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, October 02, 2023

The Precodes Are Loose #1

 


Thirties Trek Back and Let Pre-Codes Commence


After chaotic fashion of Greenbriar’s ongoing Film Noir series, we engage now the Precode era, never minding alphabetical policy that drove noir into shoals (a year and a half in and still with the B’s). Precode selections will be random, titles not addressed before at GPS. Precode is less rich a vein than noir mostly because it had a distinct beginning and finite end, in upon wings of sound, out with vigorous enforcement of the Code as of summer 1934. Noir defines more fluidly; we customize it to suit ourselves, thus Ford Fairlane included. Precode and noir ran a trendy race over decades since being identified, noir in the seventies, precode later when TNT, AMC, and finally TCM made many available to celebrate. Appears now that noir as tortoise has overtaken hare that is precode. Frisky though they were and remain, precodes don’t age as well, their language increasingly a foreign one, slanguage precious few remain to translate. Noir soothes for more modern backgrounds and attitude, less damnably old at least. Reality of early 30’s audience gone in toto cools ardor for stuff they were first to see, precode not the “thing” it was. So much too is inaccessible. Think owner Disney will loose bounty that is the Fox Film Corporation and precodes we long to look at? Not likely. Precode it seems has become more the stuff of connoisseurs, filmic equivalent of Latin or Greek cipher. There still is capacity to shock, often for reasons that would not have been apparent when precodes were new. Context counts and then-reaction that was trade talk and exhibitor activism will play into this and future columns on the topic, beginning with grenade toss that was Sign of the Cross in 1932, also theme by chance today that is Loretta Young, recent focus on TCM, thus view of three with her as follow:



LOOSE ANKLES (1930) --- Nearly ankled this for antiquity almost oppressive, surest test of so-called film lovers their patience for 1929-30 releases. Loose Ankles is comedy not funny, threat to be a musical except no one sings, and a cast finding feet at talk. Copyright date in credits reads 1929, so learn-on-the-talking-job prevails. Story in nutshell: Heiress seeks scandal so she can lose a large inheritance under terms of a will. She already has more money than she could spend, relatable (not) to crowds watching in 1930 who knew hard times were a-coming. Fascinating how good ideas prior to October 1929 became bad ideas so soon after. Loose Ankles would have been hooted out of venues had any used it by 31-32, not a likelihood as product was spent like bathroom tissue and flushed as fast. Imagine Loretta Young or Douglas Fairbanks Jr. coming upon Loose Ankles on late 50’s TV. Must have seemed to them like strangers doing foolish things on that blurry tube. We all have aspects of past that embarrass now, disco era conduct or some such, but to be besieged nightly by stuff so mortifying to moderns … how did Doug and Gretchen face friends the next day? Fairbanks talked about this some in his books, and Bette Davis never lived down her salad days, like Parachute Jumper for instance, with Doug. Just occurs to me --- Salad Days was what latter called his first memoir, apt to be sure. Screen veterans needed a late show support group. I’d take the gas pipe over watching Loose Ankles again but don’t regret the TCM sit. Proceedings were based on a play, so … did the play amuse? It had 168 performances in 1926-27, good by Broadway standard. Loretta Young was sixteen when she did Loose Ankles, by then having seen it all and then some.



THEY CALL IT SIN (1932) --- Country-bashing cousin to Hot Saturday, They Call It Sin gets in rural licks via city slick David Manners hot/bothered over Kansas blossom (among weeds) Loretta Young, who plays the church organ when she should pursue higher purpose that is Broadway, says Manners. Her parents revealed not to be her parents (won’t detail that) are dedicated repressors, praying at table, all such bunkum as defined by denizens of day-of-locust Hollywood. Again I get fully why heartlanders turned solidly against sneering biz, enough insults being enough by 1933-34. They Call It Sin turns timid to extent of Young-Manners not indulging youth’s passion, her assuring Mom-Dad not Mom-Dad she’s “done nothing to be ashamed of,” shorthand that no consummation took place, surprising (if disappointing) device prior to strict apply of the Code. I wanted them to have had a tumble, especially in light of silly sacrifice Manners makes in a third act, followed by Young’s outlandish attempt at same, then everybody having selfless go, including Louis Calhern, a satisfying heavy up to then. There is fun of him plus George Brent, Una Merkel, more. Talk about gagging at noble intent, there is soon-to-be-stale exchange between proposed adulterers, to wit “We can’t build our happiness upon the unhappiness of others,” which I bet no would-be adulterers in real life ever said, or ever will. Lesson of They Call It Sin: Not all pre-code dealt raw. Had Warners been warned? Best thing about frisky film from that period is likelihood people will comport like flawed rest of us, and They Call It Sin does not quite do that.



CROSS COUNTRY CUTS FOR CROSS --- 
Early thirties as torrid stream of precode pleases in principle, but facts belie belief that ribald rousers never had things so good. Example among many: Sign of the Cross as directed by C.B. DeMille in 1932, a five-alarm biblical fire stanched till a complete 35mm print was found in the director’s basement vault. Paramount had reissued Sign of the Cross in 1944, shorn of sex and violence rife in 1932 prints, but were even those from ’32 intact? Pete Harrison of free-thinking Harrison’s Reports saw, and was incensed, by Sign of the Cross when roadshown in New York, where “some women fainted; others put their hands across their eyes to shut out the dreadful views.” Screen story revolved around Christian persecution by Rome, “gladiators … fighting to death with pitchforks; amazons piercing dwarfs with their swords; a tiger feeding on human flesh; an elephant stepping on the head of a human being and crushing him to death, and other horrible sights.” Harrison reported some of footage removed after opening day, “and a suggestion was made to Mr. DeMille to cut out more of the scenes of cruelty, but he did not accept it.” Noise was getting to Paramount East Coast brass. Would the company lose money for too-explicit distillation of the Good Book? Sign of the Cross went to Radio City Music Hall where manager Harold Franklin hauled the print to his on-site editing room and took out all offending portions, “leaving only enough … to suggest the cruelty of the Romans.” A rape of art? Not the way Franklin saw it, him merely protecting his theatre’s investment. Who needed customer complaints and women fainting? Hard to know what countrywide audiences later saw once Sign of the Cross got into general release, but I’m guessing it kept little faith with DeMille’s vision. What he preserved in that basement was undoubtedly complete --- would he have kept the print otherwise? We are shocked by films summarily cut today, but wait, what of The French Connection? Sign of the Cross happily survives as DeMille intended, Kino’s Blu-Ray having been sourced from his keepsake. Call this happy accident of fate, then mourn anew those precodes gelded and never put right, unlikely to be ours again as intended by makers.



