Precode Picks #6
Precode: Night Nurse, Heated Up Ads, and Downstairs
MORE OF SUGGESTIVE ADS --- Suggestive, but suggesting what? I suggest it’s license as in chuck wedlock and let’s try on free love, which works after all for Bette Davis and Gene Raymond. Under cover of humor, wit if you will, but the message is plain, “complete and unprejudiced” where frankly advocating (?) laughter toward wedding bells and yawns at bassinets. Ads could be wisecracky and sometimes radical, as here. A lot of daughters and sisters were drawn to Ex-Lady on titillating promise of “Moratorium on Marriage.” Was this mere fairground pitch or a fundamental challenge to established mores? Depends on how seriously one took theatre ads, or the films they advertised. Feature titles could and did welcome winds of cultural change, Ex-Lady by its name a thumb-to-nose toward tradition. There had to come a reckoning, less provoked by the movies perhaps than salacious ads that promoted them (for more on Ex-Lady, plus further ads and graphics, go here). As any coin has both head and tail, observe RKO Palace promotion for Back Street in 1932. Distress of my clipping reflects that of Irene Dunne as kept woman (for years and years) of John Boles, toll paid for promiscuity as moralists would point out, Back Street backing argument that only sadness comes of sex outside wedlock. This too was precode, as in fallen woman sagas that seldom if ever ended happy for principals, outcome reflected here with Dunne, chin rested on palm, but no rest for having crossed social boundaries. As if to hammer home point, there is center art of what might be any discarded mistress left to contemplate her misery, “For Every Woman who has loved unwisely … and for Every Man who has loved too well” again a titillation, this time with price tag attached. Lock up your daughters, or at least keep them away from precode newspaper ads.
Gilbert’s was the kind of romantic persona that needed to identify close with his character and circumstance in order to give of his best. So dispiriting was most of his talking vehicles that it was impossible for him to connect, A Gentleman’s Fate being lately watched example, him a gangster's son (but unknowingly) living large off trust money, a premise I doubt Gilbert or anyone bought, so how to apply himself believably? Pace is glacial, as frankly is Gilbert. He was a man of moods wherein up he could reach stars, but down … disaster. I’ve wondered before if he was bipolar. That would explain a lot of what went on, certainly the periods of depression and self-medicating. Downstairs seemed a rescue. Thalberg told Gilbert they’d adapt his story and let him star, Irving lifted off the floor with a bear hug in return. Essence of Gilbert was no neutral setting. His career went back to the teens, and Jack's teens, having written, also directed, in fact done almost everything. There were friends --- who in fact was not his friend? It surely shocked Gilbert when comparative none came forward to lend meaningful help when he needed it. Failure attracts few however, especially in an occupation where fear rules. Mere perception of Gilbert as washed up was what washed him up. Did he ultimately suffer for having become such a white-hot star? Jack was best man at Paul Bern and Jean Harlow’s wedding, doom cleaving to doom. For all I’ve written of Gilbert there is obvious sympathy and fascination. Had he gone out with Downstairs, he’d have gone out a 100% winner, even if the picture lost money, which unhappily it did. Cheers, however, as Downstairs is terrific, among best of still unheralded precodes, and a regular on TCM in HD.
posted by John McElwee at 6:03 AM
10 Comments:
Are we missing the graphic for EX-LADY?
The ad I had for it is there, plus there are others linked to a previous Greenbriar post.
Sorry, I must have been staring right past the ad. The ads from the older post are corkers too!
I read somewhere that once Gable's pre-code pictures (especially Night Nurse) began appearing on the late show, "then-modern" audiences were shocked at this version of the angry, menacing Gable, who bore little resemblance to the affable, charming tough guy then romancing Doris Day and Jane Russell.
The Ingenues, appearing live in support of BACK STREET, made a nifty Vitaphone short. You can catch in THE JAZZ SINGER box set.
Thanks for the good word on DOWNSTAIRS, John. Always liked that one, as well as its predecessor THE PHANTOM OF PARIS (intended for Lon Chaney, and Gilbert gives a character performance just as persuasive),
And here I thought I was the only person who yawned at bassinets.
