SAN ANTONIO ROSE. Universal, 1941. Robert Paige, Eve Arden, Jane Frazee, Lon Chaney, Jr., Shemp Howard, Luis Alberni, Richard Lane, and The Merry Macs (Mary Lou Cook, Joe McMichael, Ted McMichael, Judd McMichael). Director: Charles Lamont. Shown at Cinecon 40, Hollywood CA, September 2004.

   Eve Arden and Jane Frazee are out-of-work performers who arrive at a supper club on the night it’s forced to close by a rival who hopes to revive his own dying club with his competition shut down.

   With no place to go (and no money), the two stay on in the abandoned club, and when a band headed by Robert Paige (less than memorable as the somnambulistic non-dead male lead of Son of Dracula) shows up to fulfill an engagement, the girls propose their version of “Let’s put on a show” by reopening the club.

   Chaney and Howard, dim-bulb minions of the rival club owner, are sent in to sabotage the opening. However, their attempts at sabotage are turned into unintentional parts of the floor show by the enterprising new owners and the boys are soon sent flying through a window.

   A bright 63 minute effort with the audience particularly enjoying the smooth singing of the once popular Merry Macs (with surviving relatives in the audience). Chaney and Howard make a fine comedy team and this was a tuneful and entertaining complement to the more ambitious (and no more entertaining) Crosby vehicle seen (and reviewed) just before.

SHE LOVES ME NOT. Paramount, 1934. Bing Crosby, Miriam Hopkins, Kitty Carlisle, Edward Nugent, Lynne Overman, Warren Hymer, Judith Allen, Vince Barnett, George Barbier. Director: Elliott Nugent. Shown at Cinecon 40, Hollywood CA, September 2004.

    Showgirl Miriam Hopkins witnesses a murder and skips town, taking refuge in a Princeton men’s dorm where she persuades reluctant soon-to-graduate seniors (Crosby & Edward Nugent) to let her hide out.

    She’s tracked down by gangsters, and Crosby’s graduation and his burgeoning relationship with the college president’s daughter (Carlisle) are soon threatened.

    “Love in Bloom” is the most familiar of the tunes in this attractively acted and staged musical. At the time of this movie’s showing, Carlisle had recently appeared at a New York cabaret. Too bad she couldn’t have been persuaded (if she was still able) to fly in for the screening, but she was probably more of a theater than a screen personality.

THE DARK HORSE. First National, 1932. Warren William, Bette Davis, Guy Kibbee. Vivienne Osborne, Frank McHugh, Sam Hardy, Berton Churchill, Harry Holman, Charles Sellon, Robert Emmett O’Connor, Robert Warwick, Louise Beavers, Wilfred Lucas Photography by Sol Polito; director: Alfred E. Green. Shown at Cinecon 40, Hollywood CA, September 2004.

   Guy Kibbee, the “dark horse” gubernatorial candidate of this political satire, is described by Warren William, his campaign manager, as “so dumb that every time he opens his mouth, he subtracts from the sum total of human knowledge.”

   Bette Davis is William’s secretary (and long-time girlfriend), who plays a nondescript role with her usual intelligence, but it’s Vivienne Osborne, as William’s predatory ex-wife, who steals the female acting honors as she lures Kibbee into a tryst, where in a game of strip poker he’s getting down to essentials as the police and reporters close in on their hideaway, with William flying in at the last minute in an attempt to get to the love nest ahead of them.

   Kibbee is a complete buffoon, completely innocent of anything that passes for intelligence, but he has a weak spot, an eye for a shady lady, and this pre-code film makes no bones about the unseemly nature of his relationship with Osborne.

   William is a human weasel, willing to do anything to promote his candidate, with Davis his conscience who rather belatedly manages to salvage William from the eager hands of the law. Kibbee is elected with William and Davis finally united and leaving the state to its new governor and a corrupt crew of supporters.

   I won’t be so crass as to suggest that this was selected as a less-than-discreet commentary on this year’s political slug-fest [2004], but astute observers will note some similarities with the contemporary scene. Sharp dialogue and frank treatment of the racy relationship of Kibbee and Osborne mark this as a pre-code script, and its quick footed pacing (and on the mark performances) made it a late-night favorite of the convention.

