Pre-Code Capsules: ROAR OF THE DRAGON, THREE WISE GIRLS, BED OF ROSES, LONELY WIVES, SMARTY

Everyone says 1939 was the best year for movies, but I'd say its 1932-33. Before the code started being enforced in mid-1934, s--t was tight! TCM's been dropping 'em like hotcakes, s--t I never even heard about prior to. Pre-code cuckoo land next stop!

ROAR OF THE DRAGON 

(1932) - ****

Did you know they had a fake Marlene Dietrich (named Gwili Andre)? And she played the abductee/obsession of a no-good Russo-Chinese bandit (C. Henry Gordon) in ROAR OF THE DRAGON (1932?). Set in China during its civil war era, it's the kind of TERRY AND THE PIRATES-esque action film with oodles of Paramount's sparkly exoticism. Richard Dix slurs (for real?) as a very drunk but able riverboat captain, the kind that Stefan on SNL would describe as "pony-keg chested." He's so macho he chewed the ear off the Russo-Chinese bandit before the opening credits, and said bandit has vowed reprisal in violent spades. However, Dix's riverboat was critically damaged in the same fight, and under hurried repairs at a nearby port while the bandits ride forth to kill every white man they see.

Gwili Andre wants to help Dix, she's white too, after all, but Dix doesn't trust her as she's the bandit's ex-lover; she comes onto him in an early scene, offers him sex in exchange for passage downriver on his under-repair steamer, but then he suspects she's a Mata Hari even after she shows him the cyanide tabs in her necklace and offers him one (he almost eats it, even knowing its poison! Now that's an existential gentleman!) When they finally hook up, the 'cutaway' scene between before and after 'that which cannot be shown' is Zazu Pitts twisting a handkerchief while listening to a romantic lullaby on the radio, her eyes drippy with by proxy orgasm!

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Gwili Andre even uses Dietrich's inflections and her big scenes are all lit like Sternberg's (though not as sublimely, and her face is kind of too sharp and baroquely angled). Her evil bandit paramour is bound to capture and torture Dix, so it's all pretty sick and riveting, a variation on the whole business with Warner Oland in EXPRESS but with way more violence. Meanwhile Edward Everett Horton fusses over his hottie girlfriend, Bridgeport (Arline Judge), who in turn fusses over a cadre of war orphans (not as bad as it could be, thanks to a decidedly unsappy worldview, though a scene of their nonstop crying begs for fast-forwarding); there's an old Jewish butcher (Arthur Stone) who winds up burned at the stake for trying to sneak out of the besieged hotel for some smoked meats to feed all the hungry people!

I wont spoil the events, but suffice to say Edward Everett Horton goes ballistic with a tripod machine gun. You heard me: E.E. Horton, the effete cuckold from so many golden screwballs, frickin' tears it up! He rocks it. The square-jawed Dix also rocks it; Gwili Andre rocks it as well. I haven't said this in awhile about anything, but this film is the shit! Like if Paramount's SHANGHAI EXPRESS joined up with MGM's MASK OF FU MANCHU and it kicked BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN's ass all the way back to Columbia, dragging Capra's canoe behind him!

THREE WISE GIRLS 

(1932) - ***

Shortly before Jean Harlow was signed to MGM she was under Howard Hughes who loaned her off to Columbia where she first struck with Capra (in PLATINUM BLONDE where she was miscast as a rich socialite) then made this, directed by the far less flashy William "One-Shot" Beaudine.

