Sing and Like It

Some time back TCM ran a morning with several of the films of 1930s comic actress Pert Kelton. Another one that I hadn't heard of was Sing and Like It. Since the synopsis sounded interesting enough, I as always decided to record it so I could eventually watch it and put up this post on the movie.

ZaSu Pitts plays Annie Snodgrass, a housewife married to Oswald (John Qualen, credited including his middle initial although it's unmistakeably his voice) who has a thing for amateur theater. And I definitely mean amateur, as these people are definitely not ready for the big time. Annie sings one of those sappy songs of the era about being thankful for your mother, and it's not just the insipid lyrics, but Annie's lousy vocal stylings that make the song truly a disaster.

However, passing by the theater where they're practicing, and hearing the voice, is Fenny Sylvester (Nat Pendleton). He's a gangster, meaning that he's got a fair amount of money, along with a lack of scruples about threatening violence to get his way. He hears the song, and for whatever odd reason -- the movie is a comedy, after all -- decides that he loves this song. Never mind that everybody around him like his second-in-command Toots McGuire (Ned Sparks) thinks Annie is terrible. Fenny is the boss, so he gets his way. And having heard Annie, he wants to do his good duty by putting her in a show.

Nothing less than the best will do for Fenny, and he's able to use those threats to get people like theater producer Frink (Edward Everett Horton) to help mount the stage show, despite Frink's obvious horror at hearing Annie's voice. There's also Fenny's girlfriend Ruby (that's Pert Kelton), who gets tasked with making Annie come across as a higher-class stage lady. But there's not all that much they can do to make this nice but thoroughly untalented woman a success.

So it's decided that the thing to do to give the show some oomph is to stage a publicity campaign involving Annie going missing, except that she won't really go missing because everybody who matters will know exactly where she is until she shows up in time for the big premiere. The only thing is, Annie gets kidnapped for real.

Sing and Like It was, I think, not conceived as anything more than a B movie. But considering the cast of very good supporting actors, they all take the material and run with it for all it's worth, making it surprisingly funny. Then again, considering the cast, it shouldn't be surprising that they're all adept at this sort of comedy. They'd all played the sorts of roles they've got here enough.

I Married an Angel

I've mentioned on a few occasions that I'm not the biggest fan of the singing of Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. But I do watch their movies to do posts on here because the pair were a big thing back in the 1930s and I feel a bit of an obligation to see a wide variety of movies to post on here. So I recorded their final film, I Married an Angel, the last time it showed up on TCM, and recently got around to watching it. It's getting another airing on TCM early tomorrow morning (Dec. 5) at 3:45 AM, or overnight tonight if that's the way you look at things.

I Married an Angel was released in the summer of 1942, several months after the US entered World War II, but is based on a play turned into a Rodgers and Hart musical in 1938, which is why the opening informs us the story is set in Budapest in those gay times of years gone past. Anna Zador (Jeanette MacDonald) works as a secretary at the Palaffi bank, run by the third generation of Count Palaffis, with the current Count Palaffi played by Neslon Eddy. Anna has a crush on the Count, and brings wildflowers from the country to his office every morning, but Palaffi's executive assistant Marika (Mona Maris) says the count doesn't notice them. Or Anna, who is really only in the typing pool so why would she be noticed by the count? Besides, Marika is pretty certain the count is interested in her.

In fact, the Count is interested in a lot of pretty, upper-class women to the point that people see him as a sort of playboy, with the most important among such people being the largest depositors in the bank. They could move their assets elsewhere, which would start a run on the bank that would likely cripple it. So he really ought to get married and settle down. When another of the assistants, Whiskers (Reginald Owen) hears that the count is not only not planning on settling down but hosting an extravagant costume party for his birthday, Whiskers has Marika give an invitation to a regular bank worker -- Anna, of course -- to make it seem at least a bit more like a work function.

Anna doesn't have the money for the sort of costume that people wear to these high-class costume balls in movies of this era, so she wears a largely homemade angel costume instead. This subjects her to some ridicule because she clearly doesn't fit in, and didn't necessarily want to be in the spotlight like this even if it allowed her to get close to the count for one night. What Anna doesn't know is that Palaffi had said that the only woman he'd ever marry would have to be a real angel. So during the party he goes into one of the drawing rooms while everyone else is out on the terraces and lawns partying away, and falls asleep and starts dreaming. (I'm not giving anything away here since in the context of the movie, we know that what follows is an extended dream.)

