Born to Dance; Speedy

“Born to Dance” (1936) is oodles of fun to watch, 105 minutes of terrific Cole Porter songs, dancing, comedy and luscious production design in the best M-G-M style. There’s a lot of exuberance on display here, which translates into good will for the audience.

Eleanor Powell was one of the great female dancers in the movies, and she’s shown to her best advantage here. The final number is a little ditty called “Swingin’ the Jinx Away” set on the deck of a mock battleship. It runs more than 10 minutes along, boasts seemingly a hundred or so extras, but Powell commands center stage and is amazing to watch. She sports a huge grin throughout the whole number, and golly, I think she means it. In her numbers she looks like she’s having the time of her life as she taps away. With other dancers, sometimes the smiles look forced, like Ray McDonald in the “Hoe Down” number from “Babes on Broadway” (1941). But dancers like Powell and Rita Hayworth seem to attain a special glow when dancing and it’s a lot of fun to watch.

Equally enjoyable is James Stewart in one of his first movies. He exhibits a pleasant singing voice as he croons “Easy to Love” to Powell and joins the cast and crew in the exuberant “Hey, Babe, Hey” number. He kicks up his heels in the number, and appears astonished, and pleased with himself, that he’s keeping up with professional dancers like Powell and Buddy Ebsen.

The trailer on the DVD is interesting, because it highlights selections from the Porter score, but does not highlight the song that has stood the test of time, “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” Not the swinging version known thanks to Frank Sinatra, the song here is sung at a more languid tempo by Virginia Bruce. I love the look she gives Stewart as she finishes the song, a long lingering close up of her over a champagne glass. That inviting look says more than pages of dialogue could.

“Born to Dance” is probably the best sounding of the 1930s M-G-M musicals, thanks to Alfred Newman’s musical direction. He was freelancing at this point in his career before deciding on a long-term contract with 20th Century Fox in the late 1930s. It’s fun to think what he could have bought to M-G-M, but with Lennie Hayton, Johnny Green, Conrad Salinger and others in the future, the M-G-M musical was in more than capable hands. But there’s no denying the extra oomph that Newman brings here.

There’s a riotous scene after the “Easy to Love” number when a suspicious cop (Reginald Gardiner) spies Powell dancing while Stewart air conducts the orchestra. Gardiner stops the proceedings, holds up his hands, and then proceeds to air conduct the music in a manner befitting a symphony conductor, with the music taking on the flavor of a vast symphony. Gardiner’s facial expressions are priceless here, and his great mop of hair is flying every which way as he conducts the music to an ever faster pitch.

The scene must have been popular with audiences, since the next year in the delightful Astaire musical “A Damsel in Distress” he does a similar scene, only this time with grand opera.

Any movie with Raymond Walburn as a dimwitted admiral is OK with me. There’s also an astonishing number Virginia Bruce called “Love Me, Love Me Pekingese” which has to be seen to be believed, and I mean in a good way. This love song to her favorite pooch, with accompanying approval from the lads of the U.S. Navy, is one of the many highlights of this most enjoyable movie.

Rating for “Born to Dance”: Three stars.

I also watched “Speedy” (1928), Harold Lloyd’s last silent feature, and a wonderful time capsule of a movie. Filmed on location in New York, there’s a marvelous sequence where Harold takes his girlfriend (Ann Christy) to the Coney Island amusement park for a day. It looks like a wonderful place to spend the day. I’ve heard relatives speak of the fun they used to have at Chicago’s version of Coney Island, Riverview, and think it must have been something like the Coney Island on display here.

There’s a fun cameo by Babe Ruth too, as cabbie Harold gives The Babe a cab ride from Hell. What fun to see a true baseball legend.

“Speedy” ends with a big chase scene and while it doesn’t contain the laughs and thrills that Harold gave us in “Girl Shy” (1924) or “For Heaven’s Sake” (1926) it still astonishes us with its stunt work, especially since it was filmed on actual New York streets. No soundstage work here.

What I like about a lot of Harold’s movies is he knows how to leave us laughing. Many of his films have a final scene or image that gives the audience one final laugh, sending us out on a grinning high. “Speedy” is no exception and its last image is one of Harold’s best.

Rating for “Speedy”: Three stars.

Short: Get Out and Get Under

I always thought drug humor began with Cheech and Chong. I’m not talking about camp classics like “Reefer Madness” (1936) or “The Cocaine Fiends” (1935) but movies where getting high was used for comedic effect. Was I wrong!

Last night I watched a Harold Lloyd short from 1920 called “Get Out and Get Under” that contained a scene that had me gaping at the TV screen.

Harold is the owner of a new car, a car that is giving him all kinds of fits. There are some terrific sight gags involved with him struggling to operate his new car. At one point the car just dies, and won’t start, no matter how often Harold turns the crank to start the engine.

