SIN IN SOFT FOCUS
Paramount Pre-Code

The Balboa Theater, November 3 - 24, 2005

Fans of "pre-Code" Hollywood films (those made before the 1934 Production Code cracked down on "sinful movies") are happily familiar with Warner Bros.' urban dramas and M-G-M's fallen women sagas but have a hard time finding the pre-Code films made by Paramount Pictures, Hollywood's "continental" studio. Only a few of the beautifully mounted, adult-themed films produced by Paramount between 1930 and 1934 are currently available on cable or DVD. To remedy this situation, the Balboa is presenting 43 hard-to-see Paramount titles. Paramount employed more European actors, writers, and directors than any other Hollywood studio. Its films were set in a fancifully wicked Continent that was more glamorous than the real place. Paramount stars (even Americans like Mae West and Gary Cooper) had a continental flair that made other studios' stars look homespun. Paramount directors Josef von Sternberg, Rouben Mamoulian, Ernst Lubitsch, and Cecil B. DeMille used innovative techniques to tell risqué stories while cinematographers Lee Garmes, Charles Lang, and Karl Struss used specially crafted filters and lights to create the legendary "Paramount glow." Seeing these rare films is both an education and a treat. It's fun to learn how much Paramount got away with by making great movies.

— Mark A. Vieira

Mark A. Vieira, a Bay Area native wrote the Abrams books Sin in Soft Focus: Pre-Code Hollywood and Greta Garbo: A Cinematic Legacy. For more information about his pre-Code research, visit The Starlight Studio.

Presented in association with the San Francisco Film Society and the UCLA Film and Television Archive.

Mark Viera has also chosen an incredible selection of original Paramount studio photographs for a Balboa lobby display. The exhibit will be shown in two parts, November 3- 13 and Nov. 14-24. Additionally there will be rotating exhibits of the colorful movies posters for the films in the series.

Throughout these notes and at the end are links to various sites and articles we think you'll find interesting.

We can't recommend highly enough that you pursue 3 terrific books to read lively accounts and view wonderful photos of this exciting era in Hollywood.

Mick LaSalle's Dangerous Men: Pre-Code Hollywood and the Birth of the Modern Man and Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood (both Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's Press) are entertaining to read while providing insight into the film industry and the images of women and men that influenced on our lives.

Mick LaSalle starts out a SF Chronicle overview:

During the pre-Code era — the five years before the imposition of a restrictive production code on July 1, 1934 — Hollywood made a series of racy and socially daring films. This is widely known. What is not widely known is that the naughtiest studio of them all was Paramount. While MGM had the actresses and the glamour, and Warners the staccato style and the social conscience, Paramount made the most risque and the most adult movies. It also had the best directors.

read the complete article at SF Gate .

LaSalle also offers a podcast that goes beyond the article exploring why you should see these movies.

Mark A. Viera's Sin in Soft Focus (Harry N. Abrams Publishers) provides a fine overview of Pre-Code Hollywood and is illustrated — 275 stunning photographs.

• Read the actual production code
• a brief history of how the Code was used
• more Production Code info
• Senses of Cinema article: More Sinned Against than Sinning:
• The Fabrications of "Pre-Code Cinema" by Richard Maltby
• In Separate Beds
• The Question of Censorship
• SIN IN SOFT FOCUS by Mark Viera
• COMPLICATED WOMEN: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood by Mick LaSalle
• DANGEROUS MEN: Pre-Code Hollywood and the Birth of the Modern Man by Mick LaSalle

Double Features — two movies for one admission price! Plus shorts on some programs

Thursday, Nov. 3

I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it.

— Mae West

Who better to launch this festival than Mae herself?

I'M NO ANGEL

Mae West tames Cary Grant (1933, Wesley Ruggles)

Mae West played what was essentially a figure of fantasy. She embodied a benign promiscuity, a rampant female sexuality. In her early films it was understood, for example, that this was a woman who had had sex with hundreds, if not thousands, of partners; that she knew all the tricks, and that all men adored her. In America, such a woman could not exist. To see West is to come away energized, as if touched by the wand of some weird and wonderful goddess.

West embodied the power of sex, but her looks didn't match the representation, lucky for her. That West was a husky woman in mid-life, not a gorgeous woman of thirty, made what she did palatable and possible.

As it was, her sexuality could be overpowering. In "I'm No Angel", she plays a carnival performer who lives by her wits. In the movie's extraordinary opening sequence, she sashays out to perform before a group of ogling, drooling men. That men should be so helpless before the sight of this middle-aged, heavy-set lady seems comical in itself — at first. West turns the tables on us. In one of the most unsettling and bizarre scenes of the entire era, she sings "Sister Honky-Tonk" and then, stretching out her arms, she moans and groans and licks her lips in a simulation of pre-orgasmic ecstasy. This is tasteless, alarming and wonderful. And it's no joke; it's just enough of a joke. Had West looked like Garbo, they would have burned her at the stake.

— Mick LaSalle, Complicated Women

Mae West's second starring vehicle, I'm No Angel casts the divine Miss West as the star performer in a seedy circus. Though she lives with Ralf Harolde, West allows herself plenty of time for other men. When Harolde runs afoul of the law, West secures extra money by becoming a lion tamer. While thus employed, West is "discovered" by playboy Kent Taylor; she willingly accepts his gifts and other favors, but she only has eyes for Taylor's cousin Cary Grant. Still, love takes second place to commerce in West's life, and she ends up suing Grant for breach of promise. When Grant allows her to win the case, she realizes she's truly in love with him after all.

— Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

More:

• http://www.moviediva.com/MD_root/reviewpages/MDImNoAngel.htm
• http://www.filmsite.org/imno.html
• http://www.reelclassics.com/Actresses/Mae_West/maewest.htm

plus

HOT SATURDAY

Who is sleeping with Nancy Carroll? Cary Grant or Randolph Scott? (1932, William Seiter)

Small town good girl Nancy Carroll goes wild after she's accused of spending the night with playboy Cary Grant, which causes her to lose both her job and her boyfriend (Randolph Scott). This star trio creates plenty of sparks in this spicy Pre-code drma, with authentic small-town atmosphere and a nifty song, "I'm Burning for You.

— Leonard Maltin

plus

THE DENTIST

Uncensored W.C. Fields (1932, Leslie Pierce)

W.C. Fields wrote and stars as a misanthropic, absent-minded dentist who keeps an office in the same house that he shares with his rebellious young daughter. One morning she announces that she has fallen in love with Arthur, the iceman. Fields won't have it, and scares the poor Romeo off, making him late for his golf game, cheating wherever possible. Back at the office, the dentist locks his daughter in her room to prevent her from eloping with the iceman, and takes out all his frustrations on his patients (whom he refers to as "buzzards" and "palookas"). An attractive young girl naively bends over to show where a little dog bit her, a sophisticated society dame is driven into bizarre contortions while Fields sadistically drills, and a strange little man ends up with a mouth full of broken teeth and birds in his beard.

Evening shows introduced by Mark Vieira

To learn more about Cary Grant who stars in both the above features:
http://www.carygrant.net

Friday, Nov. 4

MURDER AT THE VANITIES

Musical murder mystery features Kitty Carlisle, Jack Oakie, Duke Ellington and Gertrude Michael sings "Sweet Marihuana" with topless chorus girls

Loosely adapted from a Broadway hit in 1933, this musical murder mystery is an all time camp cult classic depicting deadly drama during a stage revue. Lovely Kitty Carlisle, still performing her Cole Porter renditions In New York cabaret in 2005, is the object of hate by the jealous Gertrude Michael, all for the affections of Carl Brisson who must have been the butchest pansy-acting heterosexual in movie history. Near nudity, an ode to marijuana, and some rousing musical numbers featuring Duke Ellington are just a few of the treats concocted by gay director Mitchell Leisen. (L. Paul Meienberg)

Great article: http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/26/vanities.html

BOLERO (83 min)
He rose to fame on a ladder of dancing ladies!
(3:25), 7:00

George Raft, Carole Lombard, and Sally Rand's Fan dance. (1934, Wesley Ruggles)

Bolero stars George Raft as Raoul de Barre, an arrogant dancer who rises to fame in the years prior to, during, and after WW I. Raoul is helped along the way by his promoter brother Mike (William Frawley) and scores of willing females, matriculating from two-bit gigolo to the greatest ballroom dancer in Paris. Determining that nothing will stand in his way to the top, he regularly fires any female dancing partner who has the misfortune to fall in love with him — until the last of his partners, the beautiful Helen (Carole Lombard) beats him to the punch by walking out on him. His heart weakened during the war, Raoul aspires to open his own nightclub, despite warnings that if he ever dances again the consequences will be fatal. On opening night of his new establishment, Raoul dances Maurice Ravel's "Bolero" with Helen, now the wife of a British nobleman. Having reached his emotional and professional pinnacle, Raoul collapses and dies in his dressing room — as the nightclub patrons, oblivious to his fate, loudly demand an encore. Surprisingly, George Raft and Carole Lombard's dancing is doubled by others, but the same cannot be said of the inimitable Sally Rand, whose famous fan dance is tastefully re-created here. Raft and Lombard later reteamed in 1935's Rumba.

— Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Evening shows introduced by Mark Vieira

Nov. 4-5

11 pm Late Show — Ultra Rarity!

STORY OF TEMPLE DRAKE

Buried 1933 adaptation of Faulkner's "Sanctuary" — Banned by the Code! Still shocking today. (1933, Stephen R. Roberts)

The Story of Temple Drake is humid with sex, a sense of animal-like motives beneath the surface."

— Mick LaSalle, Complicated Women

William Faulkner's bestseller Sanctuary was so taboo in some circles that Hollywood couldn't even use the title when making the first film version. Thus, Paramount's adaptation of Sanctuary went out as The Story of Temple Drake, fooling no one who could read. Miriam Hopkins plays the title role, the promiscuous daughter of a Southern judge. Temple will do anything for a thrill, which plays right into the hands of a gang of kidnappers. Coerced into a pickup date at a roadhouse, Temple is held for ransom by the lascivious Trigger (Jack LaRue) and his mob. She is raped by Trigger, whereupon she kills him. One of Trigger's earlier murders is pinned on a hapless half-wit (Irving Pichel). Called to testify in the murder trial by her former boyfriend (William Gargan), the prosecuting attorney, Temple not only confesses to Trigger's killing, but proclaims to one and all that she secretly enjoyed the rape. Even though this hot material was considerably toned down from the novel (where the villain raped Temple with a corncob!), The Story of Temple Drake was one of many films responsible for incurring the wrath of the "clean up Hollywood" brigades — resulting in the restrictive Production Code of 1934. Sanctuary was remade under its original title in 1961.

— Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Plus very rare Paramount Pre-Code trailers, Fleischer's animated Swing You Sinners & surprises.

In Association with Noir City.

Sat. Nov. 5

Two with Marlene Dietrich

SCARLET EMPRESS

She doesn't love her husband, but likes Russian soldiers. (1934, Joseph Von Sternberg)

This fanciful biography of Russia's oversexed sovereign had been ready for release in April 1934. British producer Alexander Korda was at that moment releasing his own Catherine the Great, starring Elizabeth Bergner. Sternberg retitled his film The Scarlet Empress and Paramount held up its release until the Korda film had played itself out in a few art houses. But Sternberg couldn't resist the opportunity of opening his film in London. To do this, he had to rush the film through the Studio Relations Committee (SRC). When Joe Breen saw what was the most adult, perverse, sex-obsessed film of the entire pre-Code period, he brought Will Hays in, ran the film again, and called an emergency meeting with Sternberg and Paramount executives. But the Catholic Crusade required his attention more than this one movie, and Sternberg was insistent about the opening. When Breen left to consult with Quigley, an intimidated minion passed The Scarlet Empress. It premiered at the Carlton Theatre in London on May 9.

