Precode Picks #5

 

Precode: Double Harness, Explorers of the World, Jolson Socks Winchell, and "The Five Stages of Love"

DOUBLE HARNESS (1933) --- Double Harness meditates on marriage and how it’s better avoided by men about town like William Powell who are content to keep a mistress (or two) and why spoil all that by taking vows? Sounds glib which I don’t propose to be, as Double Harness certainly is not, being earnest in its exam of what a woman, in this instance Ann Harding, will do to snare a husband, fair play an option but optional where necessity calls for more devious means. Ad here tells the essential story: “She Tricked Him Into Marriage! --- and Learned too Late That Love Cannot be Tied with Bonds of Matrimony!” Had management been to a trade screening before inventing this squib? Harding resorts to sneakery and intervention of Dad to corner Bill and shotgun a marriage, latter’s response to go along, but forget romance and we’ll wait for divorce to loosen wedded knot, “love cannot be tied” and all that. We endorse Bill’s action and it is for Ann to redeem herself. Precode could and did make moral judgments, refreshing one of which upheld sanctity of freedom if not free love where parties enter into pact knowingly, bad cricket then for the woman to break the bargain, entrap the man, and expect him to like it. Bill ghosting Ann once he knows he’s harnessed (hence the title) is remind that convention violated will work except where one or the other party tries changing rules mid-way. Double Harness in siding with Powell promiscuity speaks loudest for precode principles during short epoch it lasted. Not once are we invited to condemn his lifestyle. It is Ann Harding’s “Ann Colby” that invites scorn for arresting free and admirable spirit that is Bill's. Again the ad: “Her one idea was “Get your man. Love will take care of itself,” except no it won’t, at least in this instance. Do male viewers watch this and ponder how they ended up in their own marriage? Double Harness plays TCM in HD, was part of the deal done with Merian C. Cooper’s estate for a handful of RKO features he retained after leaving the company in the mid-thirties.

EXPLORERS OF THE WORLD (1931) --- Don’t let them tell you explorers are not precode. Ones I’ve seen are or at the least tickle edges. Greenbriar explored a notorious one here. Nature stuff drew parallel with Great War documentaries by snaring sensation from real-life topics, idea to take liberties because after all you’re exposing nature or gone-mad mankind in the raw. If we’re to watch animals in the wild, then by all means unleash them to be savage selves, violence the more bracing for not being faked. Some of footage was rigged however, men in ape-skins or cats starved to point of killing anything to venture by. Explorers of the World lends dignity to exploitation enterprise by gathering famous nature names at a banquet to regale us and each other of travels lately made, footage aplenty from far-flung spots. Accounts shared by the half dozen vary nicely, us on ice for a portion, then melt that is Africa or desert climes. This all has historic interest for those who study early exploration, and I wonder if scholars are aware of invaluable resource here. Theatres touted educational value but put chips on sights to shock. “A Noah’s Arkful of Beasts Let Loose in a Whale of a Picture” yelled the Criterion in support of its “Knock-Out Wallop,” and who’s to begrudge sales for a pitch so aggressive? All six explorer names are right up on the marquee, and we’ve got to assume they were known from magazines and/or news coverage. What boy/girl didn’t want to grow up and go uncharted places like Martin and Osa Johnson? Explorers of the World made that seem doable, thrilled too in the bargain. Who knew but what you might be the next Admiral Byrd? The rich enough did go safari route and had stuffed heads to show for them. What were exotic animals if not for killing? Maybe for disapproval of that we see less of these travel folders, but some do disc-exist, Explorers of the World from Grapevine Video and on Blu-Ray besides. I found it a bracing watch but did note discrepancy re running time. Are prints today complete? Who could know … perhaps care, so long as sampling survives to give us at least taste of untamed wilds.