THAT CERTAIN THING. Columbia, 1928. Viola Dana, Ralph Graves, Burr Mcintosh, Aggie Herring, Carl Gerard, Sydney Crossley. Screenplay by Elmer Harris; photography by Joseph Walker. Director: Frank Capra. Shown at Cinecon 40, Hollywood CA, September 2004.

    Described as a “restoration in progress” (the film is is a blow-up from a 16mm print), this domestic drama tracks the fortunes of a hotel newsstand clerk (Dana) after she marries Graves, the son of a magnate, who promptly disinherits his son, forcing him to go to work as a day laborer.

    When his co-workers prefer his wife’s box lunch to their own lunches, he has a brainstorm and starts the “Molly Box Lunch Company,” which takes off and attracts the attention of Graves’ father, who doesn’t know that his daughter-in-law is the Molly designing the lunches.

    Molly uses her native sharp wits to outwit her father-in-law, roping him into a highly profitable deal (for the company) to which he responds by showing he’s a good sport and finally accepting his husband’s wife.

    A good-natured comedy drama that makes light fun of big business and the innate good sense of the Little Man (or, in this case, Little Woman). Capra’s first film for Columbia.

SIN TAKES A HOLIDAY. Pathé Exchange, 1930. Constance Bennett, Kenneth MacKenna, Basil Rathbone, Rita La Roy, Zasu Pitts. Director: Paul L. Stein.

   Besides the two “Topper” movies she was in, I don’t think I’ve seen any of the other movies that Constance Bennett made. For a name that’s awfully familiar, not to mention being a beautiful and talented sad-eyed actress, she made a rather large number of awfully forgettable pictures.

   Including this one, I’m sorry to say, one that TCM chose to play on her birthday earlier this week (October 22). She plays the secretary who’s secretly in love with her playboy boss (played by Kenneth MacKenna), a well-known divorce lawyer. But when he proposes to her, it’s with no sense of delight that she accepts.

   It’s a marriage of convenience only. He needs a wife to get one of his many divorcee clients (Rita La Roy) off his back. Little does he know when he sends his new bride off to Europe that she’s going to turn into a glowing beauty. (She also somehow learns to play classical musical pieces on the piano; quite a change from living in a cramped apartment with two other working girls, one of whom is Zasu Pitts.)

   Basil Rathbone plays the jaded bachelor who falls in love with her, and this is the triangle (or quadrilateral, if Miss La Roy is included) that the plot revolves around, and all the more so once the lady’s husband decides that maybe he really does want a wife.

   Being a pre-Code movie, the light-hearted way that men in upper society are allowed to pal around with women who are not their wives would scarcely meet with approval a few years later.

   Unfortunately for those of us who happen to have spent the first 60 plus minutes waiting for a payoff that matches the rest of the film, the wait will have been in vain. There are many many clever ways that this movie could have ended. The way that this movie does end – and don’t worry, I shan’t tell you which one it is — it isn’t one of them.

MY SISTER EILEEN. Columbia, 1955. Betty Garrett, Janet Leigh, Jack Lemmon, Robert Fosse, Kurt Kasznar, Dick York, Lucy Marlow, Tommy Rall, Horace MacMahon, Hal March, Queenie Smith, Richard Deacon.

Screenplay by Blake Edwards and Richard Quine from the play by Joseph Fields and Jerome Chodorov, based on the stories by Ruth McKenny. Songs: Jule Styne and Leo Robin; choreography: Robert Fosse. Director: Richard Quine. Shown at Cinecon 40, Hollywood CA, September 2004.

   The inevitable question was asked of Betty Garrett after the screening: Why wasn’t the great Leonard Bernstein score for the Broadway success Wonderful Town used? The answer was that it was economics, that it was cheaper to commission a new score than pay for the use of Bernstein’s.