In July, when Breen was putting Production Code Administration (PCA) seals on Paramount films, he didn't bother to look at The Scarlet Empress because it had already been passed. He gave it a seal and sent it out. The Legion of Decency got as far as the first reel, where an eight-year-old girl's dream shows three beheadings, a naked woman falling out of an "iron maiden," three topless women being burned at the stake, and a "human clapper" swinging inside a huge bell. The Scarlet Empress made the condemned list, but it didn't create problems for Breen. No one went to see it. Everyone, including Mae West, dismissed it as "an arty disaster." What was possibly the best-scripted, best-photographed, and best-directed film of the period was written off as a waste of film.

— Mark Viera, Sin in Soft Focus

"The sixth of von Sternberg's seven collaborations with Marlene Dietrich, The Scarlet Empress is a highly unorthodox biopic of Sophia Fredericka, the naif who is brought from the provinces to the Russian court to marry Peter III and produce a male heir. Hints that this is no ordinary history come early in a startling montage of Tsarist Russia. Von Sternberg's fetishism is in full flower here as he catalogs a shadowy array of blatantly sadomasochistic tableaux: bodies spilling out of iron maidens; nude women being burnt at the stake; a man strapped to a whirling wheel; and the piece de resistance, a bound, upside-down man used as a clapper in a gigantic bell. Typical of the film's internal resonances, this image is echoed throughout, most powerfully when Sophia, renamed Catherine by the Dowager Empress, rings the bell to show her successful ousting of Peter and appropriation of the Russian throne."

— Gary Morris, Bright Lights

complete article:
http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/33/scarletempress.html

SONG OF SONGS

A country orphan doesn't stay innocent for long. (1933, Rouben Mamoulian, Restoration by UCLA Film & Television Archive)

A delightful mix of Sternbergian splendour and Mamoulian send-up, this hits exactly the right note of knowingness as Dietrich puts in her first appearance, an innocent peasant maid complete with demure braids and Bible (her favourite reading being the erotic ecstasies of the Song of Solomon). She quickly finds 'him whom my soul loveth' in a sculptor (Aherne) whom she inspires to his masterwork; but financial stringencies being what they are, she is passed on to the eagerly lecherous baron (Atwill) who had commissioned the sculpture; and it only remains for her to achieve a woman's revenge, then find her natural habitat as a sultry chanteuse in a nightclub (where she embarks on the sexy 'Johnny' with all she's got: 'I need a kiss or two, or maybe more…'). Needless to say, Dietrich positively glows with demure innocence or malice aforethought as the need arises — posing shyly in the nude for the handsome sculptor, or swooping into the arms of an abashed but responsive riding-master — and the whole thing has a glitteringly opulent beauty, sparked with an irresistible sense of the absurd.

— Time Out

The most perverse artist's model picture would come late in the era- Song of Songs – in which Marlene Dietrich poses nude for sculptor Brian Aherne. Director Rouben Mamoulian couldn't show the naked Dietrich, but he made up for it by shamelessly and repeatedly showing the nude sculpture. The payoff comes when the sculptor, getting turned on by his offscreen model, starts caressing the shoulders of the state in an unwholesome, overheated way. Still, one illicit affair will not be enough for this model. Circumstances force her to leave him, and when next we see her she is probably a prostitute, and clearly a worldly and notorious woman.

— Mick LaSalle, Complicated Women

Sun. Nov. 6

DUCK SOUP

The Marx Bros. save Freedonia? (1933, Leo McCarey)

In its brilliant combination of silent-film pantomime and verbal fireworks, Duck Soup is the distillation of all the best elements to be found in the Marx brothers' comedies. In the film, under the leadership of Groucho's unforgettable prime minister Rufus T. Firefly, Freedonia goes to war with neighboring Sylvania for no reason whatsoever. Among the film's famous scenes are the moment when Groucho mistakes Harpo for his own mirror image, and the barrage of oranges and grapefruits that greet Margaret Dumont as she sings the national anthem in the film's riotous finale. Duck Soup is also filled with inimitable dialogue and the confusions of word play—double entendres, non sequiturs, and puns. In the film, the Marx brothers, with McCarey, present a world in which organized groups, political parties, nations, and social classes seem foolish, and court jesters sane.

Critics and moviegoers around the world regard Duck Soup as one of the Marx brothers' finest comedies. Yet the film was such a failure when it opened in 1933 that Paramount dropped its contract with the Marx brothers. With the American economy in collapse, Hitler on the rise in Germany, and democracy faltering at home and abroad, audiences were simply not in the mood for a political satire that held nothing sacred and left nothing unscathed. Though Duck Soup was provocative enough to have been banned in Italy by Mussolini, McCarey insisted that the only political message intended was "to kid dictators."

— Museum of Modern Art

One of the great comedies: http://www.filmsite.org/duck.html

"Why A Duck?" is a classic Marx Brothers' line and the name of a fan website with more than'll ever want to know about the wacky team:
http://www.whyaduck.com/index.htm

The Making of Duck Soup: http://web.telia.com/~u66002771/duck.htm

Senses of Cinema: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/01/13/duck.html

plus

MILLION DOLLAR LEGS

Rarity
(2:40), 5:30, 8:20

W.C. Fields is President of Klopstokia, where everyone is an athlete. (1932, Edward Cline)

"Klopstokia: A Far-Away Country. Chief Exports: Goats and Nuts. Chief Imports: Goats and Nuts. Chief Inhabitants: Goats and Nuts." This introductory title ushers in Million Dollar Legs, one of the zaniest comedies ever to emerge from a major studio. W.C. Fields stars as the president of Klopstokia, who will hold on to his office so long as he can best the secretary of the treasury (Hugh Herbert) in their daily arm-wrestling contests. Like most of the Depression-era world, Klopstokia is broke, forcing the government to take drastic measures to raise money. Fortunately, everyone in the country is a super-athlete, inspiring visiting Fuller Brush salesman Migg Tweeney (Jack Oakie) to come up with a brilliant idea: Klopstokia will enter the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles. Alas, the subversive cabinet members, hoping to overthrow the president, plot to undermine the Klopstokian athletic team with the aid of sexy seductress Mata Machree (Lyda Roberti), "the woman no man can resist." Words can hardly describe the nonstop parade of gags and verbal insanity in Million Dollar Legs: Ben Turpin, playing a cloaked-and-caped spy, pops in and out with neither rhyme nor reason; the conspirators' outdoor hideout is incongruously equipped with hydraulic lifts and elevators; Mata Machree's butler informs the villains that "Madame can only be resisted from 2 to 4,"; and, when asked why all the Klopstokian men are named George and the women named Angela, the president's daughter (Susan Fleming, later the wife of Harpo Marx), replies "Why not?" then launches into the national anthem — a double-talk version of "One Hour With You." Among the writers were Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Henry Myers, who were also responsible for the wacky Wheeler and Woolsey political satire Diplomaniacs.

— Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

plus

Betty Boop cartoon, BIMBO'S INITIATION (8 min)
(2:40), 5:30, 8:20

Mon. Nov. 7

Crime Thriller Discoveries! — Triple Rarity!

GUILTY AS HELL

"Hidden hands ended her life! Whose were they?" (1932, Earle C. Kenton)

Colombo style murder mystery with detective Edmund Lowe certain who killed the adulterous wife. Conviction of the wrong person leads him on a chase to undercover evidence before the execution date. Great chemistry and banter between Lowe and Victor McLaglan make this film exceptional with a great surprise ending. (L. Paul Meienberg)

and

BILLION DOLLAR SCANDAL

Paroled convict, employed as a financier's masseur, learns secrets of a giant oil stock scandal. (1932, Harry Joe Brown)

Strong cast of 1930s favorites in this tale of corruption based on the Teapot Dome Scandal which disgraced the Harding administration in the early 1920s. Paced much like a Warner crime film of the period, this film was a puzzlement to the late films historian William K. Everson because it is so unpredictable, building to a suspenseful, poignant and ironic ending. Glamour abounds with Olga Baclanova and Constance Cummings joining Robert Armstrong. (L. Paul Meienberg)

A convict uses his skills as a masseur and a fight manager to get out of prison and become the private gym coach for a powerful oil magnate. When the instructor's little brother gets involved with his employer's daughter and they learn that the oil baron is trying to pull off shenanigans with the government all hell breaks loose so the ex-con enlists the aid of two other former inmates to help him set things right.

— Sandra Brennan, AMG

Olga Baclanova may be best know as the opportunist bad blonde in "Freaks" but learn more about her: http://www.olgabaclanova.com

plus

Surprise Mystery Bonus Feature!

A "notorious" comedy crime film released just prior to the full enforcement of the Code in early 1934 aroused the ire of the Catholic Church which roundly condemned the glorification of crime. Starring two seasoned actresses, an elderly veteran scene stealer and the glamourous ingénue romp through this fast-paced delight as girl gangsters that spawned two sequels. A glamorous American jewel-thief (Gertrude Michael) has great fun outwitting Scotland Yard. Returning to the U.S., she comes under the scrutiny of a New York detective who surprisingly doesn't try to make an arrest. His ulterior motive leads him to surprises. (L. Paul Meienberg)

Evening shows to be introduced by film historian L. Paul Meienberg.

For an overview of the star's career: http://www.filmsofthegoldenage.com/foga/1998/winter98/gmichael.shtml

Tuesday, Nov. 8

ONE HOUR WITH YOU

Lubitsch classic offers deliciously risque dialogue and songs by Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald.

A musical remake of The Marriage Circle (1924), One Hour with You stars Maurice Chevalier as a Parisian doctor and Jeanette MacDonald as his loving wife. Chevalier is scrupulously faithful, much to the chagrin of his lovely female patients. But when MacDonald's best friend Genevieve Tobin insists upon being treated by Dr. Chevalier, it looks to many of those concerned that Tobin may succeed where the other willing ladies failed. The misunderstandings and reconciliations of the plotline are playfully staged with deliberate artificiality by director Ernst Lubitsch: Characters speak in rhymed couplets, Parisian gendarmes issue orders to their minions to the beat of a ticking clock, and Chevalier regularly talks directly to the audience. One Hour With You is a tuneful confection which is just as refreshing today as it was sixty years ago.

— Hal Erickson, AMG

We are showing several Lubitsch films. For more on the director: http://www.lubitsch.com/about.html

THIS IS THE NIGHT

Cary Grant finds wife Thelma Todd with her lover in this rediscovered farce. (1932, Frank Tuttle, Restoration by UCLA Film & Television Archive)

Cary Grant made his feature film debut playing the Olympic-athlete husband of Thelma Todd, who in turn is the object of desire for Parisian millionaire Roland Young. To keep Grant from catching on, Young hires Lily Damita to pose as his wife. Later, Young arranges to catch Grant in a compromising situation with Damita, thus leaving the field clear for Todd. But when Grant falls for Damita, Young finds that he is genuinely jealous! Several hilarious complications later, all the parties involved settle down with their proper mates. Directed by Frank Tuttle, This is the Night is a reasonable facsimile of Ernst Lubitsch's frothy Paramount comedies, right down to the comic recitative ("Madame has lost her dress! Madame has lost her dress!") built into the musical score.

