3 reviews for the price of 1

Swedish poster for Design for Living (transl: "Between us Gentlemen"), and two Italian posters for Dark Victory (same transl.) and The Old Maid (transl: "The Great Love").

I still have a cold (probably the swine flu, I really shouldn't socialize with all those strange men down at the docks), so there have been some film viewing.

When I had seen three really great films in a row, I felt it hard to decide which one to write about - so I thought I would try to make short reviews of all of them instead. Summarizing the plots in a few lines, and focusing on what I liked/disliked about them. And lots of pictures. Sound any good? I'll do it anyway.

The films: Design for Living (1933), Dark Victory (1939) and The Old Maid (1939).

Frequently used ingredients: Bette Davis, Miriam Hopkins, George Brent, Edmund Goulding and socially awkward situations.

Spanish film poster (transl: "A Woman for Two").

Design for Living

Director: Ernst Lubitsch

USA 1933

91 min

Starring: Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins, Gary Cooper, Edward Everett Horton and Isabel Jewell, among others.

See it on YouTube here.

Gilda (Hopkins) meets two young artists on a train in Paris: painter George (Cooper) and playwright Tom (March). Complications arises when both men fall in love with her, while she keeps up a liaison with both of them. She admits that she can't choose between them, so they make a gentleman's agreement: They will all three live under the same roof, but no sex can occur.

The ménage à trois seems to work, and Gilda becomes their artistic muse. But when Tom goes away to London to work on his successful play, Gilda and George are left alone with their frustrations. Around this time, Gilda proclaims that "It's true we had a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately, I am no gentleman.", and the carousel of relations suddenly spins at top gear, making all the contestants feel sick and confused, but no less a-mused.

What I like about Design for Living:

• The amazing actors and actresses, down to the bit parts. E. E. Horton is a comical genius playing the old friend of Gilda's, Max Plunkett, who only deeply cares about his social position. His stenographer is played by pretty Isabel Jewell, an actress that worked in a lot of great pictures (including Gone With the Wind. 1939), but seldom had any meaty parts. She is highlighted in Kate Gabrielle's Silents and Talkies [post] and Mark Clark's Film Noir Photos [post] blogs.
• Miriam Hopkins. When I first saw her in a film, I thought I would hate her. I always adored Bette Davis, and they are known to be each other's nemesises. But I can't avoid it - I like Hopkins. Her accent and voice is so charming, and she is a darn good actress with a lot of charisma.
• Tom's silly play. Hilarious.
• George's seriously good paintings. (I really want to believe that Cooper painted them in real life.)
• Two strikingly good-looking men in the leading parts. I understand Gilda's problem - I would have had trouble choosing too. I love their drinking scene, obstinately trying to find something to drink for every time they raise their glasses (which is frequently).
  
• "The Lubitsch Touch". Such a great picture! Probably impossible to get bored by, no matter how many re-runs of it you participate in.

What I don't like about Design for Living:

• Ehm... nothing? That I haven't seen enough of it, perhaps.

Italian film poster (transl: "Sunset).

Dark Victory

Director: Edmund Goulding

USA 1939

104 min

Starring: Bette Davis, George Brent, Humphrey Bogart, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Ronald Reagan, among others.

See it on YouTube here.

A spoiled 23 year old heiress, Judith (Davis), is faced with the fact that she is dying of a brain tumour. When Judith falls in love with her brain surgeon, she is afraid that he proposes to her out of pity.

Since we know from the beginning that Judith sooner or later has to die, the film focuses on the environment's inconvenient feelings toward the tragedy and how Judith tries to make the best out of the time she has left, rather than focusing on the question "Will they find a cure?" or "Will she really die?". A brilliant plot direction.

What I like about Dark Victory:

• A brilliant script, that doesn't chicken out with an un-realistic happy ending, as post-codes tend to do.
• Bette Davis in her probably best role. I can't see any other actress do the part of Judith as perfectly as Davis. Those big eyes of her hold a lot of emotions.
• Ronald Reagan. I mean, seriously. How mant other countried than the USA could make a presidant out of a, perhaps only decent, actor?
• Well, the rest of the amazing cast. George Brent is really growing on me as an actor (hadn't any opinion of him just a few months ago), and Geraldine Fitzgerald is amazing as the heartbroken best friend of Judith's.
• The ending. So sad, beautiful and artistic.

