DVR Alerts for Friday 9/25 -- TCM Pre-Code Festival

Sorry to be so late with this -- end of fiscal year at the day job! Don't forget, if you have Turner Classic Movies on your cable system, you should be able to see these after the fact using WatchTCM to stream them to your computer.

Also, remember that these are NOT organized by A List or B List. It's organized based on what I've seen and can recommend, and things I haven't seen but want to.

Definite YESes (seen and recommended)
A Free Soul (3:00 a.m. ET)
The Public Enemy (3:30 p.m. ET)
Scarface (5:00 p.m. ET)
Little Caesar (6:45 p.m. ET)
Three on a Match (10:00 p.m. ET)

Good Bets (that I haven't seen, but plan to)
Ladies They Talk About (6:30 a.m. ET)
Heroes For Sale (10:15 a.m. ET)
Employees' Entrance (11:30 a.m. ET)
Midnight Mary (1:00 p.m. ET)
Penthouse (8:15 p.m. ET)
State's Attorney (2:00 a.m. ET)

I can't quite decide how I feel about recommending The Hatchet Man (12:45 a.m. ET), so I'm listing it separately. On the one hand, it has Edward G. Robinson, one of my all-time favorite actors, and is directed by William Wellman. On the other, it has an all-white cast playing in yellowface, with Asian-American actors relegated to bit parts. Pre-Code films reflect their times, which means that they can sometimes be startlingly racist to our eyes, so viewer beware.

If you haven't seen Little Caesar in a while, I'm going to let you in on a secret: Rico is gay. According to Mick LaSalle, the writer of the novel it was based on even complained about it at the time because it was so clear to contemporary audiences. The indicators they used for that were different in the 1930s than they are today so it's not quite as obvious on first viewing, but once you know, it's hard not to see it.

I also highly recommend Three on a Match, which has a bravura performance by Pre-Code star Ann Dvorak (who co-stars in Scarface with Paul Muni) as a nice, middle-class married woman with a baby who descends into drug addiction for no particular reason while her friends and family stand by helplessly. When Dvorak reduces Bette Davis to standing by as a supporting player, you know Dvorak is commanding the screen.

Unrelated trivia time: child actress Virginia Davis from Three on a Match is the same Virginia Davis who appeared in Walt Disney's very first short films, collectively called the Alice Comedies. The first Alice film bankrupted Walt (a not uncommon occurrence for him) but he was able to use it as his calling card to get a contract to make more of them once he moved to Hollywood from Kansas City, Missouri.

DVR Alerts for Friday 9/19 -- TCM Pre-Code Fridays

Confession time -- this Friday is probably the day with the most number of famous Pre-Code films that I've never seen. I've been fascinated by Mae West for years, I've read a couple of biographies of her, and yet I've never seen I'm No Angel or She Done Him Wrong. Embarrassing, but true.

So this week's recommendations are:

Possessed (10:15 a.m. ET)

Two Seconds (11:45 a.m. ET)

The Little Giant (1:00 p.m. ET)

The Mind Reader (2:30 p.m. ET)

Beauty and the Boss (3:45 p.m. ET)

Blonde Venus (8:00 p.m. ET)

I’m No Angel (9:45 p.m. ET)

She Done Him Wrong (11:30 p.m. ET)

Blonde Crazy (12:45 a.m. ET)

Skyscraper Souls (3:30 a.m. ET)

There's also the original version of Waterloo Bridge, starring Mae Clark and directed by James Whale, airing at 5:00 p.m. ET. I've seen it and don't remember being very impressed by it, but YMMV. Many people who have seen the Viven Leigh remake and then this Mae Clark version end up preferring the Pre-Code version because it doesn't have to play coy about exactly why Myra hangs around with all of those soldiers. 

The movies I'll probably end up watching first are Two Seconds, I'm No Angel, and Skyscraper Souls.

Today's notable stars: Joan Crawford & Clark Gable (Possessed), Edward G. Robinson (Two Seconds, The Little Giant), Warren William (The Mind Reader, Beauty and the Boss, Skyscraper Souls), Mae West (I'm No Angel, She Done Him Wrong), Marlene Dietrich & Herbert Marshall (Blonde Venus), Cary Grant (Blonde Venus, I'm No Angel, She Done Him Wrong), James Cagney & Joan Blondell (Blonde Crazy).

"Trouble in Paradise" (1933)

Lubitsch.

For some people, that’s all you have to say. He was one of the first “star” directors, a director whose films people would go see regardless of who the actors were, which meant he could get top stars like Greta Garbo begging to work with him. I could populate an entire Top 10 list with only Lubitsch’s films, and if I did, the number one spot would be a tough, tough call between Trouble in Paradise and 1942's To Be or Not To Be. But we’re talking about Pre-Code films here so, for today, Trouble in Paradise is going to take the top spot.