In the dream, Anna comes back to him as an actual angel, named Brigitta, telling Palaffi that she's just the sort of angel that Palaffi needs to marry to save the bank. Palaffi marries her and takes her on a honeymoon to Paris, although he finds out that being married to an angel isn't all he bargained for. The first issue is that the angel is just too virtuous, with the sort of inability to lie that leads to her telling truths that people don't want to hear. If anything, that's going to make the investors more likely to want to start a run on the bank. Of course, we know that this is the sort of movie that's going to have a happy ending, with several songs along the way for both MacDonald and Eddy.

To be honest, I Married an Angel isn't exactly a bad movie, although my view of the sort of singing that MacDonald and Eddy do stands. It's just not my thing. As stated above, the movie was released in the summer of 1942, and I get the impression that public tastes were really changing, accelerated by the US entry into World War II. Several stars of the 1930s (notably Greta Garbo and Norma Shearer) saw the writing on the wall and retired, but I think MacDonald and Eddy were suffering the same fate if you will, only without a voluntary retirement. I Married an Angel was a box office failure and gets panned by the critics, but I don't think it's any worse than the other MacDonald/Eddy movies I've seen.

Faithful in My Fashion

The next movie that's showing up on TCM that's currently on my DVR is the MGM programmer Faithful in My Fashon. That next airing comes up tomorrow, March 18, a 6:15 AM. So once again, with that in mind, I watched the movie in order to do a review of it here.

The movie was released in August 1946, so not long after the end of World War II, and a time when soldiers were still being demobbed. One such example of this is Sgt. Jeff Compton (Tom Drake). He went off to war four and a half years ago, spent some time in a POW camp, and is now finally going through the process of getting out of the military. He hopes to return to his old job in the stock room at a department store. So, of course, the first thing he does when he gets two weeks' leave is to go back to that store, where he meets manager Hiram Dilworthy (Edward Everett Horton) and assistant Miss Swanson (Spring Byington).

The real reason he made the department store his first place to visit after being given leave is because his old girlfriend Jean Kendrick (Donna Reed), whom he nicknamed "Chunky" for reasons that I don't think are ever explained. The two had a whirlwind romance before Jeff went off to fight and that romance ended up with Jeff giving Jean a ring that was obviously supposed to represent an engagement ring until he could return home and marry her. And the thought of marrying Jean is clearly what sustained Jeff through the years of war.

Unfortunately that's not what sustained Jean. She didn't really think of herself as Jeff's fiancée. During the intervening four-plus years, she's advanced from the stock room to being a purchaser for the department store. She's also moved to a better apartment, and gotten a fiancé of her own. She's trying to come up with some way to let Jeff down gently. But Jeff seems pretty darn certain that he not only still wants to marry Jean; he wants to do it today if at all possible. Worse, Jeff is considered a sort of war hero so hurting him by breaking off the engagement is bound to cause problems.

Dilworthy comes up with an idea. It's only two weeks that Jeff is going to be on leave, so perhaps everybody can do something to keep Jeff from finding out during those two weeks that Jean has become engaged to another man. Or at least maybe they can keep up the ruse long enough for Jean to figure out how to let Jeff down most gently. Of course, since Tom Drake and Donna Reed are top billed, you know that they're just right for each other as a couple and that they really ought to wind up together in the final reel. There's also the fact that, the movie being released not long after the end of World War II, you can't imagine a way for a returning soldier to have his heart broken in what's supposed to be a romantic comedy.

And that's the big problem with Faithful in My Fashion. It all feels way too contrived, and the sort of thing where everybody has to lie far too much for the movie to come across as nice. Why couldn't Jean be allowed to keep her position as a purchaser and let Jeff know she's been promoted, for example. That, and moving to a better apartment. Instead, we get a dumb scene of Jean trying to convince the "new" (for the past three years) tenant of her old apartment to let her live there for two weeks.

Perhaps this sort of material worked better for audiences back in 1946. I'm sorry to say, however, that Faithful in My Fashion didn't work for me 80 years on.