There's one great early scene, where Harlow changes into her negligee and gets readu to go to sleep after walking home from a date (we never see the guy, but he presumably got fresh): it's a tight, lengthy close-up semi-profile of Harlow's face and chest line; her face conveys weary sadness, bone-tired ennui, and you can see the layer of sweat on her body. She looks like she really has just been walking home on broken heels for three miles and her weary half-absent dialogue with mom is so real and honest and goes on so long you get the feeling the Beaudine--as he usually did at least once or twice in a film--struck gold. The moment is out of sync with the rest of the film, though, which follows the "three girls find love and/or loss while climbing the class system" boilerplate in static medium shots via the old Beaudine cookie cutter. In her lovely OCD blog, Jenny the Nipper sums the sitch thusly:

Of course, the entire premise of this film--that a girl could hook an unhappily married rich man, secure his divorce and walk happily off into the sunset-- would have been impossible a few years later. Though Harlow's character is more virtuous than Clark's (she actually breaks off the relationship when she finds out he's married rather than using the money to keep her poor mother in furs), she would still be a home wrecker in the Code era. Three Wise Girls fits into the working single girl as hero mold that so many pre-code pictures did and though it offers no solution to their problems but an honest and happy marriage, at least its willing to admit in a realistic way, that a single girl did have problems.

I'd also break it down like this, the film offers the CAST OF THE TYPICAL (not in a good way) PRE-CODE WOMAN's PICTURE:

1. Hard-working 'good girl' - usually gets fired for resisting the boss's advances
2. Her 'gone-wrong' best friend, who's dating a married man and later commits suicide
3. Her practical gal Friday - less attractive but quicker-witted, marries the chauffeur or whomever is being played by Andy Devine or Hugh Herbert.
4. The rich married sleazeball who will never leave his wife and/or mob for #2.
5. His wife (either a heaven-bound brunette cripple, or evil harridan).
6. The bad guy (possibly as in TEN CENTS A DANCE, a false fronted 'good guy') found in m'lady's boudoir giving #7 the erroneous impression girl #1's innocence is actually a stall.
7. The nice rich guy who waits around until the smoke clears, then goes back to #1.
8. A discreet butler for #7 and/or #4 -- bemused and/or shocked, possibly goes for gal #3.

But within this formula a better filmmaker than Beaudine might riff out something pretty decent, as in our next offering:

BED OF ROSES

(1933) - ***

Who'd of thunk there was a fake Mae West? At least that's how Pert Kelton (Molly the maid in MY MAN GODFREY) plays Minnie, the unrepentant gold digger pal of Constance Bennett (the fake Bette Davis/Tallulah Bankhead) in this film by Gregory La Cava. Constance is an even sharper digger but gives up her kept woman status (earned in a hilarious office seduction scene) in the boudoir of rich publisher John Halliday so she can "scrub floors" for pony keg-chested barge captain Joel McRae. Love is seen here as a chump's ticket to the poorhouse! But love is worth it, so the songs all sing. Those songs are scams, as Pert Kelton (below) would say.

The dialogue is great throughout, though, with Halliday and Kelton trying to wise up Constance to her self-inflicted class-ceilinged moral code. There's a big Mardi Gras scene that's all dressed up to go nowhere, but it's altogether a gem and a hoot. Hooter regulars Franklin Pangborn as a prissy (what else?) department store manager and the fake Hugh Herbert (perish the thought, tut tut, perish it) Matt McHugh as Minnie's dopey rich husband round out the deal with ersatz class.

LONELY WIVES

(1931) - **1/2

Laura La Plante is pretty funny and sexy as the 'fake Thelma Todd' in this "giddy" romp, but Edward Everett Horton, in a dual role that's supposed to be Jekyll and Hyde-ish that instead comes off like Michael Cera in YOUTH IN REVOLT-ish, stretches the patience. And I say this as one who loves a small dose of Horton as much as the next man (and think he's pretty badass in ROAR OF THE DRAGON). The problem is that it's hard to take him seriously as straight with his cachet of fey mannerisms. The strictly enforced closet of the era made a big tent of acceptable straight male behavior, but now Horton's effeminate fussiness seem like he's got two separate lives all right, but only one would even pretend to lust after Laura La Plante. And the TCM print is washed.

