Classic movie site with rare images, original ads, and behind-the-scenes photos, with informative and insightful commentary. We like to have fun with movies!
Archive and Links
grbrpix@aol.com
Search Index Here




Monday, April 23, 2018

The 30's Price Of Respectibility


The Easiest Way (1931) Again Seems a Most Sensible Way

Remarkable how gritty MGM pictures of the 1930-31 season could be. The Easiest Way begins with Constance Bennett living in squalor with a bum father, (J. Farrell McDonald), sour mother (Clara Blandick), and passel full of ill-behaved siblings. It's enough to propel any working girl into clutches of mistress-keeper Adolphe Menjou, her ad exec boss who sees marriage and family as a trap and nothing else, on-screen evidence suggesting he's more than right. The Bennett persona dealt its mosaic of precode whoring until a public was sated with it and her. You could only do the same story so many times before exhaustion took hold. Bennett's many for RKO got that accomplished by 1933. This actress was sharp enough to pass along at least the illusion of major stardom until an industry wised up and put her in support parts or B leads. For The Easiest Way however, the act was fresh and plain-spoke on trading virtue for Depression-era comforts. Trouble was The Easiest Way and ones like it made the swap both sensible and much preferred to poor-but-pure option that looked more and more like a sucker's choice as precode spread its credo for living. There was just no way a morally upright establishment would let this go on.




Bennett's brood fight over gruel and stale toast in an opener you could mistake for postwar Italo-realism if this weren't 1930. Metro did not shrink from coldwater realism when early talking situations called for it. Was this Thalberg influence?, because it applies across a board of what they sent out with formative sound. Contrasts between have and have-not, and they couldn't be starker than here, are neatly summarized by Robert Montgomery when he squires Bennett to a cookout and pinches what looks like a twelve-ounce steak off the grill to give to a dog. This summed up the face of wealth during a time that few could be exposed to it other than at movies. There wasn't concerted effort by Hollywood to pillory the rich, for social revolution could come of that and they'd be at least partly to blame, but there was a let them eat cake aspect to playboy and tycoon conduct during this period when viewer sensitivity had to have been acute.




The source play had been hot stuff for twenty years before MGM took it up with tongs, the Hays Office having warned that trouble would come of adaptation. Had Thalberg paid heed, there would have been half or more Metro output cleaved off, as skating at the edge was very much corporate pursuit now that tickets sold fewer and a public sought heat from film narratives. Let there be moral compensation, but also wallow in luxury that fallen women could at least enjoy through second acts before punishment befell. Patrons understood the price we paid to see characters revel in sin up to pipers being paid. Arguments for clean living were faint in the face of Menjou-bestowed cars and diamonds, plus fact he's devoted and not at all a bad guy to bed down with, marriage-wise or not. Those who would judge are a priggish lot, even a first-credit-for-Metro Clark Gable, who won't give Connie a time of day once she trades goodies to Menjou. One look at this fresh bull, however, and you know he won't be doing a piety act for long. In fact, MGM saw a star birthed from first preview audiences demand to know who this guy was. They'd find out with a dozen features Clark Gable would appear in during 1931 alone. Within that time, he'd become a major attraction.




The Easiest Way was a sort of real-time project, being shot during November and December 1930, and taking place at the same time, as evidenced by checks written and shown in close-up, situations and dialogue running up to the holiday season, an urgency because this was a best time for down-and-outers to find jobs. Bennett is enslaved by the "ribbon counter" (men's ties) where getting hit on is daily ritual. Her friend Marjorie Rambeau explains the facts of man/woman interaction in words that still apply. Remarkable how precode, at least writers in back of it, understood reality so much better than we do now. Rambeau, always a voice of bitter experience, turns up throughout The Easiest Way to boost Connie up or knock her down. This actress, always in support and as often stealing films she appeared in, conveyed flint-hard appreciation for Depression woe that bespoke what many (most?) audience members were thinking. She worked into the 50's (her 60's) and would for whole of the time embody hard-won wisdom (excellent too in 1953's Torch Song).