— Hal Erickson, AMG

"This Is the Night is a comedy full of "non-stars" whose ensemble playing matched the film's agile editing. It had Lili Damita, Charlie Ruggles, Thelma Todd, Roland Young, and in his first featured role, Cary Grant. One running gag has an evening gown torn off Claire (Thelma Todd) by a limousine. Jason Joy (head of Production Code 1930-32) wrote: "When Claire's coat flies open and Gerald [Roland Young] looks down on a 'vista' afforded by the open coat, he gasps — with a great intake of breath. The assumption is that he has seen a great deal." Schulberg made cuts without ruining the rhythm of the sequence. In its playing, innuendo, and purely cinematic idiom, the film was a template for Paramount's sophisticated comedies, and now Jason Joy could praise it. ‘The risqué situations and dialogue have been handled with delicacy and without offense'.

A companion film could be seen in Ernst Lubitsch's One Hour with You, which reunited The Love Parade's Jeanette MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier. In it, Lubitsch and his longtime collaborator, Samson Raphaelson, took a wry look at adultery. Lamar Trotti was worried: "It has the continental flavor that I fear will be dangerous." That "flavor" was the best thing the studio had going for it. As Lubitsch said, "There is Paramount Paris and Metro Paris, and of course, the real Paris. Paramount's is the most Parisian of all." Jason Joy found the finished film beguiling, too. He praised "the delicate and charming manner in which the subject matter has been treated." The Los Angeles Times credited the "Lubitsch touch, which has become more than a legend." Jeanette MacDonald remembered: ‘The first pictures I made were very 'naughty' . . . I was flaunting around in sleazy negligees and slinky gowns. Oh, yes! The famous 'Lubitsch touch.' [It had] an amusing kind of naughtiness. Not 'dirty.' Not really 'sexy' . . . it really had great whimsy'.

— Mark Viera, Sin In Soft Focus

Wednesday, Nov. 9

Live on our stage!

SIN PAN ALLEY BURLESQUE REVIEW

8:00 pm only

Live and in the Flesh!

Dancing Girls!

Titillating Temptresses!

Mischievous Melodies!

Lowbrow giggles and guffaws!

A Bump and Grindy Ribald Romp!

The Sin Pan Alley Revue features some of San Francisco's Finest Performers!

• The Lollies — award winning Burlesque troupe
• The Scenic Sisters-Tap Dancing cuties! A Saucy Sister Act!
• Kitten On the Keys — Ivory Tickling and Uke strummin' songstress,
• Rodney Austin — Gender Bending Diva with a big SURPRISE!
• James Hamilton — Magical Interludes with a Touch of Spice
• Special Guest Stars!
• Big Screen Surprises!
• Live Music and MORE!

8:00 pm only — All seats $12.00 — Adults Only!

Advance tickets on sale at the Balboa Theatre.

Come dressed as a Pre-Code character.

Thursday, Nov. 10

Double Rarity

THIS DAY AND AGE

The rarest of Cecil B. DeMille talkies. Teenagers kidnap the gang boss and hang him over a pit of rats. (1933, Cecil B. DeMille)

Cecil B. DeMille's This Day and Age was perhaps the most Draconian entry in Hollywood's early-1930s "vigilante" film cycle. Richard Cromwell heads a group of civic-minded teenagers in a small midwestern town. When a lovable old tailor ( Harry Green) is murdered by a notorious gangster (Charles Bickford), Cromwell and his pals demand justice. But the local government is terrified by the influential gangster; in fact, many of the city fathers are on the take. Enraged, the kids take matters in their own hands. In the near-fascist climax, a mob of teenagers kidnap Bickford, spirit him away to the city dump, and suspend him over a pit of rats until he confesses to the murder! This Day and Age was the sort of Depression-engendered film of desperation that all but vanished once Franklin Roosevelt was elected.

— Hal Erickson, AMG

TWO KINDS OF WOMEN

Small town girl (Miriam Hopkins) in sinful NYC. (1932, William C. DeMille)

Robert E. Sherwood's play This Is New York was the source for Two Kinds of Women, appropriately filmed at Paramount's Long Island studios. Miriam Hopkins stars as Emma Krull, the free-spirited daughter of a South Dakota senator ( Irving Pichel). Warned by her father that New York City is a den of sin and vice, Emma decides to disprove this by heading to the Big Apple herself. Here she meets randy playboy Joseph Greshman (Phillips Holmes), and manages to wangle a proposal out of him almost immediately upon their meeting! Unfortunately, Greshman is presently married to gold-digging chorus girl Phyllis Adrian ( Wynne Gibson), who doesn't intend to let him -- or his millions -- off the hook. One thing leads to another, and before long Phyllis has taken a fatal header off of a skyscraper. The ensuing scandal obliges Senator Krull to travel to New York to see what's going on. Rather than say "I told you so," the Senator embraces his daughter and secures a promise that the now-contrite Greshman will give up the Big City and settle down in South Dakota. Director William C. DeMille (Cecil B.' older brother) does a masterful job keeping the audience's mind off the fact that "daughter" Miriam Hopkins is exactly eleven years younger than her screen "daddy" Irving Pichel.

— Hal Erickson, AMG

Friday, Nov. 11

I've been to Paris, France and I've been to Paris, Paramount. I prefer Paris, Paramount.

— Lubitsch.

DESIGN FOR LIVING

Gary Cooper, Fredric March, and Miriam Hopkins sparkle as a threesome in an adaptation of Noel Coward's risqué play.

(1933, Ernst Lubitsch) Restoration by UCLA Film & Television Archive

Ernst Lubitsch's 'Design for Living" provided the era's most adventurous model, the ménage à trios. It may be pointless to argue which film, of all the many made between 1929 and 1934, is the most 'pre-Code' of the pre-Codes. A handful exist at the outer reaches of outrageousness or daring…… 'Design for Living' is right up there.

Screenwriter Ben Hecht's complete transformation of Noël Coward's play made the film version sexier and more risqué, though it did eliminate one element suggested in the play —that the men had some sort of homosexual attraction for each other.

The movie was about how three people realize that becoming a threesome is the best way to go through life. In the beginning, when the two men realize they're both attracted to Gilda (Hopkins) and she to each of them, they enter into a 'gentleman's agreement' to live and work in the same Paris apartment — but with 'no sex." However, when Tom (March) leaves for London for a production of one of his plays, the tension between Gilda and George (Cooper) is too much. After they kiss, she moves to a day bed and lies down, knowing he'll follow. They may have a gentlemen's agreement, she says, but 'I'm no gentleman."

Later, when Tom is back in town and George is away, she sleeps with Tom. The only man Gilda refuses to sleep with is the fuddy-duddy businessman (Edward Everett Horton) whom she marries on the rebound. In less than a year, the censors would insist that every film have what they called a 'voice for morality.' 'Design for Living' has one of those — the husband—but he's a boob who says, 'Immorality may be fun, but it's not enough fun to take the place of one hundred percent virtue and three square meals a day.' Whatever that means.'

— Mick LaSalle, Complicated Women and Dangerous Men

• More about "Design for Living" from the Boston Phoenix
• The Cinema of Ernst Lubitsch website

LOVE ME TONIGHT

Warm Love! Hilarious fun! Sweet music! Hot lyrics!" Chevalier and MacDonald together again. (1932, Rouben Mamoulian) Restoration by UCLA Film & Television Archive

A superb musical, outstripping the possible influences of René Clair and Lubitsch, to whose work this has been compared. A tale of the gradual dawn of romance between 'the best tailor in Paris' (Chevalier) and a haughty princess (MacDonald), the film is a stylish masterwork of technical innovations, and a delirious result of Mamoulian's desire to incorporate movement, dancing, acting, music, singing, décor and lighting into a cogent cinematic whole. The songs develop the action and characters, the dialogue is witty and rhythmic, and the entire film, with its fine score by Rodgers and Hart, is a charming, tongue-in-cheek fantasy that never descends into syrupy whimsy.

— Time Out

MAURICE CHEVALIER, a star of musicals, occupies a singular position as a leading man. Though musicals, after an early talkie heyday, had become box-office roadkill by 1931, Chevialier enjoyed and grew in popularity. At Paramount, working with some of the studio's — indeed history's — finest directors (Mamoulian, Cukor, Lubitsch ), he made films that were startling in their daring. Time and again, Chevalier sang about sex and little else. And he played men who did more than sing about it.

On-screen, he was the ultimate extrovert, throwing himself into songs with enormous gusto, playfulness, and a flamboyance that stayed just within the border of complete foolishness, but only just within it.

If an erection had a personality, it would act like Chevalier in films such as 'The Smiling Lieutanant,' 'One Hour With you,' and 'Love Me Tonight.' His energy is relentless. He exudes insinuation. Chevalier's humor, his appeal, and, undoubtedly, his Frenchness allowed the characters he played to escape judgement for a level of sexuality that would have made any other leading man appear immoral and unsavory.

— Mick LaSalle, Complicated Women and Dangerous Men

Sat. Nov. 12

Two by Joseph Von Sternberg

SHANGHAI EXPRESS

Dietrich explains, "It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily." (1932, Joseph Von Sternberg)

Von Sternberg, who was forever looking for new kinds of stylization, said that he intended everything in Shanghai Express to have the rhythm of a train. He clearly meant it: the bizarre stop-go cadences of the dialogue delivery are the most blatantly non-naturalistic element, but the overall design and dramatic pacing are equally extraordinary. The plot concerns an evacuation from Peking to Shanghai, but it's in every sense a vehicle for something else: a parade of deceptive appearances and identities, centering on the Boule de Suif notion of a prostitute with more honour than those around her. Dietrich's Shanghai Lily hasn't aged a day, but Clive Brook's stiff-upper-lip British officer (her former lover) now looks like a virtual caricature of the type. None the less, the sincerity and emotional depth with which Sternberg invests their relationship is quite enough to transcend mere style or fashion. With the gorgeous Anna Mae Wong as Dietrich's prostitute companion.

— Time Out

One of the Great Films detailed review

plus

BLONDE VENUS

Marlene performs "Hot Voodoo," a highpoint of expressionistic eroticism, replete with blonde afro. With Cary Grant. (1932, Josef von Sternberg)

Marlene Dietrich stars as Helen Faraday, a German cabaret singer in the States whose husband, Ned, falls ill and his only hope is to receive expensive medical treatment at a clinic in Europe. Struggling to afford his care and to support their son Johnny, she works at a nightclub and succumbs to the advances of wealthy playboy Nick, whose gifts assist in her husband's recovery. Soon Ned recovers and returns, but when he discovers that Helen has been unfaithful, he divorces her, threatening to take their son. After running with little Johnny, she ends up a prostitute in New Orleans, where she is found by the detective hired by Ned. The boy is taken from her and Helen flees to Paris where she becomes a cabaret sensation. Upon witnessing a performance, Nick begins seeing her again and when the show moves to NYC, he secures a meeting between her and her ex — who is finally made aware of the motivation behind her affair years before. This is the feature containing the well-known scenes where Dietrich performs stage numbers in an ape-suit and a white tuxedo (complete with top hat)

— Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide

Essential Dietrich. She played a housewife and a mother who goes back to the stage to pay for her sick husband's medical bills. She gets the money quick by sleeping with a rich bigshot, Cary Grant, who likes her from the moment she takes off her gorilla suit.