Going Highbrow

Next up is another of those Warner Bros. B movies that I recorded in part because I'm always up for Warner's B movies and in part because of the cast. It being at the top of the list of movies I've watched off my DVR but haven't done a post on yet, the movie in question is Going Highbrow.

The movie starts off with an establishing shot of one of those old transatlantic luxury liners on its way back from Europe. The press interview a young Frenchwoman, until an American worms her way into the press conference. That woman is Cora Upshaw (ZaSu Pitts), who is interested in getting interviewed because she and her husband have recently made it in the business world. They're from the midwest, out in Kansas, and it's the sort of place where high society doesn't think of anybody coming from. While in Europe, the Upshaws purchased several pieces of fine are. Cora's husband Matt (Guy Kibbee), however, isn't all that interested in the trappings of wealth, as we can see from his giving his European dress clothing to one of the ship's stewards.

Meanwhile, in New York, we meet Harley Marsh (Ross Alexander). He comes from a family that used to be rich, with his mother (Nella Walker) having inherited an estate when her husband died. However, the Marshes have lost most of their cash on demand thanks to poor investing -- the movie having been released in 1935, there is still a depression on. However, they still have a fair bit of property. The manager of the estate, Augie Witherspoon (Edward Everett Horton), reads an article in the newspaper about the Upshaws, and gets an idea: perhaps the Upshaws might be interested in buying some of the paintings that the Marshes still own.

Matt, not really wanting to take part in Cora's playing for high society, and having gotten rid of the "proper" clothing anyway, he goes to a diner across the street from the Waldorf where they're staying. There he meets Sandy Long (June Martel), the waitress out the counter. She obviously doesn't believe Matt is a millionaire. But then Augie suggests one way to get into high society which Cora wants, is for the Marshes to host a debutante party for their daughter. The problem is that they don't have a daughter. That's when Matt decides that asking Sandy if she'll play the part of their daughter.

Matt takes Sandy out to get her the clothes that will make her look like a debutante, and while they're out Harley runs into her. He falls in love with her, but it takes a while for the feeling to become mutual. There are also all sorts of complications.

Going Highbrow is, somewhat surprisingly, one of the weaker of the B movies that I've seen come out of Warner Bros. Granted, I've seen worse from RKO get shown on TCM, and Growing Highbrow isn't exactly bad. But the plot here feels like the writers just bolted together a whole bunch of different plot points that had appeared in a dozen B movies of the previous half-decade.

Still, with the B-movie constellation of stars in the cast, Going Highbrow is still worth a watch.

Rent, minus the crappy songs

In the latest installment of "Honorees in Summer Under the Stars for whom I have a movie on my DVR that's showing up on TCM", the actor in question is John Gilbert, whose career spanned the silent era and the early part of the sound era. Among his silent films is the 1926 adaptation of La Bohème, which comes on overnight tonight, or in the wee hours of the morning, at 2:15 AM (which makes it still August 19 in the Pacific time zone).

La Bohème tells the tragic story of Mimi, played here by Lillian Gish. But we don't meet her first; instead we meet the future man in her life and his friends. It's the early 1830s in Paris, and bohemianism is already a thing, having taken its name in French from the idea that the wandering gypsies (now referred to as the Romani) came from the Bohemia region in what is now the Czech Republic. But the bohemians here are fully French. Rodolphe (John Gilbert) is a writer who would like the write the Great French Play. But he needs to pay the bills, so he resorts to writing articles for some sort of magazine, at least as they existed in the 1830s.

Rodolphe lives with Marcel, a struggling artist who at least has a girlfriend in Musette (Renée Adorée) who is able to provide Marcel and his friends with some food. The two men have two other roommates, musician Schaunard and Colline (a very young Edward Everett Horton). As for Mimi, she lives in the same building as the men, in a garret apartment where she does piece-work as a seamstress. She, like the men, has a lot of difficulty coming up with the rent money.

It's the first of the month, and the men are somehow able to scrounge up the rent money, but Mimi isn't, which means she's about to be thrown out. She couldn't even get enough money from pawning the few things she owns. But when Musette invites Marcel down for dinner, and he invites his friends, Rodolphe, the last to get invited, sees poor Mimi about to get thrown out and takes pity on her. However, the rich Vicomte Paul, seeing Mimi's beauty, tries to proposition her under the guise of offering her some work.

