Public Domain Theatre: "The Vagabond Lover"

The 1929 film "The Vagabond Lover" (full movie above) stars Marie Dressler, Sally Blane and a statue named Rudy Vallee.

Filmed when Vallee was at the height of his fame as a bandleader (of the Connecticut Yankees) and as a crooner with a voice that sounds like his adenoids have adenoids, "The Vagabond Lover" is supposed to be a lightweight romantic comedy/musical. Instead it's about as graceful as one of Marie Dressler's frocks filled with wet cement.

There are a couple of problems, actually -- the script, by James Ashmore Creelman, who ended up committing suicide but not specifically because of this movie, is the kind of play that high school drama clubs would do in the 1930s or '40s. And the direction by Marshall "Mickey" Neilan is flaccid, if not downright placid. There are dead spaces between lines of dialogue long enough for a nap. The movie runs about 65 minutes, but if you took out all the pauses it would last about half an hour.

Finally, there's Vallee. By the time he started playing supporting roles in good movies in the 1940s, like "The Palm Beach Story" and "The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer," Vallee had been hosting a hit radio show for more than ten years and had a much more polished presence onscreen. True, a little bit of pompousness remained -- the reason Vallee can be so funny in some of those later films is that he never quite seems to be in on the joke.

But here, in his first major movie role, we get all of the pompousness and none of the polish. As the movie begins, Rudy and his band are a bunch of small timers. Practice is underway, but things don't really start to sparkle until the charismatic Rudy enters:



"If only that guy could play like he can sing," one of the band members says. Meh. Looking like a 12-year-old in a double-breasted suit, Vallee conveys anger, passion and humor with the same wan smile.

The story is based somewhat on Vallee's own experience -- born Hubert Prior Vallee, our hero appropriated the first name of his musical idol, saxophonist Rudy Wiedoeft. In the movie, Vallee's musical idol is saxophonist Ted Grant, a Paul Whiteman-esque figure played badly (and baldly) by Malcolm Waite.

Vallee and his band -- which seems to consist of 12 saxophones and a banjo -- go to Grant's Long Island mansion to serenade him with hopes of getting a job. But Grant is an egotistical jerk, and throws Vallee out. Then Grant and his manager leave for the city. Vallee and his group don't know that, and they enter the mansion to audition.

Once inside, Vallee and his band cut loose. He seems a little less stiff -- here are is his stage moves move:

And here's the entire number, "Nobody's Sweetheart":



Meanwhile, the next-door neighbors -- Mrs. Whitehall (Dressler) and her niece Jean (Blane) -- think the band is breaking and entering. They call the cops and rush right over:



Through complications that make me too tired to recount, Vallee is mistaken for Grant, and Mrs. Whitehall insists that the band plays at her big charity benefit.
  
So as you can see, "The Vagabond Lover" is a lot like that episode of "The Brady Bunch" where Marcia promises her classmates that she can get Davy Jones to play at her prom, even though in real life he'd probably be happy for the gig.

Blane, the younger sister of Loretta Young, is the romantic interest, and Dressler does her patented fuss and bother, doing doubletakes aplenty. And it all can't be over quickly enough for me.

Here is the full cast and credits. 

Public Domain Theatre: "The Squall"

Above is the whole wonderful movie.

There's an old story in the theatre about a production of "The Diary of Anne Frank" where the actress in the title role gives such a bad performance that at the end of the play, when the Nazis enter, audience members yell out, "She's in the attic!"

At the end of the 1929 film "The Squall," you may feel the same way.

The Lajos family has been sheltering a runaway Gypsy girl, the nubile Nubi (Myrna Loy), and she has repaid their kindness with lying, deceit and never-ending attempts to seduce every guy in the joint.

The Gypsies have now returned -- we have seen their tiny covered wagons come over the hill (a miniature shot). They are led by their whip-wielding master, who wants Nubi back, and you can't wait to see her get kicked to the curb.