Yes, her gorilla suit. Could you even imagine Garbo in a gorilla suit? This is what people liked about Dietrich. 'Miss Dietrich has everything that Garbo has', a fan wrote to Photoplay, 'and something else besides — HUMOR!' For the 'Hot Voodoo' number, Dietrich, in her gorilla suit, is led onto a nightclub stage. There she peels it off, puts on a blond afro, and places her hands on her hips, as she sings,

Hot voodoo, black as mud,
Hot voodoo, in my blood…
That beat gives me a wicked sensation,
My conscience wants to take a vacation.
Got voodoo head to toes,
Hot voodoo, burn my clothes,
I want to start dancing, just wearing a smile.

In such moments, Dietrich is both wonderfully comic and wonderfully hip. She seems to be sharing an in-joke with us, one that, albeit vague, is irresistible and funny.

— Mick LaSalle, Complicated Women

• FilmMuseum Berlin's Marlene Dietrich site — photos, credits and much more
• Text of song "Hot Voodoo"
• Censorship actions
• Senses of Cinema on Josef Von Sternberg
• Von Sternberg site

Sun. Nov. 13

HORSE FEATHERS

"Whatever it is, I'm against it," exclaims Groucho as the Brothers Marx bring anarchy to college and football.

(1932, Norman McLeod)

The title means bunk or baloney, a fitting epithet for the Brothers' second screen original for Paramount, where the lads and their writers threw sanity to the winds with a wildly disorganised parody of academic life. Groucho is president of Huxley College, where no student appears to be under thirty-five. Chief subjects on the curriculum seem to be football, sex, the delivery of heinous puns (haddock/headache) and the refurbishing of old vaudeville routines (the biology lecture). The Brothers have never been so chaotic or so aggressively funny.

— Time Out

• More trivia, background and Marxian resources
• The making of Horse Feathers

plus

KISS AND MAKE UP

And a Betty Boop cartoon (8 min)

One of the least known of Cary Grant's starring vehicles, Kiss and Make Up was based on a European play by Stephen Bekeffi. Grant stars as high-priced beautician Dr. Maurice Lamar, who does so spectacular a job on his plain-jane client Eve Caron (Genevieve Tobin) that Eve's jealous husband Marcel (Edward Everett Horton) divorces her. Eve marries Maurice on the rebound, but she drives him crazy with her shallow vanity. Maurice would prefer the company of his faithful secretary Anne (Helen Mack), but she has wed the vengeful Caron! But when Anne discovers that Caron is as self-involved as Eve, she goes back to Marcel, while Eve, who started it all, quickly finds comfort in the arms of gigolo Rolando (Rafael Storm). Highlights in Kiss and Make Up includes Cary Grant's musical numbers (yes, he can sing- don't miss one of the most divinely silly scenes in the history of cinema, a love song to corned beef and cabbage), a wacky car chase through Paris involving rabbits and ether, and a hilarious bit involving Cecil Cunningham as one of Dr. Lamar's less successful "experiments." The film also serves as a showcase for the 1934 crop of Wampas Baby Stars, including George M. Cohan's pretty daughter Helen and Jean Gale of the singing Gale Sisters.

— Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Dialogue from Kiss and Make Up

Dr Lamar: You're Madame Caron's husband?
Mr. Caron: I am, yes, on those rare occasions when you're not messing around with her.
Dr. Lamar: Messing around! I'll have you understand that my mess… My contact with your wife is purely professional.
Mr. Caron: That's what I resent!
Dr. Lamar: What do you mean?
Mr. Caron: What right have you to make my wife over? You've enlarged her here and reduced her there. And you've even done something to her knees! And I liked them as they were. I married those knees for better or for worse.
Dr. Lamar: Madame Caron merely asked me to add a couple of dimples.
Mr. Caron: And I contend, and every right thinking husband will back me up, that dimples give a distinctly ga-ga expression to the kneecap. Quite unsuited to my wife!
Dr. Lamar: Listen, when you make motorbuses for the public, you improve their lines, don't ya?
Mr. Caron: Oh, have you seen … What right have you to classify my wife as a public conveyance? Huh? Where is she? Now you've got her around here somewhere!
Dr. Lamar: You can't go in there!
Mr. Caron: Why not?
Dr. Lamar: She might not be dressed! I'll see her!
Mr. Caron: Well, you tell her that … OH! You'll see, but I can't!
Dr. Lamar: Show this gentleman out!
Mr. Caron: Doctor! Put my wife back the way she was when I married her or I'll take steps. I don't know in what direction, but I'll take steps!

plus a Betty Boop cartoon, Crazy Inventions (8 min)

Mon. Nov. 14

Double Rarity

TORCH SINGER

"Lips that had kissed more men than she could remember …crooned lullabies no one could forget!" Claudette Colbert at her torchiest. (1933, Alexander Hall, George Somnes)

Claudette Colbert considered this film a joke at the time and was soon banished by Paramount to star with Gable at Columbia which garnered her an Oscar.

The story of Sally Trent, a fallen woman putting her child up for adoption and then fighting her way to the top as a cabaret singer and radio personality is one of the most enjoyable films of the early 1930s. Colbert sings and struts her stuff with abandon. Songs in the film by Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin include "Don't Be a Cry Baby," "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Love," "It's a Long Dark Night," "The Torch Singer".

— L. Paul Meienberg

KICK IN

Clara Bow is terrific in this noirish lost film. (1931, Richard Wallace)

Previously filmed in 1917 and 1922, Willard Mack's barnstorming stage melodrama Kick In was exhumed again in 1931 as a Clara Bow vehicle. The "It" girl plays Molly, the wealthy but long-suffering sister of young coke-head Charlie (Leslie Fenton). When ex-crook Chick Hewes (Regis Toomey) tries to dissuade Charlie from committing a robbery, the no-good punk pins the blame for the crime on Chick. It takes the intervention of Molly, who's fallen in love with Chick, to set things right. Billed sixth in the cast is James Murray, who skyrocketed to stardom in the 1928 King Vidor production The Crowd.

— Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Plus Betty Boop in Old Man of the Mountain featuring Cab Calloway and his orchestra (8 min.)

Betty Boop before and after the Code

Tue, Nov. 15

DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE

Classic horror film with Frederic March and Miriam Hopkins. (1932, Rouben Mamoulian)

Still the best version of Stevenson's novella, shot in pre-Hayes Code days and therefore able to trace Jekyll's troubles to their source in sexual repression. Jekyll's frustration over the enforced delay in his marriage becomes a reiterated motif in the dialogue, and just in case anyone misses the point, it is underlined by diagonal wipes linking him to his fiancée at moments of stress preceding transformation. Cunningly, Mamoulian opens the film with a lengthy subjective sequence, so that our first real view of Jekyll (an admirable performance from March) is when he embarks on his lecture on the possibility of separating the two natures of man: a ploy which simultaneously arouses curiosity about this man, indicates his soaring intellectual arrogance, and divorces him from society as represented by his distinguished, disapproving audience. The rest, stunningly shot by Karl Strauss as a visual tour de force, is both superb and slyly subversive.

— Time Out

This version of Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novel was as much a study of sexual frustration as a horror film. Mamoulian later said: "I didn't want Hyde to be a monster. Hyde is not evil. He is the primitive, the animal in us, whereas Jekyll is a cultured man, representing the intellect." To effect the transformation from Jekyll to Hyde, Mamoulian worked with the gifted cinematographer Karl Struss, who used colored lights, filters, and Wally Westmore's makeup to transform March's face from good to evil. Struss rejected Mamoulian's atavistic concept: "The change from Jekyll should have been largely a psychological one, with subtle changes only in the make-up. But they foolishly changed the hair and put false teeth in and made him look like a monkey." Mamoulian insisted: "Hyde is the Neanderthal man, and March's makeup was designed as such." Hyde's scenes with Ivy (Miriam Hopkins) smacked of bestiality, and Joy wrote Schulberg that an undressing scene looked as if it had been "dragged in simply to titillate the audience." The film received critical plaudits and made a respectable profit.

Jason Joy (Production Code enforcer) wrote to Will Hays:

Frankenstein is staying for four weeks and taking in big money at theatres which were about on the rocks . . . resentment is surely being built up. How could it be otherwise if children go to these pictures and have the jitters, followed by nightmares? I, for one, would hate to have my children see FRANKENSTEIN, JEKYLL, or the others and you probably feel the same way about Bill [Will Hays, Jr.]. Not only is there a future economic consideration, but maybe there is a real moral responsibility involved to which I wonder if we as individuals ought to lend our support.

— Mark Viera, Sin in Soft Focus

MURDER BY THE CLOCK

Rarity — Lost Atmospheric chiller.(1931, Edward H. Sloman)

An eerie early-talkie mystery, Murder by the Clock spends most of its time in a cemetery. The matriarch (Blanche Frederici) of a wealthy family is haunted by the notion that she'll be buried alive. To avoid this contingency, she has a horn installed in the family mausoleum, to be activated in case she arises from her casket. The lady is murdered, and shortly after her internment the horn blows at regular intervals. Each time the horn is heard, the dead woman is seen wandering the cemetery, and each time one of her relatives winds up dead. These "supernatural" events are actually being orchestrated by a covetous family member (there's a large legacy involved of course), who uses the services of several homicidal confederates. Murder by the Clock was perhaps more frightening in 1931 than it is today, but a TV revival is long overdue.

— Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

There are very few films from the first wave of horror that have escaped modern-day attention. The true classics such as Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, King Kong and Paramount's Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde have been thoroughly probed and dissected, while the offshoots to these films have equally been scrutinized in some detail. However, it is with great delight to uncover another worthy addition to this roster with 1931's MURDER BY THE CLOCK The film's deserved place in the "horror hall of fame" has been denied primarily due to the lack of exposure it has received."

Read the rest of this detailed review

Wed., Nov. 16

Double Rarity

THE SEARCH FOR BEAUTY

Ida Lupino and Buster Crabbe are in for surprises at the health farm where they meet Robert Armstrong and Gertrude Michael while unknowingly becoming fronts for get-rich-quick promoters. (1934, Earl C. Kenton)

Paramount actually staged a contest through the Anglo world for studly males and comely females who would appear in this film with Buster Crabbe and Ida Lupino. The story of a sex magazine and health ranch intended to line the pockets of get-rich-quick con artists is hilarious but certainly upset the Legion of Decency. With Robert Armstrong and Gertrude Michael.

— Paul Meienberg

Erle C. Kenton's Search for Beauty had Robert Armstrong and James Gleason as con artists who dupe Olympic medalists (Ida Lupino and Buster Crabbe) into editing a near-defunct health magazine. Before long, the crooks have turned Health and Exercise into a skin-and-confession magazine — "so hot you could fry an egg on it!" When Lupino objects to its "reeking" articles, Armstrong says: "My dear young lady, there can be no virtue without a knowledge of vice. You don't know a stove is hot until you touch it, do you? These stories all point a moral."

"Yes," she snaps. "Just enough moral to sneak them through the mails."

Armstrong reminds her that a board of censors must approve each story. In a scene that should have tweaked Breen, the film shows the censors as clubwomen who are titillated by the stories they review: "'I Loved an Artist' . . . Oh, those poets! What thrilling love lives they lead! Just leaping from one bed — of flowers — to another!"

"Don't you think it points a moral?" asks Armstrong.