TAXI (1931) --- Seems taxi wars were real in New York, cabs hijacked, fares cut and then tires, a carnival with checkered bumper cars smashing into each other, drivers dragged out and sometimes killed. Hard blaming short fuse that is Cagney’s “Matt Nolan” whom Strand audiences ID’ed intensely with, smacking sweethearts round and resorting regular to fists and gun. His was simplest survival mechanism as 1931-32 public saw it, but which public? Certainly not rural ones, these understandably shocked by collapse of civilization evidently the lot of US sliver that was over-represented Gotham in movies. How dependent was Cagney stardom upon urban trade? Much of early thirties Warner lost money, bloom off rose that was talkies-as-novelty. Taxi had a $250K negative cost and earned $458K in domestic rentals, $115K foreign. Final profit was $80K, better than it sounds because this was Depression money with something preferred always to nothing. Take away the Strand and NY boroughs cash and I wonder if Taxi, or Cagney, could have lasted. He needed out of crime and go-getter topics to keep a following, the star hep to risk of sameness. Meaningful was Footlight Parade being his biggest to 1933 point, service yarns after to confirm Cagney as more mainstream, not just a hoodlum with humor. Taxi posited the coming star as still grapefruit wielding threat, less funny than scary when he bats Loretta Young about. She takes it, doesn’t like it, but still takes it. Question was whether a wide public would take it. Did New Yawkers cheer such conduct? Taxi went toward explaining why outliers dreaded the place and would largely avoid it. Ninety years later, have things changed, except maybe for the worse?


5 Comments:

Blogger William Ferry said...

I have THE SIGN OF THE CROSS in the Universal Cecil B. DeMille Collection, which also includes CLEOPATRA, FOUR FRIGHTENED PEOPLE, THE CRUSADES, and UNION PACIFIC. It's interesting to see the Pre and Post-Code impact on his films. That being said, TSOTC is one wild ride. On a side note, when it was reissued around 1943, there was a new prologue added, showing a WWII crew of pilots flying over Italy, talking about the days of Nero, which leads into the edited version. Anyway, I'd always remembered Harry Carey as the veteran pilot. I was probably confusing this with his role in AIR FORCE, as someone kindly pointed out to me that it was actually the fine character actor John Ridgely!

On a side nite, I think Loretta Young was just about the loveliest actress, ever. Like Cyd Charisse, she seemed to reach fifty and never aged after that.

5:27 PM  
Blogger Filmfanman said...

Odd that people feel the need to impose rules on what their fairy tales are permitted to relate.
Odd too that censorship never aims at incompetent editing or writing or acting or production quality in general, but only at the "content" of productions.
Also odd that going to the movies should regularize and normalize a "need" to produce official identification papers showing one's age when people are young, a requirement now expanded to many other things in life - like voting.

8:07 AM  
Blogger DBenson said...

For some reason recalling DeMille's "Four Frightened People", about four passengers escaping a plague ship and having harrowing adventures in the jungle. It's dark and grim much of the way, touching on precode. Then physical peril is safely past and the movie rolls on, the protagonists effectively safe and comfortable with civilized romantic tension promoted to foreground.

SPOILER:




During the grimmer part of the film one of the four, a spinster, is taken away by hostile natives to a presumed ghastly fate. Much later, we have a comic scene in a native village. The womenfolk, organized by the spinster, are demanding equal rights. The distressed chief orders her sent back to her own people, where she becomes a celebrity. Was this plot turn always in the script?

2:57 AM  
Blogger Kevin K. said...

Having grown up when movies of this kind were never shown on TV, I was thrilled when TCM arrived. Then I started watching movies from 1929, and realized how unwatchable many of them are. Take away "The Cocoanuts", and there's not many left worth the sit. Another thing that TCM taught me was that movies from the years immediately after the enforcement of the Code are pretty bland stuff. It seems like things didn't start revving up until 1939, and then exploded in the '40s and '50s.

James Cagney's pre-codes are terrific; it's too bad "Public Enemy" and "Footlight Parade" are the only ones that people seem to know about. And as for Loretta Young -- remarkably beautiful. No wonder why Spencer Tracy fell hard for her when making a movie together. She kind of reminds me of Angelina Jolie, only less exotic and more wholesome-looking.

8:09 AM  
Blogger rnigma said...

I saw "Taxi" in my teens on a nearby TV station that was the first in the area to broadcast 24 hours and in the late nights they ran old Warner films (and cartoons). My ears perked up when Cagney said "You dirty double-crossing rat!" I'd read his autobiography and in a chapter where he dispelled myths about himself, he wrote "by the way, I never said 'you dirty rat!'"
Well, he was sort of right.

9:53 PM  

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
  • April 2024
  • May 2024
  • June 2024
  • July 2024
  • August 2024
  • September 2024