Caesar's Wife

Somerset Maugham was an exceedingly prolific writer. Or at least it seems that way; maybe it's more that his works are the sort of things that were considered suitable for turning into movies. Some of the famous ones include The Letter and The Razor's Edge, but there's a ton more out there. A movie that I didn't realize was based on a Maugham play until I sat down to watch it is Another Dawn.

Errol Flynn is the star here, playing Denny Roark. He's a pilot with the British military in one of their possessions in Arabia, serving under Col. Wister (Ian Hunter). For some reason, Denny's sister Grace (Frieda Inescort) also lives in the area, which I'd have thought unlikely. In any case, as Denny returns from a mission having survived by the sking of his teeth, he gets some good news from Wister who, in addition to being his commanding officer, is also a friend. Wister has to take two months' leave for reasons, and is going to be going home to England for the time. Denny is getting a temporary promotion to commander, which is good career advancement for him.

On the same boat as Wister is Julia Ashton (Kay Francis). She's an American going to England for reasons, and is being pursued on board ship by a businessman in whom she has absolutely no interest. Wister saves Julia from this guy's advances, and the two become friends, although this being prim and proper England under George V, it's not going to go any further just yet. Wouldn't you know it, however, but Julia is staying with the same friends in England that Wister is staying with, so they keep seeing each other.

Wister immediately falls in love with Julia, but the feeling isn't mutual. It's not that Julia has anything against Wister; instead, she was engaged to the sort of pilot who in those days would have been considered an explorer. He went out one evening on an experimental flight and never returned, with no evidence of his plane ever having been found. Presumably, he crashed into the Irish Sea and the plane sank with him drowning. But Julia is still in mourning for her late boyfriend and can't love anybody else. However, since Wister is so nice, and she knows she can never love anybody, she agrees to make Wister happy by marrying him. She does consider him a friend, after all.

Wister and his new wife get back to the Arab sheikdom where he and Denny are stationed. Julia gets off the train and Denny sees her, treating her like a perfect gentleman because he doesn't realize who she is: Wister hasn't seen any need to wire ahead that he's returning with a wife. Denny, like his commanding officer, falls in love with Julia, which is obviously going to be quite awkward when he finds out that this woman is married to his commanding officer. But how is the love triangle going to be resolved?

One subplot in Another Dawn, which is frankly not well handled, involves Wister's manservant Wilkins (Herbert Mundin). Wilkins goes back to England with Wister, and is given a give by some of his fellow soldiers. That gift is a box of white feathers which, if you've seen the movie The Four Feathers, you'll know means his fellow soldiers consider him a coward. It's so obvious that this is foreshadowing for something that happens later in the movie, and frankly, it's a subplot that doesn't do very much to advance the movie.

As for the rest of Another Dawn, it's the sort of drama where you can see why one of the studios of the 1930s would want to acquire it and turn it into a movie. There's a fairly good love triangle story at its heart, and the sort of story that would have given a studio ample opportunity to open up the action what with the exotic setting (not that there would have been any location shooting, of course). The cast does a good job with their roles, although the movie is ultimately just a programmer. A competent programmer, but a programmer nevertheless. I think that's why Another Dawn is not as well remembered as some of the other movies based on stories by Somerset Maugham.

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.

The Secret Bride

Barbara Stanwyck was the TCM Star of the month back in early 2025, and surprisingly there were some of her films that I hadn't seen before. So I recorded a couple, and I think I'm getting to the last of the films from the tribute that I recorded. The movie in question is The Secret Bride.

Now, the marriage isn't a secret to the viewer, as it happens right at the beginning of the movie. Robert Sheldon (Warren William) is the Attorney General of an unnamed state, and he's run off to get eloped to Ruth Vincent (Barbara Stanwyck) right at the beginning of the movie. Part of the reason for the elopement is that Ruth is the adult daughter of the governor. After the wedding in front of a justice of the peace, Robert calls his office to tell them he'll be back soon. Picking up the phone is Robert's secretary/assistant Hazel Normandie (Glenda Farrell). She hands the phone to Dave Breeden (Douglass Dumbrille), who is Robert's chief investigator as well as Hazel's boyfriend. Dave tells Robert he's going to pick up somebody on a tip, but can't go into details over the phone.