One censor answers: "About one percent moral — and ninety-nine percent sex."

"There's nothing wrong with sex," says Armstrong. "As long as it leads to, uh, what it leads to."

"I got nothin' against sex," pipes up Gleason. "Either ya got it — or ya go lookin' for it."

The script thumbed its nose at Breen when teenagers Sally (Toby Wing) and Susie (Verna Hillie) compare notes on "I Loved an Artist."

SALLY: I sure wish I could meet a guy like that "dark, mysterious artist." Of course, you get a bill for it in the end.

SUSIE: Bill? Baloney! That "paying the price" stuff is the bunk. They just put that in to make the yarn moral. I'll bet that dame is living on Park Avenue, riding around in an imported oil can — and splashing mud in the faces of pure working girls. If I ever get a chance —

SALLY: Me, too! And I don't care what his past was or his future is. As long as he's got a present! Tee hee!

Oddly, Breen did not bristle at this insult to his "voice for morality." He only warned Botsford about certain visual problems: "The shot of Crabbe seen through the woman's binoculars, concentrating on his loins, [and the] shot in the locker room, in which a couple of men run through naked." The film was released without cuts, but it only got through Chicago and New York in the same condition. Every other board cut it, loins, locker room and all."

— Mark Viera, Sin in Soft Focus

FOLLOW THRU

Nancy and her ideal costar, Charles "Buddy" Rogers, in the hit musical comedy Follow Thru. Nancy's red hair and green eyes made her a perfect candidate to show off the movie's two-color Technicolor process, which emphasized red and green. (Courtesy Leonard Maltin's Movie Crazy)

This musical, based on a Broadway show, was filmed in two-color technicolor. Set upon a golf course, it chronicles the attempts of a handsome golfer to teach a young woman how to play the game. This causes her gossipy rival to start a string of vicious rumors about the two. It seems that her rival is jealous of the golfer's attentions. Songs include: "A Peach of A Pair", "It Must Be You", "You Wouldn't Fool Me, Would You?", "Button Up Your Overcoat", "I Want to Be Bad" and "I'm Hard To Please". Starring: Nancy Carroll, Jack Haley, Zelma O'Neal, Eugene Pallette.

— Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

plus Boop-Oop-A-Doo (8 min) - Betty Boop. Restoration by UCLA Film & Television Archive

When the fat circusmaster in Boop-Boop-a-Doop (1931) runs his hand up and down her exposed thighs, Betty recoils in disgust and sings a mock-lament to the sympathetic circus audience: "Please don't take my boop-boop-a-doop away." Now, what could she have meant by that?

Read more about Betty Boop in an article by Gary Morris in Bright Lights

Thur, Nov. 17

Double Rarity

WHITE WOMAN

Carole Lombard and Charles Laughton find masochism and lasciviousness in the steamy jungle. (1933, Stuart Walker)

They don't make them like this anymore. A lurid jungle picture with a fallen woman (the gorgeous Lombard) forced to sing in an interracial cafe after her husband commits suicide. No one in the African jungle British community wants anything to do with her. The British are there tearing up the jungle for the rubber plants and building huge rubber plantations. Rumor is her husband killed himself over her cheating ways. She's miserable and salvation comes along in the guise of Charles Laughton playing Horace Prin, the "King Of The River" - he's the richest rubber plantation owner in the jungle and he likes what he sees in Lombard. They marry, she's now rich but she's nothing more than one thing he owns and she begins to realize that he is obsessively jealous and insane and cruel. Laughton is amazing. A brilliant actor (from Witness For The Prosecution, Advise & Consent, Mutiny On The Bounty) who is capable of hamming it up for the sake of ham (Island Of Lost Souls, un-released Caligula) this is the hammiest performance I've ever seen but it is also so entertaining. He has a field day destroying any worker who dares to look at his new bride. What a hoot!!!

— J. Shark, IMDB

KING OF THE JUNGLE

Buster Crabbe, raised by a pride of lions, comes to civilization and must put clothes on. Too bad. (1933, H. Bruce Humberstone, Max Marcin)

In this campy adventure, a man raised in the mysterious African jungles by a pride of lions is captured by circus people and taken to New York along with his feline pals. Just before the boat is to dock, the lion-boy jumps ship and swims to shore. Dressed only in a loin cloth, he begins stalking the city streets where he encounters a pretty girl (Frances Dee) who quickly teaches him English. They fall in love, but before they can live happily ever after, the jungle King must help prevent disaster after a fire in the Brooklyn Zoo erupts and panic stricken animals begin running wild in the streets.

— Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

plus Betty Boop on Bamboo Isle (8 min)

Fri, Nov. 18

SHE DONE HIM WRONG

Mae tells Cary to 'come up' and see her sometime. (66 min)
(2:15), 5:25, 8:40

Emily Worth Lieder, author of "Becoming Mae West" will introduce the 8:40 showing.

Mae West's first starring vehicle, and one of her best (i.e. least diluted) movies. Adapted from her stage success Diamond Lil, it features her as Diamond Lou (a change occasioned by the original's notoriety), mistress of a Naughty Nineties saloon, setting her sights on the righteous young man (Cary Grant) investigating the place for signs of corruption. West, making her way through ditties like 'I Like a Man What Takes His Time' and 'Frankie and Johnny', keeps most of her double-meanings single. Marvelous stuff.

— Time Out

The censors were determined at all costs that Mae should not film 'Diamond Lil', but here it is, with Mae establishing her trade-mark set of 'oohs' 'aahs' and 'mmms' to suggest 'sin-sational' delights. Mae's 1890s saloon queen rubs up against Cary Grant's mission officer to make the sparks fly. 'I always knew you could be had!' This was Paramount's biggest hit of 1933 - until the next Mae West film came along. With Gilbert Roland, Noah Beery, Louise Beavers.

— British Film Institute

In Depth review

Emily Leider discusses why she wrote her book

Her website

Enter Mae West

Excerpted with permission from Mark Vieira's SIN IN SOFT FOCUS

Mae West's first starring film, She Done Him Wrong, had been released January 27. Years later, she recalled the Hollywood of early 1933: "It was a world that came awake with an economic hangover, and instead of being thankful it was being saved, tried to assault its rescue teams." Before the year was over, she would be credited with saving Paramount Pictures — and denounced as an evil influence.

The SRC's John Wilson wrote: "There is no objection to Mae West writing any story she wants, but they must stay away from the basic plot of 'Diamond Lil.'" On November 29, in one of his first official acts as new SRC director, James Wingate wrote to Paramount, suggesting changes: "In order to remove even the slightest suspicion of white slavery, we suggest that you include inserts of the photographs of the girls indicated in sequence A-14, in order to show the audience that these girls are dancers, singers, etc." He also advised that they "develop the comedy elements [and] invest the picture with such exaggerated qualities as automatically to take care of possible offensiveness." He need not have worried on that account.

From the moment Mae West swaggered across the screen, audiences knew they were in the presence of a master — a master of exaggeration, innuendo, and humor. The ribaldry she had flashed in Night After Night came to sexy fruition in She Done Him Wrong, the story of a Gay Nineties saloon singer who says: "Always remember to smile. You'll never have anything to worry about." Lady Lou (Mae West) is always smiling; every man she meets falls for her and showers her with diamonds, the real love of her life.

For five years the screen had been dominated by languid foreign stars such as Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo. Garbo thrilled her fans by reacting to situations; she rarely initiated them. "The drama comes in how she rides them out," said Irving Thalberg. Mae West was different. She wrote her stories, and in them she ran the show. "She was the strong, confident woman, always in command," said Adolph Zukor. "And that was the real Mae." In She Done Him Wrong, Lady Lou says: "Men's all alike, married or single. It's their game. I just happen to be smart enough to play it their way." She plays it with sex, but tempers it with humor, striding through every scene with the rhythmic tread of a transvestite dinosaur, bursting out of a wardrobe so tight that she never sits. She sells her humor with an ululating voice, humming such one-liners as:

• The wolf at my door? Why, I remember when he came into my room and had pups.
• There was a time when I didn't know where my next husband was comin' from.
• Why, he'd be the kind a woman'd hafta marry ta get rid of.
• Why, a boy with a gift like that oughta be workin' at it.
• When women go wrong, men go right after them.

There was, of course, the line that became a catch phrase, the endlessly quoted (and misquoted) "Why doncha come up sometime an' see me?" Two other lines almost didn't make the final cut: "Say, you can be had," and "Hands ain't everything." James Wingate tried to delete them from prints after the initial release, but only succeeded in cutting one verse from the song "A Guy What Takes His Time." She Done Him Wrong was Mae West triumphant. Wingate confided nervously to Hays: "We are not sure that this type of picture will do the industry any good." Sidney Kent wrote Hays: "I believe it is worse than 'Red-Headed Woman' from the standpoint of the industry — it is far more suggestive in word and what is not said is suggested in action. I cannot understand how your people on the Coast could let this get by." Critical response was equally strong.

Elizabeth Yeaman of The Hollywood Citizen-News described the film as "the most flagrant and utterly abandoned morsel of sin ever attempted on the screen, and I must confess that I enjoyed it enormously." Louella Parsons said that West was "just as naughty as she was on stage and perhaps just a shade more flirtatious." John S. Cohen, Jr., wrote in the New York Sun: "She is humorously brazen. She is brazenly humorous. Comedy saves her and her rÙles." Best of all was the item in the Los Angeles Review: "She Done Him Wrong . . . has turned into a golden gusher for Paramount. Exhibitors can't pry it loose from their screens." The film made $2 million in less than two months. With A Farewell to Arms, The Sign of the Cross, and now She Done Him Wrong, Paramount was out of the quicksand, but not out of the woods. Neither was Hollywood.

Dialogue from She Done Him Wrong

When women go wrong, men go right after them.

Ya know it was a toss-up whether I go in for diamonds or sing in the choir. The choir lost.

Come up some time and see me."

Cary Grant: "Haven't you ever met a man who could make you happy?"
MW: "Sure, lots of times."

Man looks at her diamond necklace.
MW: "Handle it with care. It's only my heart."

MW: "You never heard of me cheatin' anyone, have ya?"
Landlord: "No, not about money."

Serge the Russian: "The men of my country go wild about women with yellow hair."
MW: "I'm glad you told me. I wanna keep straight on my geography.'"
Serge: "You were made for love and love only. Surely you have enough diamonds."
MW: "Diamonds is my career."
Serge: "I swear I shall die to make you happy."
MW: "You wouldn't be of much USE to me dead."

Cary Grant slaps cuffs on her.
MW: "Those absolutely necessary? You know, I wasn't born with them."
Grant: "All those men would have been a lot safer if you had."
MW: "I don't know . . . hands ain't everything."
Cary Grant: "You bad girl. . . ."
MW: "You'll find out. . . ."

Mae West site

Lots of photos, lyrics to Mae's songs and more

plus

GIRLS ABOUT TOWN

Rarity — How can these party girls afford their Deco lifestyle? (82 min)

Kay Francis and Lilyan Tashman played a pair of roommates who make a fat living dating rich businessmen from out of town. That they're call girls is never explicitly stated, but we get the picture. One day Francis meets a man she likes (Joel McCrea) and, for fun, the two play-act what they would say to each other if they were in love — only she's not acting. Love brings out the goodness in the girl about town. It's just one of many strong pre-Code performances from Francis, who entered talkies at Paramount's Astoria Studios on Long Island after a brief stage career.

