Beast of the City

Mickey Rooney was TCM's Star of the Month in December 2024. As a juvenile actor at MGM, he made a lot of movies, including small roles before he became more of a leading actor with the Andy Hardy movies. One such child role that I haven't done a post on before is in The Beast of the City. Since I like pre-Codes and hadn't seen this movie before, I made a point of recording it to do a post on it. I finally got around to watching it and scheduling a post on it.

Rooney is obviously not the star here, although he plays the young son Mickey of the main character, a man named Jim Fitzpatrick (Walter Huston). Jim is a police detective with a big-city police department (I don't think a specific city is mentioned). He's got a reputation as someone who's so ticked off with the underworld violence that was plaguing America during Prohibition that he does things that step on some people's toes but that other people lionize him for doing. As the movie opens, we see a police dispatcher (uncredited character actor Edward Brophy) sending cops out for a bunch of petty stuff, like a skunk in a basement. But then the dispatcher mentions dead bodies in a place that clearly implies a gangland killing.

Fitzpatrick is the detective given the task of investigating. To Jim, it's obvious that these are two low-level gang members, and that the leader of the rival gang, Sam Belmonte (Jean Hersholt) is responsible even if he didn't actually pull the trigger. So Fitzpatrick goes to the nightclub that Belmonte runs to arrest him. But for a bunch of reasons, Belmonte is able to get off. One is that he didn't actually pull the trigger and has an alibi, but there's also the assumption that Belmonte has a bunch of pull with any number of corrupt members of the police department, which may include the police chief.

Jim has a wife and kids, as well as a brother Ed (Wallace Ford) who is also a policeman, serving on the vice squad. Jim wants to engage Ed's help in trying to bring down Belmonte. At a police lineup, we see Daisy Stevens (Jean Harlow), although eagle-eyed viewers will already have seen her in Belmonte's office. She's a stenographer, and presumably has an in to Belmonte. Ed meets Daisy and begins to fall in love with her, although this is a serious problem as it's a bad idea to have a relationship with gang-related molls. And Daisy is certainly going to try to get Ed into the gang's good graces.

Jim gets sent to a distant precinct in what's clearly political retribution, although he's got friends who are able to help his career by getting him involved with foiling a bank robbery. Combined with public outrage over the political types having demoted him, the old police chief is forced to resign and Jim is given the chief's job. He immediately sets about going after Belmonte. But there's the question of how legal his methods are, combined with the fact that his brother's relationship with the gang is an issue.

The Beast of the City opens with intertitles quoting then-president Herbert Hoover about the nature of the Mob and how what America needs is movies glorifying the police going after the Mob, as opposed to films like The Public Enemy. This is MGM's attempt to make the cops look good, although they didn't quite yet have the gloss that they would after Irving Thalberg died where movies would be technically well made even if that doesn't quite fit what the genres need. The Beast of the City is still clearly more MGM than, say, Warner Bros. which was a lot grittier in dealing with social issues. Walter Huston does well, although Jean Harlow in her supporting role is fabulously sexy. Although TCM ran this for the presence of Mickey Rooney, he understandably doesn't have much to do here (not that that's his fault).

The Beast of the City is a well-made early talkie that definitely deserves to be seen, even if it's not one of the all-time greats.

No need of Harry Anderson or Markie Post

I'm always up for an interesting pre-Code movie, so I was happy to see last year's Summer Under the Stars on TCM include a day of the films of Anita Page. One that I hadn't seen before is Night Court.

Anita Page plays the good girl, although we don't see her for a while. Instead we first see Walter Huston, who is the judge of the titular court, Judge Moffett. As the movie opens, he's in the judge's chambers, where he's visited by Lil (Noel Baker), who is his mistress. He's not happy about her visiting at court, especially when some reporters show up to ask him about the anti-corruption committee being chaired by one of his fellow judges, Osgood (Lewis Stone). One of the reporters figures that Moffett has a visitor in his office, when when Moffett realizes the committe is being formed, he realizes that he's in trouble.

