn't be the case with The Phantom of the Opera since there is supposed to be opera music at the heart of the film, but no, there are various scores out there. But whatever version you see, it's a film that's well worth watching for the story, and because it's surprisingly lovely to look at.

The Technicolour Veteran -- Bernard Coombs

I've stated several times before that I listen to various international broadcasters. This morning, the following story came up in my RSS feed from Radio New Zealand:

The Technicolour Veteran -- Bernard Coombs

It's hard to articulate just what an impact technicolour had on cinema audiences when it was first introduced in the 1930s and 40s. Technicolour was the process of colouring motion picture negative from black and white into colour and it was celebrated for its saturated levels of colour - giving films such as 'The Wizard of Oz' and 'Gone with the Wind' their characteristic style. One man who knows all too well about the magic of technicolour is Bernard Coombs of Wanganui, the 96-year-old started work at the Technicolour Motion Picture Company when he left school and apart from a six-year hiatus during the Second World War - he worked with the company all his life.

One thing that's mildly humorous is Radio New Zealand's repeated misspelling of Technicolor, by putting the British English U in it. Technicolor was (and still is) a company name, so the ending showld be "-color", without the U. Indeed, if you watch British movies from the late 1930s and the 1940s that were filmed in color, they'll have a credit somewhere in the opening credits that says "Colour [with the British U] by Technicolor [without the British U]". There's also a credit for Natalie Kalmus as consultant; this is something she got on every Technicolor movie, regardless of how much consulting she did. I can't believe she did much consulting in the UK during World War II. It's nice to be married to the founder of the company, though.

I have to admit that I haven't listened to the interview yet, so I can't commment on the interview itself. There's also no transcript available, so you'll have to download the audio file. The MP3 file is about 4.5 MB and 12:30 in length; the direct link is here.

Yet another movie where we know the two leads are going to wind up together in the last reel

Earlier this week, I've mentioned a couple of movies where you just know the two stars are going to reunite at the end, despite all the romantic complications they face earlier on in the movie. There's another one coming up on TCM. This time, though, the movie is from Britain, and in early three-strip Technicolor: Over the Moon, at 10:30 AM tomorrow.

Young Merle Oberon plays June Benson. She plays the granddaughter of an elderly nobleman who at the beginning of the movie is dying in his estate house that looks as though it's seen better days: Jane has no idea how she's going to keep the place going once her grandfather finally dies. His doctor, Freddie Jarvis (Rex Harrison), has a good idea: marry him! He loves her, and she does like him, but there's also the problem of all the servants and what to do with the estate. And then the old guy finally dies. It turns out that the reason the estate didn't seem to be in such great shape is that Grandfather was a miser. During his life he saved up a princely £18 million, which is in late-1930s currency and so would probably be in the middle nine-figures range today, even in pounds, never mind the conversion rate to dollars. Any way you look at it, it's a substantial sum of money.

With all that money comes the possibility that Jane can finally live a life of comfort. More comfort than Jane could ever have living off of a doctor's salary. Also, her large inheritance has made national news, so there are lots of people who, wanting to live in comfort themselves, claim to be either distant relatives or some sort of suitor. Dr. Jarvis has principles, and one of those is apparently not being wealthy through a wife's inheritance. Either that, or money has just changed her to the point that he doesn't like her as she now is. Freddie's received an offer to do research at a clinic in Switzerland, so he takes that offer, and leaves Jane to her money.

Jane goes off to France and eventually to Monte Carlo, and it's at this point where the movie begins to go off the rails. We know that Jane and Freddie are ultimately meant for each other, and that they're supposed to end up together, but it takes Jane seemingly much too long to realize this, and the movie seems to run too slowly from here to the reunion. Freddie, for his part, finds that he's gotten into something he didn't bargain for, doctoring at a chic clinic for the rich, much like the work Robert Donat was doing in The Citadel, which was made after Over the Moon but released before.

Merle Oberon and Rex Harrison both try hard, but I think that in the end, the material really sinks them, making the movie a muddled plodding mess that I actually found a bit difficult to sit through even though it only runs about 80 minutes. It didn't help either that the print wasn't the best. If you want early British color, I'd really recommend starting off with The Divorce of Lady X instead.

I couldn't find any DVD release of Over the Moon, so you'll have to catch the TCM showing, which isn't very often.