Mimi rejects Paul's advances, but accepts Rodolphe's, and as you can guess, the two fall in love. This love gives Rodolphe the inspiration for his play. However, he spends so much time writing his play that he runs way behind on the articles he's supposed to be writing for the magazine, to the point that the editor basically fires him. However, the editor only does this when Mimi brings over Rodolphe's latest piece, he being too busy working on his play to go over to the editor's office himself.

At this point, Mimi does something profoundly stupid. She doesn't tell Rodolphe that he's been fired, and is going to have to find some other writing job to pay the bills and give him the time to write that play. Instead, she decides to work double time so that she can earn more money herself and give the extra to Rodolphe, who thinks those are his wages. Mimi promptly works herself to an early grave, and the rest, as they say, is history.

To be honest, I haven't seen either the opera La bohème, or the musical Rent which is based on the opera. This version of the story, however, is at least reasonably well-acted, even though the story is melodramatic and might be eyeroll-inducing for some. Just when you think it can't get tragic enough, it gets more tragic. But that's the fault of the source material, not the actors or director.

While I'd have to say I prefer other movies from the silent output of John Gilbert and Lillian Gish, this version of La Bohème is definitely worth watching.

Success at Any Price

TCM had a night of Colleen Moore movies some time back. She was a star of the silent era who lasted several years into talkies before retiring and becoming even wealthier through smart investments. One of her final movies was Success at Any Price. Since it sounded interesting, I recorded it and recently got around to watching it.

The movie starts off in late 1927, a half dozen years or so before the picture was released. A headline in a newspaper refers to a gangster named Martin killed in a gangland shooting. He was fabulously wealthy, but had a kid brother Joe (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) who wasn't so wealthy. Joe has a girlfriend Sarah (that's Colleen Moore) who works as a secretary at an advertising agency and is doing reasonably well for on of those working girls who is presumably going to quit the workforce when she gets married and starts a family. Joe wants to get the money, and vows to do whatever it takes, at least legally, to get it.

Sarah's job is working for Merritt (Frank Morgan before he moved to MGM). Merritt takes an interest in Sarah, but it seems more because he's interested in all of the secretaries. Sarah isn't interested in the advances, but is able to get Joe a job with the agency. Joe, meanwhile, grates at what seems to him like the evils of networking: all those men who went to college and were in fraternites are able to use those connections to get ahead in the business world while people like him languish because the college boys look down on them.

Eventually, Joe has a blow-up with Merritt, but Sarah is able to get Joe a second chance. That chance involves coming up with copy not for Wham, but for a cold cream used by the upper classes. ("If you ain't eatin' cold cream" is not exactly winning ad copy.) While Joe is in the office trying to come up with the copy that would save his job, in walks Agnes (Genevieve Tobin), who is Merritt's current mistress. Joe is immediately taken with Agnes, largely because she's the sort of upper-class woman who uses the cold cream Joe is trying to advertise. He gets the job back, and starts to become more successful. Successful enough, in fact, that he can start calling on Agnes, which is a problem when Merritt walks in on him.

And then an establishing shot shows a calendar for 1930. Everybody watching the movie when it was first released would have recognized that this means the stock market crash of 1929 has occurred, and with that, a lot of people are in financial trouble. Among those in trouble are the company, as well as Merritt personally. Joe sees this as a chance to move up in the company, eventually driving Merritt out and even getting Merritt's old girlfriend Agnes. But will he be happy with the newfound success?

Success at Any Price is the sort of movie that was common during the Depression, looking at the business world while also portraying the rich as not necessarily being well off. Some of it is skewering the rich, while sometimes I wonder whether movies like this were trying to send the message to the working classes that they should be happy with what they have because the rich aren't happy either.

Douglas Fairbanks does well, as does Moore, but I can't help but think that this sort of material would have worked better had it been made at Warner Bros., which had the reputation for making social issues movies. Not that Success at Any Price is bad; it's just that it doesn't really rise above the standard for the genre. It's definitely worth one watch, however.

The King and the Chorus Girl

Some months back, TCM ran another of those surprisingly new-to-me movies, surprising considering how long I've had TCM and this is one of those movies that should be in the Turner Library so ought to get a few more showings on TCM: The King and the Chorus Girl. I recorded it so that I could watch it later and do a review on it here.

