Continuing the tradition of brisk pre-Code films, Joel McCrea’s occasional appearances in Gregory La Cava’s 1933 Bed of Roses serve as strange moral medium between the wanton hedonism of the lead Constance Bennett and the upcoming censorship of the era. Screenwriter Wanda Tuchock’s story of jail-hopping prostitutes-on-the-side seems like a victory lap for vice-ridden cinematic world of the early 30s, including flippant talk of suicide, heavily implied sex, liberal boozing, and poking fun at previous attempts of government sponsored moral judgment (“The Eighteenth Amendment is a law, and as a law should be enforced until it stops being a law”). The film begins in a prison as Bennett’s Lorry Evans and partner-in-crime Minnie (Pert Kelton) walk out of their cells, trash-talking life outside in radio-ready cadence and street-ready slang. They have short hair, hats tipped on the side of their head (I assume gravity worked differently in...
- 6/5/2015
- by Zach Lewis
- MUBI
With such a definitive and spoiler-happy title as “He Married His Wife” (even with pronouns lending a level of mystery), plot quickly becomes unimportant. Even the contemporary micro-genre this 1940 film fills, the comedy of remarriage, immediately announces T.H. Randall’s (Joel McCrea) eventual reunion with estranged wife Valerie (Nancy Kelly). In order for the couple to come together, both actors must switch between clown and straight-man acts at screwball pace using the supporting cast as colorful props.This outline worked well for Howard Hawks’s Bringing Up Baby (1938) two years earlier, but that had the remarkable advantage of both Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, both known for versatility in anything their studio would throw at them. Conversely, 20th Century Fox put director Roy Del Ruth to the task of He Married His Wife as a workman director capable of identifying the strengths of a trending narrative style for economic opportunity.
- 5/6/2015
- by Zach Lewis
- MUBI
Mary Boland movies: Scene-stealing actress has her ‘Summer Under the Stars’ day on TCM Turner Classic Movies will dedicate the next 24 hours, Sunday, August 4, 2013, not to Lana Turner, Lauren Bacall, Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Esther Williams, or Bette Davis — TCM’s frequent Warner Bros., MGM, and/or Rko stars — but to the marvelous scene-stealer Mary Boland. A stage actress who was featured in a handful of movies in the 1910s, Boland came into her own as a stellar film supporting player in the early ’30s, initially at Paramount and later at most other Hollywood studios. First, the bad news: TCM’s "Summer Under the Stars" Mary Boland Day will feature only two movies from Boland’s Paramount period: the 1935 Best Picture Academy Award nominee Ruggles of Red Gap, which TCM has shown before, and one TCM premiere. So, no rarities like Secrets of a Secretary, Mama Loves Papa, Melody in Spring,...
- 8/4/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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