Cut to a bank just as it's opening up. Being let in by the security guard is Willis Martin (Grant Mitchell). Willis is making a deposit of $10,000 in cash, but it's to the personal account that's not his, as we soon learn because he's picked up by the authorities -- that tip Dave mentioned obviously is about this deposit and both who it's from, and whose account is getting it. Willis is the executive assistant to one J.F. Holdstock, a businessman who was sent to prison on fiancial fraud crimes but was pardoned by the current governor. The clear implication is that the deposit will be seen as Holdstock having bribed the governor for the pardon. Worse is that not long after this, Holdstock is found dead of a suicide, which is an implicit admission of guilt.

Now, Sheldon is loyal to the governor, and knows that the governor didn't really engage in any wrongdoing. But there's a problem, which is that marriage to the governor's daughter. If that comes out, then nobody will believe the Attorney General is acting independently. Nowadays, a special prosecutor would be appointed and people would act like the special prosecutor is independent and unbiased. But they didn't have things like that back in the day.

It gets worse when Breeden comes to see Sheldon that evening. Sheldon has brought Ruth back to his place, and Hazel is working there as well. So when Breeden comes, Hazel goes out to the courtyard to meet him. In the courtyard, Breeden gets shot and killed! Now, we know that the angle he was shot from should exonerate Hazel, never mind the fact that we've seen it. I'd have thought that Breeden was shot from far enough away that Hazel wouldn't have had time to get into the position from which the shooter took the shot. But a small handgun that Hazel had purchased is found at the scene and is determined to be the murder weapon. So for these obvious reasons she's put on trial. Ruth saw what happened, too. But, if she were to testify, it would reveal that she's married to Robert, which would likely end his and the governor's careers because of that controversy over the apparent cash-for-pardon scheme.

The Secret Bride was released in December 1934, a few months after the Production Code really took effect, so you can guess that the good guys are going to win in the end. And the Ruth Vincent and Robert Sheldon characters are never portrayed as anything less than good. Maybe they're a bit naïve in the way they're acting, but they're clearly not on the take. So that's part of the flaw that The Secret Bride has. The movie has to get to a certain end, and the way it gets there and resolves all the plot issues is a bit too convoluted for its own good.

However, if you don't pay too close attention to the plot, you'll find that The Secret Bride is a fine example of the Warner Bros. programmer as it was in the mid-1930s. It's a brisk 64 minutes, and never stops moving -- and frankly never stops being entertaining either. It moves so fast that I can easily see audiences of the day not particularly caring about the plot holes, and remains worth a watch 90 years on.

Fate Without Music

I was looking at the upcoming TCM schedule, and noticed that tomorrow, April 7, at 8:00 AM, you can catch the Howard Keel musical version of Kismet. It's from 1955, based on a then-recent musical, with the musical being based on an old stage play from the turn of the last century. That play had already been turned into a non-musical movie on multiple occasions, most notably a 1944 MGM Technicolor production also titled Kismet. I have that 1944 version sitting on my DVR, so I figure that now wouldn't be a bad time to do a post on it.

Thankfully, the movie has some opening narration that greatly helps to explain everything that's going on in the movie. The setting is Baghdad in its golden age, or "old Baghdad when it was new and shiny" as the narrator tells us. Hafiz (Ronald Colman) is a beggar by day who has somehow obtained some fancy clothes that enable him to go out at night disguising himself as a prince, calling himself Prince Hassir. It's as his prince that he makes his way into the palace of the Grand Vizier where he meets the Vizier's Macedonian wife Jamilla (Marlene Dietrich). But we're getting ahead of ourselves here.

Also given prominence in the opening narration is the nominal ruler of the empire, the Caliph (James Craig). The Caliph is smart enough to know that his advisers are going to engage in toadyism and tell him whatever they think he wants to hear, and that those things aren't necessarily going to be the truth. So he escapes from his own palace at night, dressing in regular clothes and passing himself off as the son of the royal gardener. This he does in order to be able to find out what his subjects honestly think. What they think isn't pretty, of course. But this going out at knight is also what brings him into contact with Hafiz as Hassir. One other person the Caliph meets is Marsinah (Joy Page). He falls in love with her, not knowing that she's really the daughter of Hafiz. Hafiz, meanwhile, has been feeding Marsinah a bunch of lies about how she's going to marry a prince and her life will be one of luxury.

