From Headquarters

Tonight continues TCM's Star of the Month salute to actor George Brent with one of the movies where he's the star and there's not really much in the way of a big female star to eclipse him. That movie is From Headquarters, which comes on tonight at 8:00 PM.

We don't actually see Brent at first. Instead, we see the workings of a bug-city police department, where they're bringing in various people they've arrested. However, the big news of the day is going to be the discovery of the dead body of a famous playboy, Bates, whom we'll see briefly in a couple of flashbacks. It's obvious that somebody has shot him, and, as it turns out, there are going to be quite a few suspects. Multiple department members are assigned to the case, with Dr. Van de Water (Edward Ellis) doing the forensic work. Sgt. Boggs (Eugene Pallette) has definite ideas on what's happened, while Lt. Stevens (George Brent) is much more thorough in trying to figure out who killed Bates.

Part of Van de Water's analysis is to determine the time of death, which seems a bit strange since all of the suspects have conflicting views of when they might have seen him. Some claim they saw him after he died, while others may be able to have an alibi in that they saw him before the shooting, if at least that was the last time they saw him. One of the obvious suspects is Lou Winton (Margaret Lindsay), as she is his ex-girlfriend. She tried to break off the relationship and Bates might have been forcible in trying to prevent that, which might make the case self-defense. Except that Lous has a brother Jack who shows up and seems to be way too protective of his sister, which implies that he knows more than he's letting on and might have something to do with the shooting himself.

And then there's Bates' butler Horton who is less than fully honest. There's also Anderzian, a dealer in Oriental rugs who has been selling stuff to Bates and says there are letters in Bates' safe that Bates wanted him to have in case Bates were to die. But Anderzian also seems a bit too insistent that he gets those letters, which gives Stevens an idea. Meanwhile, that opening sequence comes full circle. One of the guys being booked in that scene has wanted to see Stevens when he hears of the killing of Bates. That guy is found out and gets murdered as well for his troubles. When the detectives discover the dead body, the building goes on lockdown, leading to the killer ultimately being found out.

From Headquarters is an interesting enough little programmer, although I have to say that the police procedural would get much better in later years. Brent does a competent job, even though he's not the sort of actor that you'd think of as playing a police detective. Margaret Lindsay as the nominal female lead is OK too, but she doesn't have much to do. Audiences watching this in 2026 won't find it anything special, but back in 1933 when moviegoers didn't have TV or much chance to see these movies after first-run, I think it would have entertained them.

Young Tom Edison

Mickey Rooney is this month's Star of the Month on TCM, and surprisingly enough there are several of his starring roles that I haven't seen, not even considering the Andy Hardy movies airing later in the month. One of those movies aired on TCM a few weeks back, so I recorded it in order to be able to do a review on it for this month's airing: Young Tom Edison, which will be on early tomorrow morning (Dec. 13) at 4:00 AM.

It doesn't take much to figure out that Mickey Rooney is the star here, and that he is playing an adolescent version of inventor Thomas Edison (1847-1931). As the movie opens, Tom is about 13 years old and living in Port Huron, Michigan with the his parents Nancy (Fay Bainter) and Sam (George Bancroft) and kid sister Tannie (Virginia Weidler); she's a bit of a partner-in-crime in young Tom's schemes as he's already got an inquisitive (and costly) mind. Tom had come up with a scheme to wake his sister up remotely and close her bedroom window, and also likes to putter away on his chemistry set.

However, Tom also likes to think about those inventions as well as things like telegraphy while he's at school, and all that experimenting gets him in trouble, with his teacher and the school board suggesting he be expelled. At the same time, the experiments and other practical jokes lead everybody in town to think young Tom is addled. It's enough to make him want to run away, but first he starts making money for himself. He has some sweets that he and Tannie are eating on the railway platform, and people on the train wouldn't mind having some too. So he buys from the local confectioner and sells at a profit on the train. Eventually, he's able to buy a printing press and get news off the telegraph to distribute to the passengers on the train, at a profit for him, of course. (You'd think the passengers would only buy one or two copies of the paper and share.)