After the opening credits, a camera pans over a series of portraits of kings, from Alfred I through to Alfred VII, who looks quite contemporary. Cut to Alfred's apartment in Paris, although we don't see him at first. Alfred VII is the deposed king of one of those made-up central/eastern European countries that were a big thing in movies made before World War II. A doctor is visiting, and talking to Alfred's last two attendants, Count Humbert (Edward Everett Horton) and Duchess Anna (Mary Nash). Alfred's been on another bender; the benders last three days and sleeping them off lasts another three, with Alfred being in the sleeping it off stage. The doctor informs the Count and Duchess that Alfred has an acute case of apathy.

Alfred (played by Fernand Gravey) finally wakes up, seemingly sober, and we see that he's not exactly a likable character, self-centered and still expecting the trappings of power. He feels like he's done everything there is to do in Paris, and is bored with life. The Count and Duchess suggest some ideas that might lull him back to sleep out of his boredom, and eventually everybody agrees to try another night at the Folies Bergère, even though they've heard all the jokes from the vaudeville-style comedy pair before.

But this night turns out a bit differently. One of the musical numbers has a bunch of chorus girls, and one of the chorus girls, American-born Dorothy Ellis (Joan Blondell) keeps shining her mirror where the light is going to reflect right in Alfred's eyes. Alfred notices this, and decides she's impudent enough that he'd like to invite her over to his apartment for dinner after the show, before getting up and leaving. Not that she knows anything about ex-king Alfred, but she agrees to go, because who wouldn't want to meet a king. And he might even have a tidy sum of money still.

As for the Count and Duchess, they realize that bringing Miss Ellis over isn't such a bad idea, because it might help Alfred deal with that apathy. Unfortunately, Dorothy, the Count, and Duchess return to the apartment to find that Alfred went home and right to sleep, apparently having forgotten that he'd invited a chorus girl over for dinner, or perhaps just joking about the idea of inviting a chorus girl over. Dorothy is unsurprisingly displeased and walks out, not even seeing Alfred.

The Count and Duchess decide that a woman who would walk out on Alfred is just what he needs, so they decide to try to bring the two together. Based on the sort of movie this is, we know that they will mostly likely wind up together in the final reel, although there are going to be quite a few complications along the way.

The King and the Chorus Girl is a bit of an odd movie, for a couple of reasons. One is the casting; although Joan Blondell had played chorus girl types in the early 1930s, but 1937 when this one was made Blondell as an American in Paris feels a bit off. It feels more like the sort of story that MGM would have made with Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. That, and the story doesn't feel like a typically Warner Bros. story; instead, it feels like something more suited to MGM as I said, or maybe the Korda brothers over in the UK.

Not that The King and the Chorus Girl is a bad movie. It's definitely formulaic, and something that won't appeal to everybody, but for the people who like 1930s romantic comedies, they'll definitely like it.

The Great Garrick

Another movie I watched recently was the period comedy The Great Garrick, which as far as I can tell received a DVD release courtesy of the Warner Archive.

Brian Aherne plays David Garrick, a real actor on the British stage in the middle of the 18th century, and apparently one of the most famous actors of his day. At the start of the movie he's just finishing up playing a season of Hamlet at London's Drury Lane Theater, which again we're to presume is one of the most prominent theaters in London, and hence all of Great Britain (and even the world). But Garrick tells the audience that it's his last performance in London for a while because he's received an invitation to perform with Paris' equally famed Comédie Française.

Garrick's London audience is enraged, taking it as a personal affront that he possibly thinks French actors are more worth acting with than the English. Garrick decides that the way to get out of this is to say that no, the French aren't really good actors, and that he's going to be going to Paris in order to give them a lesson on what good acting is. Somehow, this immediately changes the opinion of an audience that had no good reason to be ticked off anyway.

Somehow, news of Garrick's comments make it to Paris in those slow transportation days well before Garrick even sets out for France. You'd think they might have heard the whole story, but no. So Picard (Melville Cooper) and Beaumarchais (Lionel Atwill), heads of the Comédie Française, decide that they're going to teach Garrick a lesson rather than just rescinding the invitation. They know Garrick's itinerary once he crosses the English Channel, so they know exactly which road house he and his valet Tubby (Edward Everett Horton) are going to stay at. So they plan to get there first and play the staff and patrons of the place, putting Garrick in a compromising situation.

