An Ode to Tracy and Dvorak

The Strange Love of Molly Louvain [1932] Dir. Michael Curtiz. Starring Ann Dvorak, Lee Tracy, Leslie Fenton, Richard Cromwell, Frank McHugh.

"Just one of the tinsel girls. Looks swell on a Christmas tree, but can't stand up in the rain."

There's a lot to like about The Strange Love of Molly Louvain, a certain unpolished charm that makes it my favourite of all those wonderful, cynical little gems from a year in Hollywood filmmaking when the gods certainly seemed to come together. Warner Bros was cranking out threadbare melodramas like Louvain by the truckload by 1932, often with names much bigger than Lee Tracy and Ann Dvorak, but the electric current crackling between this movie's stars wasn't nearly as consistent in the studio's output. Their scenes together light up an otherwise drab and thoroughly cliched movie, which just goes to show you don't always need a fireball like Harlow, Stanwyck or Gable to turn on the heat when you've got some great actors, zippy dialogue and a director who could do wonders on a Warners-sized budget.

Molly Louvain follows the usual boy meets girl, girl gets pregnant and runs out of town with local gangster and becomes a fugitive of the law plotline (that old chestnut). Dvorak plays Molly with the endearing, Olive Oyl gangliness that was her trademark, even when she bleaches her hair and plays at being a sexy gangster's moll while on the run from the police. Scotty (Tracy) is a reporter living in the room next door in the faded old boarding house Molly uses as her hide out. One look at Molly and Scotty's got her number - she's one hard nut. He can read people, he "knows women".

"The boys call me Babe," Molly says with a grin. "I knew it, Babe or Queenie. I'm a reporter, I read between the sheets," he grins back, - to which she quips, "I used to read in bed myself." Tracy does a double take and, impressed, offers some breakfast: bread, coffee, marmalade? "Make it jam," Dvorak purrs, and takes a puff of her cigarette...

Dvorak's an ideal partner for Tracy's wisecracks - she's no dope and, unlike most of Tracy's other co-stars, the joke's not on her. She's smarter than Harlow or Velez and no scolding schoolmarm like Mary Brian or Madge Evans. She can knock back her drinks and give Tracy a good slap when he deserves it, but she's still a lady. Where did these girls go after the Code? Why did they all have to turn into simpering idiots who couldn't wait to get married?

Tracy, of course, is his usual manic self but this time with added sex appeal. If you're used to that Charlie Brown head from Bombshell or Dinner at Eight then your in for a treat. Lee Tracy is not only at his rat-a-tat best, he's also a bit of a babe. He's got a blonde, boyish handsomeness that is mercifully minus the MGM-inflicted Brylcreem and eyebrow makeup. Tracy's legendary drinking habit would catch up with him soon enough in the looks department, so Louvain probably gives us a last glimpse of the actor really in his physical prime.
And just for those of you who like your heroes with a rebellious streak, Tracy and Dvorak both had this in spades. Tracy was already developing a reputation, even at this early date, for liking a drink or three and failing to show up for work on time. Reports floated about hinting at drunken fisticuffs in Hollywood nightclubs, and this was still two years before the infamous Viva Villa urinary malfunction that would relegate him to B pictures ever after. Dvorak was no better, though I would guess more sober. She married Louvain co-star Leslie Fenton (he played the gangster) and took a year-long honeymoon in Europe to celebrate. Fenton encouraged Dvorak's confrontations with the notoriously slave driving Warner Bros and the studio was none too happy about it. The actress went back to work, but only to squander her talent in so-so roles as "punishment" for a few more years until she finally broke free in 1936, then almost disappeared altogether by the end of the decade. Both Tracy and Dvorak would still be in work all the way into the TV age, but both experienced that bittersweet blessing of being thwarted in their prime. Though they both turned in good performances after the pre-code era, its those early 30's comedies and melodramas that we remember them for. And that's not a bad thing - who really wants to see Dvorak or Tracy purified and apple-pied like the rest of them by the late 1930s? ________________________________

I've included two clips from the film, so you can see what all the fuss is about. The first is the scene in which Tracy and Dvorak get acquainted. The police are on the lookout for Molly and Scotty's covering the story - he's bragging he can play the reading public like a violin, but she's hoping he's not as smart as he says...