Meanwhile, Tom still can't catch a break at home, and when he brings nitroglycerine on the train, this is one of the final straws that leads to him getting fired. Nobody in town will give him a job, and he's just about to leave for Detroit. But two other things happen that give young Tom the chance to save the day, become a hero, and get a proper start as an adult. One is that his mother gets an infection and needs surgery, and the other involves the railroad bridge being out and Tom figuring out how to stop the train from going into the river. (Nowadays, you'd just use cell phones.)

I don't know how accurate Young Tom Edison is, but as a movie, it's certainly entertaining enough. Rooney was 19 at the time of filming playing Tom from about ages 13 to 17. There's a lot of the stereotypically Rooney "Oh gee willikers" stuff, but I think this time it actually works for a kid who's quite the dreamer and has gotten the reputation of being "addled". Rooney plays Tom with spunk, and I think that works here. Young Tom Edison is another good example of the pre-WWII Hollywood look at biopics, and definitely is worth watching at least once.

The Cheaters

I recorded quite a few movies last Christmas and have been watching them before they expire on the DVR as they only last nine months. While I suppose I could write up the posts and save all of them for December, obviously the time at which they expire from the DVR is well before TCM's December schedule will be known. So I wouldn't know if all of them are going to be showing up on TCM this Christmas. (Then again, some of them, like My Night at Maud's back in August, are only set at Christamstime and not really Christmas movies.) The latest of the movies, which is definitely much more of a Christmas movie, is The Cheaters.

J.C. Pidgeon (Eugene Pallette) is a New York businessman who's fallen on hard times. That's in part because the rest of his family -- wife Clara (Billie Burke) and daughter Therese (Ruth Terry) especially, along with lazy brother-in-law Willie (Raymond Walburn) -- are profligate spenders to the point that they've spent him into near bankruptcy and a string of process servers coming to J.C.'s office. The only saving grace is that J.C. has a rich uncle Henry out west who is on his deathbed. J.C. has sent son Reggie out there to butter up Henry in the hopes that perhaps Henry might remember them in his will and secure the family's finances.

J.C.'s family are about to make his life more difficult. Therese has a boyfriend Stephen who's serving in the Army and is coming home for the holidays (the movie was released in 1945, just as World War II was ending, but was based on a play written before the US entry into the war), and she wants to impress him. To that end, she insists that the family take on a "charity case" for the holidays, as that's what all the rich people do. In the announcements in the newspapers, they read of a Mr. M., who was a former matinee idol on the stage before getting in a car crash that led him to drink, costing him his acting career. Mom loves the idea of having an actor, so they pick that case. Cut to a scene of Mr. M., real name Anthony Marchand (Joseph Schildkraut), renewing his Actors Equity card.

And then Henry actually dies. Reggie was there for the reading of the will, which was a huge problem for the family. Mercurial uncle Henry apparently believed in charity cases himself. He was so taken by one such case, a showgirl named Watson from 30 years earlier when she was just a child actress, that he left the entire will to her instead of his nephew since Henry had the good sense to understand that Clara is a spendthrift. However, there's a catch, which is that Henry doesn't know what happened to Watson, so if the executor can't find the woman in question, the money will revert to J.C. With that in mind, J.C. comes up with the plan to find Watson himself and keep her incommunicado until the "reasonable" period of time to find her passes.

This is where the family's having taken on a charity case might just help. Marchand, being an actor, has access to Actors Equity and can use that to find her. Willie approaches her and says she's a long-lost cousin, and would she like to spend Christmas with the family. Not that she knows the ruse, although Marchand does. Everybody decamps to a cottage out in the country, and the rest of the movie deals with which secrets will be found out, as pretty much everybody in the movie is keeping things hidden.

I mostly liked The Cheaters, even though everybody here is being a bit dishonest at heart. You get the impression that none of these characters is going to use the money honestly and that frankly, Uncle Henry had the good sense not to bequeath it to J.C. and his side of the family. However, the acting overcomes the script problem, and the Christmas theme softens a lot of the greed.

