YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU 1938

You Can't Take It With You            1938

Is it possible that one of the two Frank Capra movies to win the Best Picture award is actually the weakest?

Well, the other winner was It Happened One Night (1934). The non-winners were Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Lost Horizon (1937), You Can't Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Meet John Doe (1941), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) and It's a Wonderful Life (1946).

All are classics. Put those up for an Internet vote, and It’s a Wonderful Life might win. The corny but magical It Happened One Night and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington are my second-place finishers, and You Can’t Take It With You comes in dead last.

Jimmy Stewart, one of my favorite actors, overplays his character by a factor of X, especially in the beginning, lying across his stenographer (Jean Arthur’s) desk and whispering sweet nothings in her ear. He’s supposed to be adorable, but honestly, if any man did this, would he be respected?

To be fair, You Can’t Take It With You is a screwball comedy, and in the 1930s, actors did overplay their roles in a way that wouldn’t be seen today. Still, viewed through the prism of 2011, You Can’t Take It With You seems simplistic and silly.

Tony Kirby is the vice-president of the company owned by his father, Anthony P. Kirby. Senior’s motto seems to be, “He who dies with the most toys wins.” His marbles are real estate and money.

By Capraesque coincidence, stenographer Alice Sycamore is in love with her boss, Tony, and Anthony P. Kirby is the land-grabber who needs to buy one last house in a 12-block area so that Kirby Arms can build a munitions plant and become biggest arms dealer in the world.

Standing between Kirby and his monopoly: Alice's grandfather, who is also the most respected, beloved man in town, Martin Vanderhof (Lionel Barrymore). And Grandpa is the leader of an eccentric clan that invites strangers to live in an anarchical house where no one cares for money. So Kirby’s offer of $25,000 for the house is ignored, and so is $50,000 and $100,000. After the Kirbys, the town’s biggest snobs, are invited to dinner on the wrong night, they learn that Alice’s grandfather is the holdout, that he’s zany, and that everyone else in the house is a madcap.

That sets up the romantic friction between Alice and Tony, and the reason why she walks out on their engagement. And it’s the only reason why Grandpa would ever sell his beloved Victorian house: to make his granddaughter happy.

This is a war between the classes, except the don’t-worry-be-happy family doesn’t care to fight.

Trivia

Before filming started, Lionel Barrymore was crippled by arthritis and a hip injury. That’s why a sprained ankle was written into the film; Barrymore acted the film on crutches. He also received hourly injections for pain.

Passed over

1938 was a classic year in film: The Adventures of Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn; Bring Up Baby with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn; Angels with Dirty Faces with James Cagney and Pat O’Brien, Pygmalion, Boys Town and Jezebel.

Best Actors

Spencer Tracy won for Boys Town and Bette Davis for Jezebel. Supporting actors were Walter Brennan in Kentucky and Fay Bainter in Jezebel.

Capra was the hottest move maker in Hollywood, taking home his third Best Director award in five years.

Alexander's Ragtime Band was nominated and won for Best Score. It was a backstage musical about two songwriters, Don Ameche and Tyrone Power, who battled for the affections of Alice Faye.

Jezebel was Civil War drama about a selfish, stubborn Southern belle. Sound familiar? Yes, Hollywood has a tendency to make the same film twice (Wyatt Earp and Tombstone) or three times (Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now). Gone with the Wind won Best Picture the very next year.

THE LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA 1937

The Life of Emile Zola 1937

Who the heck was Emile Zola? That’s why biographies are useful.

From the 10^th film to win an Oscar for Best Production, we learn that Émile Zola (eMIL Zola) was a great 19^th century French writer, thinker and activist.

Today, he’s famous for nothing we would remember, but back in the 1800s, he wrote “J’Accuse.” Like Bob Woodward reproaching Richard Nixon for being a corrupt president, Zola exposed the French army for falsely convicting the Jewish Capt. Alfred Dreyfus for passing military secrets to the Germans. The army then covered up its mistake by exonerating the real traitors.

Zola had risked his career and his life; he was convicted and fled to England. After he proved to be right, the French government fell.