Now, as I said earlier, Hafiz meets Jamilla, and is taken with her. The feeling is mutual, although Jamilla is smart enough to know that Hassir is a disguise as there's no real Prince Hassir in Baghdad. After all, the arrival of a prince would be big news, especially in the palaces. In any case, Jamilla is also the wife of the Vizier, played by Edward Arnold. Edward Arnold's casting is a sign that the Vizier is the baddie in the piece. While the Caliph is the nominal power, the Vizier fancies himself as the real power, and he's going to get into a power struggle with the Caliph. He also meets Hassir when Hafiz gets himself invited to the Vizier's place by posing as the prince. This is, unfortunately, going to cause a great deal of legal difficulty for Hafiz when the Vizier figures out the deception. But it also is what really puts the plot into motion for the second half of the movie.

Kismet received four Oscar nominations (which is why TCM aired it -- as part of 31 Days of Oscar) in various technical categories. It's easy to see why the movie picked up those nominations, but not for any of the more traditionally prestigious categories like acting or direction. The movie is certainly lovely to look at, and to be fair to the actors they do a reasonably good job with the material even if none of them look Arab. What makes this version of Kismet a movie that's not as well remembered as other 1940s classics is, I think, the screenplay, which is slow to develop and tends to meander, as if the screenwriters couldn't quite decide what to do.

That isn't to say this version of Kismet is bad. It's more to say that you wonder whether a truly classic movie could have been made from the material. I have yet to see the musical version, so maybe that musical will be the classic.

Ayn Rand does Cyrano de Bergerac

One of those old movies I'd seen show up several times on the TCM schedule but never got around to recording or watching was the 1945 film Love Letters. With that in mind, the last time it ran on TCM, I made a point to put it on my DVR to get around to watch later. I've finally watched it, so now you get the review.

The movie starts off in Italy in World War II. Serving near enough to the front to hear the bombs are Alan Quinton (Joseph Cotten) and his friend Roger Morland. Roger has a girlfriend back in England named Victoria (Jennifer Jones), but Roger isn't much of a romantic, so he has Alan write the love letters to Victoria on behalf, which seems like nonsense since surely Victoria would recognize this as not her fiancé's writing. Worse, however, is that Alan realizes he's falling in love with Victoria even though he's never met her, while Victoria is in love with the letters, not with Roger.

At any rate, the letters are about to stop in part because Alan doesn't want to write any more, while Roger is going to be going back to England anyhow to train as a paratrooper. And on top of that, Alan gets injured in combat too and faces a lengthy recuperation before going back to England, no longer having to fight in the war. Roger visits Alan's parents, and has them tell Alan that he's married Victoria.

Some months later, Alan finally returns to England and visits his parents. He's had an aunt die in the meantime and bequeath him a place in County Essex, which is good because he knows that's near Longreach, which is the place where Victoria lived. However, Victoria isn't going to be around since Roger died in an accident before Alan got back to England. Meanwhile, Alan also has a fiancée himself, except that he's come to learn that since writing all those letters to Victoria, he's no longer in love with his fiancée.

Unfortunately, by this time Roger has died in an accident. Alan's brother tries to cheer him up by taking him to a party, wher he meets a woman named Dilly who happens to know Victoria and realizes that a drunken Alan is talking about Victoria when he talks about having written those letters for Roger in Italy. Alan finally goes to Longreach, only to learn that Victoria is dead too, which is not actually the case. The real truth is that Dilly is Victoria's cargiver, and that Victoria stabbed Roger to death, only to immediately develop a case of amnesia, taking the name Singleton. Dilly is terrified of what's going to happen should Singleton remember that she's really Victoria and especially if Victoria figures out she's talking to the guy who actually wrote those love letters for Roger.

Love Letters has what to me is a fairly ridiculous premise, but one that I suppose will appeal to people who like a certain type of romantic movie, such as Random Harvest. Not that I liked Random Harvest, although for me Love Letters didn't sink to being quite as mawkish as Random Harvest. Still, Love Letters is definitely another of those movies where you're going to need to watch and draw your own conclusions.

Man Wanted

I'm always up for watching another Kay Francis movie. One that I hadn't seen before and showed up on TCM a little while back was a pre-Code film called Man Wanted, so I made a point of recording it and watching it.

Francis obviously doesn't play the man, but the woman who more or less winds up wanting the man. She plays Lois Ames, a woman who is actually in the world of business, editing a high society magazine called The 400. Perhaps more surprisingly is that she's married, although her huband Fred (Kenneth Thomson) seems more interested in living the good life and being a bit of a playboy, including stepping out on his wife. Lois, for her part, seems more married to her job, but that's probably as much Hollywood making a moral judgment about women that high up in the working world as it is the truth. It's to the part that her long-suffering secretary is sick of having to work nights.

