Early Talk Goes Underwater
Columbia Treasure Hunts With Below The Sea (1933)
Imagine if Ann Darrow took over the Venture and
worked her erotic wiles on a whole crew. They'd forget Skull Island soon
enough, as demonstrated here in a Columbia programmer Fay Wray did around a
same time as King Kong, her Bruce Cabot counterpart a rough-and-tumble Ralph
Bellamy with as much use for women (he thinks) as BC prior to wrestling with
Wray. She comes on like a siren of the sea, and though we're a third in before
Fay enters, she's worth the wait. Was this actress aware of the heat she
spread? Below The Sea happily gives her guile as opposed to innocence under
threat that was customary menu. Fay is financing a scientific comb of deep
waters that unbeknownst to her, conceal gold bars sunk with a U-Boat from the
past war. The latter's captain has teamed with Ralph to salvage same amidst
double-crossing between the two and a femme confederate. Sounds more
complicated than it is, Below The Sea a pure actioner that must have stood
Depression youth on their ears. Columbia
did likes of this by yards, and some were fine as limited expectation could
hope for. 24/7 work on such as Below The Sea was what pushed Ralph Bellamy into
embrace of an Actor's Guild; he talks of it in his memoir. TCM plays Below The
Sea frequent, and it warrants the short sit.
Dan Mercer e-mails some appreciation for Fay Wray:
ReplyDeleteI understand that, when Gary Cooper and Fay Wray were Paramount’s “Glorious Young Lovers,” Cooper murmured to her that he imagined that it would be wonderful to make love to her. Nothing more was said about it, nor was there any sort of consummation. At least, that is the impression Fay herself conveyed in her autobiography, “On the Other Hand.” It was as though he had remarked in passing on how glorious the sun of a summer’s day was, but never basked in it. One understands the sentiment, however, and even the likelihood that there was no more to it than that. She was a superb-looking woman, with large eyes set in a pert, pretty face, a slender figure not without a delicate emphasis on her more womanly attributes, and long, shapely legs. Her piquant lips seemed always to be trembling—in her films, at least—with the possibility of a deep and overwhelming passion. She was also extremely intelligent, and this, as much as her physical appearance, must have captivated such remarkable men as John Monk Saunders, Robert Riskin, Sinclair Lewis, and Dr. Sanford Rothenberg. There was something else, as well, an essential innocence that remained seemingly untouched by experiences in her life that should have at least left it tarnished. What she offered was not merely a pleasant interlude, but the promise of life itself, as it should be lived and enjoyed. For the scores of young boys who thrilled to her plight in “King Kong” and would willingly have interposed themselves between her and so dire a fate, the colleagues who worked with her before the camera or behind it, her children, or the people who shared her company through a very long life, she was a source of radiance that must have found its source elsewhere.
https://ok.ru/video/879683308174
ReplyDeleteYou left out Clifford Odets in the list of captivated, remarkable men.
ReplyDelete