Moffett goes to Park Avenue to see Lil. He's been paying for Lil to have that nice apartment, which also has a wall safe, from which he pulls a bunch of large-denomination bills. He's obviously one of the judges on the take that Osgood is going to be investigating, and he's smart enough to know that Lil could put the finger on him, especially if she's forced to testify under oath. So he tells Lil that she's going to have to vacate the Park Avenue apartment and find some place that's cheap and where the authorities won't be able to find her.

This is where we're finally about to meet Anita Page, although we're only about 15 minutes into the movie. Lil goes to one of the less fashionable parts of town and picks a place to rent that just happens to be in the same building where Page's character lives. Page plays Mary Thomas, a young housewife and mother of an infant child married to Mike (Phillips Holmes), a taxi driver who works the night shift.

Moffett goes to visit Lil, only to find out that Osgood's detectives are smart and seem to be following Lil already. Lil isn't stupid either, and goes to see Mary to give her a sob story about a detective who is working for some sort of abusive partner with whom Lil no longer wants to be partnered. During the visit, Mary's kid pulls something out of Lil's pocketbook, which turns out to be a bank book (remember those) with a large set of figures, and Judge Moffett's name, in it. When Mary returns it to Lil, Judge Moffett realizes that he's in trouble, thinking that Mary actively knows what's going wrong when she doesn't.

At the point the movie gets really fun, if unrealistic, as Moffett has Mary framed to be the worst sort of criminal possible, resulting in her winding up in prison and Mike losing custody of the baby. How the rest of this plays out is something you're just going to have to watch Night Court to find out.

Night Court is another of those pre-Codes that has a fun if not quite plausible premise that turns into something that's more fun than it has any right to be. Poor Mike and Mary seem to have one burden after another heaped upon the in the second half of the movie. Unsurprisingly, Walter Huston is quite good as the corrupt judge. Lewis Stone doesn't have a whole lot to do, and frankly neither does Anita Page. Phillips Holmes is one of those early sound era actors whose careers didn't go quite as far as it should have, although in his case it was partly his own doing thanks to a car crash. Holmes, however, is quite good here.

Night Court is definitely worth watching, especially if you have an interest in pre-Codes.

Not the terrible Michael Crichton book/movie

I mentioned yesterday that I had two movies on my DVR coming up on TCM in quick succession. In fact, I think I've got more than that, although I didn't notice at the time I did the post on The Outriders. The next movie watched off my DVR is Kongo, which TCM will be showing tomorrow (Mar. 5) at 6:00 AM.

Walter Huston is the star here, playing a man named Flint. As we first see him, he's descending a rope from his bedroom on the upper floor of a building, and then crawling across the floor to a wheelchair. Flint is paralyzed from the waist down, and living somewhere in the jungles of central Africa, together with Tula (Lupe Velez), who is apparently his fiancée; and two factotums, Hogan and Cookie. Why the two men stay there, I have no idea, but apparently Flint has some sort of Svengali-like power over people. He's also going mad; he marks time by the month on a sign on the wall that says, "He sneered".

Presumably before coming to Africa, Flint was a stage magician in the States, because he performs magic tricks for the native tribe. Except, he's doing this to make them believe that he's some sort of god, so that they'll do his bidding, and make the area around where he lives forbidding for anyone he doesn't want to enter "his" territory. That, and he's been staying in Africa and marking time for reasons that are about to become clear.

In that distant past, just before he started marking time, Flint had a wife. But she ran off with an ivory trader, Gregg (C. Henry Gordon), and had a kid. Somehow, Flint was able to pay for the kid to be put in a convent school, and she's about to turn 18. So Flint is going to take "custody" of the kid, Ann (Virginia Bruce), and bring her to this middle-of-nowhere place as a way of inducing Gregg to come here as well. In addition to Ann, Flint also obtains a doctor, Kingsland (Conrad Nagel), in the hopes that Kingsland can perform an operation on him. Kingsland is addicted to one of the plant-based drugs in the region, and Flint is able to use that to maintain his control over Kingsland.