The Florodora Girl

Marion Davies is one of thsoe Hollywood people whose career seems to get assessed less than objectively, thanks in most part to the long affair she had with William Randolph Hearst, who spent years bankrolling movies starring her in an attempt to make her a star. Tomorrow brings a chance to see for yourself how good or bad an actress she was, as TCM is showing The Florodora Girl at 6:15 AM.

Marion Davies plays Daisy, the titular "Florodora Girl", who is actually a chorus girl in a Gay Nineties era Broadway show. If you've seen enough old movies you'll know that, at least according to the movies, a lot of wealthy people went to Broadway shows, with the men -- both the married older men and the young playboys -- eying the pretty chorus girls. The chorus girls, for the most part, seemed to be willing to let these rich guys pursue them, because it sure would have been nice to be on something resembling easy street. Daisy, however, doesn't seem to be doing too well in this milieu. Whether it be because she really wants true love first and money second, or because she just doesn't know the ropes of the way relationships between the chorus girls and the potential sugar daddies works, Daisy hasn't been having the success with the men at the stage door that the other chorus girls are having.

Enter Jack Vibart (Lawrence Gray). He actually seems like Mr. Right for Daisy. Sure, he's rich, but Daisy feels she might truly be in love with him. Unfortunately, all the other chorus girls still think there are set rules as to how they're supposed to be interacting with the rich guys, and they're trying to teach those rules to Daisy. This sounds perfectly reasonable, except that whatever rules work for all the other chorus girls, they don't seem to work for Daisy and Jack, and what seems the sort of relationship where you expect them to wind up together in the final reel.

And then there's another complication: one of the frequent financial crashes of the era. Before the introduction of the Federal Reserve Bank in 1913, the American economy was such that when there were crashes, they tended to be relatively short, but quite a bit more severe than the recessions of today. Jack gets more or less wiped out in one of these crashes. That's not a problem for Daisy, who it turns out really is in love with Jack for who he is, and not for the money that he no longer has so much of. Jack's famliy, however, has a problem with the relationship. If he had married a rich girl and one of them lost their fortunes, well, things happen. But marrying a chorus girl and then both of them winding up poor? The horror!

The Florodora Girl really isn't a bad movie, but it definitely is a product of its time, that being near the beginning of the sound era in 1930. Before 42nd Street, most musicals were very static, and the musical numbers here (including a finale in two-strip Technicolor) show that weakness. The need to capture the sound also saw directors use much less of the camera's range of movement than was the case at the end of the silent era, and that's another area where The Florodora Girl has the same problems that a lot of movies from around 1930 have. And, of course, the plot doesn't seem fairly original. None of this is Marion Davies' fault, and she gives a perfectly capable performance, helping The Florodora Girl rise above the leve of many of the other musical comedies from this era.

The Florodora Girl seems to be not only not available on DVD, but not in TCM's database at all! So, you'll have to catch tomorrow's TCM airing, since this is one that shows up very infrequently.

Ah yes, Halloween is tomorrow

Tomorrow being Halloween, we get a lot of horror films on TCM. Of course, it's a bunch of stuff from Hammer films; TCM must have signed a long-term contract with whoever owns the rights to the Hammer films because the Hammer films seem to have formed the bulk of the October horror movie lineup for the past few years. So, to be honest, I'm more interested in a couple of shorts airing tomorrow.

The first is a re-airing of Polar Outpost, early tomorrow morning at 5:44 AM. (Of course, TCM considers this part of Wednesday's lineup and not the Halloween lineup, since TCM's daily schedule generally begins at 6:00 AM ET.) I just mentioned Polar Outpost back in September, where I mentioned that it would go well with Decade for Decision, which I think actually showed up a week or so ago and I should have metioned it then. Polar Outpost, which I hadn't seen when I blogged about it, turned out to be interesting for its historical value, but no great shakes in terms of cinematic value.

In among the horror movies is the two-strip Technicolor short The Devil's Cabaret, at approximately 3:20 PM. I have to admit not having seen this one before, but it looks interesting, presenting Hell as a giant pre-Code party. I'm always up for a pre-Code short, even if some of the stuff is pretty dire. The Devil's Cabaret is apparently availabe on Youtube, albeit in two parts, as well as an out-of-print DVD of Cimarron.

