Undercover Robert Taylor Says, This Is My Affair (1937)
Naval officer Robert Taylor goes on secret
assignment for President McKinley to flush out bank-robbing Victor McLaglen and
Brian Donlevy. 20th Fox was lured by Gay 90's theme like bugs to a light bulb,
Affair pursuing trend of The Bowery and ones that would follow right into the 50's
when past century dwellers would disappear sure as nickel beer and horse
carriages these pics celebrated. What was Betty Grable's career but ongoing
evocation of this? Zanuck, ormaybe Joseph Schenck, must have been raised by
barber shop quartets. This time at least, action is played more for keeps,
stakes high for Taylor
gone undercover and then having rugs pulled when McKinley is assassinated and
there's no one to clear him of complicity in bank jobs. This Is My Affair was
bedecked in gloss, a bid to match Metro for such values, that a greater urgency
as Taylor was
borrowed from Leo for the occasion. Much of selling honed on lead lady Barbara Stanwyck,
Bob's real-life inamorata. This Is My Affair turned up lately on
TCM, licensed from Fox, and like many of 20th's, could use a remaster.
Fox didn't have a monopoly on "Good Old Days" movies. You can do a nice little festival of them.
To rattle off the ones I remember, MGM had the granddaddy of them all, "Meet Me in St. Louis" (Fox's "Centennial Summer" feels like a direct response), along with "Summer Holiday", "Excuse My Dust" and "In the Good Old Summertime" (the contemporary "Little Shop Around the Corner" moved back in time).
Paramount put W.C. Fields in spats for "The Old Fashioned Way" and "Poppy"; Fields in a high hat became the iconic image (brought back for Universal's "My Little Chickadee"). Of course Mae West was "Diamond Lil" before she arrived at Paramount.
Warner's "Strawberry Blonde" made the original "One Sunday Afternoon" look bland, and the very faithful filming of "The Music Man" was similarly wrapped in period gingerbread. Over at Termite Terrace, Chuck Jones created the ultimate dime novel sendup with "The Dover Boys of Pimento University".
The conventions of gaslight melodramas and barnstorming theater troupes were fodder for cartoons and shorts across the board -- perhaps more so than any other aspect of the era. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" companies soldiered on for decades, so a lot of twentieth century adults would have childhood memories or at least parental anecdotes.
Latecomer Disney offered "Lady and the Tramp", "Pollyanna", "Summer Magic" and a few cartoons set in the era ("Casey at the Bat", "The Nifty Nineties", and "Crazy Over Daisy"). Most notably, Uncle Walt built Hollywood's vision of the era as Disneyland's Main Street. It was idealized nostalgia for people of his generation; now it's as much a fantasy as Camelot or a spotless TV western town.
Fox arguably wrote the last chapter with the epic "Hello Dolly" (Grable, incidentally, played Dolly on tour and on Broadway).
There are probably dozens more set in roughly the same period, but these are the ones that jump out at me as embracing and expanding on the mythology.
One of the neglected little Gaslight era nostalgia films I discovered a few years back is "The Villian Still Pursued Her" from 1940. Buster Keaton is among the cast. It's a direct parody of late 19th century melodrama theater productions. I believe you can find it at archive.org.
"The Villain Still Pursued Her" is a definite oddity. It's based on the same vintage melodrama featured in "The Old Fashioned Way", which incorporated the cast of successful stage version that was played broadly for laughs. An interesting difference is that TVSPH played the same material extremely deadpan -- to the point they felt it necessary to have Billy Gilbert delivering a broadly silly introduction, signaling that it's MEANT to be funny. I think this might fly with the right audience; a lot of familiar faces, and any actual gags usually make up in eccentricity what they lack in boffo-ness. I found it on Alpha, back when their titles were the DVD equivalent of scratch-off lotto tickets: You paid two or three bucks and took your chances.
6 Comments:
Fox didn't have a monopoly on "Good Old Days" movies. You can do a nice little festival of them.
To rattle off the ones I remember, MGM had the granddaddy of them all, "Meet Me in St. Louis" (Fox's "Centennial Summer" feels like a direct response), along with "Summer Holiday", "Excuse My Dust" and "In the Good Old Summertime" (the contemporary "Little Shop Around the Corner" moved back in time).
Paramount put W.C. Fields in spats for "The Old Fashioned Way" and "Poppy"; Fields in a high hat became the iconic image (brought back for Universal's "My Little Chickadee"). Of course Mae West was "Diamond Lil" before she arrived at Paramount.
Warner's "Strawberry Blonde" made the original "One Sunday Afternoon" look bland, and the very faithful filming of "The Music Man" was similarly wrapped in period gingerbread. Over at Termite Terrace, Chuck Jones created the ultimate dime novel sendup with "The Dover Boys of Pimento University".
The conventions of gaslight melodramas and barnstorming theater troupes were fodder for cartoons and shorts across the board -- perhaps more so than any other aspect of the era. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" companies soldiered on for decades, so a lot of twentieth century adults would have childhood memories or at least parental anecdotes.
Latecomer Disney offered "Lady and the Tramp", "Pollyanna", "Summer Magic" and a few cartoons set in the era ("Casey at the Bat", "The Nifty Nineties", and "Crazy Over Daisy"). Most notably, Uncle Walt built Hollywood's vision of the era as Disneyland's Main Street. It was idealized nostalgia for people of his generation; now it's as much a fantasy as Camelot or a spotless TV western town.
Fox arguably wrote the last chapter with the epic "Hello Dolly" (Grable, incidentally, played Dolly on tour and on Broadway).
There are probably dozens more set in roughly the same period, but these are the ones that jump out at me as embracing and expanding on the mythology.
One of the neglected little Gaslight era nostalgia films I discovered a few years back is "The Villian Still Pursued Her" from 1940. Buster Keaton is among the cast. It's a direct parody of late 19th century melodrama theater productions. I believe you can find it at archive.org.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033224/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_58
I cant believe Robert Taylor is billed over Barbara Stanwyck in 1937, or any year for that matter.
"The Villain Still Pursued Her" is a definite oddity. It's based on the same vintage melodrama featured in "The Old Fashioned Way", which incorporated the cast of successful stage version that was played broadly for laughs. An interesting difference is that TVSPH played the same material extremely deadpan -- to the point they felt it necessary to have Billy Gilbert delivering a broadly silly introduction, signaling that it's MEANT to be funny. I think this might fly with the right audience; a lot of familiar faces, and any actual gags usually make up in eccentricity what they lack in boffo-ness. I found it on Alpha, back when their titles were the DVD equivalent of scratch-off lotto tickets: You paid two or three bucks and took your chances.
I thought that Disneyland's Main Street USA was Walt's memory of Marceline, Missouri, not Hollywood's.
Looking at that print ad, I have to say I would give "Hotel Haywire" a shot just for the title alone.
Post a Comment
<< Home