It wasn't all that long ago that I did a post on the Harold Lloyd silent Grandma's Boy. I've got a bunch of silents sitting on my DVR, and one that I wanted to get to before it expired was The Boob. For reasons that will become clear, I couldn't help but think of Grandma's Boy as I was watching.
The star here is a man who's not well known to me, George K. Arthur, and that's because his career didn't really survive the coming of talking pictures. Arthur plays Peter Good, who supposedly works as a farmhand on a farm somewhere in small-town USA. He's got a girl he pines for in Amy (Gertrude Olmsted), but Amy wants better things in live, so when big-city Harry showed up, she immediately took to him to the point of accepting his marriage proposal after just a week.
Peter wants to win Amy back, and his friend Cactus Jim, a stereotype of the drunkard cowboy, suggests dressing up as a real cowboy, which needless to say doesn't impress Amy one bit. However, since Harry is from the big city, the belief is that he must be involved in bootlegging, this being Prohibition and there being no other reason for city slickers to show up here besides going to the roadhouses that supplied city folk with alcohol.
Peter vows that he's going to find some of these bootleggers and take them down, and that by doing so he's bound to win Amy's heart. He learns that Amy and Hary are going to go to a roadhouse called the Booklovers which, as it turns out, is indeed a place flouting Prohibition. It also has a floor show that needs to be seen to be believed. Also at the Booklovers is Jane (a young Joan Crawford on her way up the ladder to stardom). She's actually working for the feds in fighting the people making and selling illegal liquor. When Peter shows up and makes a mess of things, Jane gives him a second chance because he's just an amateur with an interest in going after bootleggers too. They need the help of the people after all when a large section of the country hates Prohibition.
Peter goes to a mill in the middle of nowhere where a couple of guys are digging up a coffin that is filled not with a human body but with a bunch of booze. Harry is supposed to meet these men there on his way to getting married to Amy. But Peter shows up first, leading to a climactic fight in -- or should I say on -- a speeding automobile.
Jacqueline Stewart presented this as part of Silent Sunday Nights, and she mentioned that the movie got scathing reviews at the time of its release, as well as mentioning director William Wellman's comments that at least he could take pride in having directed Joan Crawford in her worst movie. To be honest, I think I have to come down more or less on the side of the contemporary critics, although I don't think I'd go quite that far. The movie doesn't really work, for a bunch of reasons, including Arthur not being right for the role. It also feels more like a series of scenes than a coherent plot, and Cactus Jim is just terribly unfunny. Stewart made mention of Peter's black juvenile companion, Ham Bunn, as a stereotype. I think I'd have to disagree with her, as Cactus Jim is far more offensive than Ham Bunn.
The Boob has received a Warner Archive release, and it's in the public domain, although the print TCM ran had a "new" score, in the sense of it having been composed for the film's resurrection from obscurity 20 or so years ago.
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