Zola was just a shipping clerk who got a job in a newspaper advertising department. He also wrote book and art reviews, and finally became a political journalist. He first crossed literary swords with Napoleon III, president of the French Second Republic, who engineered a coup d'état that made him emperor.

Twenty of his novels commented on French life: violence, alcohol, prostitution and the Industrial Revolution. "I want to portray, at the outset of a century of liberty and truth, a family that cannot restrain itself in its rush to possess all the good things that progress is making available and is derailed by its own momentum, the fatal convulsions that accompany the birth of a new world."

Sounds like 2011 America, doesn’t it?

The most successful was the ninth (1880) novel, “Nana,” a streetwalker who destroyed every man who pursued her.

The Life of Emile Zola is a forgotten film about a forgotten man, played by Paul Muni, the forgotten Tom Cruise of his time. It may be the least known of all the Academy Award winning Best Pictures.

Shoulda Woulda Coulda

Zola’s competition included Captains Courageous, The Good Earth, Lost Horizon, Stage Door and the original Janet Gaynor version of A Star is Born.

1937 was one of those stellar years in films. It also included Topper, Greta Garbo in Camille, Barbara Stanwyck in Stella Dallas.

Trivia

The Good Earth was the last film supervised by legendary producer MGM Irving J. Thalberg. The first of Oscar’s lifetime achievement awards went to Darryl Zanuck.

The Awful Truth was nominated for Best Production, Irene Dunne for Best Actress, Ralph Bellamy for Best Supporting Actor, and Leo McCarey for Best Director and Screenplay, but the male lead, Cary Grant, was ignored. He wouldn’t be nominated until Penny Serenade (1941).

Best Song went to "Sweet Leilani" from the musical Waikiki Wedding. Snubbed: "They Can't Take That Away From Me," sung by Fred Astaire and written by George and Ira Gershwin in Shall We Dance.

A Walt Disney masterpiece, Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs, was nominated only for Best Score, and it lost. Animated films, Cary Grant, science fiction and Stephen Spielberg didn’t win easy respect.

Both Ginger Rogers and Katharine Hepburn were overlooked for their performances in Stage Door.

Camille, directed by George Cukor, one of the all-time greatest romantic tearjerkers, received only one nomination for Best Actress, which Garbo lost.

THE GREAT ZIEGFELD 1936

The Great Ziegfeld 1936

Like all mediums, movies can be educational. Biopics, of course, don’t try to be as factual as documentaries, but they do impart lots of information and a sense of what the subject’s life was like.

From The Great Ziegfeld, we learn there was a Florenz Ziegfeld, he did change Broadway with the Ziegfeld Follies, and he discovered great talent like Fannie Brice (Streisand played her in Funny Girl), W.C. Fields and Jazz Singer Eddie Cantor.

And then, of course, there was Irving Berlin, whose work was featured in the Follies. Maybe that was why the Great Ziegfeld was the first biopic and the second musical to win an Academy Award.

Another reason, of course, was the brilliant cast: the great William Powell in the title role, Luise Rainer (who received the Best Actress Oscar for Ziegfeld’s first wife, stage actress Anna Held, and Myrna Loy as movie actress Billie Burke (Burke’s most famous role: Good Witch Glinda in The Wizard of Oz).

Zieggy was the guy who popularized revues: a strongman, dancers, singers and novelty acts like Will Rogers, a comedian who also twirled a lasso like no one else. However, Zieggy also staged 101 musicals; the most famous were Show Boat and The Three Musketeers.

William Powell failed to win an Oscar for his portrayal of Ziegfeld, but he won the same year for My Man Godfrey. The other nominees: Gary Cooper, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town; Walter Huston and Spencer Tracy.

Paul Muni was the winner for The Story of Louis Pasteur. (The next year, Muni would play Emile Zola, which would win the next Best Picture. Muni would be nominated again, but would not win.)

Of the nine Best Picture winners, Ziegfeld and Broadway Melody seemed the weakest. That’s an unproveable opinion, because the Great Ziegfeld did win three Oscars: Best Picture, Best Actress Luise Rainer, and Best Dance Direction for A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody.

