TUGBOAT ANNIE

TUGBOAT ANNIE (1933). Director: Mervyn LeRoy. 

Annie Brennan (Marie Dressler) lives and works on her tugboat, along with her often-drunk and lazy husband, Terry (Wallace Beery), whom she dearly loves. The only thing that comes between them is their son Alec (Robert Young), a successful captain of a luxury liner, who is disgraced by his father's behavior and wants his mother to leave him. This causes an estrangement between son and parents that is painful for all. Tugboat Annie features that swell team Dressler and Beery in top form. (Although Young is okay, he's rather one-note and out-classed in this company). Maureen O'Sullivan is excellent as Alec's girlfriend, and Frankie Darro is fine as Alec as a boy in the earlier scenes. Tugboat Annie and its leads never let you forget the pathos underneath the comedy. The only debit is that the climactic storm-at-sea sequence goes on a little too long, and is a bit confusing as well. 

Verdict: Dressler and Beery at their best. ***.

THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE (1921)

Rudolph Valentino

THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE (1921 silent film). Director: Rex Ingram. Tinted edition.

Madariaga (Pomeroy Cannon) is a lusty and very wealthy rancher and entrepreneur in Argentina who has two daughters. One of them has three sons by a German husband, Karl (Alan Hale), while the other is a Frenchman, Marcelo (Josef Swickard), who was a deserter. Madariaga has a special fondness for his grandson, Julio (Rudolph Valentino), Marcelo's spoiled and womanizing son. After the death of his grandfather, Julio moves to Paris with the rest of his family while Karl takes his own family back to Germany. Julio embarks upon an affair with a married woman named Marguerite (Alice Terry), whose much older husband is Laurier (John St. Polis of Mr. Wong, Detective), but her feelings for her lover change when her husband goes off to war. Argentinian, Julio is determined to stay neutral while WW1 rages around him, and his father finds his country estate ravaged by Germans, including his own nephew and a crude Lt. Colonel (Wallace Beery) who tries to rape a maid. By their actions, both Marcelo and Julio eventually find redemption. Based on a best-selling 1919 novel by Vicente Blasco Ibanez, Four Horsemen is a strong and absorbing, fast-paced film beautifully directed by Ingram and with fine photography by John F. Seitz. Strong characterizations and dramatic presentation make this an excellent picture even without Carl Davis' rich and excellent modern score, but the music -- with themes by Liszt -- adds immeasurably to its impact. There are perhaps too many shots of the phantom horsemen riding across the skies, as well as shots of the fire-breathing dragon-like "beast," and the Christ figure at the end is a little much, but this also has many powerful sequences. (One that sticks in the mind is two crying children clinging to their dead mother in the rubble.) Alice Terry and the older actors are all quite good, while Valentino [Beyond the Rocks] gets across his initially superficial character without raising a sweat. This is a sweeping historical epic that is not for one minute dull. Remade in 1962. Alan Hale [Stella Dallas] was the father of Alan Hale Jr. of Gilligan's Island infamy.

Verdict: A silent masterpiece. ****.

MIN AND BILL

MIN AND BILL (1930). Director: George W. Hill.

Min (Marie Dressler) runs a dockside boarding house and Bill (Wallace Dressler) is one of her tenants, with whom she has an "understanding." However, misunderstandings crop up when an old friend from Min's past, Bella Pringle, shows up. Bella (Marjorie Rambeau) is the prostitute who left her daughter Nancy (Dorothy Jordan) in Min's care years ago. Min told her the girl died just to keep Nancy away from her mother's negative influence, and will do just about anything to keep the slatternly woman from ruining Nancy's life. Trying too hard to be "cruel to be kind," Dressler's character is rather unpleasant in this. She's so anxious for the girl to go off and be happy that she makes her feel she doesn't love her (a ploy that probably occurs only in Hollywood movies); in fact she treats her quite horribly. And she doesn't really give the real mother much of a chance. Whatever the faults of the story --and there are many -- this study of misguided maternal devotion works because of the acting. Rambeau, Beery, and Jordan are top of the line, and Dressler won the Best Actress Oscar.

Verdict: Worth watching for that cast. ***.

DINNER AT EIGHT

DINNER AT EIGHT (1933). Director: George Cukor.

"You couldn't get into the men's room at the Astor!"

The only thing on the mind of airy Millicent Jordan (Billie Burke) is the dinner party she's planning, so she doesn't realize that her husband Oliver (Lionel Barrymore) has serious business woes and even more serious health problems. But then most of the guests have their own preoccupations. Dr. Talbot (Edmund Lowe) is having an affair with an increasingly clingy Kitty Packard (Jean Harlow, pictured), whose grumpy, much older husband Dan (Wallace Beery) wants to take over Oliver's business. Faded actress Carlotta Vance (Marie Dressler) has money troubles, but not as bad as has-been Larry Renault (John Barrymore), who can't pay his hotel bill and whose agent (Lee Tracy) has to deliver some devastating news. The Jordan's daughter Paula (Madge Evans) has fallen in love with Larry, even though she already has a fiance.

Although the pace sometimes drags, this is a brilliant comedy-drama that has many highly amusing lines and situations but can also slide effortlessly into tragedy as we witness the grim fate of Larry Renault. John Barrymore handles the horrifying situation with his usual aplomb. Harlow and Beery have a great scene battling together and telling each other off, and Marie Dressler is perfection (she has a funny scene with fawning Elizabeth Patterson -- Mrs. Trumble on I Love Lucy -- in a bit.) All the performances are excellent.

Verdict: They really don't make 'em like this anymore. ****.

A DATE WITH JUDY

A DATE WITH JUDY (1948). Director: Richard Thorpe.

Young Judy (Jane Powell) is dating Oogie (Scotty Becket) but falls for an older man (Robert Stack) when he’s inveigled into taking her to a high school dance. Unfortunately, Stack also meets a beauteous young Liz Taylor at the dance, and Liz sets her sights on the handsome soda jerk. An added complication occurs when Judy erroneously comes to the conclusion that her father, (a somewhat subdued Wallace Beery) is having an affair with dance teacher Carmen Miranda, who is only teaching him to rumba. You can call this dated, hokey, quaint and everything else, but it’s an undeniably charming picture with many amusing lines and sequences. Powell and Taylor are perhaps a bit too sophisticated to be typical high school girls, but Scotty Becket hits the right note, as does Selina Royal as Judy’s mother. Carmen Miranda is at her snappiest, and seeing her teamed with Beery is bizarre to say the least. Miranda’s song Canto le gusta certainly gets across that "let’s go off anywhere to do anything even if we’re broke" attitude of devil-may-care youth. Judaline is a strange number, although it sounds much better when it’s reprised. Corny Side is a pretty bad song, but it’s very well performed by Powell and Beckett. (The best number, of course, is It’s a Most Unusual Day.)

Verdict: This is easy to take and lots of fun if not exactly a great classic. ***.