Flint's ultimate scheme is to have Gregg die while with Flint. Apparently, the natives have some sort of religious belief whereby if the father dies before marrying off the daughter, the daughter has to be sacrificed as well. So Flint's now obvious plan is to have Gregg die, which means that Gregg's daughter will never know happiness either. Of course, that plan is complicated by the other people in it not wanting to go through with it. Ann tries to nurse Kingsland back to health, and along the way, the two of them fall in love. They're both innocent, so they're going to have to try to make an escape as part of the movie's climax.

Kongo is apparently a remake of the silent West of Zanzibar, which I have not yet seen. Kongo, seen not in comparison to any previous version, is an interesting if bizarre little movie, and one that's got all sorts of plot messes. Why did any of these people stay with Flint in the first place? And how is Flint able to get all the props he needs for his magic tricks, as well as the copious amounts of western-style alcohol? Ah, don't pay any attention to these plot holes. Just enjoy the weird little movie.

Summer Holiday

TCM aired a bunch of movies suitable for Independence Day back on July 4. One of them was Ah, Wilderness!, which has a prominent scene set on Independence Day. Ah, Wilderness was turned into a musical by MGM a dozen years later. That musical, retitled Summer Holiday did not air on July 4, but does get a showing tomorrow, July 28, a 10:00 AM.

Mickey Rooney appeared in both movies, but obviously in different roles since he had become an adult in the intervening years. In Summer Holiday, he plays Richard Miller, a 17-year-old who is about to graduate from high school in a small town in Connecticut circa 1905. This is one of those towns that's a Hollywood nostalgia vision of what small-town life was like for middle-class families: Dad (Walter Huston) is the editor for the local paper; Mom (Selena Royle) is a housewife who surprisingly doesn't have a housekeeper; there's an older and younger brother; and also living with them are Uncle Sid (Frank Morgan) on Dad's side of the family and Mom's cousin Lily (Agnes Moorehead).

Richard has a high school sweetheart living right across the street in the form of equally middle-class Muriel (Gloria DeHaven), and Richard already knows he's going to marry her when he graduates from Yale in four years' time. However, there are some twists and turns along the way. One is that Richard has been reading works by revolutionary socialists, at a time when none of them had really taken over any European countries to show just how disastrous socialism in practice can be (never mind the trope about "real" socialism never having been tried). Richard plans to put some of this propaganda into his valedictory speech, but Dad fortunately finds out and comes up with a way to cut the speech off and make it look natural. That would be enough later for Muriel's father to want to put the kibosh on Muriel's relationship with Richard, but then there are the love letters he wrote her.

Meanwhile, among the family drama in the Miller home is Uncle Sid's drinking. It's prevented him from holding down a good job, and at one point he tries by going off to the big city only to get fired. If it weren't for that drinking, he'd be a natural pairing for spinster cousin Lily. Sid's drinking, however, is good for one thing in that it wins him a drinking competition at the town's Fourth of July celebrations.

But back to Richard; he having been dumped by Muriel's father and not realizing that it was he and not Muriel who forced the breakup, Richard decides to go out and experience "real" adulthood but hooking up with chorus girl Belle (Marilyn Maxwell) and going to a bar, even though he's underage. Richard acts as though he's got experience, but of course he doesn't, and so is unable to hold his liquor or his woman.

Summer Holiday is, however, a Freed Unit musical from MGM, so you have to expect that the ending is going to be one that leaves the audiences exiting the theater in a happy mood. How we get there is an exercise for the viewer.