The Cheaters was made at Republic, and because the cast is mostly people who didn't get to be leads in movies at the biggger studios, it's easy to see why the film became forgotten over the years until TCM resurrected it 15 or so years ago. But it's definitely worth one watch. Not as good as, say, It Happened on Fifth Avenue, but still enjoyable enough.

Dangerously Slight

A movie that I had surprisingly not seen despite it being part of the "Turner Library" of movies that for years made up the bulk of TCM's programming is Slightly Dangerous. So the last time that it showed up on TCM, I decided I'd record it in order to be able to watch it and then do a review here.

After the credits, a voiceover tells us about the town of Hotchkiss Falls, a made-up place supposedly in the mid-Hudson valley, which wouldn't be too far from where I am if it actually existed. But the towns here, places like Kingston and Poughkeepsie and Newburgh, are the same sort of boring places that the voiceover man tells us Hotchkiss Falls is. Anyhow, one of the residents of Hotchkiss Falls is Peggy Evans (Lana Turner), who typifies how boring the town is. She works at the soda counter of the local five-and-dime, and is getting a bonus for showing up on time for 1,000 consecutive shifts. Big deal, she thinks.

The place is so boring, that she gets into a debate with one of her co-workers about whether she could do her job blindfolded. A patron comes up, orders a sundae, and sure enough Peggy is able to fulfill the order properly while blindfolded. But as she was doing it, the store's new manager, Bob Stuart (Robert Young), walks in. Seeing a professional no-no, he calls Peggy into the office. It leads to an exchange in which Peggy, realizing how boring Hotchkiss Falls is, says she'll be Peggy Evans until the day she dies.

That gives her an idea as she thinks that she'll be Peggy Evans until the day Peggy Evans dies. With that in mind, she writes a note that could be construed as a suicide note, and goes running off to the big city, not telling a soul where she's gone. In New York, she starts thinking about getting a complete makeover, not just hair and clothes, but a new name as well. But she can't decide on what an appropriate new name would be.

Peggy decides to go to one of the newspapers to take out a classified ad that would presumably be like the billboard Gladys Glover rents in It Should Happen to You. But a sign painter is working over the evidence, and knocks down his paint bucket, hitting Peggy and temporarily knocking her unconscious. Having just undergone a makeover, she doesn't have any ID in her new pocketbook and no identifying marks on her new outfit. And when she comes to, she decides this would be a perfect opportunity to pretend to have a case of amnesia.

Editor Durstin (Eugene Pallette) decides to take Peggy's picture and put it in the papers to see if anybody can recognize her. Bob sees the story, and thinks he recognizes Peggy. But it's not an absolute, since part of the makeover involved getting her hair dyed blonde. And at the newspaper offices, we see that Bob isn't the only person who thinks he recognizes the mystery woman, although we know the rest of them are wrong.

Meanwhile, Peggy has been devious, looking through old newspapers at the library for a missing persons case that might involve someone who would now be close to her age. Eventually, she finds a Carol Burden who was supposedly kidnapped as a very young girl. Carol had a nurse named Baba (Dame May Whitty), so Peggy says she can remember the word "baba". Durstin has his researcher go through the files and he naturally finds the Burden case, with Caro's father Cornelius (Walter Brennan) being a very wealthy man.

However, they've already had to deal with other frauds claiming to be Carol Burden, so they're going to put Peggy-claiming-to-be-Carol through her paces to expose the fraud and prosecute to the full extent of the law. And of course Bob Stuart is waiting in the wings to recognize Peggy as well.

Slightly Dangerous is the sort of escapist light comedy that you can understand why audiences in 1943 when it was released would love. With a war raging in the real world, and Lana Turner being so glamorous, it's obviously just what the doctor ordered. And Lana Turner shows herself to be pretty adept at comedy as well. Somewhat more surprising is that Walter Brennan and Dame May Whitty also prove to do well in this sort of comedy. Not that they're bad actors, but Slightly Dangerous is rather more different from what they normally did.