Zieggy was nominated for four more statuettes: Best Art Direction, Film Editing, and Original Screenplay. Robert Z. Leonard lost Best Director to Frank Capra for Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.

The two classic near misses were George Cukor’s Romeo & Juliet, starring Norma Shearer,  Leslie Howard and John Barrymore, and Frank Capra’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. Capra won for best director, though.

The film cost $2 million to make, so Universal sold it to MGM for $300,000. Ultimately it earned $40 million.

MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY 1935

Mutiny on the Bounty 1935

Mutiny on the Bounty was nominated for eight Oscars, but won the only one that counted: Best Production.

It contained myriad historical accuracies:

Captain Bligh was never on board HMS Pandora, the ship that caught the Bounty crew who remained on Tahiti. Bligh wasn’t present at their trial.

Bligh might not have been the brutal sadist depicted by the movie. Keelhauling had been abandoned as a punishment long before Bligh’s time.

The ship’s log indicates few sailors were flogged. The Bounty had only two deaths: a seaman, of scurvy, and the ship’s surgeon, apparently of his own drinking.

Mr. Christian likely was not inspired to take over the ship after several crewmen have unjustly been cast into irons by Bligh.

Instead of founding an idyllic society on Pitcairn Island, all the mutineers died from drunkenness and murder. Rape of the island women was frequent. Many of their ancestors remain there today.

There was a real-life mutiny aboard the real HMS Bounty, led by Fletcher Christian against Captain Bligh. Fictional Midshipman Roger Byam really did try to stop the mutiny, failed, and was convicted by the lords of the admiralty. Real-life middie Peter Heywood, 15, was convicted of the mutiny of 1789, but later acquitted and served 29 years, retiring as a captain.

Bligh and the 19 other loyal officers and crew were put aboard a lifeboat, and Christian went back to Tahiti for the native women they’d fallen for when they had stopped to buy breadfruit plants. They were to deliver the breadfruit (a fruit which can be roasted and tastes like bread or potato) for slaves.

But enough about the facts. The movie was inspirationally cast with Charles Laughton as the toadish Captain Bligh, the boyish Franchot Tone as Mr. Byam, and Clark Gable (the Oscar winner the previous year for It Happened One Night, which also won for Best Production). All three were nominated for Best Actor, but none won.

Gable is the rakish buccaneer who hated his tyrannical captain, and Laughton is captain who resented his popular and wise first officer. (Christian: “He doesn't punish men for discipline. He likes to see men crawl.”)

A 1962 remake starring Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard would result in a three-star movie, not the four-star production the 1935 film turned out to be (don’t be confused. Like the Super Bowl, the films of 1935 were up for the 1936 Oscars).

What’s interesting about watching Oscar-winning movies from the first Academy Awards in 1928 through the eighth in 1936 is how performances toned down so quickly from the overacting of the 1927’s Sunrise and even 1931’s Cimarron to the relatively realistic Gable and Laughton, just eight years later.

Film quality also improved: Sunrise was dark and softly fuzzy; Mutiny on the Bounty was an excellent black and white with sharp edges and realistic skin tones.

Trivia

Despite directing three men who received Oscar nominations, Frank Lloyd was nominated but lost to John Ford’s The Informer, which also grabbed the golden icon for Best Screenplay.

It wasn’t memorable year for movies. The other nominees: Alice Adams, Broadway Melody of 1936, Captain Blood, David Copperfield, The Informer, Les Miserables, The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Naughty Marietta, Ruggles of Red Gap, and Top Hat.

IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT 1934

It Happened One Night is the first romantic comedy to win Best Picture, and it became the model for screwball flicks like When Harry Met Sally and the Runaway Bride.

The plot: when a rich heiress marries her boyfriend without her father’s permission, he isolates her on a boat in Miami.  Ellen Andrews swims to shore and hocks her jewelry to buy dry clothes. Alexander Andrews hires detectives to find Ellie, and her sensational escape makes the front page of every East Coast newspaper.