BROADWAY THROUGH A KEYHOLE (1933) --- Consider fate of principals, Texas Guinan gone within a week of November 1933 release, Russ Columbo a casualty the following year, Paul Kelly having served an active sentence for beating a man to death with his fists. Lead lady Constance Cummings led them by living to ninety-five (d. 2005), so imagine workings in her mind if ever she saw Broadway Through a Keyhole revived. Here was early effort for named producer Darryl Zanuck doing business as Twentieth-Century Pictures, this before formation of better known Twentieth-Century Fox. Broadway Through a Keyhole is seen if at all on bootleg discs or renegade uploads, quality generally terrible by my so-far experience. Ad above drew me for cryptic reference to dust-up between Walter Winchell, whose story supplied Broadway basis, and Al Jolson, who said Winchell based his yarn on real-life circumstance of Ruby Keeler, Al’s then wife. Jolson “saw red” at the sight of Winchell during a prizefight both attended, hopping from his spectator seat and landing two (at least) blows on the Gotham gadfly. Incident took place in Los Angeles and was mass-reported by end of July, 1933, just in time for Broadway Through a Keyhole to benefit from press however tawdry. Winchell later said thanks for Jolson’s offer to apologize and be pals again, but let’s wait a while and bask in publicity the quarrel generated. Might this whole thing have been a phony? The boys never admitted one way or other, stayed fast friends in the wake of events, Walter putting together a record album long after Al’s death to salute latter who predeceased him. Hollywood (rather New York), you big hearted town(s). Exhibition got a hypo, ads like Leow’s touting “the picture with a punch” as in why did Jolson throw his at Winchell? --- answer what twenty cents “till 5” might supply. "Glamorous Amorous Girls Girls" (insert four exclamation marks) helped sell what Broadway Through a Keyhole was really about (but how do I know, not having seen it). Art alone lit fuses, chorus dancers largely unsheathed and showing navels, something even AIP beach pics couldn’t do in the sixties, on posters or screens. Ever see Annette’s? Such promoting reminds if nothing else that precode was even more wide open than we thought, at least on newsprint pages if not on screens.

FIVE STAGES MORE OR LESS --- Are there really “Five Stages of Love”? A late silent era evidently taught so as here. We speak of precode as if it came on like a light switch, all before but a Puritan blur. But how could film be bawdy minus talk, specifically talk of suggestive nature? Silents were necessarily subdued but for Fairbanks jumping or clowns slapsticking. Seduction seemed more the stuff of dialogue, as was fast shuffles dealt by precode sharpies. There’s something stately about stills used to accompany this Picture Show Annual page commemorating supposed stages we must pass through enroute to true love. This was Picture Show’s 1931 number, change well afoot even if they didn’t fully realize it, this pictorial well behind times a-rapid-changing. For one thing, the films depicted were well out of circulation, and would remain so. Most now are lost … note I’m assuming that w/o even knowing titles. Players too would evaporate off talking screens. Sole of this lot to survive and prosper was Adolphe Menjou; one could ask where art thou Claire Windsor, Huntley Gordon, and Betty Compson? Precode really was survival of the quickest. Think Cagney characters concerned themselves with five stages of love? Just one and he’d be done and out. These images evoke parlor and manners taught when formalities were observed. Were we better off chucking these so completely? You’d think yes where comparing stolidity of talkless drama and demon speed of precode with pedals pressed down. So is this instructional still relevant? There are presumably same rituals to courtship and love: Introduction, Attraction, First Kiss, Flirtation, and “Wedded.” It’s the order they go in, or are supposed to go in, that had to be sorted out. By the early thirties, movies were for shuffling cards to quick-get past that first kiss, nix the wedded part, hang all of form save consummation. Could you blame an establishment’s disapproval? Dialogue was the Great Unfetter of Films and society watching them. Depression further bent rules and banished proprieties. No wonder a gone silent era came in for such ridicule. We still care less for then-ways except where they make us laugh … who’d sit for Marguerite de la Motte and Cullen Landis exchanging calf looks where alternative is Warren William compromising a co-cast before half a typical seventy minutes is spent?