Nubi is another one of Loy's turns as an exotic temptress -- for other examples, see "Thirteen Women" and "The Mask of Fu Manchu." And she is indeed a little Hungarian hottie, with her flaming eyes and cheekbones as sharp as razor blades.  

But the movie she's stuck in is a lot like a bad opera, filled with cheering peasants, singing gypsies and characters with names like Josef and Uncle Dani.

"The Squall" takes place on the Lajos family farm, where, an intertitle tells us, "the labor of years has been crowned with prosperity and content (sic)." (I'm still wondering where "-ment" went.)

In the Lajos household, prosperity takes the form of nice wardrobes, plentiful food and lots of expository dialogue. We witness romantic hi-jinks between the cook, Lena (Zasu Pitts), and farm hand Peter (Harry Cording). Father Josef (Richard Tucker) and mother Maria (Alice Joyce) are plump and prosperous, doting on son Paul (Carroll Nye), who is engaged to the lovely Irma (Loretta Young).

But there are storm clouds on the horizon, foreshadowed by dialogue that is as subtle as a pile driver. Such as when Maria says, "Our lives have been like a summer day -- without a cloud. If only it could be that way until the end." Fat chance, Maria.

Or take this exchange, between Irma and her grandfather (Knute Erickson).

Irma: Oh, I just hate squalls. They only make everyone so unhappy. I'd like someone to tell me why we have them.

Grandfather: Perhaps there's a reason, Irma. God gives us shadows that we may know light. He gives us sorrow that we may know joy. He gives us Zasu Pitts so that we can appreciate Myrna Loy in a peasant blouse. (OK, I made up that one.) And perhaps he sends the squall that we may learn the beauty of a limpid sky.

Outside, the squall is kicking up, and then there is a scream and a frenzied banging at the door. The family hears it, but they are so busy feeding their faces with content that a servant answers. In tumbles Nubi, who is fleeing from her abusive master because "He keel me!"

Nubi immediately plays on the family's sympathy by explaining that she is a reluctant Gypsy, having been stolen as a baby. The kind-hearted Maria offers her shelter from the squall, little realizing that her act of kindness will throw her marriage, her happiness, nay, HER VERY LIFE into Jeopardy! (Used with the permission of Merv Griffin.)

Nubi looks out the window at the tiny Gypsies as they leave the farm. Then she speaks a little monologue that makes all the men hot and bothered:



Nubi's first conquest is Peter the farm hand, who lip-syncs a little song about his love for Nubi while currying the horse. No, really:



Then Nubi moves on to Paul, and as a result he starts giving Irma the cold shoulder. "Never mind, Irma. Your old granddaddy loves you, and isn't that enough?," her granddaddy asks, answering his own question. 

Finally, Nubi tries to seduce the master of the farm, Josef. "I am keesing your shadow," she purrs. Longtime wife Maria is watching from the shadows. What's a wife to do? "My husband -- half of my life," she says. "My son -- the other half." Not to get picky, but aren't they the same half? Or isn't there at least one-third of overlap?

Anyway, leave it to Maria to finally understand how dangerous Nubi is, while the men are all derp-derp-derpy about her. So when the Gypsies return, she makes the move to get rid of Nubi:



With Nubi gone, content returns to the family farm.

Here are the full credits for "The Squall."

 

Public Domain Theatre: "Night Parade" with Hugh Trevor and Aileen Pringle

 

Public Domain Theatre: "Tanned Legs" (1929)

 

Public Domain Theatre: "Jazz Heaven" (1929)

The 1929 film "Jazz Heaven" is the same old story -- boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy and girl break into a piano factory where he can play his song and they end up on the radio without knowing it.

In the 1920s and '30s, song publishers were like recording studios. They were where the hits were born, with the goal being to publish a song and make thousands from sales of sheet music.

The excitement of the music publishing business could be captured onscreen and used as a metaphor for the drama and bustle of a large city, and it's done very effectively in "The Broadway Melody," released the same year as "Jazz Heaven":



Here, by contrast, is the jazzy introduction to the song publishing business in "Jazz Heaven":

Meh.