Molly Louvain Clip 1

In the second clip Scotty's gone and got a bit too familiar, and Molly's going to tell him how it is. You wouldn't see this after 1934...

Molly Louvain Clip 2

Rare film alert!

For all of you classic film fans in the UK, do not miss Sunday's airing of the 1932 Capra classic Forbidden on the ever wonderful Filmfour. It starts at 1:00 in the afternoon, so you don't even have to stay up late (or set your alarm for 5:00 in the morning) to catch it. You can't get this film on DVD or even VHS unless you send for it all the way from the States and have a video player and TV that will play NTSC cassettes so now's your chance!

Should be a good one too. It's a Depression-era melodrama with newspaper reporters, DAs, illegitimate pregnancies... the lot, and stars a young Barbara Stanwyck, an older Adolphe Menjou and good ol' Ralph Bellamy. Just to get you really excited, have a look at Dr Macro's summary of the film, complete with movie posters, publicity photos and clips!

Old Velvet Voice returns

I've been on a bit of a Vincent Price kick ever since viewing his 1946 gothic ghost story Dragonwyck. Looking for further info, I stumbled across what looks like the beginnings of a great Vincent Price tribute site...

The Sound of Vincent Price

Admittedly, the site appears to currently be under construction as there are plenty of "come back later's" throughout, but webmaster Peter Fuller has got the ball rolling with a clip from Price's first big Hollywood lead in the 1938 comedy Service de Luxe with Constance Bennett - a new one for me at least. If you like those late 30s glossies, or even just have a bit of a soft spot for the young and devastatingly handsome Vincent from his early days, this one's for you. Check this one out - plenty of gorgeous photos, lobbycards and posters plus there's a link for you to subscribe to the guy's YouTube channel, where he promises plenty more Price in the upcoming days and months (he's already got the full Service de Luxe posted in 7 parts if you want to check out the rest of the film). All I can say is, stay tuned...

Hollywood's first flying aces

All right, it's about time I came out of this la-de-dah hiatus... Here's a nice little story to ease back into blogging mode from Kevin Brownlow's book Hollywood: The Pioneers. No thought provoking historical analysis, but a nice little snippet to keep things moving along .

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Aviation and the movies have had a long history together and Brownlow unearthed a gem of a story from its earliest days about one Lt. Ormer Locklear, a First World War Air Corps ace who continued his flying career into the barnstorming craze of the 1920s. Locklear made the trek to Hollywood after the war and forged a career for himself as a stuntman. Along the way he romanced actress Viola Dana, who rode along for all his most heart-pounding stunts, and Locklear became famous throughout the movie colony for his ludicrously dangerous showmanship. DeMille actress Leatrice Joy remembered how he frequently asked movie actors to go up with him:


"This Ormer Locklear was a very popular man, a very daring man, and he took all the stars up. Every time he came to the studio, I succeeded very tactfully in avoiding him, not because I was scared., but because I wasn't particularly interested. I was having too much fun on earth. He stopped me in the hallway and he said 'I know, you're Leatrice Joy.' I made out I was very weak and about to die, so he would think I wasn't too robust. 'You know,' he said, 'you're the only star who hasn't gone up. Come on now, let's make a day of it.' So I said, 'All right.' We went up in this little crackerbox, so help me heaven, and we started zooming up. He made an Immelmann curve, then the reverse of it and all those kind of things, and I thought 'I've had enough.' I made some kind of gesture to him - meaning take me down, and he gave me an enthusiastic okay sign. I wondered why he was so happy about taking me down, and all of a sudden, he zoomed up again, and went into the most daring of any of those stunts - the Falling Leaf. You spin down, down, you practically pick buttercups. Then he landed and stopped and picked me up and said, 'Congratulations. You're the only star with guts, Miss Joy. You're the only one who asked for the Falling Leaf.' And I didn't have the courage to say, 'That was my sponge I was throwing in.'"

Poor Locklear's heroics would prove his undoing. During the filming of The Skywayman in 1920, Locklear was blinded by a spotlight while performing a staged tailspin and was killed in the resulting wreck. The crash was purportedly used in the final DeMille film, but from what I gather there are no existing prints to be found today to prove this. Viola Dana was watching on the sidelines and one of the filmcrew had to restrain her from running to the burning wreck. Dana told Brownlow, "Whoever took me home, I don't know. All this is very vague to me know, because it was such a shock. But I do remember that my hair started falling out - I could pull it out in clumps, the shock was so great. I guess I was just kind of crazy. I couldn't believe what had happened. When you're young, those things are very shocking. I don't even like to talk about it."