This is one of Lubitsch’s nine collaborations with New York playwright Samson Raphaelson, who also wrote two other beloved Lubitsch films, The Shop Around the Corner (1940) and Heaven Can Wait (1943). But much as I love those films, they can’t hold a candle to Trouble in Paradise.

Night Nurse (1931)

Let’s say this first – if you like Pre-Code movies, you will love Night Nurse. It’s a full blast of the fun that Pre-Code films can hold: wisecracking best friends, snappy dialogue, unconventional plot twists and, of course, Barbara Stanwyck in her early red-headed days.

But it’s an unusual role for Stanwyck, because the character of Laura Hart is something we don’t expect from the usually hard-boiled Stanwyck: a starry-eyed idealist. She’s not naïve – it’s established from the start that she’s a working-class girl who was forced to drop out of high school and work to support herself – but she loves nursing and wants to be the best nurse she can be. Even at the end of the film when she’s forced to leave the field she loves, her disillusionment hasn’t made her hard or cynical. She remains the same warm, caring, confident person we saw when the film opened.

It’s sometimes startling to see the contrast between the Pre-Code Stanwyck and her Production Code persona. There is a definite difference between the two. In her Production Code films, there’s something a little cold about Stanwyck even in her romances – something a little remote and mysterious. In her Pre-Code films, Stanwyck holds nothing back. She lays it all on the table and dares the audience to judge her for it.  And director William “Wild Bill” Wellman backs her up with a tough, punchy film that showcases Stanwyck’s strengths as an actress.

UPDATED: TCM Pre-Code Fridays: DVR Alerts for Sept. 12

Still working on my piece about Night Nurse (which I hope to have up tomorrow), but I wanted to get the DVR alerts in so people have time to plan and/or program:

Friday, September 12

Definite YESes (seen and recommended)
The Age of Consent (3:00 p.m. ET -- watch it and then read my essay about it here!)
Red-Headed Woman (6:30 p.m. ET)
Design For Living (9:30 p.m. ET)
Trouble In Paradise (11:15 p.m. ET)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (12:45 a.m. ET)
Freaks (3:45 a.m. ET)

Good Bets (that I haven't seen, but plan to)
Ten Cents  A Dance (7:00 a.m. ET)
ADDED: Double Harness (10:00 a.m. ET) -- recommended by NotMax
Mary Stevens, M.D. (1:45 p.m. ET)
Bombshell (4:45 p.m. ET)
Red Dust (8:00 p.m. ET)
The Story of Temple Drake (2:30 a.m. ET)
Jewel Robbery (5:00 a.m. ET)

If you can only see one movie this week, make it Trouble In Paradise -- you will never be sorry, though your friends will get tired of you repeating lines from it. If you can only see two, the second one should be Design For Living. As far as essays go, I'm planning to aim for Trouble In Paradise ("Constantinople!") and The Story of Temple Drake, which was suppressed for many decades because it was so incredibly scandalous.

Stars of the day: Jean Harlow (Red-Headed Woman, Bombshell, Red Dust), Miriam Hopkins (Design for Living, Trouble In Paradise, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Story of Temple Drake) and Kay Francis (Trouble In Paradise, Mary Stevens M.D., Jewel Robbery)

Also note that I added Double Harness to the Good Bets list at the recommendation of NotMax.

The Divorcee (1930)

** If you have a participating cable TV provider, you can stream this month's movies to your computer using WatchTCM, so you can still watch this film and upcoming selections if you missed Friday's broadcast. **

I’m probably going to be writing about multiple films from TCM Pre-Code Fridays since there’s such an embarrassment of riches, but I’m going to start with The Divorcee because I think its charms are a little less obvious to modern audiences.

First of all: Norma Shearer. The First Lady of MGM. Married to top MGM executive Irving Thalberg. And yet she wasn’t interested in the classy, ladylike roles that Thalberg wanted to shove the object of his affections into, like so many doting movie executives before and after him. She wanted to play modern, complicated women dealing with changing social mores – there’s a reason Mick LaSalle chose her photograph for the cover of his book Complicated Women. She played thieves (A Lady of Chance, The Last of Mrs. Cheyney), kept women (The Trial of Mary Dugan), and freethinking adults who believed they should have the same freedom as men – which is what Shearer’s character Jerry believes in The Divorcee.

"Love Me Tonight" (1932)

One of the things I'm enjoying most about watching these Pre-Code films is that I'm able to re-discover what made some stars into "stars" in the first place.  My spouse's first experience with Barbara Stanwyck was seeing her on the 1980s nighttime soap operas Dynasty and The Colbys and, understandably, he wondered what the big deal was.  Even when he was older and saw some of her Production Code classics like Double Indemnity and The Lady Eve, he still didn't really "get" Stanwyck.