I have to say that I really enjoyed Ah, Wilderness! (in which Rooney plays the kid brother, played here by Butch Jenkins) a lot more than Summer Holiday. I think a good portion of that is because the material doesn't really work so well as a musical. It also doesn't help that the songs aren't the highest quality. Maybe one song as background music during the Fourth of July sequence, but multiple mediocre songs (like the one about the Stanley Steamer) just brings the movie to a screeching halt. That's a shame in some ways because the source material should be so good. On the bright side, however, is that one can always go back and watch Ah, Wilderness! instead.

The parade of wetness

One of those titles that I saw show up on TCM several times over the years, but that for some reason I didn't think I'd ever gotten around to watching, is The Wet Parade. So the last time it was on, I made a point of recording it, so that I could finally watch it. (In fact, I had never seen it before.) That viewing recently occured, so now you get the review.

The opening credits have multiple screens for the cast, one screen mentioning the southerners, followed by a second screen for the northerners. The action then opens, in Louisiana in 1916, the bucolic Louisiana of plantations, riverboats, and Stephen Foster music where everything moves a little more slowly. Roger Chilcote Sr. (Lewis Stone) is the head of one of those gracious mansions, except that the house is in a more parlous state than perhaps he realizes. The family is apparently heavily in debt, and Dad is exacerbating the situation by drinking heavily and then gambling away the family's savings. His daughter Maggie May (Dorothy Jordan) is terrified of what's going to happen to Dad, but son Roger Jr. (Neil Hamilton) cares more about the book he's working on. Eventually, Dad realizes what he's done financially and, because he's already been drinking himself to death, he's sick and decided to kill himself. Dad's friends want to drink to Dad one last time, but Maggie May is horrified.

Roger Jr. moves north to New York to work on his book just in time for the Great War to come calling, with Woodrow Wilson getting Congress to declare war. Roger Jr. takes a room in a rooming house run by the Tarleton family. Or, more precisely, it's run by Mrs. Tarleton (Clara Blandick) and her son Kip (Robert Young). Dad (Walter Huston) is there too, but like the father in the Chilcote family, he's taken to the bottle much to the consternation of Mrs. Tarleton and Kip.

As I said, the Great War comes, and one of the consequences is the belief in a certain portion of the population is that grain which could go to feeding the soldiers "over there" is being used instead to make all sorts of intoxicating distilled spirits, and that the natural way to deal with this is by the prohibition of alcohol. Woodrow Wilson wouldn't go along with this, so the states realized they needed to amend the Constitution, which of course does happen, bringing the Prohibition era to the land.

Of course, Prohibition didn't stop people from drinking alcohol; it just made doing so illegal, and brought in all sorts of crime to the provision of alcohol to those who still wanted to drink it. Against the backdrop of all this, Maggie May comes north to meet her brother, and falls in love with Kip because both of them hate the demon liquor and are consequently horrified by Roger Jr.'s drinking. Things get worse when Pow is drinking in the basement of the rooming house against his wife's wishes. She tries to stop him, and he responds by beating her to deaath. This leads to the final act of the movie in which Kip joins the Feds to fight bootleggers.

The Wet Parade is an odd little movie, or perhaps I should say an odd big movie because MGM brought out so many of its second tier of stars and gave it a two-hour running time. In addition to those I've mentioned, there's also Jimmy Durante as Kip's parter in the Feds, and Myrna Loy before she became a big star opposite William Powell, here playing a speakeasy boss.

The Wet Parade is also a bit odd in that it rather hedges its bets on what side it's taking in all of the issues it covers. Although on the one hand it has decidedly anti-alcohol lead characters in the two played by Robert Young and Dorothy Jordan, it also has no lack of sympathy for the idea that Prohibition leads to worse consequences than the negative outcomes of alcohol still being legal. All the way, however, it's a compelling movie and a good example of how pre-Code movies could show not just lurid sex, but violence as well. Definitely worth a watch if you haven't seen it before.

Lil Dagover

Shortly before my DVR died, I watched The Woman from Monte Carlo. It's available on a Warren William box set, so I'm comfortable doing a full-length review here.