If you want to escape with a slightly different comedy, don't hesitate to try Slightly Dangerous.

I've Got Your Number

In the latest installment of movies I've got in my Youtube TV library that happen to be coming up again soon on TCM, I noticed a breezy little movie called I've Got Your Number. It's going to be on again tomorrow (Sept. 19) at 11:30 AM, so I made a point of watching it to be able to do a review here to give you all a chance to watch it too.

Joan Blondell is nominally the star here as she gets top billing, but the real star of the proceedings is Pat O'Brien. He plays Terry, a linemen for the phone company. He's good at what he does, as we see when he goes up on the roof of a building to cut some wires in order to prevent more serious problems in the building next door that's on fire. In that incident, Terry saves the life of Schulyer (Henry O'Neill), a wealthy broker in stocks and bonds. But Terry also grates on his boss Mr. Flood (Eugene Pallette) by doing things that bring in customer complaints, especially from the female customers.

Joan Blondell plays Marie, who is a switchboard operator at an apartment hotel. Nicky (Gordon Westcott) shows an interest in her, and gets her to play what she thinks is a practical joke by switching a call intended for someone else to him. That call is in fact the result of a horse race that earns Nicky a ton of money instead of the legitimate target of the call. The hotel manager calls the phone company to check whether the lines could have been tapped, and Flood sends Terry and his partner John (Allen Jenkins).

Terry wastes no time in putting the moves on Marie, basically harassing her until she gives in and agrees to go on a date with him. In some ways, it's a bit fortuitous, since Terry has connections with the phone company that could get her a job as an operator for them, or, if that falls through, calling in a favor from Schuyler. So at least Marie will have a job working for Schuyler. Except that she spills the beans about some bonds to Nicky, who is able to come up with a scheme to get those bonds off of Schulyer. Marie is arrested, and it's up to Terry to try to exonerate Marie, with a little help from his lineman skills.

I've Got Your Number is exactly the sort of programmer-length rapid-fire film that was perfect for the lower half of a bill back in the early 1930s. The plot goes from one point to the next extremely quickly and doesn't always quite make sense, although it never stops entertaining. Warner Bros. also threw in several of its supporting stars, notably a scene with Glenda Farrell as a phony psychic and Louise Beavers as her assistant phoning things in from another room. Ninety years on, of course, people will look at Pat O'Brien's character and be a bit horrified, because he really is nasty in the way he goes after women. As an example, he knocks over Marie's dining table, destroying her dinner and a good portion of her dishes, just so she'll go out for dinner with him.

Still, I've Got Your Number is a fun enough ride for fans of movies from the early 1930s.

Steamboat Round the Bend

Quite some time back, I recorded Steamboat Round the Bend on TCM. I recently noticed that there's a box set of Will Rogers movies that includes Steamboat Round the Bend, so recently I watched it to do a review on here.

Will Rogers plays "Doctor" John Pearly, one of those medicine-show quacks who plies his trade in a decrepit riverboat up and down the Louisiana/Mississippi section of the Mississippi River in the 1890s, having to deal with all sorts of people along the way, such as rival captains like Eli (Irvin Cobb), and revivalist preachers.

Into Doc Pearly's life comes young Fleety Belle (Anne Shirley). She's the girlfriend of Doc's nephew Duke (John McGuire). Duke, meanwhile, is in legal trouble. One of the rural types from Fleety Belle's community was also in love with her, and confronted Duke over it, resulting in an incident in which Duke killed the other man in apparent self-defense. The authorities didn't see it that way, however, largely because no witnesses could be found to corroborate Duke's story, the only one being one of those preachers calling himself "New Moses". So Duke is convicted and sentenced to be executed down in Baton Rouge.

Doc needs a good way to get the money to get better legal representation for Duke. One of those ways involves a discarded wax museum, which he picks up, and uses to turn his riverboat into an attraction. Not that any of the locals agree with it. Fleety Belle, for her part, is willing to break Duke out of jail, but Duke will have none of that, since he doesn't want Fleety Belle to wind up in legal trouble herself.