   Undoubtedly a minus, since the replacement score is undistinguished, but the gorgeous wide-screen technicolor, the charming performances by the cast (especially Garrett, Leigh, Lemmon, Fosse and Rall), and the solid merits ofthe McKenny stories contributed to a smashingly entertaining 72 minutes, with a number by Rall and Fosse, danced in an alley, that lit up the screen with some of the most exciting dancing that side of West Side Story.

   Garrett said that she most missed not being able to sing “Ohio” from the Bernstein original, but she played in the Bernstein musical on Broadway and on the road and didn’t lack for opportunities to sing it.

   I’m still a bit put off by the gradual encroachment of post-1940 films at these conventions, but the opportunity to hear Garrett talk about her career and to see such a splendid example of the fifties film musical pretty much put those concerns to rest.

GIRL WITHOUT A ROOM. Paramount, 1933. Charles Farrell, Charlie Ruggles, Marguerite Churchill, Gregory Ratoff, Grace Bradley, Walter Woolf [King], Sam Ash, Leonid Kinsky, Mischa Auer, Leonard Snegoff, Alex Melesh, John T. Murray, Spec O’Donnell, Edith Fellows, Harry Stubbs. Screenplay by Frank Butler and Charles Binyon, based on stories by Jack Lait. Director: Ralph Murphy. Shown at Cinecon 40, Hollywood CA, September 2004.

   Farrell arrives on a scholarship in Paris to paint and rents a room in a boardinghouse filled with eccentric bohemian artists and expatriate Russians (including the Trotsky, Walksky, Galiopsky/Sitsky crew).

   There is a far-out Bohemian girl, “Nada”; a playgirl (Churchill) pursued by an alcoholic rich American but falling for Farrell; and Vergil Crock (Charlie Ruggles), master of the revelries, and mentor for the babe-in-the-wood Farrell.

   Back in 1989 I described this as a “funny, charming, delightful sendup of the ’30s avant-garde French art scene.” In the Cinecon program notes, it’s described as the kind of “sparkling, madcap entertainment that Hollywood once fashioned without breaking a sweat.”

   I have to admit that what I loved before, I found tiresome, with an array of good character actors bringing occasional bright moments among the madcap chaos. Actually, what I found most interesting about the film was the brief appearance of Spec O’Donnell, the talented participant in several of the brilliant and truly funny Max Davidson two-reel silent comedies, here reduced to playing a 30-second bit.

LIFE BEGINS AT FORTY. Fox, 1934. Will Rogers, Rochelle Hudson, George Barbier, Richard Cromwell, Jane Darwell, Slim Summerville, Sterling Holloway. Screenplay by Lamar Trotti, adapted from the novel by Walter B. Pitkin. Director: George Marshall. Shown at Cinecon 40, Hollywood CA, September 2004.

   Rogers was probably closer to 50 than 40 when he played Kenesaw H. Clark, a small-town newspaperman who loses his paper to banker George Barbier who calls in a loan after Rogers hires recently released convict Richard Cromwell, who had been convicted of stealing funds from Barbier’s bank.

   This is one of Rogers’ patented do-good roles as his rehabilitation of Cromwell includes proving he was framed for the theft and putting up lazy Slim Summville as an opposition candidate to Barbier in the upcoming school board election.

   Sterling Holloway plays dangerously close to a dead-on Caucasian Stepin Fetchit impersonation, with Hudson the schoolteacher who falls for Cromwell, and Darwell, greatness still ahead of her, doing her folksy (and very effective) maiden lady who may have an eye for perennial bachelor Rogers.

   The film’s portrayal of small-town America introduces some elements that almost veer into crime drama and an attempted lynching of Cromwell that casts an ugly shadow on this family comedy/drama.

   Rogers propelled these evocations of period America into box-office successes that may seem liked faded snapshots to some, but their genuine humor, warmth, and basic dramatic conflicts still have the power to engage and entertain.

ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS. Orion Pictures, 1986. Patsy Kensit, Eddie O’Connell, David Bowie, James Fox, Ray Davies, Mandy Rice-Davies, Sade Adu. Based on the novel by Colin MacInnes. Original music: Gil Evans; cinematography by Oliver Stapleton. Director: Julien Temple.