To find out more about Ormer Locklear, visit Century of Flight, where you can read about Locklear and the Lunatics, fellow barnstormers and daredevils of the First World War era. You can also find a few pictures there of Locklear's "wing-walking" stunts that are nothing short of vomit-inducing if you happen to have anything resembling a healthy aversion to tempting certain death. That said, the stunts are awe-inspiring, and you really get a sense that these guys were certainly carrying the torch for their wild west cowboy ancestors.

I hate to use the word hiatus but...

I'm not really on a real, extended break. I just haven't had a whole lot of time lately to pull together anything worth posting. In a way I'm hoping nobody's noticed, but then again I hope I'm desperately missed too.

So this is a mini-semi-blink-and-you'll-miss-it-hiatus just to get a few things out of the way. I've actually got other writing to do as I'm proofreading an essay I wrote in my final undergraduate year to be published in the college's own journal. Maybe I'll post it here sometime if anyone's interested. It's an essay on 1925's The Big Parade and its influence on anti-war sentiment in the 1920s. I've written about King Vidor's deliberate efforts to create a new, more realistic understanding of war to dispel the myths that had been put on screen in all those wartime Hate the Hun features and how it related to the anti-war literature of the time, influencing American public opinion on key political issues like the League of Nations and disarmament policy.

But hopefully I'll be back with something nice to write about by as early as the end of the week. So not too long, but it's only fair to let you know...

More silent cinema live!

It's worth a mention that I've just been lucky enough to catch another silent on the big screen here in the Midlands, if only to pass round the name of the organist who accompanied the film, Donald MacKenzie. The film, by the way (as if you couldn't tell) was the 1920 John Barrymore classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and it was screened at the absolutely beautiful Light House Media Centre in Wolverhampton. If you live anywhere in the nearly near, it's in the old historic Chubb Buildings, beautiful in themselves, and there's a great little bar and cafe next door that will let you bring your glass of wine in the cinema with you. I had a glass of Italian red and a bag of M&Ms and sat fairly near the organist, so I was set for quite a nice little show...

MacKenzie was great and I'd recommend you catch one of his performances if you have the chance. Not that you need my recommendation, though - the guy is a regular at the Odeon at Leicester Square and has accompanied quite a few classics including, most recently, The General. According to MacKenzie's website, he's been accompanying silent films since he was fourteen (!) and has films like Metropolis, Carmen, and The Black Pirate literally at his fingertips. Keep your eyes out for Mackenzie's performances, although you might have to wait til the autumn for updates on his concert diary.

Pre-code Goldmine

What a gem of a website I've just stumbled upon! It's called
The Life and Films of David Manners, and it's a well stocked treasure trove of information and memorabilia on this prolific British/Canadian pre-code actor.

Not sure you've seen him before? His breakthrough role was that of Lt. Raleigh in 1930's Journey's End. He also co-starred in Dracula with Bela Lugosi, in The Mummy with Boris Karloff, in Bill of Divorcement with Kate Hepburn, in The Miracle Woman with Barbara Stanwyck... the guy had more than the occasional brush with greatness. Manners made 38 films in total from 1930 to 1936, many of which with some of the best remembered actresses of the period: Carole Lombard, Loretta Young, Ann Dvorak, Kay Francis and plenty more.

With a detailed biography, filmography and a blinding abundance of rare film stills and advertisements, it's worth a look even if you don't already know Manners, because chances are you know about his films. On top of all this, the site was created by one John Norris, a man who had become friends with Manners in the later years of his life, so it's both a candid snapshot as well as tribute to an actor and a man who might otherwise have been unfairly forgotten. Tributes to the lesser lauded personalities of this era are always a treat, and this one is certainly no slouch. Visit and be thoroughly impressed.

The Mysterious Island

The Mysterious Island [1929] Dir. Lucien Hubbard. Starring Lionel Barrymore, Lloyd Hughes, Montagu Love, Jacqueline Gadsden.