SMARTY

(1934) - ***

This one stars Joan Blondell as a bossy sassy ball-buster who divorces Warren William after he slaps her--just once, mind you--on the advice of skittish divorce attorney Edward Everett Horton ("sigh"), who promptly marries her himself and then lives in his house, in his bed, and one wonders to what extent Blondell's playful idiocy will go just to annoy our dear Warren William. He thrives--as do all men when Edward Everett's their competition-- in the race to win her back, but if I were William I would stick with the liberated, married lovely (Joan Wheeler) who follows him home. Oh well, a bird in the bush is worth two in the hand when it comes to wolves like William; he can't resist old Joan B., whom I guess is the 'smarty' one, but she's so annoyingly smarmy, continually ragging on William while they're playing bridge, that she's immensely dislikable, at least to anyone married ever who had their wife think she's terribly clever by relentlessly insulting you. An AWFUL TRUTH-style screwball battle is on (Horton being the pre-code Bellamy), and 'tis lively but there's a lot of yelling, so don't be hung over while viewing--you just may want to slappy Joan and socky Horton in the eye yourself. And if Horton's hissy and indignant tantrums start to lose their welcome early, just remember SMARTY is one of the many pre-code gems that has a sense of morality and battle of the sexes relationship minutiae far more complex than might seem at first glance. Is it funny? More like painful... but it is an engaging example of the posh adult pre-code pre-screwball era screwball comedy, all the films that, like James Whale's REMEMBER LAST NIGHT? wind up just being shrill and strident the hardy it tries to be urbane and insouciant.

From Russell at the excellent Screen Snapshots comes this look at the weird use of domestic violence as a comedic topic:

Smarty is almost a great little movie but sadly also a very, very wrong one. Ultimately it probably says more about male film industry attitudes in the thirties than that of the average man or woman on the street. Despite this, I think several books deserve to be written about whatever issues Joan Blondell’s character has in the movie. Did she get on with her father? Was she hit as a child? Does she feel undervalued as a person? We need to know these things and give her all the help she deserves. Maybe she just needed a cuddle. Actually, I’m not sure I want to know, to be honest.

The idea that Blondell's character needs help or was molested just because she enjoys / or rather reacts so harshly a good slap is actually more denigrating to women than the slap itself, I feel. I know a lot of women who love being slapped, choked, etc. if done the right way at the right time. Go figure. 1) A slap in the face is nature's 'reset' button - the sting jars your senses, distracting you from whatever was driving you to hysteria beforehand (think of all the times in old films people slap, or splash water in the face of, a hysterical person), 2) it's archaic connection to ritual pack leader dominance goes way way deeper into the core of the psyche than some late inning feminist theory can excavate. 3) It releases endorphins, and a flush of shame, which can be a turn on. I respect Russell's concern but I think it can become too close to a kind of universal victim mentality to just deride her interests and needs as tragic and the film's treatment of the issue as 'wrong.' After all, Joan sues for divorce based--at a time when it was still a shocking thing to get divorced at all--on a single slap in what was beforehand a relationship of equals (clearly since she's so strident and belittling to him beforehand, during, and after--treating him in a sense like he's an ordinary imbecile, i.e. a Horton. It seems more petty (and spurred by Horton's divorce lawyer wooer just looking for any crack in the marriage to wedge himself into) than, say, a brave standing up to domestic violence (she could have just given him the cold shoulder for awhile). The film is a little too blithe perhaps in its handling of its issue, but I'd counter that the sensitive feminist outrage over a comedy about a masochistic woman is itself a subjugation, inferring women are too weak to decide for themselves if they're being abused or just getting their rocks off. A slap, as Camille Paglia pointed out, can be a good thing. Sometimes we all could really use one.

Which I herewith macro dovetail to Bunuel's TRISTANA (1970, above), which I saw yesterday at BAM before watching SMARTY, and will write about tomorrow, yo! It was a meta moment of liberated women who love to be dominated at the same time. That infernal belle rings on!