City Streets (1931)

Nan (Sylvia Sydney) is involved with the racketeering business through her stepfather’s Pop Cooley’s (Guy Kibbee) gang. She’s fallen for The Kid (Gary Cooper), a shooting gallery showman and tries to convince him to join the gang. However, when Nan spends a year in prison after being implicated by her stepfather for a murder she didn’t commit, she realizes she needs to get out of the business and take The Kid with her. Unfortunately, The Kid, under the influence of Pop and his mob boss Big Fella Maskal (Paul Lucas), has gotten involved in bootlegging, hoping to earn enough money to get Nan out of jail sooner.
When Nan gets out of the clink she tries to convince The Kid to leave the whole business behind. The Kid is reticent, since the money comes easy and he gets his kicks from high-speed chases. However, Maskal has his eye on Nan and it won’t be long before he and The Kid will have to tangle.

Accordingly, this is the one and only gangster film Gary Cooper did. If you watch it, you will see why. He was totally out of his element as a wisecracking gangster, looking more suitable on a dirt road in the Wild West or being any other regular Joe in a small town. Please note- this makes him no less handsome in a pinstripe suit and fur coat. As for the film, it’s a regular formulaic early thirties drama, with the only bright spots being Sydney and Cooper’s performances.

Fun fact:

The storytelling technique of voice over was used for the first time in film with City Streets. Director Rouben Mamoulian had to fight the studios to have it done- it obviously took hold in a big way.

Thanks to Dr. Macro for the scans!

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The More the Merrier (1943)The World War II housing shortage brings three people together for an unlikely romance.Cast: Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea, Charles Coburn. Dir: George Stevens.

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Double Dose of Cary Grant

I finally had a chance to sit down and watch two films Cary Grant made in 1934 and of course, prior to his bigger successes in the film business. I began with Thirty Day Princess. While visiting Taronia, Richard Gresham (Edward Arnold) runs into King Anatol XII (Henry Stephenson), who laments that he does not have the funds to provide his peasants a better way of life, like in America. Seeing an opportunity to get back on his feet during the Depression, Gresham offers King Anatol a loan for the amount of fifty million. All he needs to do is come to America to perform the much needed public relations. However, King Anatol cannot leave the country so, it’s decided that his daughter Princess "Zizzi" Catterina (Sylvia Sydney) will go in his stead. Unfortunately Zizzi comes down with the mumps upon her arrival and must be quarantined for a month. Rather than risk losing the loan, Gresham hires an out-of-work actress Nancy Lane also played by Sydney to impersonate the Princess. Complications arise when she falls in love with Porter Madison, owner of the city paper and the man Gresham is paying her extra to divert from investigating the legitimacy of the loans.

Very little of Cary’s natural charm shows in Thirty Day Princess and the end result is a rather dull movie with some comic relief provided by Vince Barnett who plays Count Nicholeus. However, it should be noted that despite suspending your imagination on how easy it was to find a Princess Zizzi’s lookalike, the viewer is treated to a much overlooked detail in earlier American cinema (or any current film involving Tom Cruise)- the accent. Sydney rarely slips out of it and does a great job being both a princess and a regular American girl.

In Kiss and Make Up, a pseudo musical about a doctor devoted to women’s beauty, we see the stirrings of what will soon be a charmingly hilarious actor who will provide viewers with his great comedic timing and distinct deliverance of dialogue.

Dr. Maurice Lamar (Cary Grant) believes that all women have a right to beauty and has built an entire empire in Paris around it. When he creates his most perfect piece in Eve Caron (Genevieve Tobin), he does so at the expense of her marriage. Marcel Caron (Edward Everett Horton) used to love his wife when she was just pretty enough, and plump. Now he has to deal with men ogling and wooing his wife as well as her strict regiment (courtesy of Dr. Lamar) in order to keep herself slim and beautiful. When Eve and Marcel divorce she immediately marries Lamar much to Anne’s (Helen Mack) dismay. Anne has been Lamar’s devoted secretary for years. She doesn’t go in for all the beauty mumbo jumbo and encourages Lamar to use his education for something more beneficial. However, she needn’t worry, soon Lamar sees the monster he has created in Eve and decides to quit the beauty business altogether. Thinking to find solace in Anne, Lamar learns that she is now engaged to Marcel (so convenient) and a hilarious chase ensues.
The most interesting aspect about this film is Grant singing. He wasn’t too shabby but it seemed out of place and unnecessary to have him or the other characters singing at all. However, I loved “Corn Beef and Cabbage I Love You”.