I'm no connoisseur of classic sci-fi (heck, the only futuristic monster movies I've been able to sit through from start to finish were on Mystery Science Theater 3000), but the half-silent, half-talking MGM release The Mysterious Island had enough quirks, and absolutely beautiful deep sea cinematography, to keep me interested and really quite impressed. Why hadn't I heard of this one before?

Had Mysterious Island been a full on talkie, it might very well have made the MST3K grade. It meets just about all the criteria: logic-bending plot twists, an unconvinced cast turning in unconvincing performances, ridiculous monster suits, even stunts that border on cruelty to animal actors. The film visited the even then-antiquated Jules Verne story of the same name and the double whammy of 1920s nostalgia for Verne and today's nostalgia for early sound film make this either a double curiosity or double drudgery... depending on how far nostalgic novelty goes with you.

The aforementioned quirks were actually kinks that couldn't be ironed out of an infamously cursed production that would make a car accident look well planned. It seems today that the film is better remembered for its shambolic creation than for the actual finished product. MGM wanted to create for themselves a money-maker of The Lost World sort, but in the end saddled themselves with a two and a half-year, accident-prone nightmare that limped along just long enough to be perfectly timed for the added headache of the transition to sound. Hopes had been high in 1926; Thalberg had hired no less than Maurice Tourneur to direct the dramatic scenes and J. Ernest Williamson (a specialist in underwater cinematography who had worked on 1916's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) for the deep sea action to be filmed on location in the Caribbean. But as rewrites ruffled the artistic temperament of Tourneur until he was replaced first by Benjamin Christensen and then by more reliable studio director Lucien Hubbard, poor Williamson was taking one step forward and two steps back in a series of violent hurricanes, and with the talkies were ever more surely encroaching, the whole thing had to be re-rigged for sound. If you have a look at the poster above, MGM boast that the film took two years to shoot, trying to make a series of unfortunate screw ups look like it was all done on purpose. Audiences weren't fooled though, and Mysterious Island only picked up a tenth of it's costs at the box office. Apparently, it was this film that scared studios from attempting Verne's other work for years to come.





But don't let all that stop you. I for one liked it, for two reasons. The first was Lionel "there's a lot of ham in me" Barrymore. No matter how many times critics disparage his alleged scenery-chewing, I'll always enjoy a performance by the craggier of the two Barrymore brothers and he's saved more than one otherwise tedious production in my eyes. Spoken dialogue is only used occasionally in Mysterious Island which would be a shame except for the fact that it keeps Montagu Love mercifully silent for most of the scenes. But Barrymore is great as usual as Count Dakkar (read Captain Nemo) and Jacqueline Gadsden is interesting to watch as well. The second reason Mysterious Island is worth a gander is the beautiful scenery in the underwater scenes. Although I've read Williamson's work was mainly scrapped for action shots taken in a studio tank, that doesn't make the scenes any less effective. I'd just watched The Thief of Bagdad before catching this one, and the underwater shots of Mysterious Island hold up really nicely against the better remembered Douglas Fairbanks film. Why audiences would have been so uninterested in this spectacle I don't know. Surely the kids would have liked this one?

I found the full version of Mysterious Island after watching a shortened version of it on YouTube. Have a look but don't tell anyone, you never know how long it'll last before someone takes it down!

Watch The Mysterious Island

Updated Entry

I've added a few nice new photos to the post for The Half Naked Truth (1932). Have a look! A nice little publicity photo of Lee Tracy and Lupe Velez as well as a portrait of each from the film.


The Half Naked Truth


Worth a look too if you haven't seen the post before. There's a link to an hilarious video of Lupe Velez singing "Hey Mr Carpenter".

Books into Film #2

Doomsday [1928] Dir. Rowland V Lee. Starring Florence Vidor, Gary Cooper, Lawrence Grant, Charles A Stevenson.

It's certainly true that there's a film for every mood. Popcorn movies, date movies, weepies, nailbiters, laffers... you can add to that the type of movie best appreciated when your a sneezing, aching invalid with only will enough to lift your remote control finger. I found a great one of these just when I needed it: Paramount's 1928 melodrama Doomsday.

