Precode Picks #7

 

New Genius? Her Old Genius Was Plenty Enough for Me.

Unleash These Tigresses! Image Courtesy Mark Vieira/Starlight Studios

Precode: Clara Cat Fights, Connie Nurses Good, Harding Hardly Looks Herself, and Charley Chases Precode Placement

CALL HER SAVAGE (1932) --- Not enough savage I say, too much wage of sin. Parts I’m for rewatching anytime: Clara Bow whips Gilbert Roland and he apparently digs it, Clara smashes a guitar over a guy’s head after asking him twice to quit playing it, Clara wrestles at length with a Great Dane what is bigger than her, catfights with Thelma Todd, struts about in skivvies --- so where does Call Her Savage sag? I’d say where Bow breaks on wheel of parental meanness, no-good husband (Monroe Owsley, 30’s trust equivalent of Ray Danton), and midway resort to streetwalking which I didn’t get for disappointed dad having told her early on that should she need funds, get them from the family lawyer even though he never wants to see her again, plus there’s generous allowance from the estranged cad husband. It’s like they want to punish Clara’s character by contriving her to hit bottom, me for fast forward till Clara got back in comparative chips. Her “Dynamite” Nasa is “born bad” as in sins-of-ancestors (including Fred Kohler --- now that’s bad), biblical quotes underling the point. Had this been all for fun, as likelier case from Warners, I’d unspool Call Her Savage more frequent, but do acknowledge it for playbook of “don’ts” as soon would be hard-enforced by the PCA. Just wish they hadn’t gone so hard on Bow. I’d swear writers had it in less for Nasa then the actress playing her … Clara Bow the offscreen outlaw getting overdue spank? She’s unplugged to point where you wonder if it’s altogether acting, an electric merge of person with part. Watching Clara Bow is a gift to keep giving. There was obviously something here that lit her up. Poor kid was but 28 when she did Call Her Savage, miles of hard life behind her. Definitive story was told by David Stenn, him brains also behind a Bow documentary. Call Her Savage lost money for Fox. Was it the star they rejected or harshness of the film? She was wise getting and staying out, whatever hiccups such as the night club or temptation to be Scarlett.

Turns Out the Star "Everybody Adores" Wasn't Adored Quite Enough, At Least for a Long Haul

BORN TO LOVE (1931) --- Movies deal from a cold deck where using crib death to resolve a story point, worse as device to unite a love-struck couple otherwise chained by convention bound up in the child. Audiences in addition to infants paid dear for queasy-arrived-at clinches to finish not just precodes but many a melodrama to come (Caught from 1948 further egregious example). Born to Love was meat processed by RKO for frugal $338K neg cost, similarity among Constance Bennett vehicles the more where her next, The Common Law, came in at $339K. RKO could set clocks with Constance, seeing profit with her until one day they didn’t, her a star that sank for sameness of parts and execution of same. She’s a WWI nurse in Born to Love. My impression based on fiction and other films is that nurses laid down more than wounded soldiers they treated. This time it’s Joel McCrea, on British leave and spending rapturous night with Bennett before death at the front, except he doesn’t die, her with child and marrying Paul Cavanagh who is a baronet and has old Baron Frankenstein for a Dad, all which could be exhausting if Born to Love ran more than 81 minutes (in fact, 71 would digest better). Great War leaves were near-always a matter of snatch-and-run romance, back to trench or flight goggles after stolen nights and never a parson to bless couplings. Love scenes got pride of place over battles for which staging took dollars, too few of those, especially at RKO, to risk even on Constance Bennett during brief period she prospered for them. McCrea is a flyer but we never see a plane, not even stock footage of one. Boudoirs are battleground upon which warriors engage, the male as prize bull and not a stock part Joel McCrea or any male lead could bring much texture to. He’d look later on these as mere price of all and sundries, the word “sameness” a burden sure as was for Constance Bennett. Difference was McCrea could sustain, stay a tall oak indefinitely, so long as horses held out and a public relied on his reassuring presence. Born to Love plays TCM, transfer soft as with most early thirties RKO.

Above is One of Those Heralds They Inserted in Newspapers or Put in Grocery Bags

Ann Harding with Morganton, N.C.'s Own Robert Williams

DEVOTION (1931) --- Ann Harding had common sense quality across board of performing in precodes and after. Must have been her unless all characters she played were written a same way. Line readings have a thought-out and sincere quality, as if Harding analyzed actions/motivations going in and had made up her mind how to improve on them. Shorthand is me believing whatever the set-up, be it The Animal Kingdom in 1932 and also with Leslie Howard, or frankly foolish former, Devotion for Pathe, that company of crowing logo rooster atop world globe that surely got laughs then as it’s sure to now. Cracked is the concept, Ann as Cinderella-ish daughter of wealth who I figured first for a servant, but no, she just likes serving everyone drinks and lighting their cigarettes. Enter Leslie Howard and it’s love at first sight on her part, so why not don middle-age disguise to apply for governess spot at Leslie’s country manor? Nuts I know, Devotion but faintly a comedy, Harding already having a mature look so we almost buy Howard taken in by her disguise. She fusses over him and his kid likes her almost to point where he’d be better off having her as caretaker/babysitter rather than wife for Dad she schemes to be. Enter Robert Williams as a wife-killer that lawyer Leslie gets off the hook, Williams also an artist who wants to put Harding on canvas, him having sussed her scheme but in love with her anyhow. This sort of thing is where old movies really earn “old” appellation. Skirts stay clean here, spike to argument that not all precode tickled edges. I’m astonished but gratified that TCM still runs Devotion, having watched for liking Howard, Harding, and especially Williams who as told before was from Morganton, NC and the uncle of a friend of mine at college. 

Slight Off-Topic: Do You Think Roland West Confessed Offing Thelma to Pal Chet Morris? 

CHARLEY CHASE --- Many things long obvious to others come to me like bolts from blue, like why not Charley Chase for precode totem? In fact, he and Thelma Todd for placement among oracles of early thirties sinema. There was steppingstone that was jazz associated with both thanks to casting of Todd as vamp or gold digger in features, she for support but still prominent. Chase was up-to-minute too with comedy modern-set and attitude for emphasis. Sound came to the Hal Roach company in 1928 via disc-recorded music-and-effect scores, these to buoy fun enacted by Chase, Laurel-Hardy, Our Gang, the rest. Herewith jazz became escort to clowning, keeping them current (in Chase case and L&H, years). Live accompany had been there, yes, but catch-can music did not necessarily follow fashion as recorded escort now would. Viewers, at least ones with access to wired theatres, got popular tunes they could associate with favorite clowns. Charley Chase, who already had pep we’d associate with moderns, saw youth restored thanks to music sprightly where instrumental, saucy where lyric helped. Chase even sang as settings enabled, Thelma Todd along what with speech to enhance their byplay. Could all this add up to precode as we define it? Maybe not to desired degree, Hal Roach resolute at keeping his comedies clean, personnel tempted where chosen gags they thought funny tilted toward blue. We Faw Down got showman complaints from that, “dirt, vulgar, obscene” among words bandied. So were jazz lyrics complainers called suggestive. Charley Chase looks precode ready in the portrait above, a little dark (dissolute?), at the least ready for anything. Not like chipper Charley that Robert Youngson tendered us in 1970’s Four Clowns (“the original good time Charley whose Elk’s tooth had a cavity”), 1928-29 a peak period for recorded music to make Roach comedians more up-to-moment than ever before or since. For me to declare them precode is but faint supported by filmic facts, but support is there via the Laurel-Hardy disc scores presently available plus ones for Charley Chase to hopefully come with eventual release of surviving 1928-29 output.