All of "Jazz Heaven," in fact, is kind of meh -- not terrible, but not memorable. One exception is the featured song, "Someone." Oh boy, is it featured. It's hard to get it out of your memory, maybe because they play it 67 times. And it isn't bad -- Oscar Levant wrote the music.

Johnny Mack Brown, wearing trousers that come up to his nipples, is our songwriter hero, Barry, who has come to New York City from Mobile, Alabama, and has brought along his sing-song Southern accent.

Barry has been working for days on one special song, keeping the other residents in his apartment building up all night. This gets him in Dutch with the landlady, but her softhearted husband Max (Clyde Cook) helps Barry escape her wrath.

Then, hark! There is a female voice in the next room whose vocal improvising lends the ending to Barry's song! He uses it, they meet, and sparks fly. She is Ruth (Sally O'Neil) and she works for Kemple and Klucke, music publishers. She takes Barry, who she calls "Big Boy," to meet her bosses.

If Barry immediately sold his song to Kemple and Klucke, "Jazz Heaven" would be a 10-minute movie. But there are complications. One is that Barry's song needs lyrics, and after meeting Ruth he is inspired to write some, all about love and stuff. Then Barry's beloved piano is destroyed when Max tries to move it and it rolls down a flight of stairs. That's why Barry and Ruth perform the song in the piano factory (Max is the night watchman and he lets them in) and it goes over the air:



Farmers love it!

Bootleggers love it!

Rich people love it!

BUT! There is still conflict in the air. Ruth is being chased by her bosses, Kemple (Joseph Cawthorn) and Klucke (Albert Conti). Klucke tells Ruth he will orchestrate Barry's song and have it performed at a swell nightclub, but only if Ruth accompanies him.

So she does, leading to a misunderstanding on Barry's part, exacerbated by Cawthorn in full-bore cranky mode:



Cawthorn practically had this kind of role trademarked -- see here for more Cawthornian goodness. He does have one of the movie's better lines -- at the nightclub he tells Ruth, "Look at my spats! I got socks on under 'em and everything."

One of the reasons "Jazz Heaven" is so flaccid is the wan performance of Brown, a former football star who ended up making a lot of westerns, including serials. On the other end of the energy scale is O'Neil, who brings a Betty Boop-ish charm to her role. But a Boop alone does not a movie make, and "Jazz Heaven" is just blah. 

Public Domain Theatre: "Seven Keys to Baldpate" (1929)

(Here's the entire film.) 

Based on George M. Cohan's 1913 play, which itself was based on a novel by Earl Derr Biggers, the man who also gave us Charlie Chan, the 1929 film version of "Seven Keys to Baldpate" takes place in what one character calls "the loneliest spot on earth -- a summer resort in the winter."

To this spot comes William Halliwell Magee (Richard Dix), a best-selling novelist out to win a bet that only gets betted (?) in movies like this -- a rich friend, the owner of Baldpate, will pay McGee $5,000 if he can write a 10,000-word story in 24 hours. (Kind-of-interesting sidelight -- when Cohan played the role on Broadway and in the 1917 film, his character was named George Washington Magee.)

Magee accepts the bet, and his friend says he hopes the book won't be about the usual stuff Magee writes about -- ghosts, stolen money, shots in the night, falling in love at first sight. At this point, of course, Magee meets Mary (Miriam Seeger):

Like most early talkies, there are awkward moments (See what I did there?) in "Seven Keys to Baldpate." Because most of the film takes place on one set -- the two-level lobby of the resort -- it lends itself to staginess, and most of the cast members perform with exaggerated gestures and hammy line readings (this is the kind of movie where Mary is called "meh-dee") that actors utilized before modern, economic sound film acting was introduced by people like James Cagney and Paul Muni.