When she buys a bus ticket and sits beside a newspaper reporter who just got fired, Peter Warne realizes who she is and strikes a bargain: if she sticks with him, he’ll get her to New York and he’ll have the scoop of the year.

She detests Peter, but, of course, anyone who spends time with Clark Gable falls in love pretty quickly, and Claudette Colbert (colBEAR) is no exception. One reason: he calls her a spoiled brat, and shames her when she insists on special treatment.

However, he’s a good man, and he cares for her. When they fjord a stream, he carries her over his left shoulder.

“You know this is the first time in years I've ridden piggy-back.”

“This isn't piggy-back.”

“Course it is. I remember distinctly my father taking me for a piggy-back ride.”

“And he carried you like this, I suppose? Your father didn't know beans about piggy-backing. I never knew a rich man yet who could piggy-back ride.”

“You're prejudiced.”

“You show me a good piggy-backer and I'll show you a real human. Now you take Abraham Lincoln for instance. A natural born piggy-backer.”

When they rent a kitchenette cabin for the night and he cooks breakfast, It Happened One Night becomes one of the most charming movies ever.

Ellie dunks a donut in her coffee.

Peter Warne: “Say, where'd you learn to dunk? In finishing school? “

“Aw, now don't you start telling me I shouldn't dunk.”

“Of course you shouldn't. You don't know how to do it. Dunking's an art. Don't let it soak so long. A dip and plop, in your mouth. You let it hang there too long, it'll get soft and fall off. It's all a matter of timing. Aw, I oughta write a book about it.”

“Thanks, professor.”

“Just goes to show you, $20 millions, and you don't know how to dunk.”

“Oh, I'd change places with a plumber's daughter any day.”

Minutes later, two detectives looking for the heiress barge into their cabin. Peter and Ellie don’t miss a beat: You think this plumber’s daughter is a millionaire? He starts screaming at her as if they’ve been fighting years, and it becomes apparent why this audacious, clever script becomes the first mega Oscar winner: Best Production, Best Writing, Best Actor Clark Gable, Best Actress Claudette Colbert, and Best Director Frank Capra.

When they lose their bus ride, they must hitchhike to New York, which leads to one of the most famous scenes in film history: Clark Gable shows Claudette Colbert the most effective way to stick out one’s thumb. But by now, she realizes he’s a congenital braggart.

He shows her the hitchhiker’s hail: “It's a long sweeping movement like this. Gotta follow through, though.”

“That's amazing.”

“But it's no good if you haven't got a long face to go with it. Keep your eye on the thumb, baby.”

Cars pass.

“I still got my eye on the thumb. You mind if I try?”

“You? Don't make me laugh.”

“I'll stop a car and I won't use my thumb.”

She hikes her skirt, shows one skinny leg up to her thigh, and the first car stops.

This is classic Capra, matched only by It's A Wonderful Life and maybe Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

Trivia

Myrna Loy turned down the role of Ellie Andrews. Robert Montgomery turned down the male lead, saying the script was the worst thing he had ever read.

When Clark Gable showed up for work, he reportedly said, "Let's get this over with."

Claudette Colbert was the sixth to be offered the role; she accepted because Capra doubled her salary and promised she’d be done in four weeks. She disliked it so much she didn't attend the Oscars; she was leaving on a trip and was rushed to the ceremony.

Looney Tunes animator Friz Freleng's unpublished memoirs contain three scenes upon which the film character Bugs Bunny was based: womanizer Oscar Shapely's personality, an imaginary character named Bugs Dooley that Peter Warne mentioned to frighten Oscar, and the manner in which Peter ate carrots and talked quickly.

Ten films were nominated in 1934, including classics Cleopatra, The Thin Man and An Imitation of Life. Clark Gable competed with only two others, William Powell and Charles Laughton. Colbert was up against a write-in: Bette Davis.

Source: www.imdb.com

Cavalcade 1933

Cavalcade

1933 110 minutes

This movie isn’t on Netflix. When it becomes available, I’ll review it.