What I don't like about Dark Victory:

• How could Warner Bros do this to Humphrey Bogart? He is just so wrong as the Irish stableboy. His accent is embarrassing, and his part has really no great purpose in the film.

The Old Maid

Director: Edmund Goulding

USA 1939

95 min

Starring: Bette Davis, Miriam Hopkins, Donald Crisp, George Brent and Jane Bryan, among others.

See it on YouTube here.

A costume "woman drama" set in the days during and after the Civil War. Delia (Hopkins) is just about to be married when her previous fiancé Clem (Brent) comes home from the war. Delia breaks her engagement to him and goes on with the marriage, but her cousin and friend Charlotte (Davis) has feelings for Clem and spend time with him before he goes to war again. He is later killed in the war, and the next thing we know Charlotte runs an orphanage for children who lost their fathers in the war. Among those children are her and Clem's love child, Clementina, who for security purposes is adopted by Celia and raised as her own.

Charlotte moves in with Delia and her family and grows into an old maid, while her daughter Clementina only knows her as the stubborn, unsympathetic "aunt Charlotte".

What I like about The Old Maid:

• Donald Crisp. It feels almost surreal to watch him as a kind, child-loving doctor in this film, the day after I saw him as the tyrannic father in Broken Blossoms (see previous post)!
• Davis' and Hopkin's chemistry. They may not have likes each other in real life, but every scene they have together is almost magical. Perhaps the tension between them did it. Whatever the reason may be, we always feel the unsolved problems and unverbalized thoughts hanging in the air between them.
• Miriam Hopkins, again. She is a really great actress. I read that she was very difficult to work with, but you can't blame an artist for being eccentric, can you? Anyway, Hopkins is, like George Brent, growing on me big time.
• My Darling Clementine. The tunes of the song is played when Charlotte and Clementina have a scene together, and it's so heart tearing. Charlotte really loves her daughter, while Clementina never aknowledges her, except for complaining and yelling. (Nothing wrong with Jane Bryan, but the character is a horrible, spoiled brat.)
• Charlotte by the fire. When Charlotte practices her speach to Clementina when she comes home from the ball. At first she is the loving mother, then at an instant she changes into the strict aunt. An obvious proof of Davis' acting qualities.
• The final scene.

What I don't like about The Old Maid:

• George Brent dies. Okay, his characters can die, but not 20 minutes into the film! That was just brutal.
• Yes, the Clementina character. I want to hit her.

Ladies' Man (1931)

Ladies' Man

Director: Lothar Mendes

USA 1931

75 min

Ladies' Man is an early talkie starring Hollywood's truest ladies' man: William Powell.

Powell plays a charming society gigolo with the unlikely name of Jamie Darricott, who makes his living by charming rich dames with husbands too busy making money (that their wives spend) to have time for them. Darricott takes the women out, charms them, gets expensive gifts he can sell and thereby can pay the rent of his luxurous bachelor apartment.

Waterproof way to make a living without boring oneself with a job.

We enter the story when Darricott charms a rich banker's wife, Mrs. Fendley (Olive Tell). He soon advances to her daughter, Rachel (played by a very Lombardy Carole Lombard), all to the growing anger of the son Anthony (Martin Burton), and the naïve and totally unknowing father Horace (Gilbert Emery).

Little does Darricott know (or any of his mistresses neither, for that matter) that he is about to meet his true love, in form of a sweet society girl, Norma Page (Kay Francis).

This might sound like a movie that isn't awefully unique (the ignorant bachelor using women, and then falls in love for real) - but the film makes it interesting by giving Darricott an unusually dark persona, someone who knows that he is going to fall and that it's just a matter of time. And Powell gives a great performance as such.

The film also gets an innovative twist in the otherwise overused plot, when the father realizes how much Darricott has interfered with his family in his absence and ignorance (of course just in time when Darricott no longer has any interest in the Fendley women, and would be concidered harmless).

The absence of a cliché happy resolution leaves a remarkable impression on the viewer when the film is over.

William Powell (handsome as ever), Carole Lombard and Martin Burton.