And the first third of the film, in particular, is glacially paced -- although considering global warming, maybe that's too much of a compliment. When Magee gets to Baldpate, he has to endure what seems like a half hour of expository dialogue with the caretaker and his wife:



Once Magee starts writing his story, the loneliest place in the world suddenly seems like Grand Central Station. Visitors include the mayor, the president of the local railroad, the president's wife, a couple of guys bribing the mayor for the railroad president, and a hermit named Pete, and Mary.

Dix, a husky fellow who usually played humorless heroic types, does at least get to do some comedy:

Here are the complete credits for "Seven Keys to Baldpate."

 

Public Domain Theatre: "Half Marriage" (1929)

Awkward Early Talkie Theatre: "The Broadway Melody"

Star-struck sisters coming to New York, struggling songwriter, backstage drama, misguided love -- it's all there, and more, in the 1929 film "The Broadway Melody." It's like a cliche incubator. It also has those awkward little touches we love in early talkies -- hammy acting, stilted silences and a musical soundtrack that makes it sound like the orchestra's in the bathroom.

To the concrete canyons of Broadway, where there's a broken light for every heart, or something like that, come the something-something sisters, Queenie (Anita Page) and Hank (Bessie Love). Queenie is blonde and stauesque, if you know what I mean and I think you do, and Hank is a little pepperpot of personality. ("I'm gonna lay that dame like a roll of linoleum," she says of a rival at one point.)

Hank's boyfriend Eddie (Charles King) has just joined the Zanfield Follies, and he's promised Hank that she and Queenie can join the show. We first meet Eddie at the Ye Olde Gleason Music Publishing Company, overseen by character actor James Gleason, who also co-wrote the dialogue. Eddie has just put the finishing touches on the movie's title song: 



Eddie and the girls are reunited, and since he hasn't seen Queenie since she was a little princess, he's surprised, to put it mildly, that she's grown so tall -- and stuff.

Meanwhile, there is backstage drama aplenty. Queenie and Hank get jobs in the chorus, and Queenie ends up as the main visual attraction, if you know what I mean and I think you do, in a big production number. There she attracts the attention of oily rich guy Jacques (Kenneth Thomson), who, in a bid at regular-guy status, signs his calling card "Jock." Queenie is attracted to Eddie, but out of loyalty to her sister she starts hanging with Jock.

Time out for some backstage banter:

Gay designer on his outlandish costumes: I design the costumes for the show, not the doors to the theatre.

Chorus girl: I know that -- if you had, they'd be painted in lavender.

Then it's time for the big-time production of "Broadway Melody":



Hank is mystified by Queenie's behavior. Eddie, mixing his metaphors, says, "I guess the bright lights just got under her skin." Then Queenie and Eddie have an awkward scene all their own:

There's a lot to like in "Broadway Melody," and if you don't like you can pass the time by counting how many times Queenie and Hank undress and slip into skimpy costumes and/or underwear. We also see them performing their vaudeville act, "Two Harmony Babies From Melody Lane," which includes the line "We can do more with a vo-de-oh-doh/Than Mr. Rockefeller can do with his dough."

When it's all said and done, Hank realizes that Queenie loves Eddie, and she steps out of the picture. At the movie's end, she's ready to go on a vaudeville tour with a new partner, and with the advice of her stuttering agent (Jed Prouty):             

Here are the complete credits, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.

 

Public Domain Theatre: "My Bag O'Tricks" (1929) with Trixie Friganza (1870-1955)

Public Domain Theatre: "The Singing Fool"

Beginning in 2024, films released in 1928 are now in the public domain, so I've started posting early talkies on my YouTube channel. Here's the top-grossing film of 1928, "The Singing Fool," with Al Jolson, Betty Bronson and Davey Lee. Songs by the team of DeSylva, Brown and Henderson include "Sonny Boy," "I'm Sittin' on Top of the World" and "It All Depends on You."

Awkward Early Talkie Theatre: "Hollywood Revue of 1929"

"The Hollywood Revue of 1929," MGM's entry in the look-at-us-we're-talking sweepstakes, is a lot like Warner Bros.' "The Show of Shows," released later that year. It's a big-budget hodgepodge of skits and songs featuring almost every performer on the lot (a select few were exempt -- Al Jolson isn't in "The Show of Shows" and Greta Garbo isn't in "Hollywood Revue").