Eventually, Doc Pearly comes across a blockage in the river, as traffic is being stopped for the start of a race from that location to Baton Rouge, which coincidentally happens to be where Doc is trying to get to to see the governor about a possible retrial for Duke. What Doc doesn't realize is that the execution is being put off until after the race, or at least after Captain Eli's ship crosses the line first. So if Doc can take his old wreck of a riverboat and finish ahead of Eli, he might still have a chance to save Duke. And he might have a chance to find the New Moses along the way, too.

I have to admit to not having seen too many Will Rogers movies, so I'm not quite certain if Steamboat Round the Bend is typical of his films. His acting style is certainly different, and it's definitely going to be an acquired taste for the audiences of the 2020s. His folksy, gentle humor, however, is something that apparently really appealed to at least a certain segment of the American moviegoing population during the first half of the Depression, which is why Rogers was such a hit until his tragic death in a plane crash in Alaska not long after he completed filming on this movie.

The story in Steamboat Round the Bend is a bit of a mess, as it felt to me as though there were multiple disparate sublpots the writers were trying to mesh together, and it doesn't always work. With that in mind, it definitely helps to be a fan of Will Rogers. The supporting actors, however, are mostly given a scene or two each to shine, much to the movie's benefit.

If you haven't seen a Will Rogers movie before, do yourself a favor and give him a try.

Why does Stowaway seem so familiar to me?

Another of the movies that showed up in the FXM rotation recently is Stowaway. A search of the blog claims I haven't blogged about it before, so I decided to DVR it and watch to do a post on it the next time it shows up on FXM. That time is coming up, with an airing tomorrow (October 17) at 6:00 AM. However, having watched it, the movie seemed awfully familiar to me.

Temple plays Ching-Ching, real name Barbara Stewart, a girl whose parents died in China and who has been looked after by a missionary organization in a provincial town. This being the era when there was a civil war going on in China, the town is under threat from bandits of one stripe or another, so the missionaries decides this American girl should be sent to Shanghai, which is relatively safe.

So Ching-Ching and her dog are put on a boat headed for Shanghai, where her handler runs off with the money left for her. She wakes up all alone (well, except for the dog, and doesn't know anybody, so she gets up, gets off the boat, and goes wandering in town looking for a bone for her dog. It's there that she meets Tommy Randall (Robert Young), a playboy tourist trying to haggle with a store clerk who doesn't speak English. Ah, but little Ching-Ching speaks both English and Mandarin, so she's able to translate!

Tommy offers to get her a meal, and when he's at his club telling some of his expat friends about Ching-Ching, she gets out of the car because the dog runs off, only to hide in the trunk to get out of the rain. So Tommy doesn't know where she's gone, when he goes to have his car put aboard a boat bound for various Southeast Asian destinations.

Ching-Ching doesn't know what's going on, either, until she wakes up in the cargo hold of the ship and her dog starts barking, which makes the crew think there's a stowaway on board. (To be fair, little Ching-Ching is a stowaway, but not intentionally.) When she realizes the crew is chasing her, she runs off and hides in the cabin of one of the wealthier travelers.

You'd think that traveler is Tommy Randall, but no. Actually it's a pair of people, young Susan Parker (Alice Faye) and her future mother-in-law, Mrs. Hope (Helen Westley). They're travelling to meet Susan's fiancé Richard (Allan Lane). Mom is pissed, but Susan has sympathy. And when she runs into Tommy and tells her about the girl, Tommy finds that it's little Ching-Ching.

Now, if you've seen a Shirley Temple movie, you can probably guess where this one is going, which is part of the reason why I felt as though I might have seen this one. But there's more, such as a lullaby scene which seemed awfully familiar, along with much of the interaction between Young and Temple.