Enter Tommy Sherman (David Manners). He's a salesman working for an exercise equipment company in the days when exercise equipment was quite expensive. He actually goes off to clients' homes and offices to demonstrate the equipment, which is how he's about to meet Lois. Tommy, meanwhile, has a best friend in Andy (Andy Devine), and is engaged to Ruthie (Una Merkel), the perfect working-to-middle-class couple. At least, until Tommy meets Lois. It just happens to be on the very same day when Lois' secretary has finally gotten fed up with all those nights working, and quits right then and there. Tommy decides to offer himself up for the job, at least on an emergency basis.

Surprisingly, Tommy shows himself to be adept at the job of executive assistant, quickly making himself indispensible to Lois. This, as you can guess, causes all sorts of problems. Lois, after all, still has a husband, even if he is cheating on her and she's about to find that out once and for all. And now Ruthie is about to become similarly suffering. Worse for Tommy is that when Andy consoles Ruthie, he starts to fall in love with Ruthie and thinks about putting the moves on Ruthie himself!

Man Wanted is a movie that has a lot of potential, but one that I felt unfortunately couldn't figure out a good way to resolve all the plot developments it had built up. It's a pre-Code, so it doesn't have to adhere to the strictures that a post-1934 movie would, but the ending still seemed a bit anodyne to me. Worse is that it all comes across as so old hat and not particularly memorable compared to other pre-Codes, and I don't mean old-hat and dated simply because it's from over 90 years ago.

Still, fans of any of the principal stars here will probably find something to like about Man Wanted.

Fashions of 1934

My posts here have been a bit more about more recent movies for a little while now, which is mostly because I've been seeing some of the more recent stuff that I have on my DVR showing up on one movie channel or another, leading me to want to do a post on it. Something rather older that I had on my DVR that got a Warner Archive release is Fashions of 1934. As always, I made a point of sitting down to watch it and do a post on here.

William Powell, nearing the end of his time at Warner Bros. before going to MGM to make The Thin Man, plays Sherwood Nash. As the film opens, Sherwood is one of those 1930s stockbrokers that were common in movies of the day, the sort who thinks he's got a deal for you but is really just trying to pull the wool over your eyes. He doesn't have a deal, however, as his phones are being repossessed, forcing Sherwood and his partner Snap (Frank McHugh) to go into another line of business.

Fortunately for them, they run into Lynn Mason (Bette Davis, stuck in a platinum blonde wig for the first time in her career). She's a fashion sketch artist, one who clearly has a lot of talent, but unfortunately doesn't have a job. International copyright protections weren't quite as well honored as they are nowadays, so Sherwood comes up with the idea of getting the designs for high fashion straight from Paris, before the people who actually paid big bucks for the right to use them in the US can get them. Obviously, when the knockoffs show up on the market, the legitimate licensees are pissed off.

Sherwood is forced to decamp to Paris along with Snap and Lynn, with a plan to institute some scheme or another to get them involved in the world of high fashion, but the big idea only hits them when they pass one of those street vendors selling vintage books. One of them has historical drawings, and Lynn, having an eye for drawings since she's a sketch artist herself, realizes that it's drawings like this that have been the inspiration for Paris designer Oscar Baroque (Reginald Owen).

Lynn starts creating such imitation drawings herself, but complicating matters by stamping the established designers' names on such images. Sherwood discovers that Baroque's girlfriend, the Grand Duchess Alix (Verree Teasdale), is an impostor, and somebody he new back in Hoboken in the 1930s. Sherwood uses this first to get Baroque to make the designs for a fashion revue, and then to get out of trouble once Baroque discovers that Lynn has been forging his signature.

Fashions of 1934 came across to me as much the sort of movie William Powell was making a lot of during his time at Warner Bros.: Powell as the suave man who may not be quite so honest, getting himself into a range of situations that may not be quite so legal. (I doubt it was deliberate that Powell switched studios just as the Production Code was going into strict enforcement, but it does seem like a very lucky move on his part.) This time, however, the Powell story has a bit of a musical grafted on it, at least in the form of a big production number choreographed by Busby Berkeley. It's an interesting pairing that doesn't quite always mesh.

I also felt like it was easy to see why Powell might want more of a challenge than being typecast at Warner Bros. Also, you can see from roles like this why Bette Davis would go on to stand up to the studio and flee to London. There's a fair bit here to like, but also a fair bit that feels like it's running out of steam. Still, despite the flaws, Fashions of 1934 is definitely worth a watch.