The budget is so big, the chorus ends up passing the hat.

Both films were designed to introduce audiences to the brave new world of talkie films -- the ironic thing is that early talkies, because of cumbersome cameras and sound recording equipment, were much less "free" than silent films. The setting that both studios use to showcase sound is very static -- a clearly defined stage, proscenium arch and all. ("Broadway Revue" even has a pit orchestra.)

Joan Crawford warms up for her big dance number. 

Still, this was a chance to see your favorite actors and actresses talk, dance and sing. MGM used to brag about having "more stars than there are in heaven," and at least a galaxy or two is accounted for here -- Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, John Gilbert, Marie Dressler, Bessie Love, Anita Page, Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton and many others.

Like "The Show of Shows," "Hollywood Revue" prides itself on being very up to date, with sketches that poke fun at quaint Victorian songs and melodramas. The opening number of "Hollywood Revue" and at least part of the proceedings take place in the context of a much more modern setting -- a, um, minstrel show.

The emcees here are Conrad Nagel and Jack Benny. Benny was a headliner in vaudeville by this point, but this is early in his career and he's just beginning to perfect the mannerisms and low-key style that he would utilize so successfully in radio and television. The emcee of "The Show of Shows" is Frank Fay, whose stage persona Benny freely admitted to appropriating, and in comparing the two, Fay comes off as more effective (at least to me). Here's Benny in a sketch with William Haines:



Here, by comparison, is Frank Fay in "The Show of Shows":



The other emcee, Conrad Nagel, is pleasing and polished -- like almost everybody else he sings a number, a song that sends lyrics of love right up into Anita Page's nostrils.

The two performers who are featured most prominently in "Hollywood Revue," however, are singers -- Charles King and Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards. King was the male lead in MGM's other big film of 1929, "The Broadway Melody," and gets far more attention here that he merits. (He sings the song "Your Mother and Mine," which is parodied in "The Show of Shows.")

Edwards, on the other hand, was never a big star, but he was a reliable second banana in several MGM films of the early 1930s. (And he was the voice of Jiminy Cricket in "Pinocchio.") His singing style is simple and appealing, and here he accompanies himself on the uke:

That is some art right there.

Comedy bits are offered by Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton and Marie Dressler, but they are minor stuff. There are also quite a few ensemble numbers with elaborate sets and costumes.

And then, toward the end, there is for me the most wince-able portion of "Hollywood Revue" -- a bit, shot in two-strip Technicolor, with Norma Shearer, John Gilbert and Lionel Barrymore.

You've probably heard of it if you haven't seen it -- Gilbert and Shearer perform the balcony scene from "Romeo and Juliet," and then director Barrymore tells them that, under studio orders, the dialogue must be updated.

Norma Shearer tries and fails to act like a regular person.

It's one of those ideas that has "cute" written all over it, and not in a good way. It also features what is supposed to be good-natured, natural bantering between the three, and it's truly squirm-worthy.

Soon enough comes the ending, also shot in two-strip Technicolor -- it's the movie's big hit song, "Singin' in the Rain," sung by the entire cast, in rain slickers, as they prepare to -- board Noah's Ark?

SEE Cliff Edwards in a rain hat! SEE Joan Crawford looking around for her camera! SEE Buster Keaton look like he wishes he was somewhere else!

SEE the complete credits for "The Hollywood Revue of 1929"!

 

Awkward Early Talkie Theatre: "Lights of New York"

(I'm reposting this entry because, as of January 1, movies produced in 1928 are now in the public domain. That includes this film, and I'm celebrating by posting it on youtube so you can follow along.)

The opening exchange of the 1928 film "Lights of New York," a conversation between two gangsters in a hotel room, goes something like this:

Gangster 1: The bootleg rap against us has been dropped -- and we can go back to the big town tomorrow.