   For me, this knockout of a movie musical was an absolute eye-opener. A veritable feast for the eyes and ears throughout, beginning with the opening narration by Colin (Eddie O’Connell):

   It is as if the war and the postwar recovery were over at last, and the world changed in a magical instant from black-and-white to vivid color. It is the summer of the teen-ager, brought to life and personified by Colin the photographer, and Suzette (Patsy Kensit) the model. Youth and young love and … money. Bright lights and glitter are always followed by trouble. No roads are ever easy, and there are always obstacles along the way.

   Success comes to Suzette first, and boy loses girl. Does that sum it up? Does boy win girl back? Don’t always be so sure.

   Beautifully photographed throughout, with the best of late 50s London pop and rock, as seen through the visual lens of 1986. If David Bowie and Ray Davies (of The Kinks) do not play your kind of music, as they do mine, this may not be the movie for you, but the flash and brilliant color may win you back.

   From the first sequence on, a melange of activity in a busy, thriving section of streets in a boisterous entertainment area in London, over two minutes long in one continuing shot filled with what looks like hundreds of musicians and dancers, I was caught up immediately. This is my kind of musical.

   Colin again:   “For the first time ever, kids were teenagers. They had loot, however come by and loot’s for spending. Where there’s loot, trouble follows.”

   Can you say “sell out”?

   And worse. The ending, incorporating as it does hints of class warfare (well, more than hints) and a well-choreographed racial riot that I’d have made several minutes shorter, but it is one of the four crucial parts of the book this film was based on, the events of which take place on four days in London — one a month — over an 18-year-old boy’s last summer as a teenager.

   Even so, some reviewers have said that this movie misses the whole point of the book, which I haven’t read, but I have a feeling they may be right, that any message the film may have intended is lost among the magnificent colors, vivid imagery, and above all, the music. An overload, in fact, but truthfully? I didn’t mind it for a second.

THREE GIRLS ABOUT TOWN. Columbia, 1941. Joan Blondell, Robert Benchley,, Binnie Barnes, Janet Blair, John Howard, Hugh O’Connell, Frank McGlynn Sr., Eric Blore. Director: Leigh Jason.

    What this movie is, if I may be allowed to say so, is a screwball comedy that is not only not screwball, but for the most of its 75 minutes of running length, not even funny.

    Robert Benchley always cracks me up, though, no matter what movie he’s in, and as Wilburforce Puddle, the manager of the hotel for which Joan Blondell and Binnie Barnes work, he’s no exception here. Even his name is funny.

    Joan Blondell and Binnie Barnes (as Faith and Hope Banner) are hostesses for the hotel, which caters to conventions, but the wholesome kind. One wonders, though, what the local women’s civic league thinks they have been doing, marching in on the manager to deliver their complaints in person.

    Puddle has other problems. There is a magicians’ convention that is just closing, and a morticians’ convention that is coming in, and never the co-mingling should meet. Not to mention the upstairs ballroom where a defense-oriented corporation and an angry employees union are waiting for a government mediator to arrive, and worst of all, a dead man in the room next to our two ladies.

    Whose sister has just arrived, naturally named Charity (Janet Blair, in her debut film), who’s delinquent from the school where they’re sending her and a delinquent in more ways than that, the way she has eyes for Faith’s fiancé, who’s in the hotel covering the labor battle but who discovers that he has another story on his hands, if the body would ever stay in one place long enough for the police to do anything about it. (Charity also gets what’s coming to her at the end of the movie. Rather remarkably, too, that’s all I can say.)

    Getting back to the main proceedings, also worth mentioning is the wandering Charlemagne, a drunken magician (Eric Blore) who interrupts the proceedings looking for his good friend Charlie wherever the laughs seem to be dying out — which is something like every five minutes.

    It is hard to say what exactly goes wrong, that this movie isn’t more fun than it should be. Everyone tries hard, but it’s tough slogging when the jokes just aren’t as funny as whoever thought them up thought they were. Either that, or my taste in humor and theirs just don’t jibe.