I watched this one in an empty flat on a rainy afternoon one day, sick with the cold. Knowing nothing about the film, but with interest piqued by the chance to see Florence Vidor and a young Gary Cooper, I was impressed by what turned out to be a quiet, brooding little film about a woman who betrays the man who has loved her but, when she realises her mistake, must work to redeem herself by slaving away for him on his beloved farm. Not a masterpiece by any means, but I enjoyed the film enough to find the book, enjoyed that, and thought it would make for a nice second installment of the Books into Film series...

A quick synopsis

Doomsday heroine Mary Viner (Vidor) is a girl fed up with her dreary life in post-1918, rural Sussex. She lives with her elderly parents in a little box of a house in "Cinder Town" just down the road from the Doomsday Farm, owned by ex-soldier and gentleman farmer Arnold Furze (Cooper). While Mary balks at the idea of being buried alive under the drudgery of domestic work (the '20s were roaring out there somewhere you know), Furze has an almost zealous enthusiasm for honest work and has his eye on making Mary, little grafter that she is, his wife and workmate.

Furze takes his beloved on a tour of his farm, her future home, but Mary bolts as she envisions a life of dullness worse than death and marries rich, unromantic Percival Fream instead. But after a few years of living the high life the loveless marriage is unendurable, and Mary goes back to her old house at Cinder Town to try to make peace with the old beau she abandoned. Mary has learned her lesson, and wants to know the satisfaction of a hard day's work again, but Furze doesn't want to risk humiliation a second time and rejects her attempts to revive their romance. The only way Mary can convince him she has changed is by stubbornly planting herself in his home and working for him as his housekeeper to show him that she's made of stronger stuff, and has learned humility and the value of work.

While neither Vidor nor Cooper's performance turned out to be overly impressive - not bad, but not really memorable - the production as a whole is wonderfully atmospheric, more than making up for any shortcomings. Director Rowland V Lee creates a moodily overcast little village with a faded, Olde English daintiness where inhabitants have nothing but the mending and peeping secretively at the neighbours to keep them busy (hence Lee's emphasis on the spying habits of old Fream in the screencaptures above). All this adds a nice weight to the sombre material this story deals with. The lengths to which Mary must go to redeem herself in the eyes of so serious a character as Furze are just shy of those taken to enter a convent, with an equally austere reward at the end. But Mary learns the old moral that champagne and parties are nice, but bread water and honest work are the only stuff of life that are truly fulfilling.

There is actually very little information readily available today on this film, which gives the impression that this one's been largely forgotten. To be fair, 1928 was a real embarrassment of riches with The Wind, The Crowd, Show People, Four Sons, Lilac Time... the list seemed endless. Well, almost. Here's a copy of The Film Daily's top ten for the year, courtesy of All Movie Talk. Then as now, a quiet little film like Doomsday was buried under such heavyweights.

And here's a not unkind, but not ecstatic, review of the film:

PHOTOPLAY
April, 1928

At last Florence Vidor shakes off the great lady manner, the coy sophistication, the tea-and-toast comedy tricks. Miss Vidor emerges as an artist and proves that she has something real to give to the screen. In this fine, intelligent story, she plays a household drudge. Although she loves Arnold Furze, played by Gary Cooper, he can only offer her the further drudgery of a farmer's wife. So she marries a rich neighbor. And then comes the drama. Rowland V. Lee has made an absorbing picture. Women, especially, will like it because they will see in it their own problems, their own mistakes. And admirers of Miss Vidor who have seen her fading into a genteel feminine version of Adolphe Menjou, will be glad to know that being a star hasn't made her forget how to act.

And for the book

You can read the book online, free, courtesy of Project Gutenburg.
Read Doomsday here

Doomsday was based on the Warwick Deeping novel of the same name, published in 1927 and fits my "Books into Film" criteria because, although the moral was considered romantic and old fashioned even upon its release, both the book and film are filled with great little details that set the story firmly in its era. The threat of "progress", the raising of aspirations in women, the threadbare gentility of the ex-servicemen, it's all there. This book won't change your life, like most of Deeping's work, but if you've never been to 1920s rural Sussex, it's still got something to offer and for the historical detail, I'd recommend it.

Deeping was a prolific and bestselling writer (68 works in total) and most famous for the First World War novel Sorrell and Son, published two years before Doomsday. A number of his books, including Sorrell, were made into films in the 1920s because the familiarity among audiences would guarantee a certain degree of box office, especially among women. Doomsday wouldn't have been at the top of Deeping's achievements, but it's a nice little tale that I might not have picked up, had I not been so taken by the film.