Clive Brook and Diana Wynyard star. Frank Lloyd adapts and directs Noel Coward's retelling of the Romeo and Juliet theme. Two English families, the upper-class Marryots and the working-class Bridges, love, lose and change from 1899-1933 due to the Boer War, Queen Victoria's death, the Great War and the Depression.

GRAND HOTEL 1932

GRAND HOTEL  1932

Each of the first five Oscar winning Best Productions began as yawners. Sunrise, Broadway Melody, All Quiet on the Western Front, Cimarron and Grand Hotel appeared simplistic; the actors lacked today’s naturalness.

However, it’s a mistake to dismiss these films. Each is more complex and character rich than, say, the Last Samurai, whose point is that Tom Cruise can train in martial arts for a few months and then kill a thousand Japanese in 154 minutes.

Grand Hotel’s nothing-is-as-it-seems plot is as sophisticated as Hitchcock. Its setting is Berlin’s plush, modern hotel where, in the words of Dr. Otternschlag, "People come, people go. Nothing ever happens."

The first scene sets the cast: Baron von Geigern (John Barrymore), a down-on-his-luck aristocrat who is so broke, he’s compelled by a mobster posing as a chauffer to steal a Russian dancer’s pearls to repay a 5,000 mark debt.

There’s Kringelein (Lionel Barrymore), a terminally ill bookkeeper who wants to spend his savings in the months he has to live. And coincidentally, there’s his boss, factory owner Preysing (Wallace Beery), who must arrange a merger between his troubled company and an English firm.

A pervasive theme is that there are courageous and unsavory qualities in each man and woman. Preysing, a dedicated family man and a captain of German industry, preys on others and connives to cheat on his wife with stenographer Flaemmchen (Joan Crawford, a major hottie in 1932).

With eyes wide open, Flaem submits to Preysing’s overture:

“I’d like to take a secretary to England. Do you understand me?”

Flaem: “I understand you perfectly.”

Preysing: “How much would you need?”

Flaem: “I would need some clothes, shoes. You’d want me to look nice, wouldn’t you?”

Preysing: “Oh, of course.”

Flaem (sardonically): “Yes. I thought you would. A thousand marks.”

And he gets her an adjoining room at the Grand. It’s an astonishing sellout, but we’ve all seen it happen, haven’t we?

Flaem tells the baron what’s happened, but he doesn’t judge her, because he’s a classy gentleman. Both Flaem and dancer Grusinskaya (Greta Garbo) fall for the baron, a lady’s man who’s also a cat burglar with a conscience: he gives back her pearls and Kringelein’ wallet with $14,000.

Grusinskaya couldn’t be much closer to real-life Garbo: flawless performer, lonely, rich, eccentric, successful, but mortified by performance fright. One line encapsulates both her character and the actress: “I just want to be left alone.”

A few minutes later, there’s a classic scene: Garbo sneaks away from the theater before performing. The baron slips into her hotel room. Then her secretary walks in, looking for Grusinskaya. The baron, trapped, hides in the closet. Grusinskaya arrives and changes in the bathroom. The secretary leaves. The baron races across the room and gets to the exterior curtains before the dancer reenters.

In a soliloquy, she laments her life and wishes for death. The baron could leave, but he comes out of hiding to convinces her to live. They talk all night, and they’re revealed as soul mates.

Which exposes all of us, doesn’t it? Without careers, without spouses, without children, what reason is there to live?

That’s why cringing Kringelein can display the fearlessness of the old: “Who do you think you are? You can’t do anything to me anymore. I’m going to die.”

And that’s how the doctor-philosopher, in the final scene, depicts the hotel as a metaphor for life: “What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat, sleep, loaf, flirt a little. A hundred doors leading to one hall. No one knows anything about the person next to them. When you leave, someone occupies your room, lies in your bed.”

Kringelein, who is dying, pays no notice to the doctor’s words, and in the background, a woman laughs outrageously.

Trivia

John and Lionel are the brothers of Ethel Barrymore. John is the father of John Drew Barrymore, and the grandfather of Drew Barrymore.

Two classics missed the Best Picture Oscar: The Champ, also starring Wallace Beery (who tied for an Oscar), and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Fredric March, the other half of the tie).