Side Note: Excerpt from Marlene Dietrich by Maria Riva

Speaking about a party she went to hosted by Carole Lombard at a fun house on the Venice pier in California: "...Who wants to look at themselves fat? I can have that right here in my bathroom and not look like I have been at war! Remember our shirts salesman? He got in all the pictures next to Lombard. He must have spent the whole evening watching where the photographers were going, and managed to get there before them. 'Ready and handsome,' in position!"

The "shirt salesman" she was referring to was Cary Grant whom she stated that on the set of Blonde Venus he would sell shirts to make more money and that he was so charming that people came from all over to buy them.

He must have been one of the few (and I mean few) men that came withing her sphere and escaped her... charms... as this was the worst she would say of him (she didn't have a lot of nice things to say about anyone according to her daughter). Also, in a conversation with Peter Bogdanovich later in life, Grant stated he saw what was going on between von Sternberg and Dietrich and he didn't want any part of that situation.

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Something called Doctor Zhivago??? I guess maybe it was some sort of big deal at some point in time? ;)

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Dead End (1937)

Dead End is a movie that alternates between subplots that all take place at the dead end of a slum that butts up directly against a new high rise built for the rich who, if they want, can sit on their balconies and watch the drama in the filthy street of the slum unfold.
This is the first movie to feature the Dead End Kids, a gang of not so friendly friends whose antics alternate between funny and downright vicious. Observing their antics with a smile is gangster Baby Face Martin (Humphrey Bogart) who, with the aid of cosmetic surgery, has safely returned to his old neighborhood to find that his mother has disowned him and that his childhood sweetheart Francey (Claire Trevor) has turned to prostitution to support herself. His friend Hunk (Allen Jenkins) tries to persuade him to leave but since Martin didn’t get what he came for, he’s decided to stick around and commit another crime.
Dave (Joel McCrea), also a neighborhood kid who decided to try and make good by getting himself an education in Architecture is finding it hard to get a job and he’s currently torn between two women, Drina (Sylvia Sydney) a sweet but poor girl from the neighborhood and Kay (Wendy Barrie), a rich man’s mistress. When violent crime breaks out in the slum involving adults and juveniles, lives are impacted both negatively and positively.

A very well done film that depicts the sadness and irony of two classes living in such close proximity. The most poignant part of the film was when Kay left her comfortable apartment in the high rise to visit Dave and let him know that though she was afraid to be poor again, she would give him a chance. As she walks up the winding stairs of his tenement, Dave, unbeknownst to her, follows behind and watches her reaction as she hears babies crying, couples violently arguing, and observes the trash and cockroaches in the hallway. When she turns to leave, never making it to his apartment, Dave realizes then that his love for her will never be enough.

Side note:
I was watching Directed by William Wyler (1986) last week and Wyler was telling a story about when producer Samuel Goldwyn visited the huge set constructed for Dead End (a very detailed depiction of a New York City slum). Goldwyn thought the set was a mess and since he was a man known for his 'Goldwynisms' he reportedly shouted, "Why do directors always want these slums to be so dirty? Clean it up!" He was eventually persuaded by Wyler that it would hurt the picture's credibility if a slum were depicted as a nice place to live.

Claire Trevor who played Francey was in Dead End for all of two minutes yet her performance lead to her being nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Due to the censors, she could not come right out and tell Martin she had turned to prostitution. Instead she positioned herself in the light when Martin told her he’d come to take her away and complained that she was tired and sick- from this the viewer learns that she has syphilis, a common disease of prostitutes then.

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Cry, the Beloved Country (1952) A South African minister travels to Johannesburg to find his missing son. Cast: Canada Lee, Sidney Poitier, Charles Carson, Michael Goodlife Dir: Zoltan Korda

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