You can find out more about the writer at the link below. Biographical information, a list of works and reviews:

Warwick Deeping at Collection Books and Magazines

Happy Birthday Miss Clara Bow

July 29th is the 102nd birthday of Jazz Age movie icon Clara Bow. While I won't go into the tragic and oft-told tale of this wonderful actress, I will provide a list of links for biographies, photos, tributes and videos. They'll be much more interesting than any potted history I could give you. Here we go!


The Clara Bow Page
The most extensive Clara tribute site on the net. An unequalled collection of photos, film and biographical information and memorabillia.


Clara Bow: My Life Story
The three part biography written by Hollywood scribe Adela Rogers St. John. Original text from Photoplay magazine February through April, 1928.


Monday Glamour Starters: Clara Bow Part One
Probably the most entertaining and insightful account of Clara's life, courtesy of John McElwee at Greenbriar Picture Shows.
Monday Glamour Starters: Clara Bow Part Two
Conclusion to Part One.


Clara Bow: The "It" Girl Part One
Part One of the video documentary.
Clara Bow: The "It" Girl Part Two
Part Two.

Movies, movies everyday

After the news today that Britain probably won't be getting a summer this year (hope you enjoyed sunny April, because you won't be getting anymore of that anytime soon) it's nice to know that those of us who still have electricity will be able stay in and watch some rarely-aired classic films in BBC2's Summer of British Film.


BBC 2 The Summer of British Film

There are some keepers in this batch too: there's A Cottage on Dartmoor (1929), Hindle Wakes (not sure yet which version this will be but fingers crossed it's the silent one) Young and Innocent (1937), Obsession (1949), The Seventh Veil (1945), A Canterbury Tale (1944), and Battle of the Sexes (1959 with Peter Sellers!) If you haven't seen A Canterbury Tale yet, or saw it once and didn't like it, I'd definitely recommend recording this one, reading up on it, and then watching it again. It's an atmospheric Powell and Pressburger film that, once appreciated, you won't forget.

A lot is being done at the moment about awakening people to British film history (there's a great silent cinema festival in Nottingham for one). Let's hope that with a film season like this on the way, a Silent Britain series will be up next!

"A nation rabid for war"

Here are a few pictures of Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks at a rally in New York, 1917, encouraging fans to buy Liberty Bonds and support the future of democracy. It's a great snapshot of the United States at the brink of entering World War and stepping into her 20th century boots as a major world power; and the likes of Chaplin, Fairbanks and the rest of the movie making industry helped to push that transition ever more quickly forward...



If there’s one thing I love more than anything else about the movies, it’s when they collide with history. For this reason, I thought I'd highlight an excellent documentary, taken from Kevin Brownlow's Hollywood: The Pioneers series, called Hollywood Goes to War in which the film historian interviews key personalities of the film industry on movie-making during and after the war years, the anti-German propaganda, and the industry's relationship with the U.S. government's Committee on Public Information (CPI) during the war.

Luckily for us today, Kevin Brownlow had the foresight to find these people, record their thoughts on what has now become and important moment in American political as well as cultural history, before it was too late. Certainly everyone in this documentary has since passed away - maybe with the exception of a few sons and daughters - so to hear the stories of war and propaganda making from the people who took part is all at once an invaluable historical resource a silent film buff's dream come true.

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Watch Hollywood Goes to War
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The war years marked a turning point in American society. It was a time of nation building when a wildly diverse and even more widely sprawled collection of immigrants and old pioneers came together to "make the world safe for democracy." In 1917, that meant knocking down the German "Hun". To get the patriotic, pro-war fires burning in a largely pacifist, disinterested, heck - German - nation, the propaganda mill began to turn. The CPI, lead by journalist George Creel, was thus created to turn the American public into "one white-hot mass... with fraternity, devotion, courage, and deathless determination." One method the CPI used to achieve this was with the Four Minute Men, so named because that was the amount of time allowed these pro-involvement public speakers while the projectionist was changing reels in the ever increasing number of movie theatres across the country. Plus the name had the added punch of patriotic recognition of the days of the Revolution.