The scene is France's Mediterranean coast in 1914, so just before the start of World War I. Captain Corlaix (Walter Huston) is the captain of the Lafayette a French warship pulling into port. He knows there's a possibility of the war about to break out, discussing a secret code for a friendly ship to pass. Also, his men are ordered to stay on board and not go into port because of the tense situation.

However, there's a party for the officers' and sailors' wives, and among those is Lottie Corlaix (Lil Dagover). When she gets on board the ship, she sees that one of her husband's officers is Lt. d'Ortelles (Warren William), which is a problem since she has a past with him and Capt. Corlaix wouldn't be happy knowing that his wife was less than fully faithful with him. Also on board is Brambourg (John Wray), who also knows that Mme. Corlaix has a past, even if he doesn't fully know what it is.

I mentioned it was 1914 and that the situation is tense, and sure enough all of the wives are going to have to get off the boat because it looks like there really is going to be a war. However, Lottie has been busy seeing d'Ortelles, and fails to get off the boat in time, so it's already pulling out into the open ocean! It's not as if she can jump out a porthole and swim back to shore without being noticed, so she has to hide in d'Ortelles' cabin.

Meanwhile, Brambourg is doing a "lights out" inspection that requires him to go to every cabin, so there's a good chance that he's going to catch d'Ortelles and Lottie together. While he's in d'Ortelles' cabin, the two see the code that Capt. Corlaix was talking about at the beginning of the movie. But: it turns out that some spies had gotten a hold of the code, because this isn't a friendly ship, and it winds up attacking the Lafayette, with a substantial loss of life!

Unsurprisingly, there's a naval court of inquiry, and even though we know Capt. Corlaix is in the right, his defense doesn't have the evidence to prove it. Brambourg is seemingly the spy, having no desire to tell the truth that he saw the code given. As for d'Ortelles, he was wounded in the brief naval battle and has been in a naval hospital delirious ever since, so he's in no condition to testify. And even if he could testify, his health means his testimony would be discounted in favor of Brambourg's.

Ah, but there's one other witness to it all: Lottie. The only problem is, she wasn't supposed to be there, and if she gives her evidence, everybody is going to know that she and d'Ortelles were having an affair, which is also a bit of a problem.

This is based on a play which apparently starred Jeanne Eagels in its first American showing; and if the film has a weakness it's that the stage origins really show. All of the leads try but the material is ground that' been covered quite a few times in movie history and so this isn't the best work for most of the cast. It's not notably bad; it's just that it's also not notably great.

The one person worth mentioning is Lil Dagover. She was a European actress, born in the Dutch East Indies to German parents and became a silent film star in Germany, most notably in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. With the advent of sound movies and the popularity of both Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich, other Hollywood studios wanted their own exotic European actresses, so Warner Bros. brought Dagover to Hollywood to make this movie. She's really too old for the part but other than that isn't bad. However, she never made another movie in Hollywood, instead going back to Germany to continue a long acting career.

Dragonwyck

A search of the blog suggests that I haven't posted about Dragonwyck before. It's going to be on FXM tomorrow morning at 8:05 AM, and it doesn't seem to be in print on DVD, so you're going to have to catch the FXM showing.

Gene Tierney plays Miranda Wells, eldest daughter in a family working a tiny farm in Connecticut in 1844. One day, the family gets a letter from a distant cousin, Nicholas Van Ryn. Van Ryn is what was known as a patroon, that is, a Dutch-descended landowner in New York who held large tracts of land farmed by tenant farmers. Nicholas has a wife and daughter, and wants Miranda to be a governess to the daughter. Miranda wants to escape her life in Connecticut, but her ultra-religious father Ephraim (Walter Huston) has a very dim view of the outside world, especially people like Van Ryn who are rich enough to be wasteful.