Now, it probably ought to be obvious to anybody that there's something amiss, as these French actors are playing the most wacky, over-the-top characters. And indeed, Garrick does figure it out pretty quickly. He decides that he's going to get back at them by showing them what true acting is.

But there's a complication. Among the people at the inn is Germaine (Olivia de Havilland), claiming to be a countess whose father has gotten her betrothed to a man she doesn't want to marry in Paris. So she's running away and can't go back to Paris. And she seems afraid of these wacky actors; perhaps Garrick can protect her. Now, Garrick obviously sees Germaine as another member of the troupe and the perfect person to try to get him into that compromising position. But it turns out that Germaine isn't part of the troupe, and actually sincerely loves Garrick. She doesn't know anything about his trying to turn the tables on those other French people, so when that jig is up, she thinks Garrick was exploiting her. By this time, Garrick has realized he's falling in love with Germaine.

The Great Garrick was based on a stage play, and I'm guessing the characters were all written to play to the back of the audience, as they're extremely broad and farcical. And to be fair, the whole act that the French are putting on at the inn is supposed to be bad. But that does make the movie a bit of a slog at times. The actors all do the best they can with the material, with de Havilland coming off best and Edward Everett Horton playing yet another of his comic relief characters.

The Great Garrick is the sort of movie that would benefit from being on a box set instead of at the price point of a standalone Warner Archive disc.

Roar of the Dragon

Another movie that I recorded off of TCM some months back and got a DVD release from Warner Home Video is Roar of the Dragon. As always, I recently sat down to watch it and do a post on it here.

China in the 1920s and 1930s was an "interesting" place, in the sense that there was a lot going on, not all of it good by any means. Out in the hinterlands, there was a civil war going on even before the Japanese marched into Manchuria. Richard Dix stars as Carson, who pilots a riverboat owned by Johnson (Dudley Digges) in one of these outlying areas. This area is odd in that it has a Russian bandit named Voronsky (C. Henry Gordon) raiding, despite the fact that they're hundred, if not thousands, of miles from Siberia.

Westerners are trying to get out, and they've all holed up in a hotel not far from the river while repairs are being undertaken on the boat. Among the westerners is Voronsky's girlfriend Natascha (Gwili Andre); timid civil engineer Busby (Edward Everett Horton); and a woman who stupidly undertook a trip to the Orient despite her nerves not being up to it (Zasu Pitts). Humorously, there's also a Jew named Sholem (Arthur Stone) who settled in town and takes refuge in the hotel.

Also taking refuge is a bunch of Chinese people, ferrying in a group of orphan children. This puts a strain on the hotel, which is besieged, and doesn't have enough food. So Voronsky could simply wait and starve everybody out to get whatever it is that he wants, which starts with Natascha but probably doesn't stop there.

Natascha begins to fall in love with Carson, as you can expect. Carson tries to take command although it's a bit unclear as to who should be organizing the defense. But fortunately for them, they have a machine gun on the roof and enough ammo to keep the bandits at bay for at least a little while until they can possibly get to the boat. But there's also a spy in their midst....

Roar of the Red Dragon is part of a cycle of movies that were made in the early sound era and set in China's period of upheaval. I can imagine a couple of reasons for the popularity of making such movies. One is that the war atmosphere naturally lends itself to drama and adventure, while the China setting is an exotic one that likely would have appealed to an American moviegoing poulation that had much less knowledge of the wide world outside of America. Other movies I can think of in the genre include Shanghai Express and The Bitter Tea of General Yen.

Roar of the Dragon isn't nearly as good as those two other movies, but it still has a fair bit going for it. One is the setting, and seeing how inaccurate the filmmakers get it. Making the bandits Russian is one humorous error, and having a Jewish shop owner was also quite humorous. But the bigger thing is the performance of Horton, who winds up playing against type as the man who gets a chance to be a hero. A big negative was Pitts, whose shtick doesn't work for a serious drama like this.

Roar of the Dragon is available on a two-movie set along with another movie I'd never heard of Men of America. It's not overly expensive, either.

Wide Open

Another of my recent movie watches was the early talkie Wide Open, which is available on DVD from the Warner Archive Collection.