Historian David Kennedy wrote in Over There: The First World War and American Society:

“By the beginning of 1918, the Four-Minute Men were specifically encouraged to use atrocity stories. The Committee, which early in the war had produced upbeat films like Pershing’s Crusaders and Our Colored Fighters, turned to promoting movies like The Prussian Cur, and The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin. And in a development chillingly evocative of the “Two Minutes Hate” exercise practised by George Orwell’s Oceanians in his novel, 1984, the CPI urged participatory “Four-Minute Singing” to keep patriotism at “white heat.”

It worked well and, even more significantly, helped to get an early Hollywood eager for respectability on the bandwagon. An industry with its fair share of prominent Central European names attached to it, plenty saw an opportunity to save their interests (Laemmle, Zukor, etc.) and make a few bucks as well as a name for themselves. Erich von Stroheim earned notoriety as "The Man You Love to Hate" and frequently aroused aggressive reactions from moviegoers appalled by his onscreen brutality. There's a great interview in the video with von Stroheim's wife Valerie, who told Brownlow:

"We went to a little theatre out on North Broadway, and I see him on the screen, and he's shooting an apple off an old lady's head. Then he shoots her. And so I said, "We'd better get out of the theatre before the lights are turned on."

At the same time, the push for preparedness was hitting those in the film colony. In Hollywood, Cecil B. DeMille did his bit by heading the Lasky Home Guard on Thursday nights, kitted out in costume-department uniforms and prop rifles. Niece Agnes DeMille told Brownlow:

“They drilled very faithfully and then they had a final drill out at the Lasky ranch and some of the men went to France… When he said goodbye to the boys, Cecil’s voice broke and he was really overcome with it. Mary [Pickford], however, like a little soldier, stood up and sent them to their death very valiantly. The grisly part is that some did go to their death.”

But not everyone was enjoying the solemn patriotism of 1917-18. The documentary includes a chilling comment from Intolerance cameraman Karl Brown when he explained the failure of D. W. Griffith’s 1916 epic:

“What he did not realize was that in the 18 months that he was making that picture America, from being a pacifist nation whose popular song was ‘I Didn’t Raise My Boy to be a Soldier [to Kill Some Other Darling Mother’s Boy]’ had turned to “Hate the Hun”. Meanwhile Griffith was preaching peace on Earth and good will to man [with Intolerance]; how could such a sermon do anything but fail in a nation that is rabid for war?”

But by the time the war began to wrap up in the autumn of 1918, President Wilson was worrying that the anti-Hun, atrocity-ridden propaganda had worked too well, and the degree of anti-German sentiment whipped up in the previous year would make the forthcoming peace process difficult. As November approached, the government let it be known that it was time to nix the Hun pictures.

Actress Blanche Sweet remembered: “When we received this letter saying ‘cut down on the German atrocities’ we knew the war was over.” Brownlow asked her if she realized the films that became known as ‘atrocity pictures’ were exaggerations. Sweet replied:

“We didn’t exaggerate the atrocities. They were there. They were in the newspapers. Or are you saying newspapers exaggerated them? I don’t know – who are you going to go by? Who’s going to tell you what’s exaggerated and what isn’t? What other way have you?”

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This is of course only a tiny portion of the whole story, so here are a few links if you're interested:

Mobilizing Public Support for War: An Analysis of American Propaganda During World War
an excellent, scholarly essay by Robert A. Wells from the 2002 International Studies Convention.


The Reckless Art of Erich von Stroheim
by the ever-informative (and entertaining) Tom Sutpen at Bright Lights Film Journal on the ultimate Beast of Berlin.


The Bond
the 1918 Charlie Chaplin short encouraging Americans to buy war bonds.

Garbo the sailor-woman

Some gorgeous photos from Greta Garbo's Anna Christie 1930.

Mean, moody and magnificent...

Dragonwyck (1946) Dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Starring Gene Tierney (Miranda), Walter Huston (Ephraim Wells), Vincent Price (Nicholas Van Ryn), Glenn Langan (Dr Turner), Anne Revere (Abigail Wells).

"You must never be afraid of anything with me Miranda..."