Women needed money. What else could a poor girl do but trade what she had for what she needed?"

— Mick LaSalle, Complicated Women

The girls are in it for the gold, the furs, and the cocktails, the town is New York after dark, and the director is Cukor at his most urbane. Playwright Zoe Akins (The Greeks Had a Word for It) provided the risqué pre-Code story line, Tashman gave it snap, Francis was, to quote Cukor, "decorative," and McCrea was "attractive as the boy." A very funny film with lavish décor and gowns courtesy of Paramount.

— Note for LA County Museum 2005 Tribute to Joel McCrea

Kay Francis and Lilyan Tashman portray what used to be euphemistically labelled "good time girls". They work the convention circuit, providing companionship and other favors for tired business men--who of course lavish the girls with expensive gifts. Francis spoils this little set-up by falling for poor but virtuous Joel McCrea. Meanwhile, Tashman continues plying her trade with wealthy Eugene Pallette, whose wife responds not with jealousy but by trying to imitate Tashman's style! Girls About Town is the sort of ribald film fare that would be chased off the screen a few years later by the more stringent Production Code.

— Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This film is a great showcase for character performers.

With two books set for release on Kay Francis, people may want to know more abut her. Also check her out in TROUBLE IN PARADISE on Sunday, Nov. 20.

Kay Francis fan site

Another site with bloopers and outtakes

Lilyan Tashman bio and photos

Joel McCrea

Bright Lights article: The Sexy Ways of Joel McCrea

Eugene Pallette

Plus a Betty Boop's Any Rags (8 min) (3:45), 7:00

Sat. Nov 19

Cecil B. DeMille directs Claudette Colbert

THE SIGN OF THE CROSS

Graphic violence, debauchery, hints of homosexuality & nudity amidst the Christians. Charles Laughton and Frederic March co-star. (124 min)
(12:20), 4:35, 8:55

A prologue tacked on in 1944 ludicrously attempts to link the Allies' advance over Italy to the dreadful happenings in Nero's time. But history was always a plaything to DeMille, useful only as a surefire way of offering up sex, violence and visual spectacle under the guise of cultural and moral enlightenment. And this slice of 'history' has it all: Laughton's implicitly gay Nero fiddling away while an impressive miniature set burns, Colbert bathing up to her nipples in asses' milk, Christians and other unfortunates thrown to a fearsome menagerie, much suggestive slinking about in Mitchell Leisen's costumes, much general debauchery teetering between the sadistic and the erotic. Not for people with scruples.

— Time Out

Looking at the plump young actor in an English film, Cecil B. DeMille must have clutched his chest ecstatically and cried out 'My Nero!' Charles Laughton fulfilled DeMille's juiciest dreams. Sitting in an imperial box at the arena, and using an emerald as a lorgnon, this Nero peers at the Christians and lions at their games. He's a voluptuous connoisseur of agonies, and childishly appreciative of any novelty, such as the frolicsome spiking of a pygmy on a fork by a wild woman fro the North. As the wicked Empress Poppaea, Caludette Colbert looks wryly amused to find herself bathing in asses' milk, but her svelte figure in Roman scanties, explains the casting; she must have had the best shape on the Paramount lot. DeMille's bang-them-on-the-head-with-wild-orgies-and-imperilled virginity style is at its ripest; the film is just about irresistible.

— Pauline Kael

Almost from the beginning The Sign of the Cross had censorship problems, but DeMille stood firm against efforts to cut his picture. However, for its 1938 reissue, 760 feet of cuts were made to conform to the revised 1934 Production Code. In 1944, a World War II Prologue was added for a second reissue, and the picture was trimmed by another 800 feet. The original 1932 cut survived only in DeMille's personal vault until it's recent rediscovery.

Read about the censorship problems below.

Under the Naked Moon.

Excerpted with permission from Sin in Soft Focus by Mark Vieira

At fifty-one, Cecil Blount DeMille was perhaps the best-known film director in the world, whether for sex fables such as Male and Female or biblical epics such as The King of Kings. DeMille's eminence meant nothing to the new regime at Paramount Pictures. Emanuel Cohen only cared that The Sign of the Cross be made economically: "Remember, Cecil, you are on trial with this picture." DeMille's interest in the film was not purely aesthetic; he had raised half of its budget of $650,000.

To finish the film within budget, DeMille enlisted the talents of costume and set designer Mitchell Leisen. Leisen was bisexual, with a reputation for decadence. He embellished the spiritual story with authentically pagan detail. As time grew shorter and the job more demanding, DeMille let Leisen codirect much of the film. Before long, they had turned the venerable play into a catalogue of Hollywood's private life. With a straight face, DeMille asked a reporter: "Do you realize the close analogy between conditions today in the United States and the Roman Empire prior to the fall?"

In The Sign of the Cross, DeMille cast ladies' man Fredric March as the womanizing Roman, Marcus Superbus, but was unsure who could play the Empress Poppaea. At the time, Claudette Colbert had played mostly "bright young things." DeMille called to her from his office window one day: "How would you like to play the wickedest woman in the world?"

"I'd love it," she answered.

For her screen test, an actor upbraided her: "You harlot!"

"I love you," was her reply. The way she said it assured DeMille that he had made the right choice for Poppaea. Leisen said: "Making the costumes for Claudette was a real pleasure . . . I slit her skirts right up to the hip to show her marvelous legs. She didn't have a stitch on underneath." Colbert's Sapphic bias brought another dimension to the role, but no one could compete with Charles Laughton for depravity. When asked by a reporter how he was portraying Nero, he said: "I play him straight." In contrast to Laughton's undulant, triple-jointed emperor, Leisen cast muscular Georges Bruggeman as his ever-present male slave. Their seminude propinquity brought new meaning to the line "Delicious debauchery."

For the obligatory bath scene, DeMille put Poppaea in a huge pool of asses' milk. Leisen said: "DeMille wanted the milk to just barely cover her nipples, so the day before, I had Claudette stand in the pool and I measured her to get the level just right." The studio technicians filled the pool with powdered milk. In a few days, the heat of the lights turned it sour. Cinematographer Karl Struss recalled: "Oh, boy! It smelled to heaven! It was there for a week. Claudette was really nude, so she couldn't get out too often." When she did, DeMille tried to get a free look; a technician inadvertently blocked it, and DeMille cursed him.

DeMille's voyeurism aside, Struss remembered the film as a "great challenge. I used gauze throughout, to give the feeling of a world remembered; it wasn't much used then, as it had been in the silent period. I shot the whole black-and-white picture through bright red gauze." Some of his finest work, as well as that of Leisen and art director Hans Dreier, was in two sequences, the Circus Maximus and the orgy. The Circus Maximus scene recreated in sadistic detail the excesses of the "Arena Games." The orgy scene had as its centerpiece the "Dance of the Naked Moon." In this scene, dissolute Marcus has failed to seduce innocent Mercia (Elissa Landi), so he asks Ancaria (Joyzelle Joyner), the "most wicked and, uh, talented woman in Rome," to perform a dance that will "warm her into life." As conceived by Leisen, directed by DeMille, and shot by Struss, the scene was something that had never been done before, a narcotic ode to sex.

DeMille was in the sands of the arena, filming an Amazon beheading a pygmy, when his business manager ran up to him: "We've just used up the budget. You haven't got a dime." DeMille stopped filming. He had managed to make his epic within budget. Now he had to get it past the Hays Office. Jason Joy was still working at the SRC when the film came up for approval, but James Wingate was there, too, learning the ropes. They looked at The Sign of the Cross, and collaborated on a letter to Paramount: "Ordinarily we would have been concerned about those portions of the dance sequence in which the Roman dancer executes the 'Kootch' Movement. But since the director obviously used the dancing to show the conflict between paganism and Christianity, we are agreed that there is justification for its use under the Code."

The SRC may have been agreed, but many Catholic publications, including Our Sunday Visitor, Commonweal, and America, were outraged. Martin Quigley's Motion Picture Herald could recommend the film only to people whose "sensibilities survive the odors of Lesbos and de Sade." The Hollywood Citizen-News lambasted it as a "vicious excursion in eroticism, cloaked in religion." Ancaria's dance was described by one scandalized Catholic as "the most unpleasant bit of footage ever passed by the Hollywood censors." Daniel Lord told DeMille that it smacked of "sex perversion." Martin Quigley referred it with great distaste as "that lesbian dance," and declared: "The scene is objectionable because it transgresses the limits of legitimate dramatic requirements and becomes an incident liable to an evil audience effect."

DeMille had not expected this response from the usually well-disposed Catholic press. When Protestant and Jewish leaders also voiced disapproval, he asked Paramount: "Are there many people who will stay away from a theater today because of a sensational dance?" Before he got an answer, Will Hays called him.

"I am with Martin Quigley. What are you going to do about that dance?"

"Will, listen carefully to my words because you may want to quote them. Not a damn thing."

"Not a damn thing?"

"Not a damn thing."

Paramount shipped the film to the censor boards. The few who did cut it concentrated on gorillas, alligators, and asses' milk. Not one board cut the "lesbian dance." Harrison's Reports speculated that no one knew what it meant. Whether they knew what it meant or not, the Midwest Catholics knew impure love when they saw it. Hollywood had defiled their mythology of Christians vs. lions, and they would not forget.

In spite of the depression, or perhaps because of it, The Sign of the Cross was a bigger hit than anyone expected. To see Rome in soft focus, destitute people offered theaters handwritten I. O. U.'s. "Nearly every one of them was redeemed when cash began to flow again," wrote C. B. DeMille. But Paramount couldn't cash these little pieces of paper, and on February 4, the company went into receivership."

Cover of Souvenir Program Book

Claudette Colbert Tribute

Cecil B. DeMille

plus

CLEOPATRA

"History's most seductive woman! The screen's mightiest spectacle!" (100 min)
(2:40), 7:00

After the less than enthusiastic reception accorded Four Frightened People, DeMille turned again to historical spectacle in hopes of repeating the success of The Sign of the Cross. Like the latter, Cleopatra was made on a relatively modest budget considering the scope of the production, but there is a claustrophobic feeling about the film, and many of the settings could have been recreated in the legitimate theater. DeMille concentrated on a few set pieces to give the film a sense of the spectacular, and with scant exceptions this is a practice he would follow in all of his future pictures. For Cleopatra the big moments were the Egyptian queen's entry into Rome, her seduction of Marc Antony on a Nile barge, and a stirring battle montage-which incorporated a great deal of stock footage culled from DeMille's own The Ten Commandments (1923).

Unfortunately, Cleopatra would be Claudette Colbert's last DeMille picture. A tasteful performer who could play both drama and comedy with equal flair, Colbert saw the fun in her roles for DeMille, but she never made fun of them. She also projected a knowledge of human nature without a hint of cynicism, and because this was so much a part of DeMille's own point of view, she has to be considered the director's perfect leading lady.

For DeMille, Cleopatra would have a long-lasting impact, for it was Henry Wilcoxon's first film with the director. DeMille discovered Wilcoxon by watching another director's screen test, and cast him as Marc Antony. Wilcoxon, who would go on to become a trusted friend and advisor, seemed to be DeMille's alter ego, exuding the regal self-confidence that DeMille himself showed in public and longed for in private. He would eventually become DeMille's associate producer."

— Robert S. Birchard for a Cecil B. DeMille retrospective at the American Museum of the Moving Image in 1989. (Birchard's book Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood was published in 2004 by the University Press of Kentucky).