Dan Mercer has plenty to say about John Gilbert and DOWNSTAIRS (Part One):
When a star as luminous as John Gilbert plunges so quickly and irretrievably into the darkness, it cannot help but be a tragedy. At that, however, most will consider him a product of his times, with the same extravagance that found expression in flamboyant architecture and fashions, wild enthusiasm for sport and stunts, be it on the playing field or state house, the excitement of the gambling den called the stock market, or even the extravagance of silence in the silent film. They were like wildflowers bursting open at the end of a heady summer that could not survive the cooler reality of seasons to come.
Others, fascinated by his personality and performances, will try to find some continuing validity in them or some possibility that, had it occurred, might have arrested the descent if not rescued the career altogether. “Downstairs” is often enlisted to that end because it was one of the few talkies he made that was wholly accomplished, with a good screenplay and direction and strong acting, not the least of which is his own. As the manipulative and ruthless Karl, he is audacious and entirely convincing, and yet, for that very reason, he could hardly have saved his career, playing such a role in such a film.
I’ve always regarded Gilbert’s great popularity as something of a phenomenon. He was not conventionally handsome, with his long, long-nosed face—as David Shipman wrote, he more suggests a weedy bank clerk than a great lover—and yet those eyes of his are utterly compelling. In the films which made him a star, all of them romances, there would inevitably be a transcendent moment when he realized that he could no longer live as he had, when there was no possibility of living in any other way in such a world as ours, and yet he would give himself in love to one who is lovely, nonetheless.
Your comment that he may have been manic depressive is well taken. His screen performances certainly bear that out, also his tempestuous love life, which seemed to have been modeled after the fantasies of his films. When he was "on," there were seemingly no limits, no star that he could not reach for and pluck from the heavens. There are writings published in fan magazines under his byline, but undoubtedly his, given their lustrous, purple coloring and punctuation used as an oarsman uses his oars when riding a boat down the rapids, which must have been composed in a similar mood.
It has been said that such ardent love as Gilbert conveyed could not be expressed in words, except to be made absurd, and that this prevented him from surviving sound. I disagree, in that the expression of love has always depended more on what is left unsaid than what is said. It was not so much what he was given to say which hurt him as what he should have been allowed not to say. Thus, it was a matter of skill in the way in which his unique talent was employed.
Part Two from Dan Mercer:
In “Downstairs,” the words themselves were fine and well suited to the story and the character Gilbert played. That was the rub, however, for he was playing not a lover or romantic hero but someone only seeking to use others for his own pleasure or gain. He was uncompromising in the character he created, both in story and performance, and permitted himself nothing that might have softened or excused the excesses of his character. Thus, the passionate intensity which had enthralled his fans was not used to explore the many variations of love, but to portray a cad.
There was a moment when Karl seemingly confesses to Anna, the beautiful and innocent maid, that he’d never had a chance, never been with anyone who could have shown goodness and love but always had to fight his way alone in the world. Had it been left there, it might have permitted some sympathy for his character, but in his enthusiasm for the role and his sense of artistic integrity, he could not do so. Instead, he allowed the audience to see him slyly gauging the effect of his words on Anna, demonstrating that there was no sincerity and thus, no love. It was no more than a gambit in his seduction of her, thus betraying any expectations his audience might have had that here was at heart the same commitment to love and romance that they had once loved him for.
I understand that when Gilbert learned that M-G-M intended to make “Downstairs” from the story he had submitted several years before, he was so overjoyed that he sold it to them for $1.00. It was at last a film he could believe in and give himself to, and with it the possibility of redemption. As worthwhile as it was and remains, there would be no return to favor with his audience. The brief season he had shared with them was past recovering.
Downstairs should be better known than it is, as should Gilbert. He's terrific in his silents and talkies. But I can never shake the feeling that when he's supposed to be drunk he really is. He never overdoes it but appears to try acting sober as drinkers usually do in real life.
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