I first thought to review Dragonwyck as the second instalment of the ‘Books into Film’ series but, after inspecting the book, decided against the idea. Dragonwyck is by no means a dumb Mills and Boon bodice-ripper, but nor does it make any thought provoking statement on place or time or society worth examining. Joe Mankiewicz described the worth of the plot for his debut as a writer-director pretty accurately, saying that

‘…the love story is apt to be very unsatisfying in its conclusion. The young doctor cannot be half so glamorous or exciting as his murderous heel rival. I can imagine no woman preferring the hero to the villain, in this case, for either bed or breakfast…The political and economic applications are naïve, oversimple, and made unexciting by the times in which we live.’

What is exciting is Vincent Price. Top-billed Gene Tierney is good as the strong-willed farmgirl Miranda who falls under the spell of her sexy psycho cousin, but the role is a largely thankless one, overshadowed by the obsessive cruelty of Price's Nicholas Van Ryn. Tierney wrote years later that she disliked the film and her performance in it (or was it really the distraction of her deteriorating relationship with Oleg Cassini and her frustrated one with JFK at the time?) The historical setting in 1840s New York is a treat and the camera work and score are haunting, but without Price the whole thing would've fallen a bit flat. As the dashing, cold hearted descendent of an old Dutch family with a curse on its bloodline, its Price who propels the story and gets all the best lines:

"What can you possibly do up there?" Mrs Van Ryn asks. "Possibly?" Nicholas challenges, "Anything from pinning butterflies to hiding an insane twin brother. Actually, I read. I hope that my explanation satisfies you?"

With a voice like that at your disposal, it'd be a shame to waste them on anyone else...

To be honest I never realized what a babe Price was in his younger days; I like most people remember him as the weak-willed Shelby in Laura, or as the king of schlock horror from innumerable monster flicks of the 60s. Tall and moody with sad blue eyes, and even more handsome when he's crazy, it's hard to take your eyes off him. Critics in 1946 seemed to be equally taken:

Look magazine swooned that Price was “lean, razor-jawed and romantic.” In fact Price had to lose 30 pounds of his 205 pound heft (the guy was 6 foot 4, so it wasn’t that bad) after he had padded out for an earlier role in Keys of the Kingdom. At first Mankiewicz wasn't convinced, but Price wanted the role badly. "I had to fight like the devil for this part," Vince later wrote. "My bosses kept remembering me as the good-natured guy in Laura and I insisted I wasn't that type." But the new slimline figure seemed to tip the scales, so to speak, as Look noted,

“As Dragonwyck’s homicidal aristocrat who tries to murder two wives, he sets a romantic pace which will be a revelation to feminine moviegoers. One of Hollywood’s soundest actors, this soft-spoken former member of St. Louis society dominates the picture.”

Louella Parsons agreed:

"[Price] has reached the pinnacle of his success. His Nicholas Van Ryn...is his top performance. It is an extremely difficult role because the man is a charmer, even though he is a snobbish rogue. Also, he is a case for a psychiatrist. The role of Van Ryn calls for a lot of acting and Vincent admits he's a ham and loves to act all over the place, but the fact that he has restrained himself and doesn't over-emote is a tribute to his ability."

Dragonwyck probably marks the height of Price's pre-horror career in that it was at this time that he was considered most seriously as a possible romantic leading man. Neither he nor the studios ever really followed through on this, but he was probably better off for that. No studio-produced personality, Price had too much going on upstairs to ever get too absorbed in becoming a romantic idol. Plus, the cards didn't play out that way with Fox or indeed with Universal. Instead he made a new name for himself in horror movies with House of Wax in 1953 and was a busy working actor and cult icon for the next four decades. Well-rounded, Price's interests in fine art, writing and gourmet cooking prompted many to pin on him the label "renaissance man", and never one to take himself too seriously, Price was by all accounts one of the best loved men in the business.

A lifelong friend of Boris Karloff, Janet Gaynor, and an early inspiration to Greg Peck, he charmed Garbo with his knowledge of bread-making. Columnist Inez Wallace wrote:

"I really have a crush on that St. Bernard, with that courtly manner and that doggone smile of his which is like the sun breaking through the clouds. Of all the actors I know, Vincent Price is the only one about whom one never hears an unkind word."

And to end with a link: The Vincent Price Exhibit is an excellent online tribute, from which I pulled some of these great photos, and I'd recommend it if you too might be getting a hankering for all things Vincent. A collection of photos and memorabillia from a longtime fan in New York, it's one of the truly unique movie star sites with something original worth sharing. Price certainly deserves it.

The Vincent Price Exhibit

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