Then we watched Night Nurse and ... damn!  Now he got it.

For me, that was the reaction I had to Maurice Chevalier when I saw Love Me Tonight.  I knew Chevalier from his later years in Hollywood, most notably playing a dirty old man singing "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" in Gigi, but I'd never seen him in his prime.  And all I can say is ... damn!  Now I get it.

DVR Alert -- Week 1 of TCM's Pre-Code Fridays

Yes, I'm WAY late to this, but here are my recommendations for your DVR pleasure starting tomorrow (Friday Sept. 5):

Definite YESes (seen and recommended)
Night Nurse (4:00 pm ET)
Baby Face (8:00 pm ET)
The Divorcee (9:30 pm ET)
Gold Diggers of 1933 (1:00 am ET)

Good bets (that I haven't seen)
Wild Boys of the Road (11:00 am ET)
Safe in Hell (12:15 pm ET)
Female (2:45 pm)

Also, if you catch the opening of Taxi! (4:15 am ET), you ca see James Cagney speaking Yiddish like a native (which he pretty much was, since he picked it up from the other kids in the tenements of New York).

I haven't quite decided which of these I'm going to write about over the weekend, but the best bets are either Night Nurse or The Divorcee, so if your DVR space is limited, I would go with those. Happy viewing!

DVR Alert -- But Not Pre-Code!

I'm traveling this weekend and may not have time for a full essay, but I wanted to alert people to set their DVRs for a NON-Pre Code movie. 

I Walked With A Zombie is a cool little horror movie produced by Val Lewton in 1943 and directed by Jacques Tourneur. Lewton described it as "Jane Eyre in the West Indies," but that jokey description conceals what the true horror examined in the film is: the lingering aftereffects of slavery on both the former owners and the former slaves. 

But it's also an atmospheric gothic tale with a strong heroine and no gore (under the Code, no gore was allowed anyway) that's well worth watching. Even horror movie chickens should be able to handle this one. 

CORRECTION! Airs Saturday Oct. 19 at 2:15 am ET / Friday Oct. 17at 11:15 pm PT. Enjoy!

Coming Soon: "Love Me Tonight" (1932)

It was a tough decision, but it's been a stressful week, so wacky romantic comedy wins.

Love Me Tonight (1932)
Starring Jeanette MacDonald, Maurice Chevalier, and Myrna Loy
Directed by Rouben Mamoulian with music by Rodgers & Hart

Airs on TCM on Monday, Sept. 23rd at 8:00 pm ET/5:00 pm ET

What the heck is "Pre-Code"?

"So look for me in the future where the primroses grow and pack your man's pride with the rest. From now on, you're the only man in the world that my door is closed to."

This is a hard thing to come up with a short answer to. There have been entire books written about the Production Code, what it was, and how it came to be. (See the reading list in the sidebar.)

But, short version, “Pre-Code” is the period in American sound films from about 1929 to mid-1934 when films were censored after they were completed by the studios. Film censorship was completely legal, because the Supreme Court had ruled in 1915 that movies were purely a commercial enterprise and thus did not have any First Amendment protections. 

In the “Pre-Code” period, there was a list of forbidden topics, but studios were allowed to make their films first and defend them to the censors afterwards. This allowed far more freedom in story and visual expression than during the years when Joe Breen ran the Production Code office, when every aspect of a studio film from story to script to publicity shots had to be pre-approved by Breen and his censors before shooting even began.

Pre-Code films give us a very different window into concerns of 1930s America before the Breen office slammed that window shut and pulled the curtains. Poverty, incest, prostitution, crime, drug addiction, murder, suicide … and with none of the easy moralizing that was imposed on films by the Production Code Office after 1934. We see veterans of World War I who have been permanently damaged by their service and divorced women enjoying their newfound freedom. We see girls sleeping with gangsters for the sheer thrill of it and career women sacrificing everything, not for a man, but for their work. We see nice, middle-class girls become thrill-seeking drug addicts while their working-class friends try to help. We see lives ruined not by “sins,” but by society’s refusal to forgive those sins.

Watching these films almost makes me angry, because I can see a maturity and modern adult sensibility trying to raise its head, only to be stepped on by the Breen office and pushed back out of sight to fester underneath. What would American society be like if our most popular art form had not been forced to censor itself and pretend real life didn’t exist? How would America and Americans be different if we hadn’t lied to ourselves about ourselves for 30 years and pretended that we were more moral, more upright, more sane than we actually were?

In this blog, I hope to explore not only the films themselves, but the actors, actresses, producers, writers, and directors who made them. I will occasionally stray out of the period to show that some filmmakers were able to sneak around the Breen office even after it took control, or to show how a Pre-Code film was remade into a safe, sanitized, Breen-sanctioned film.