A very young Edward Everett Horton plays Simon Haldane, a slightly mousy bookkeeper at a company that manufactures record plays and music to play on those players. At least, it seems as though they make record players since Simon has a plan for a new type of needle that will help the company's flagging revenues.

Meanwhile, he's being pursued by co-worker Agatha (Louise Fazenda), who somehow manages to convince her mother that if Simon doesn't marry Agatha, it'll be something that brings immense shame to Agatha and her family. It must be one of those old-fashioned family honor things, since I didn't quite get it. But all of this is interrupted by our other main character.

Patsy Miller plays Doris, who is seen breaking into Simon's place of work and rifling through the books he's left there, which isn't much since he's been working on the books at night as part of his financial plan involving the new needle. But Doris gets his address and breaks in, the police in hot pursuit. Doris feigns illness which gets Simon to keep her there overnight.

Back at work, Agatha does nothing to stop the gossip going on about Simon, leading everybody to think that Simon has just gotten married despite considering himself a confirmed bachelor. So all of the coworkers crash his house in order to hold a party! Meanwhile, Doris is still trying to find those books for reasons that are made clear at the end of the movie.

Wide Open is one of those early talkies that didn't quite seem to know what it was doing, and tried to deal with that by throwing everything it could against the wall to see what might stick. In that regard, it made me think of So Long Letty mostly because that's the most recent early talkie I watched before this one. I think I'd have to say that So Long Letty is better because it's more coherent, but Wide Open is definitely not without its bizarre charms.

The biggest fault I found in Wide Open is the characterization of Doris, who is a sort of Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby type. She's lying so much about why she's at Simon's house in the beginning that it seriously made me dislike her. On the other hand, the movie is so full of plot holes that, where they would bring later movies down, only serve here to make things more nuts. It's never explained, for example, how Simon could afford to live in such a big house and have Louise Beavers as a maid.

Wide Open is another of those movies that really should have gotten a release to DVD on one of those four-movie sets that TCM used to put out in conjunction with Warner Home Video, instead of a more expensive standalone Archive DVD. Still, I'm glad I saw it, even though I'm not one to spend that much money on a standalone for such a trifle of a movie.

Biogaphry of a Bachelor Girl

TCM ran the movie Biography of a Bachleor Girl not too long ago. It's going to be on again tomorrow morning at 6:00 AM if you want to watch it for yourself.

Ann Harding plays the titular unmarried woman, an artist named Marion Forsythe. She apparently gained some fame while she was over in Europe, and is now returning to her native America. Richard "Dickie" Kurt (Robert Montgomery in an odd pair of spectacles for him) is a magazine editor who has come up with a great idea to pitch to his publisher to help shore up the magazine's flagging fortunes. He'll get Marion to write her autobiography, which will be serialized in their magazine, and that will boost circulation.

Kurt goes to the boat Marion is sailing in on and finds that he's not the only one who wants her attention. There's also Feydak (Edward Arnold), brother of an artist Marion knew, but for whatever reason Feydak seems to drop out of the movie fairly early on. Eventually Kurt is able to talk to Marion about the biography, and since she's in need of money, she reluctantly accepts.

But this is going to cause other problems. Earlier in life, she met lawyer Leander "Bunny" Nelson (Edward Everett Horton) and apparently had a torrid affair with him. This shouldn't be a big deal nowadays, but for the mid-1930s such affairs probably were more scandalous. Bunny wasn't married at the time, but now he's engaged to Slade Kinnicott (Una Merkel), daughter of a newspaper publisher back in her and Bunny's home state. And Bunny is now running for the US Senate, so if news of that affair were to come out, he fears it would sink his candidacy.

So Bunny has what he feels is a perfectly good reason for trying to convince Marion not to write that memoir, while Kurt has own job to think of in trying to get Marion to fulfill their agreement. Eventually Marion goes back to a small town to consider her prospects, with everybody following her.

Biography of a Bachelor Girl came out in the beginning of 1935, and it really feels like the sort of movie that was badly neutered by the enforcement of the Production Code, which began in July 1934. There's a fair amount of potential in the material, but none of it was realized as the movie can't seem decide whether it wants to be a comedy or a drama. There's also the disappearance of Feydak, and the whole small-town thing not working here the way it did in many other movies.

Biography of a Bachelor Girl does not seem to be on DVD as far as I can tell, so you're going to have to watch the TCM showing.