Robert Montgomery is The Easiest Way's leading man. He is easy to forget in hindsight because of Gable. They do not appear in scenes together, Montgomery representing the well-borne and upwardly mobile, while Gable is up-from-pavement with rolled sleeves and Anita Page as his well-serviced wife. No contest then, for who needed polite lovemaking as a culture cracked under the Crash. Gable came at precisely a right moment and made out best, knowingly or not, from it. He is a "laundryman" who builds the business to where he and wife/child have a more than comfortable home for Christmas, The Easiest Way wrapping as hit-skids Bennett shows up in Stella Dallas mode, peering through a window at family life where she's not welcome. Yes, even precode dealt harshly with fallen women. It was only occasional that they prospered for straying. The Easiest Way is too enjoyable to be a preachment, however, being brisk (73 minutes) and to a brim with brusque dialogue, a given during the period. It is a must for many reasons, and available on DVD from Warner Archive.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

grbrpix@aol.com
  • December 2005
  • January 2006
  • February 2006
  • March 2006
  • April 2006
  • May 2006
  • June 2006
  • July 2006
  • August 2006
  • September 2006
  • October 2006
  • November 2006
  • December 2006
  • January 2007
  • February 2007
  • March 2007
  • April 2007
  • May 2007
  • June 2007
  • July 2007
  • August 2007
  • September 2007
  • October 2007
  • November 2007
  • December 2007
  • January 2008
  • February 2008
  • March 2008
  • April 2008
  • May 2008
  • June 2008
  • July 2008
  • August 2008
  • September 2008
  • October 2008
  • November 2008
  • December 2008
  • January 2009
  • February 2009
  • March 2009
  • April 2009
  • May 2009
  • June 2009
  • July 2009
  • August 2009
  • September 2009
  • October 2009
  • November 2009
  • December 2009
  • January 2010
  • February 2010
  • March 2010
  • April 2010
  • May 2010
  • June 2010
  • July 2010
  • August 2010
  • September 2010
  • October 2010
  • November 2010
  • December 2010
  • January 2011
  • February 2011
  • March 2011
  • April 2011
  • May 2011
  • June 2011
  • July 2011
  • August 2011
  • September 2011
  • October 2011
  • November 2011
  • December 2011
  • January 2012
  • February 2012
  • March 2012
  • April 2012
  • May 2012
  • June 2012
  • July 2012
  • August 2012
  • September 2012
  • October 2012
  • November 2012
  • December 2012
  • January 2013
  • February 2013
  • March 2013
  • April 2013
  • May 2013
  • June 2013
  • July 2013
  • August 2013
  • September 2013
  • October 2013
  • November 2013
  • December 2013
  • January 2014
  • February 2014
  • March 2014
  • April 2014
  • May 2014
  • June 2014
  • July 2014
  • August 2014
  • September 2014
  • October 2014
  • November 2014
  • December 2014
  • January 2015
  • February 2015
  • March 2015
  • April 2015
  • May 2015
  • June 2015
  • July 2015
  • August 2015
  • September 2015
  • October 2015
  • November 2015
  • December 2015
  • January 2016
  • February 2016
  • March 2016
  • April 2016
  • May 2016
  • June 2016
  • July 2016
  • August 2016
  • September 2016
  • October 2016
  • November 2016
  • December 2016
  • January 2017
  • February 2017
  • March 2017
  • April 2017
  • May 2017
  • June 2017
  • July 2017
  • August 2017
  • September 2017
  • October 2017
  • November 2017
  • December 2017
  • January 2018
  • February 2018
  • March 2018
  • April 2018
  • May 2018
  • June 2018
  • July 2018
  • August 2018
  • September 2018
  • October 2018
  • November 2018
  • December 2018
  • January 2019
  • February 2019
  • March 2019
  • April 2019
  • May 2019
  • June 2019
  • July 2019
  • August 2019
  • September 2019
  • October 2019
  • November 2019
  • December 2019
  • January 2020
  • February 2020
  • March 2020
  • April 2020
  • May 2020
  • June 2020
  • July 2020
  • August 2020
  • September 2020
  • October 2020
  • November 2020
  • December 2020
  • January 2021
  • February 2021
  • March 2021
  • April 2021
  • May 2021
  • June 2021
  • July 2021
  • August 2021
  • September 2021
  • October 2021
  • November 2021
  • December 2021
  • January 2022
  • February 2022
  • March 2022
  • April 2022
  • May 2022
  • June 2022
  • July 2022
  • August 2022
  • September 2022
  • October 2022
  • November 2022
  • December 2022
  • January 2023
  • February 2023
  • March 2023
  • April 2023
  • May 2023
  • June 2023
  • July 2023
  • August 2023
  • September 2023
  • October 2023
  • November 2023
  • December 2023
  • January 2024
  • February 2024
  • March 2024