(Long pause, during which Lindbergh flies the Atlantic)

Gangster 2: Great! And what are we gonna use for money when we get there? Our bootleg joint is empty and we need dough!

(Long pause, during which Alexander Fleming invents penicillin)

Gangster 1: I've been taking care of that! You know that barber downstairs? He looks like a cinch to me. And after the talks we've been having, he thinks that joint of ours is a regular barber shop and not a speakeasy!

Billed as the first 100% all-talking film, "Lights of New York" should also get credit as a 100% all-pausing film. There are large cushions of air between every line of dialogue, and sometimes between words. And to include exclamation points in the dialogue is kind of misleading -- it implies that the actors deliver lines with some sort of emotion, and for the most part they don't.

But it didn't really matter. The film's novelty assured its financial success -- it was the second-highest grossing movie of 1928, beaten only by Al Jolson's "The Singing Fool." Still, even contemporary reviewers were less than impressed. Wrote Variety:

"It's that kind of a sappy mixture, the kind that recalls the mellers [melodramas] of ... ages ago. ... In a year from now everyone concerned in 'Lights of New York' will run for the river before looking at it again. ... [S]till, this talker will have pulling power, and the Warners' should get credit for nerve even if they didn't do it with a polish."

"Lights of New York" is the story of two small-town barbers -- Eddie (Cullen Landis) and Gene (Eugene Pallette). They are plying their trade in a hotel run by Eddie's mother. But they have dreams -- dreams of being big-time barbers in the Big Apple! Shearing scalps in the city that never sleeps! Scraping their straight razors across the mugs of Babe Ruth! Herbert Hoover! Fanny Brice! Here they discuss it, at length:

As illustrated above, people don't just say their lines in this movie -- they recite them. There's a lot of standing and proclaiming, and a lot of hooking of thumbs into vests. And there's music -- always music. In movies like this, a soundtrack is something to fill up, and music incessantly plays on the soundtrack whether or not it has any relation to the action.

Anyway, Eddie and Gene get a loan from Eddie's kindly mother and they set out for the concrete canyons. Six months pass, and Gene and Eddie realize they've been had. "About the only thing I shave around here are labels off bottles," sez Gene. (In fact, these guys never have any customers in the small town or in the big city. Maybe they're just lousy barbers!)

Eddie has rekindled a relationship with Kitty (Helene Costello), a girl from his hometown who works at a nightclub run by the evil bootlegger Hawk Miller (Wheeler Oakman). In a scene set in what we're told is "Central Park," Eddie and Kitty bemoan their fates. This clip has a little bit of everything -- cheesy sets, a line flub, bad acting and deadly pauses:

Then we hie to the nightclub, where we meet owner Hawk Miller and his mistress, Molly . They've been together a long time, and Hawk is starting to ogle the chorus girls, particularly Kitty.

Molly (to Hawk): You're a hound for chickens, ain't ya? You might get indigestion from too much chicken.

(Long pause during which wood turns to coal)

Hawk: Well, if I will, it won't be from an old hen.  

Hawk has killed a cop in the process of transporting illegal hooch, and he plans to frame Eddie for the murder. But when he confronts Eddie at the barber shop, a shot is fired! And the Hawk is grounded in one of the clumsiest death scenes you'll ever see.

And just when you think things can't any worse, enter Det. Crosby (Robert Elliott), whose slow cadences make everyone else seem like they're on cocaine. Molly the mistress confesses to the killing of Hawk, and Crosby stretches ten words into what seems like ten minutes:

The film careers of the romantic leads, Cullen Landis and Helene Costello, were kaput by 1930. Gladys Brockwell, who actually acts a little as Molly, was killed in a 1929 car crash. The only folks whose careers survived "Lights of New York" were Pallette; the cop, Robert Elliott (who went on to play dozens of cops); and Tom Dugan, who played comic bits in dozens of movies and, during World War II, found himself playing Hitler or Hitler surrogates in movies such as "Star Spangled Rhythm" and "To Be or Not to Be."