Most of all, I want to look at these recordings of an earlier time that will help us recognize that there was never a “more innocent time” in America, only a time when our culture lied to us about what was really happening in the world around us.

The Age of Consent (1932)

A couple of years ago, I found myself in a small used bookstore in Ventura where I found a book that changed my life and my perception of American history.  No, it wasn’t the Bible, or the Book of Mormon (or Book of Mormon), or Lies My Teacher Told Me.

It was this book – Complicated Women, by Mick LaSalle.  I had heard of “Pre-Code” movies before, of course.  I don’t have two film degrees for nothing. But I’d always heard them spoken about as an aberration, a novelty, a failed moment in the evolution of American film that dead-ended in 1934 and allowed the real history of American film to begin.

But LaSalle had a different view.  He wrote about Pre-Code films as being a brief moment of honesty on the American screen, until that honesty was shoved back into the box demanded of it by conservatives.  He thought that the Production Code, far from being the “improvement” over the filth of the Pre-Code period that many critics used to speak of as being, had actually infantilized us as a society and made it difficult for Americans to deal with real life when it inevitably came to us in the form of illness, disappointment, divorce, and betrayal.

Once I started watching the Pre-Code movies LaSalle wrote about for myself and comparing them to the Production Code films I knew so well, I knew he was right.  And I knew I needed to write this blog.

So let’s talk about one of those movies that opened my eyes.  It’s not a great or even particularly good movie.  It doesn’t have any major stars or a major director (sorry, La Cava fans). But it does cover many of the themes that will recur over and over again as we look at Pre-Code films and see how different they are from Production Code films.

This Month on TCM

This is the first time I'm trying this, so we'll see how it goes.  These are all of the movies on TCM this month that fit into the Pre-Code time period.  I've marked the ones that I've actually seen and recommend with one star, and marked the ones that I will be writing about (eventually) with two stars.

* Recommended
** A movie I'm planning to write about

Thursday Sept. 12
6:00 a.m. ET/3:00 a.m. PT
Passion Flower (1930)

7:30 a.m. ET/4:30 a.m. PT
Star Witness (1931)

8:45 a.m. ET/5:45 a.m. PT
** Gabriel Over the White House (1933)

10:15 a.m. ET/7:15 a.m. PT
This Side of Heaven (1934)

Friday Sept. 13
Prison Movies Block
7:45 a.m. ET/4:45 a.m. PT
Numbered Men (1930)

10:30 a.m. ET/7:30 a.m. PT
** Hell's Highway (1932)

11:45 a.m. ET/8:45 a.m. PT
The Big House (1930)

3:00 p.m. ET/12:00 p.m. PT
** Ladies They Talk About (1933)

6:00 p.m. ET/3:00 p.m. PT
** I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang (1933)

Sunday Sept. 15
6:00 a.m. ET/3:00 a.m. PT
Viva Villa! (1934)

8:00 a.m. ET/5:00 a.m. PT
** King Kong (1933)

Monday Sept. 16
6:00 a.m. ET/3:00 a.m. PT
The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933)

Tuesday Sept. 17
Joan Crawford Block
6:00 a.m. ET/3:00 a.m. PT
Our Blushing Brides (1930)

7:45 a.m. ET/4:45 a.m. PT
Montana Moon (1930)

9:15 a.m. ET/6:15 a.m. PT
This Modern Age (1931)

10:30 a.m. ET/7:30 a.m. PT
Today We Live (1933)

12:30 p.m. ET/9:30 a.m PT
** Dancing Lady (1933)

Saturday Sept. 21
8:00 p.m. ET/5:00 p.m. PT
* It Happened One Night (1934)

Sunday Sept. 22
8:00 a.m. ET/5:00 p.m. PT
** I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang (1932)

Monday Sept. 23
8:00 p.m. ET/5:00 p.m. PT
** Love Me Tonight (1932)

11:15 p.m. ET/8:15 p.m. PT
** The Public Enemy (1931)

12:45 a.m. ET/9:45 p.m. PT
** Frankenstein (1931)

2:00 a.m. ET/11:00 p.m. PT
** Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)

3:45 a.m. ET/12:45 a.m. PT
Twentieth Century (1934)

Wednesday Sept. 25
6:00 a.m. ET/3:00 a.m. PT
** The Divorcee (1930)

7:30 a.m. ET/4:30 a.m. PT
Divorce in the Family (1932)

9:00 a.m. ET/6:00 a.m. PT
Wednesday's Child (1934)

10:15 p.m. ET/7:15 p.m. PT
Street Scene (1931)

Thursday Sept. 26
6:30 a.m. PT/3:30 a.m. ET
Girl Crazy (1932)

Coming Soon: The Age of Consent (1932)

The Age of Consent (1932), directed by Gregory La Cava and executive produced by David O. Selznick

Amazon.com:  Purchase download for $9.99
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