On the sidewalk Harold sees a man all jittery and jumpy and running his hands up and down his arms. We then see a close-up of the man taking a small package out of his pocket, which turns out to contain a syringe. The man turns his back on us, we see him inject himself with the syringe. He straightens up, is as happy as can be, and walks away with his head held high and full of life.

Harold gets a bright idea. He walks up to him and asks for a match. The man gives him a match while unknown to him, Harold is rummaging in his pocket to extract the drug kit. Harold thanks him, goes back to the car and injects the car engine with the drug. Instantly the car roars to life, and takes on a life of its own as it careens up and down streets, sidewalks and makes mincemeat of a Main Street parade.

It was quite astonishing to me, and proof positive that there are still lots of interesting bits of business to be found in old movies. Drug use was not as prevalent in the 1920s as it is today, so the situation could be mined for innocent humor. Still I wonder if Harold Lloyd would have re-thought the gag a few years later.

The director William Desmond Taylor was found shot dead in 1922 in a love triangle involving stars Mabel Normand and Mary Miles Minter: popular leading man Wallace Reid would die of morphine addiction; and comedian Fatty Arbuckle would be charged with manslaughter in 1921. Preachers and concerned citizen groups across the nation began decrying the loose morals of Hollywood’s citizens and their negative influence on the American public.

But in 1920 Hollywood was still a carefree town, where a joke about shooting up drugs was deemed fit for mass audience consumption. But these scandals would forever identify Hollywood, a perception it has not shaken to this day.

The Bourne Ultimatum, The Freshman, Trouble in Paradise

I apologize to one and all for not updating this blog, but work commitments have kept me busy. So rather than a long blog, here’s a quick rundown of some recent movie viewing of mine. I hope to get back on track next week and stay that way for a while.

I saw “The Bourne Ultimatum” over the Labor Day weekend and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Personally, I could do with less jerky camera movements but this is a very exciting film. I’ve enjoyed all three Bourne movies, and was especially impressed by its brevity. Director Paul Greengass takes his story through many cities and over several continents and still manages to bring the film in under two hours. Would that other directors take note of this.

I was also amused by Bourne’s invincibility throughout the film. I think when the series started the film’s producers were looking to make an anti-Bond film and show a more vulnerable spy. All well and good, but Mr. Bourne survives the many attempts on his life with a shrug of the shoulders and one especially grueling car chase where his car receives several hard hits, goes over a guard rail, falls several stories into several parked cars, and Bourne emerges from the car and continues the chase on foot. What a superman!

If they make a fourth Bourne movie, they might want to consider making him less Bond-like. Just a thought.

Rating for “The Bourne Ultimatum”: Three stars

I’m a big fan of Harold Lloyd, the silent film comedian and one of his most enjoyable films is “The Freshman” (1925), where he plays the title character, a likeable chap who’s so anxious to make himself liked by everyone in college that he becomes the campus laughingstock. There’s a football climax where he takes part in winning the game and it’s a lot of fun.

Between this, the Marx Brothers’ “Horse Feathers” (1932) and the classic Three Stooges short “Three Little Pigskins” (1936) I use to think that football and physical comedy were a match made in heaven. That is, until I saw Adam Sandler’s “The Waterboy” (1998), one of the worst “comedies” I’ve ever sat through.

Lloyd is probably best known today for the famous image of dangling from the hands of a clock in “Safety Last” (1923). It’s probably his most famous movie, but its not his best. Instead, I would opt for the aforementioned “The Freshman”; “The Kid Brother” (1927), a marvelous blending of comedy and sentiment; “Hot Water” (1924), which includes the famous segment where poor Harold wins a live turkey in a raffle and attempts to transport it home in a street car; and my personal favorite, “Girl Shy” (1924) with a chase sequence that is as exhilarating as it is exhausting.

Rating for “The Freshman”: Three and a half stars.

For a comedy masterpiece of another kind, I sat happily transfixed by the glorious “Trouble in Paradise” (1932) directed by the great Ernst Lubitsch. Two con artists played by Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins take rich innocent dupes throughout Europe and are having a fine time until they decide to part wealthy Kay Francis from her jewels and Marshall begins falling for her.

83 minutes of pure joy. Any movie that has Edward Everett Horton and Charlie Ruggles as romantic rivals is just dandy with me. Robert Grieg has a memorable role as Ms. Francis’ butler who becomes more and more exasperated as the movie goes on. There are several scenes where he descends the stairs and makes all kinds of harrumphing noises. It’s hilarious the first time, even funnier the second time and screechingly funny the third time. I don’t think the noises change at all, but by the third time it happens I was on the floor.

I taped it off TCM, but its available on DVD on the Criterion label, and it’s definitely on my “To Get” list.

Rating for “Trouble in Paradise”: Nothing less than four stars.