LOVE DETECTIVES. Columbia, 1934. Frank Albertson, Armand Kaliz, Betty Grable, Gloria Warner, Tom Dugan, Heinie Conklin and Blanche Payson. A “Musical Novelty” directed by Archie Gottler. Shown at Cinecon 45, Hollywood CA, September 2009.

    Lest you think I’ve returned to my Southern Baptist roots in my enthusiasm for the spiritual virtues of The Miracle Man [reviewed here not so very long ago], I recommend to you (on the happy chance that it turns up on a cable channel in your vicinity), a sprightly musical short with no redeeming quality other than its obvious attempt to please.

    It certainly pleased me with its dancing chorines, slightly risque situations and repartee, and a story line of little consequence. This preceded the screening of The Miracle Man and is an example of the program committee’s wacky and rather endearing habit of scheduling entertainments of vastly different natures, in this case opening Friday’s screenings with a sexy romp that left the audience completely unprepared for the spiritual drama that followed it.

THE CARDBOARD LOVER. Cosmopolitan/MGM, 1928. Marion Davies, Nils Asther, Jetta Goudal, Andres De Segurola. Screenplay: F. Hugh Herbert, based on the play Dans sa candeur naive by Jacques Deval. Director: Robert Z. Leonard. Shown at Cinecon 40, Hollywood CA, September 2004.

   A comedy to be classed with Davies’ performances in The Patsy and Show People. For much of her silent film career, Davies starred in costume dramas that her long-time lover William Randolph Hearst fancied.

   Her native gift, however, was for comedy and she established herself as a first-rate comic actress in the comedies that showcase her undeniable talent.

   In The Cardboard Lover she’s a vacationing American tourist who collects autographs and in the process of trying to snare the autograph of tennis star Asther (in photo) she becomes infatuated with him and sets out to separate him from the stylish vamp (Goudal) who’s been toying with his affections.

   Davies gets a chance to display her skill at impersonation when she does a dead-on imitation of Goudal’s slinky vamp and Asther, not noted as a comic actor, is a charming foil, caught between the two women, while Goudal, for much of the film, ably counters Davies’ moves with her not inconsiderable wiles.

   One of the delights of this year’s screenings and a major addition to Davies’ filmography, apparently copied from the sole surviving print.

TOP O’ THE MORNING. Paramount Pictures, 1949. Bing Crosby, Ann Blyth, Barry Fitzgerald, Hume Cronyn, John McIntyre. Screenplay: Edmond Beloin & Richard L. Breen; director: David Miller.

   Trivia experts likely know that William Levinson and Richard Link created the character of Lt. Columbo for Bing Crosby, but they may not realize Bing had played a detective before, and in fact a private detective in this 1949 musical comedy with a touch of noir.

   Music and murder had mixed before — Charlie Chan at the Opera, Murder at the Vanities, The Princess Comes Across, and Lady of Burlesque come to mind, but those were backstage mysteries, and the singing was confined to the stage. This may be the only full blown musical comedy murder mystery ever filmed.

   It begins with a murder and a shocking theft — the Blarney Stone — which bequeaths the gift of gab on anyone who kisses it — has been stolen. The stone is part of ancient Irish lore and it’s theft could well visit disaster on the entire nation. Finding the stolen stone and restoring it and the killer is of vital importance.

   Enter top American insurance investigator Joe Mulqueen (Bing Crosby), a laid back pipe-smoking crooning detective, sent by Inspector Fallon (John McIntyre) to Ireland find the ancient rock and save the company from having to pay off on the priceless relic.

   But that pits Joe against Sergeant Briany MacNaughton of the Irish Garda Civil, and his fiery daughter Conn (Ann Blyth), and further complications ensue because Joe’s arrival seems to fit all too well a prophecy about who the lovely Conn will marry.

   Top o’ the Morning is by its nature schizophrenic. When Bing isn’t crooning familiar tunes or those written for the film by Burke and Van Heusen, romancing the lovely Blyth, doing the usual Irish shtick with Fitzgerald and most of the cast, and exploring the legend of the Blarney Stone, he’s playing detective investigating a brutal murder.

   Toward the end of the film the mood turns dark and even noirish, and the screenplay acknowledges a nod toward G. K. Chesterton and one of Father Brown’s most famous cases, “The Invisible Man,” as Joe and Sgt. MacNaughton close in on the killer.

   Indeed these scenes almost make you wish the film had been played as a straight detective story, and they have a quiet power as well as a dark noirish look, thanks to Miller’s direction.

   Top o’ the Morning is more of a curiosity than a success. You can’t fault the cast or even the screenplay; the two forms just don’t really work that well together.

   Bing does get to show a little steel beneath the crooning in a few scenes, and he’s always worth watching playing off Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald, who played almost as many cops and professional Irishmen, gets to exercise both his specialties here, and Blyth is both lovely and convincing. A special nod to Hume Cronyn as Biddy O’Devlin, who gets to shine briefly in an offbeat film.

   Still Top o’ the Morning is well worth catching, and noir fans will recognize some excellent work toward the end of the film. It’s one of those films that you may find you like far more than it really merits.

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.