That having been said, there's really not a whole lot wrong with Stowaway. Alice Faye does well with her songs; Shirley Temple is as charming as always and gets a particularly fun song that has her imitating, among others, Al Jolson -- that particular impression is a hoot. The movie ends with a courtroom scene reminiscent of the one in Bright Eyes, except that this one is far more unrealistic, which is probably the movie's one big flaw. Eugene Pallette is underused as one of Randall's friends, while Arthur Treacher is hilarious as Randall's butler.

Anybody who wants a good family movie, however, will certainly enjoy Stowaway, which showcases Shirley Temple in the sort of role that made her immensely popular during the Depression. If I wanted to introduce people who didn't know what Temple was all about, there are some other of her movies that I'd recommend, like the aforementioned Bright Eyes, but you won't go wrong with Stowaway. It's available on DVD on one or another box set of Shirley Temple films.

The ghost may or may not go west

I recorded The Ghost Goes West last week when it was on TCM, and was planning to do a post on it in time for Halloween. Unfortunately, I failed to notice that the DVD is out of print, since it's a backorder at the TCM Shop and listed as unavailable at Amazon. Not having anything else to blog about, I'll break with my normal pattern and to a "please release me" post instead.

Robert Donat plays Murdoch Glourie, scion of a Scottish clan in the 18th century. The Scottish are planning to go off and fight the English, although Murdoch is rather more of a ladies' man than his ancestors ever were, something that irritates his father no end. Then there are the McLaggen clan, who make fun of Murdoch for his perceived cowardice. He does eventually go off with the intention to fight, but before he can get in the real fighting, he gets killed without having earned his honor. So he becomes a ghost, forever haunting the Glourie castle until he can bring a McLaggen to his knees.

Fast forward 200 years. Donald Glourie (also Robert Donat), the latest head of the Glourie clan, lives in the castle, although probably not for much longer as he's heavily in debt and the creditors are planning to sell off the castle to get the debts paid off. The only problem is the old Glourie ghost, who scares off potential buyers. That is, until an American family shows up. Lovely Peggy Martin (Jean Parker) is the daughter in the family, with Dad (Eugene Pallette) being a grocery magnate. Peggy likes the castle, although Mom doesn't want anything haunted. Peggy sees the ghost and falls in love with it, thinking it's Donald in costume since, after all, both characters are played by the same actor.

Eventually, Dad decides to buy the castle, but he's got an odd plan for it. As a nouveau riche American, his intention is to dismantle the castle, ship it to America, and rebuild it in Florida! Donald is going to go along to supervise the reconstruction, since he could use a job and he'll be near Peggy. Dad doesn't realize that if he does that, the ghost is going to go along for the ride. The ghost is supposed to come out at midnight every night, but where is he going to come out if the castle is dismantled? As it turns out, he shows up on a transatlantic liner, not knowing at first where he is. And the passengers are intrigued by the idea of a ghost, even if the ghost isn't intrigued by the passengers. Indeed, he doesn't like America at all.

Still, Mr. Martin sees the ghost as a great publicity ploy for business, with his chief grocery rival not believing in the existence of ghosts. And the ghost doesn't want to show up any more if it means showing up in America. How is everybody going to resolve the situation such that they can live happily ever after?

I have to admit that The Ghost Goes West took rather a long time to get where it was going, even though the movie is fairly short. (IMDb says 95 minutes; Amazon says 82; I thought the print I watched was a little under 80. So I have no idea what if anything might have been cut.) The portion of the movie in 18th century Scotland wasn't quite my cup of tea, but things really picked up once Eugene Pallette shows up. It's not that Donat is bad; it's just that I felt the script in the first half of the movie let him down a bit. Peters is OK, but pretty much any ingenue actress of the 1930s could have handled her role, which I felt was secondary to the men.

The Ghost Goes West was made in the UK by Alexander Korda producing and René Clair directing; this is probably the explanation for the lack of an in-print DVD release. Clair has an interesting resume when it comes to English-language movies; he also did I Married a Witch and It Happened Tomorrow, both of which are interesting fantasies. The Ghost Goes West is no less interesting. It really needs another DVD release.