Still, Dad ultimately relents and lets Miranda do the Van Ryn's estate of Dragonwyck on the Hudson River. At first it's a sort of big adventure for Miranda, but it's not going to be a bed of roses for her. On her very first night, the maid gives off some very bad vibes that lead the viewer to understand things aren't right. The other members of high society look down on Miranda for not knowing anybody or anything, and there's trouble brewing with the tenant farmers, led by Bleecker (Harry Morgan) who doesn't want to pay the annual rent. The only adult who seems to have Miranda's best interests at heart is Dr. Turner (Glenn Langan), who is Mrs. Van Ryn's personal physician.

Mrs. Van Ryn seems a bit sickly, and one night she gets a sudden attack of something and dies right then. Dr. Turner is worried because he can't figure out what killed her, while for Miranda, it means the end of her time at Dragonwyck, or so she thinks as she goes back to Connecticut. Nicholas comes calling with unrevealed sinister intentions. The first Mrs. Van Ryn had not been able to bear Nicholas a son to take over as the patroon, and Nicholas, desperately wanting a son, asks Miranda to marry him. She doesn't realize how much danger she's about to be in....

Dragonwyck is a good enough gothic drama, although not quite what I had remembered it as being from my previous viewing many years ago. Tierney is as lovely to look at as always, and Price is suitably sinister. I do, however, prefer their pairing in Laura and their work together in Leave Her to Heaven. Dragonwyck is, by comparison, lesser stuff.

This is not to say that Dragonwyck is bad. If you like the actors, or historical drama released in back of those days, you'll definitely enjoy it. It's more that if I were going to introduce people to either these actors or the genre, there are other movies that I would start off with, and leave this one until later for people who are more receptive.

The Outlaw

TCM ran The Outlaw last month. Not having blogged about it before, I DVRed it so that I could re-watch to do a post. The movie has a reputation that precedes itself, but as for the actual movie? Well, that's as interesting as its reputation, but for different reasons.

The movie opens with Doc Holliday (Walter Huston) showing up in the town of Lincoln in the New Mexico Territory. His horse has been stolen, as he tells his old friend who's now the sheriff, Pat Garrett (Thomas Mitchell). Who should show up with a horse that looks suspiciously like Holliday's? Why, it's William Bonney (Jack Beutel), better known as Billy the Kid. He claims to have bought the horse legitimately, although Doc isn't so sure.

Billy the Kid is known around the Southwest for being a gunfighter, which makes the sheriff none too happy, and he'd like to get Billy out of town immediately, even though there's no stage until the next morning. And sure enough, Billy gets involved in gunfights, first with one other guy and then with a bunch of men the sheriff sends to deal with Billy. Since somebody ultimately dies, Billy and Doc have to head out.

Doc has a lady friend in young Rio (Jane Russell), who lives with Guadalupe (Mimi Aguglia). So Doc takes the wonded Billy there in hopes that he can recover. Guadalupe isn't thrilled to have Billy around, and is frankly hoping he'll die, but Rio finds this young man hot in spite of his near-death situation. However, Doc seems to think she should be his girlfriend, so he's not very pleased with her treatment of Billy.

Eventually, Billy recovers, and he and Doc have to head out to safety so that the sheriff and his men won't chase. But there's the unresolved issue of Rio, as well as the dispute over the horse. Further complicating matters is that some of the Indians decide to attack, leaving all the white folk running for their lives....

The Outlaw is a bizarre little movie that has no bearing in reality. Although the three male characters are all based on real people, as far as I could tell none of them had relationships like the ones depicted in the movie. Indeed, there's an undercurrent throughout the movie that could easily lead you to believe that Doc and Billy are gay lovers like Bert and Ernie. But, at the same time, it's made fairly clear that Rio has been sleeping with Billy. It's a really strange plot.

Then there's the direction, which was handled by Howard Hughes after Howard Hawks left the project. I found the direction risibly bad, looking like a bad Saturday matinee western with characters standing around declaiming their lines. Hughes obviously intended the movie as a vehicle for his two new stars, particularly Russell, whose ample assets are on as full display as the production code would permit. And then there was the score. Large portions of it were lifted straight from Tchaikovsky, and didn't fit the action on screen at all. Other portions were bad derivatives of B movie cues. I usually only tend to notice a score if it's jarringly bad, and this one certainly fits that description.