Two Hearts in Wax Time

Last night just before House of Wax kicked off Vincent Price night on TCM, they showed the short Two Hearts in Wax Time. It turned out to be one I'm pretty certain I've seen before on TCM. The short does seem to be available, on an old DVD version of the 1935 version of David Copperfield. Amazingly, this is one that the TCM Shop says you can't buy -- or more accurately, it says they have no DVDs available for the 1935 David Copperfield, which surprises me greatly with this being a film from MGM. David Copperfield is on the December schedule; I'm not certain about the next time Two Hearts in Wax Time will show up.

The short kicks off with two men in a department store who design the mannequins and dress them for the window displays. They're just about finishing up their night's work, when in walks the janitor Joe, played by Gus Shy, who was apparently a holdover from the vaudeville days. Joe is a chronic drunk, but in a movie like this, that's supposed to be funny. The two dressers decide to play a joke on Joe by claiming the mannequins are actually alive, and Joe needs to treat them better. Eventually they leave; Joe goes about his business and finishes up his shift at 2:30 AM.

As he leaves the store and walks past the displays outside, he sees that perhaps the dressers were right, and the mannequins really have come to life! Nah, he's still drunk and this is his drunk fantasy, but the mannequins perform various musical numbers in front of various scenes that have been set up in the multiple display windows. Two of the mannequins, a man and a woman, appear to be in love, too, as they stroll from one display to the next.

And then they get to the last window, which has "The Greatest Menace of Them All". I'm not certain what this display was supposed to be selling. The others at least advertised clothing, or in one case, camping equipment. Perhaps the last window was supposed to be advertising Hollywood costumes, ad the window has a number of stock horror film characters. Most surprising is the presence of a Frankenstein's monster character. Mary Shelley's story was in the public domain, of course, but this monster looks surprisingly like the one Boris Karloff portrayed in the 1931 movie (and would reprise a few months later in Bride of Frankenstein). That Frankenstein movie, however, was made at Universal. Go figure.

There's not a lot of story here, and the music is more inoffensive than memorable, but the color is a sight to behold, with the monsters being the second most worthwhile part of the short. Overall, if you can find it, it's worth a watch.

About five minutes of the short have shown up on Youtube, too.

Another chance to capture The Flag

I mentioned the silent two-strip Technicolor two-reeler The Flag back on Flag Day 2008, and again in 2010. It still doesn't seem to be on DVD; I would have thought it would by a worthy addition to some Warner Archive DVD set as an extra. That having been said, I see IMDb says it was produced by the Technicolor Corporation in conjunction with MGM; or, at least, IMDb lists both of them under "Production Companies". I'd have no idea what happened to the rights since then, although since it shows up on TCM from time to time you'd think that Warner Bros. wound up with the distribution rights at some point.

Anyhow, TCM has scheduled another airing of The Flag, overnight at 4:58 AM, or just after The Unholy Three, which starts at 3:30 AM and is listed as having a running time of 86 minutes. It's about your only opportunity to see it, since I couldn't even find it on Youtube.

Service With a Smile

I see that TCM has scheduled the short Service With a Smile for a little aftre 7:40 PM this evening, following An Ideal Husband, which begins at 6:00 PM and has a listed running time of 93 minutes.

Leon Errol, who made a whole bunch of two-reelers in the 1930s, is the star of this one, released by Warner Bros./Vitaphone in 1934. Errol plays Walter Webb, who runs a service station, back in the days when they weren't just gas stations attached to a convenience store, but offered mechanics and more for all your motoring needs. Webb is woken up one night by his assistant, who tells him that the service station has burned to the ground. That would be a bad thing, except that Webb has insurance! And the insurance money will enable him to build the service station of his dreams.

Not only does Webb have insurance; Leon Errol has three-strip Technicolor: Service With a Smile is one of the earliest live-action movies in three-strip Technicolor, which had first been used by Disney for its animation a few years earlier. Anyhow, Webb uses the insurance money, and the studio uses its Technicolor, to come up with a service station that looks like it could have come out of a Busby Berkeley dance number. The workers entertain the patrons with elaborate song and dance numbers, while wearing greens and purples that clearly must have been selected with the intention of showing off the new three-strip Technicolor process. There's no realistic way a service station like this could be a going concern, as it would never turn a profit. But this is Hollywood.