DeMille's dazzling epic was box-office gold in 1934. The film starred Claudette Colbert, ravishing in her role as the royal seductress, and chronicled with wit and humor her reign and her love affairs with Julius Caesar and Marc Antony. In true DeMille fashion, the production was a lavish visual feast, with titillating costumes and award-winning cinematography. Topping it all off are Hans Dreier's and Roland Anderson's jaw-dropping, eye-popping sets; the opulence of Cleopatra's barge was one of the great achievements in Hollywood production design.

— UCLA Film & Television Archive

Another Cecil B. DeMille site

Detailed review

Websites all about Cleopatra

Sun, Nov. 20

TROUBLE IN PARADISE

Lubitsch' sly ode to immorality and sex. Pure caviar, only tastier. (83 min)
(1:50), 5:15, 8:45

Ernst Lubitsch used Laszlo Aladar's play The Honest Finder as a springboard for one of his most delightful early-1930s Paramount confections, Trouble in Paradise. Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins play a pair of Parisian thieves, both disguised as nobility. Both decide to rob lovely perfume company executive Kay Francis; Marshall gets a job as Francis' confidential secretary, while Hopkins installs herself as the woman's typist. Love rears its head, forcing Marshall to choose between marriage with Francis and a fast getaway with Hopkins.

Recognized by one of his former victims (Edward Everett Horton), Marshall is turned in for punishment to the chairman of the board of Francis' cosmetics firm (C. Aubrey Smith) — who is himself exposed as a crook by the wily Marshall. As the film fades, Marshall and Hopkins are back together, still picking one another's pocket and loving every minute of it. Filled with marvelous throwaway gags and sophisticated innuendo, Trouble in Paradise was described by one critic as "as close to perfection as anything I have ever seen in the movies.

— Hal Erickson, AMG

Lubitsch's next film economized with its cast (Herbert Marshall, Kay Francis, and Miriam Hopkins) and sets (Busch Gardens, UA's Venice canal, and standing sets at Paramount), but its imagination was rich beyond Hollywood's most extravagant budget. Even Geoffrey Shurlock, a new SRC reviewer, had to say that Trouble in Paradise was "the most sparkling and entertaining of Lubitsch's comedies since the advent of talkies." Then he added: "For adults." After all, it was the story of two jewel thieves (living together, of course) who fleece a rich, glamorous widow. As in all Lubitsch films, the seeming meanness of the plot belied the smiling sympathy of its director. Lubitsch later said: "As for pure style, I have done nothing better or as good as Trouble in Paradise." Neither the critics nor the public agreed; there was red ink in paradise.

— Mark Vieira, Sin in Soft Focus

Right from its opening joke — a Venetian romantically serenading a gondola full of garbage — Trouble in Paradise spins a wonderful, sophisticated tale in praise of immorality, money and sex, with two aristocratic impostors (Marshall and Hopkins) battling over their plans to rob a rich widow (the languorous Kay Francis). Lubitsch's regular script collaborator Samson Raphaelson never bettered the lethal irony of his dialogue here, as the thieves pass insinuations to and fro with the same lightning grace they give to pickpocketing. And the director's famed 'touch' remains featherweight and incisive throughout, matching the performances of his charmingly bogus lead players. If ever a film slipped down a treat, this one does.

— Time Out

Having seen "Ninotchka" years ago, and "Heaven Can Wait" and "That Uncertain Feeling" more recently, I was relatively convinced of Ernst Lubitsch's legendary "touch." But now that I've seen TROUBLE IN PARADISE, I really get it. What a master of the urbane, stylish, and subtly sexy he was! Working here with screenwriter Samson Raphaelson, from an adaptation by Grover Jones of a play by Aladar Laszlo, the director and his cast polish this piece beyond gleaming. The dialog is throw-away perfection; it keeps taking you by utter surprise.

Looking back on what I've seen of Lubitsch, I believe it's his embrace of everything positive in life (including sex, you bluenoses!) that makes us root for his characters and so love his films. He understands how precious, how splendid human beings — with all our foibles — can be, and he shares this with us via comedy, romance, thievery, glamour and — omigod — infidelity. How much better, more original, more surprising, does it get? Herbert Marshall, Miriam Hopkins and Kay Francis were never among my favorites, but they've zoomed to the top based on their work here. Frances, in particular, is so appealing that she turns the "other woman" into someone more wonderful than I would have believed possible. Save this one for a night that will be — and a companion who is — really special..

— Talltale , Green Cine

Roger Ebert writes about why it is a "great movie."

detailed article on Trouble in Paradise

plus

SMILING LIEUTENANT

Lubitschian double entendres and naughtiness with Maurice Chevalier, Claudette Colbert. Miriam Hopkins sings "Jazz Up Your Lingerie." (88 min)
(12:05), 3:30, 7:00

Maurice Chevalier plays a 19th century Viennese lieutenant, conducting an affair with sexy violinist Claudette Colbert. While publicly flirting with Colbert, Chevalier is spotted by a dowdy princess (Miriam Hopkins), who thinks that the lieutenant's wink was meant for her. Forced to marry the Princess, Chevalier despairs at her lack of charm. But good-hearted Colbert takes the princess aside, dolls her up, and instructs her how to bewitch — and keep — her man. Chevalier is enchanted by the "new" princess, while Colbert, who will have no trouble finding someone else to keep her warm and comfortable, cheerfully sashays out of his life. Long thought lost, The Smiling Lieutenant was rediscovered in an East European vault in the 1970s.

— Hal Erickson, AMG

The film's ending, in which the wife transforms into a siren and the lover goes away forever, has been criticized as an unfortunate concession to morality. In fact, this jarring ending — we root for Colbert all along — takes the movie out of the realm of faity tale. That Chevalier can be so desolate at losing his lover and then, minutes later, be delighted to see his wife in a negligee is in itself a wonderful commentary on the nature of the Chevalier hero and of male sexuality in general. The smiling lieutenant is quite simple, after all. It doesn't take much to keep him smiling.

— Mick LaSalle, Dangerous Men

1930 Gossip about Lubitsch

What is 'The Lubitsch Touch?'

The Lubitsch Touch" is a brief description that embraces a long list of virtues: sophistication, style, subtlety, wit, charm, elegance, suavity, polished nonchalance and audacious sexual nuance.

— Richard Christiansen (Chicago Tribune)

The Russians have a drink called kvass, and at the bottom of the kvass is a raisin that adds flavor to the whole. Russian actors used to say, "Find the raisin and the whole bottle is good." Lubitsch always looked for the raisin that would impart flavor to a scene . . .

— Herman G. Weinberg, author of "The Lubitsch Touch"

For more

Mon. Nov. 21

MURDERS IN THE ZOO

Rarity — Lionel Atwill has sadistic plans for his wife's lover. (61 min)
(2:55), 5:40, 8:30

In a splendidly fiendish opening sequence, Atwill's millionaire sportsman disposes of a rival for his wife's affections by leaving him to die in the Indochinese jungle, having first carefully stitched up his lips. 'What did he say?' asks the anxious wife (Burke), told that her lover went on alone. 'He didn't say anything,' Atwill blandly replies. Back in America, Atwill carries on the good work, using the zoo to which he supplies animals as a convenient disposal ground: another rival succumbs to green mamba poison, and the suspicious Burke ends up in the alligator pit. Instead of exploring its Sadian motifs (the erotic charge Atwill gets from 'protecting' his wife, for instance), the script unfortunately opts for comedy relief (capably handled by Ruggles) and a slightly tiresome detection motif (Scott as a toxicologist who discovers that the mamba wasn't the culprit). Fine, macabre fun for all that, beautifully shot by Ernest Haller, and very capably directed (although a little more extravagance would have helped the finale: Atwill setting the big cats free to cover his escape, but ending in a boa constrictor's coils).

— Time Out

plus

ISLAND OF LOST SOULS

Charles Laughton brings out the whip to tame his "experiments." (67 min)
(4:10), 7:00

Not a great success at the time, probably because its horror is more intellectual than graphic, this adaptation of HG Wells' The Island of Dr Moreau (repudiated by the novelist, and originally banned in Britain) is nevertheless a remarkably powerful film. Laughton is magnificently repellent as the fiendish doctor whose evolutionary experiments, involving painful vivisectional graftings, have resulted in a pitiful island community of hideous man-beasts. Satanically bearded, the epitome of imperialist arrogance in his immaculate white ducks, the whip-toting Moreau rules his 'natives' through rituals of fear and pain; and in a subplot that suffuses the film with a perverse erotic sadism, he indulges his intellectual curiosity by plotting to mate a human (Arlen) with the beautiful girl he has created from a panther (Burke), but who is already reverting to her animal state. In the delirious final sequence, superbly staged and shot by Karl Struss as the 'natives' rebel and drag the screaming Laughton away to his own 'House of Pain', the film's subversive spirit surfaces with a real vengeance.

— Time Out

A terrific site dedicated to ISLAND OF LOST SOULS

plus Betty Boop's Snow White (8 min)

Tue. Nov. 22

NIGHT AFTER NIGHT

Goodness probably had nothing to do with Mae West entering George Raft's speakeasy. (76 min)
(2:30), 5:25, 8:25

In one of his first starring roles, George Raft plays Joe Anton, a tough but basically decent speakeasy owner who falls in love with Park Avenue socialite Miss Healy (Constance Cummings). Hoping to come up to the girl's social level, Joe starts taking lessons in speech and behavior from haughty dowager Mrs. Jellyman (Alison Skipworth). What he doesn't know is that Miss Healy pays attention to him only because he's living in the posh apartment where her family had resided before the Stock Market crash. Even so, the girl genuine falls in love with Joe when it appears as though he's about to desert her in favor of his ex-flame Iris Dawn (Wynne Gibson). A dreary retread of stock movie-drama themes, Night After Night would be utterly forgotten today were it not for the presence of Mae West, making her film debut. A scant few seconds after her first appearance, the generously bejeweled West is accosted by a hatcheck girl who coos "Goodness, what lovely diamonds." Swivelling those famous hips, La West replies expansively "Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie." Commenting years later on Night After Night, George Raft, who suggested that Mae West be cast in the film, ruefully recalled "She stole everything but the cameras."

— Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Detailed review

Dialogue from Night After Night

Woman: Goodness, what beautiful diamonds
MW: Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.

Woman: Do you believe in love at first sight?
MW: I don't know but it saves an awful lot of time. (Maudie Triplett)

Woman: Chemistry's a wonderful thing.
MW: I'll say it is, but I know a couple of druggists that never made a dime 'til Prohibition.

A Mae West Fan site with lots of goodies and links

Fun Mae blog

plus

MADAME RACKETEER

Rarity — Alison Skipworth finds George Raft playing around.(68 min)
(4:00), 7:00

Alison Skipworth, nearing 70 years of age in her first starring role, drags out every trick she had learned from 40 years on the stage. Once again teamed with George Raft,,each taking turns upstaging the other. Story of a phony countess just out of prison visiting her family, her daughters not knowing who she is, plays out as a poignant comedy.