The Outlaw is a movie that should be seen for its place in Hollywood history. But it's really not very good.

Report from the Aleutians

TCM is honoring Walter Huston today, even though I think it was yesterday that was his birth anniversary. I probably should have mentioned Report from the Aleutians a bit earlier, but it's on at 3:00 PM today as part of the salute.

This is another of those movies that was made during World War II by the filmmakers who were enlisted into service; in this case it's John Huston who directed. Japan actually captured two of the Aleutian islands off the coast of Alaska at the start of the US involvement in World War II, and so the US stationed a whole bunch of men on the other Aleutians to stem Japan's advance, and possibly as a precursor to the eventual invasion of Japan's Home Islands that never occurred. Charlton Heston was stationed on the Aleutians, and he mentioned in the Private Screenings interview he did with Robert Osborne that he thinks the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved his life: being stationed on the Aleutians, he knew that he'd be in the early waves of forces invading the Home Islands and that meant a likely death.

As for Walter Huston, he's here in voiceover. The movie is worth a watch for its historical value, and for its Technicolor photography. If you've got Amazon Prime and do the streaming thing you can stream it for no additional cost, but there are also DVDs available.

December 7

On tonight's third installment of the TCM Spotlight, Five Came Back, Ben Mankiewicz and Mark Harris will be discussing director John Ford. Among the movies airing is the interesting docudrama December 7, at 11:45 PM.

Assuming you all know your history, you should know that December 7 refers to the date in 1941 when Japan attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, an attack which caused the US to enter World War II. But it takes a while before this movie gets to the actual attack. Instead, it starts off with a sequence involving Uncle Sam (Walter Huston), and a "Mr C." (Harry Davenport), who is apparently supposed to be the conscience of Uncle Sam or something. Uncle Sam is enjoying himself on what is for him a Hawaiian vacation, since this sequence is set before December 7, 1941. Mr C., however, gets into a debate with Uncle Sam as to what the "true" nature of the Japanese-Americans in Hawaii is. After all, many of them have apparently reatken Japanese citizenship thanks to a law that allowed them dual citizenship, and they may be spying for Japan against America. As we already learned from Resisting Enemy Interrogation, it's amazing what information the enemy can get just by being patient and listening to people inadvertently drop secrets.

All that out of the way, we then get into the meat of the film, which is a look at how the US could have dropped the ball so badly in allowing Japan to attack Pearl Harbor and inflict so much damage. One of the things mentioned in looking at the attack is that the Americans had radar, but didn't use it (to be fair, it was a relatively new technology at the time). This and other mentions of American incompetence caused problems at the Department of the Navy, which commissioned the film. There were things that they probably wanted to be kept secret, even though this was ostensibly more for the Navy than for the general public. That, and I don't think they liked having their incompetence laid bare in front of the general public. So the Navy Department had what was originally an 80-minute movie, and had it edited down ultimately to a two-reeler. Amazingly, that two-reel version won an Oscar for Best Documentary Short.

Finally, ending the movie is a look at the people who lost their lives in the Pearl Harbor attack, with a very young Dana Andrews at the beginning of his career playing the ghost of one of those dead soldiers.

December 7 is a difficult movie to give a rating to, largely because it doesn't really fit into any genre very well. I called it a docudrama at the beginning, and that's partly right. But it's almost propaganda as much as it is documentary. And the debate between Uncle Sam and Mr. C. is strange, to say the least. All in all, however, the result winds up being something that's quite interesting. The full 80-minute version is now available again, and it is that version which TCM showed last December the last time I saw it on the schedule. It is presumably also that version which will be airing tonight, since the schedule lists it as being about 80 minutes.