Service With a Smile is reasonably entertaining, and an above average effort for a Vitaphone short. To be honest, though, the main reason to watch it is for the Technicolor. The last tiem I saw this on TCM, they had what looked like a pretty good print for a 1934 short. The color is much better than what you see in any of the Traveltalks shorts that TCM airs, for example. The music and dancing is more dated than anything else, but there's nothing particularly wrong with it by 1930s standards. People who don't care so much for old movies might only find the Technicolor interesting; those of us who are fans of 1930s films will probably enjoy the movie as a whole.

I don't know if TCM marks any of its shorts as being available on DVD, as they'd only be extras accompanying some other feature. IMDb, however, does a somewhat better job of linking to Amazon when there is a DVD out there that has some short as an extra. In the case of Service With a Smile, there's no such link, so I'm guessing it's not available on DVD at all. That's surprising, since you'd think its early Technicolor would make it a more likely candidate to get included on some other DVD.

Robert Woolsey, 1888-1938

1930s RKO comedy team Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey

Today is 125 years to the day since the birth of Robert Woolsey. Woolsey started his career on Broadway, and it was during the production of the Broadway musical Rio Rita that he met Bert Wheeler. The two were brought out to Holywood by new studio RKO in 1929 to make a movie version of the musical, and when that movie proved to be a hit, it made Wheeler and Woolsey a star comedy team for RKO, making a good 20 movies or so together over the next eight years until Woolsey's untimely death in 1938.

I don't know if I've done a full-length review of any of Wheeler and Woolsey's movies before, although I did mention the two of them back in October 2009, mentioning Girl Crazy as one of my favorite of their films. Their version isn't as well known as the 1943 version starring Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, which just aired last night. It doesn't help that George Gershwin's wonderful songs are not nearly the focus of the 1932 film the way they are in the 1943 version. The Wheeler and Woolsey version involves the two of them getting brought out west by a playboy friend (Eddie Quillan) to help him turn his ranch into a vacation resort; Wheeler gets elected sheriff and all sorts of comedic complications ensuing. A couple of Wheeler and Woolsey's early films had scenes in two-strip Technicolor, but Girl Crazy is not among them; the aforementioned Rio Rita is. Also, Rio Rita has received a Warner Archive release to DVD while Girl Crazy hasn't. I'd like to think that Wheeler and Woolsey deserve one of those four-film box sets that TCM likes to hawk, or even Girl Crazy deserves to be part of a two-movie set with the Garland/Rooney version. But I despair to think how few people would buy a non-MOD DVD of a Wheeler and Woolsey film. It's also far too infrequently that TCM shows any of these.

Early Color Shorts

TCM has a couple of shorts on today's lineup that ar OK, but more interesting for the fact that they're among the earliest live-action shorts in the three-strip Technicolor process.

The first of them is La Cucaracha at about 7:35 PM, just after That Hamilton Woman. You probably recognize the title as that of a Mexican-sounding children's song, and in fact the song features prominently in the short. The plot, which is a bit wanting, involves a female singer and her male dancer partner in a Mexican club who are visited by a producer from the big time who is looking to sign the dancer, and only the dancer, to a bigger gig. The singer obviously is afraid of losing her partner, so she tries to sabotage things. You can probably guess what happens next. The print I remember seeing on TCM some years back wasn't quite as good as prints of some other early three-strip shorts. The short has been included as an extra on an out-of-print DVD of the Wheeler and Woolsey movie Dixiana. It also appears to be on Youtube.

The second short is La Fiesta de Santa Barbara, at 5:35 AM after The Private Life of Henry VIII. This one has even less of a plot; it's a bunch of Hollywood players -- some stars and some not-yet-stars -- celebrating a fiesta in Santa Barbara with a bunch of novelty performance. Andy Devine is part of a bullfighting bit with, I believe, Buster Keaton; Warner Baxter, Robert Taylor, and Gary Cooper show up in the audience. Ida Lupino wasn't a star yet, but she shows up as a cowgirl. Really. The short is probably best known for Judy Garland and her sisters singing "La Cucaracha". Multiple people have posted this one to Youtube. There's a version split into two parts, and one that seems to be in its entirety, although a caveat is that I didn't watch the Youtube videos at any of the links.