— L. Paul Meienberg

Confidence woman Martha Hicks (Alison Skipworth), better known to those who know her at all as "the Countess," is a career criminal who has just been paroled. She would like to slip away from the authorities and leave the country, but first she wants to look in on the only decent, respectable part of her life, the two daughters whom she left behind with her onetime husband, Elmer Hicks (Richard Bennett), a small-town hotel owner. She arrives to find that Elmer, in his well-meaning but dithering way, has let their younger daughter (Gertrude Messinger) fall in with the wrong crowd, including a two-bit criminal, Jack Houston (George Raft). He has filled her head with stories about what a big man he is and plans to take her to Chicago with him, until Martha intervenes -- she manages to turn the interest of veteran lawman John Adams (J. Farrell MacDonald) to her advantage and nearly gets Houston thrown in the slammer. When he proves tougher to get out of the way than she'd thought he'd be, Martha has to choose between freedom or the well-being of her daughter, and gets some unexpected help from Elmer. Skipworth is charming and the rest of the cast is first-rate in this sly, fast-paced, and enjoyable comedy drama.

— Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Evening shows to be introduced by film historian L. Paul Meienberg.

Wed., Nov. 23

A FAREWELL TO ARMS

Hemingway's classic with censored and lost 12 minutes finally restored. Gary Cooper, Helen Hayes & Adolphe Menjou. See two different endings. (90 min)
(12:00), 3:30, 7:05

Not only the best film version of a Hemingway novel, but also one of the most thrilling visions of the power of sexual love that even Borzage ever made. An American ambulance man, serving in Italy in World War I, falls in love with an English nurse; he finally goes AWOL to rejoin her, only to find her carrying his child and dying of hunger and loneliness. No other director got performances like these: Cooper at his youngest and sexiest, moving from drunkenness to intoxication; moon-faced Hayes, at once a mother-figure and a lover; and Menjou as Cooper's repressed homosexual friend, jealously coming between the lovers. And no other director created images like these, using light and movement like brushstrokes, integrating naturalism and a daring expressionism in the same shot. This is romantic melodrama raised to its highest degree, fittingly set to the music of Wagner's 'Liebestod'.

— Time Out

There's a mutuality about sex, as it's spoken of in these films, that comes as a surprise to anyone familiar with movies made under the Code. In pre-Codes, sex was understood as something men and women did together, not something men did to women. A Farewell To Arms ---essentially a love story set against a World War II background — featured Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes as an ambulance driver and a nurse who meet at a party. Since this is wartime, they don't even wait till the first date—they have sex immediately, in the garden, while the party goes on inside. The next day Cooper shows up at the military hospital where she works and, stammering as only he can, tells her, 'I'd hate to have you feel that it wasn't important to me…about us.'

— Mick LaSalle, Dangerous Men

This adaptation of the classic Hemingway novel stars Gary Cooper as an ambulance driver involved in a passionate and turbulent affair with an English battlefield nurse (Helen Hayes) against the background of WWI-ravaged Italy. Generally faithful to the spirit of the book, Borzage infused his own lyrical romanticism into Hemingway's terse style. To Hemingway's chagrin, two endings for the film were shot - one happy, the other downbeat (per the original novel) - and both versions were presented to the public during the initial release. Paramount also subsequently trimmed the film from 90 to 78 minutes for future circulation. The Archive however has restored the bulk of the missing footage, as well as the film's original ending, shown with the alternate "happy" ending as a bonus.

— UCLA Film Notes

In April, Paramount's New York directors pushed Jesse Lasky out. In June, they ousted B. P. Schulberg. Emanuel Cohen was now at the Paramount throttle, determined to turn the company around. He signed Bing Crosby and Mae West. He bought Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms, hired Frank Borzage to direct, borrowed Helen Hayes from M-G-M to play Catherine Barkley, and cast Gary Cooper as Frederic Henry….. the new executives were going to "live or die by this picture and that they are going to be as daring as possible." The production took two months and cost $900,000, but the result was well worth it. Borzage had crafted an epic, and people wanted to see it. Before they could, there was the matter of the Code. The film had an illicit love scene on the pedestal of a horseman's statue, an illicit love scene in a hospital bed, an "unofficial marriage," graphic scenes of childbirth, and the retreat of the Italian army, which could be the biggest problem of all. What would Jason Joy do?

Nothing; Jason Joy had already succumbed to the blandishments of the Fox Film Corporation, where Sidney Kent and Winfield Sheehan had been courting him for six months. He was now ensconced in a luxurious office, with Lamar Trotti as his assistant, making sure that Fox Film's scripts would be approved. His Studio Relations Committee successor was none other than his former nemesis, the New York State Censor, Dr. James Wingate. Assisted by new reviewer Geoffrey Shurlock, Wingate took a look at A Farewell to Arms. True to form, he rejected it, then went to his quarters at the Hollywood Athletic Club. He was in for a rude awakening.

Paramount, who had already cooperated with the SRC to the extent of placating the Italian Embassy and shooting two endings, appealed his decision, and presented the film to the Association of Motion Picture Producers (AMPP) jury. On December 7, 1932, Carl Laemmle, Sr., Sol Wurtzel, and Joseph Schenck ruled in favor of Paramount, saying that "because of the greatness of the picture and the excellence of direction and treatment the childbirth sequence was not in violation of Article II of the Production Code." A Farewell to Arms premiered a day later, and within weeks, it was making the money that the rest of the films in the Paramount calendar had not. Yet Paramount ended 1932 with a deficit of $15,857,544.

— Mark Vieira, Sin in Soft Focus

Restoration by UCLA Film and Television Archive — Funding provided by the Film Foundation and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

Helen Hayes site

Gary Cooper site

Gary Cooper.com

and

MOROCCO

The Foreign Legion and Gary Cooper will never be the same when Dietrich arrives. (90 min)
(1:45), 5:15, 8:50

The first of the Sternberg/Dietrich collaborations at Paramount is one of the finest: a delicate romance between a legionnaire and a woman with a past, set in a claustrophobic, studio-built Morocco composed from the play of light and shade on extravagant sets. For all the melodramatic qualities of script and performances, it's also a perfectly realistic examination of the perils of desire and an affirmation of l'amour fou, rooted deeply in emotional reality. Sternberg's direction is stunningly evocative, and Dietrich is sublime; the film also gives her one of her best cabaret numbers.

— Alex Jacoby

Sternberg's first Hollywood film with Dietrich looks like a deliberate reversal of their first collaboration on The Blue Angel the year before in Germany. Dietrich plays another sumptuous vamp, but this time one who is retreating from her past by taking a one-way ticket to Morocco… as although she runs delicately cruel rings around Menjou's affection for her, she ultimately sacrifices everything for the man she truly loves, legionnaire Gary Cooper. It's been customary to dismiss Sternberg's 'absurd' plots as mere vehicles for his experiments with lighting and decor, and his loving explorations of Dietrich's visual and emotional possibilities. The truth is that films like Morocco are completely homogeneous: the plotting and acting are in exactly the same expressionist register as everything else. Here, the highly nuanced portraits of men and a woman caught between the codes they live by and their deepest, secret impulses, remain very moving and 100 per cent modern.

— Time Out

Tom Brown, a devil-may-care American Legionnaire and ruthless in his treatment of women, is singled out for attention by cabaret singer Amy Jolly despite the clamor of other suitors, among them debonair man-of-the-world Kennington. Surreptitiously she arranges a rendezvous with Tom in her apartment, where he finds her embittered with life and scornful of men, though hypnotically attractive. He leaves abruptly and goes into the street to meet an officer's wife, but Amy, intrigued by him, follows and interrupts their interview. The woman urges the street beggars to attack Amy, but Tom defends her, and he is arrested and assigned to a dangerous mission.

Learning that Kennington has offered her wealth and happiness, Tom elects to remain at a desert outpost after accomplishing his mission. Amy hears that he is wounded and goes to the post, accompanied by Kennington; realizing their love, Kennington offers to aid Tom in deserting the Legion. Tom, however, tells Amy that if she loves him, she must be prepared to be a good soldier. As he marches with his column into the desert, Amy joins the ragged wives and sweethearts who follow in the trail of the departing soldiers.

— American Film Institute Catalog

Thur., Nov. 24

MONKEY BUSINESS

S.J. Perlman puts the Marx Brothers on a cruise. Watch out! (97 min)
(12:15), 3:35, 7:00

The four Marx Brothers as stowaways trying to bull their way through immigration by pretending to be Maurice Chevalier (each hopefully doing an impersonation to prove it), then crashing a Long Island society party to sow havoc. With Monkey Business, their first screen original, the team cast caution to the winds, helped by a perky script ('Tell me, has your grandfather's beard got any money?' — 'Money? Why it fell hair to a fortune') and some lunatic sight gags. Thelma Todd provides Groucho with his most delectable and intelligent foil.

— Time

The first Marx Brothers film to be written directly for the screen (its authors included S. J. Perelman, Arthur Sheekman and Will B. Johnstone), Monkey Business is also the merry Marxes' first Hollywood production. Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo are brilliantly cast as four stowaways on an ocean liner, bound for New York. As our heroes endeavor to elude dimwitted First Mate Gibson (Tom Kennedy), each of the brothers gets involved in an adventure of his own. Groucho finds himself in a menage a trois with gangster Alky Briggs (Harry Briggs) and Briggs' sexy wife Lucille (Thelma Todd); Harpo joins a "Punch and Judy" puppet show, driving the ship's crew into a frenzy of confusion; Chico hires himself out as bodyguard to retired bootlegger Joe Helton (Rockliffe Fellowes); and Zeppo romances Joe's pretty daughter Mary (Ruth Hall). Once they've arrived in New York, the Marx boys head to Helton's Long Island mansion, where, after the obligatory harp-and-piano musical interludes, the fearsome foursome team up to rescue Mary from her kidnappers. There are far too many wonderful moments in Monkey Business to detail here, but highlights include Groucho's initial confrontation with Alky Briggs ("With a little study, you'll go a long way, and I wish you'd start now!") and his romantic tete-a-tetes with Lucille ("Come with me, and we'll lodge with my fleas in the hills — er, flee to my lodge in the hills"); Harpo and Chico's attempts to shave a sleeping barbershop customer ("You know what, partner? I think we give-a him one snoop too much"); and the classic setpiece, "borrowed" from the team's early Broadway hit I'll Say She Is, in which all Four Marx Brothers try to slip past the customs officials by posing as Maurice Chevalier! Though not the best of their Paramount features, Monkey Business is still among the funniest Marx Brothers comedies ever made — and one of the funniest comedies, period.

— Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

MARXOLOGY — Vaudeville, rare movies and cut scenes

The making of Horse Feathers

Detailed review

plus

INTERNATIONAL HOUSE

Grand Hotel of comedy with W.C. Fields, Burns and Allen, and Cab Calloway singing "Reefer Man." (70 min)
(2:10), 5:30, 8:55

A bizarre, juicy comedy in which dozens of eccentric characters are quarantined in a Shanghai hotel where a crazy local doctor has devised a 'radioscope' — a television set. Over the airwaves we get turns by Rudy Vallee, Baby Rose Marie, and Cab Calloway singing about 'that funny reefer man'. Meanwhile, Burns and Allen perform their shtick, and the incomparable WC Fields cocks a snook at Prohibition by his ostentatious consumption of beer — in flight too!

— Time Out

Several people converge on a hotel to bid for rights to a new invention.

W. C. Fields, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Rudy Vallee, Bela Lugosi, Franklin Pangborn, Cab Calloway; what do all these performers have in common? The answer is twofold; first of all, they're all performers fully capable of stealing any movie they're in, and secondly, they're all in this movie. It's a comedy-musical, fast-moving and outlandish, with energetic musical numbers, a plethora of great comic moments, and no real plot to speak of. T