If I should complain about anything, I can give you two examples. The first isn't really something negative about the film itself, but rather the lack of using Kay Francis to something useful. She really shouldn't have to play the boring "good girl" - to me she will always suit best as the femme fatale.

Lombard, however, is wonderful. A favourite scene is when she gets extremely drunk and embarass herself in front of Darricott and Norma.

The other complaint is the quality of the film. It does not seem to have been restored (what my shallow Google search could find, at least), and the version I got my hands on was crappy as hell. There so much noise that it seems like a train passes by in every scene. The cutting was sometimes really weird - a scene ended, the screen went black, and then a short clip from the previous scene was shown again - without sound. That happened at least three times.

The picture quality is nothing to cheer about neither, but it was okay.

I'd love to see this film being properly restored. It's one of the best performances by William Powell I've had the delight to see. (But he is never especially bad, is he? Has he ever been even mediocre?)

Anyway - see it if you have the chance. And report to me if it's just my edition of the film that had a shitty quality.

Trivia: The film premiered on May 9, 1931. On June 26, William Powell and Carole Lombard got married, a marriage that would last for only 23 months. They did, however, remain close friends.

Powell - The Ladies' Man of Paramount.

3 x Shearer and Montgomery

It was Friday 17th of July, 2009.

Lolita was very eager to get a hold of some friend to take a cup of coffee with her. Seven bitter phone calls later, she had to give up and realize that she obviously didn't have enough friends - they either had other plans or were ill. How incredibly selfish of them. (Lolita really should get a job.)

She did however always find a solution for a problem like that. Rather than getting out in the real life and doing something important, she could always hang out with her friends from the silver screen.
So she sat down and watched three films in a row. And they had something important in common - they were all pre-code Norma Shearer and Robert Montgomery vehicles. Great ones, too.

And to leave that silly third person story telling, I must say - Shearer and Montgomery might be among the most lovable on-screen couples in motion picture history. They sparkle.

So, here's a little summary of of the films I watched that awful day when I didn't have any friends to play with me.

Their Own Desire

Director: E. Mason Hopper

USA 1929

65 min

Lally (Shearer) is a wealthy girl, living a happy life playing polo and joking around with her father Henry (Lewis Stone). But the idyllic life is soon smashed to pieces when Lally's father after 23 years of marriage divorces her mother Harriet (Belle Bennett) to start a-new with a younger woman, Beth Cheever (Helene Millard), who also leaves her current husband.

Harriet is devastated, and Mandy turns against her father and his new woman. Bitter on all men on Earth, she and her mother go on a vacation. There she, of course, meets a charming young man; Jack (Montgomery), and falls in love. Things get more complicated when Lally realizes that the man she is wooing is none other than the son of Mrs. Cheever.

Their Own Desire is surprisingly fluent in its story-telling, considering that it is a pretty early talkie, and that those often tend to be a bit clumsy. The first scene with Shearer and Montgomery is fantastic - he sees her at a swimming pool, about to dive in. When she does, he goes after her (clothes on and all), and surprises her with a kiss in an under-water shot. Really beautiful. And, as would for any real woman, it works.

Strangers May Kiss

Director: George Fitzmaurice

USA 1931

81 min

Our leading lady Norma Shearer plays Lisbeth Corbin - a modern woman who doesn't feel the necessity to get married to her lover, Alan (Neil Hamilton). Or is it just he who doesn't want to get married? At least that's what Lisbeth's friend and family thinks (among them Irene Rich and Marjorie Rambeau) and warn her about.

Despite having the wonderfully charming Steve (Montgomery) volunteering to marry her, Lisbeth decides to follow her love interest to Mexico. While there, Alan confesses that he actually has a wife in Paris, making Lisbeth realize that she probably doesn't mean more to him than being another mistress. Heartbroken she decides to go to Europe and exploring the loose single life that all men obviously know about - being single or not.

Steve catches up with a Lisbeth surrounded by Spanish admirers. He quickly learns that Lisbeth hasn't wasted any time at her travels.

Steve: Ooh, what I heard about you in Paris, ooh...

Lisbeth: And of course, like a true knight, you refused to believe it.

Steve: Well, the first six or seven hundred times I did.

Lisbeth clearly enjoys the fruits of life ("I'm in an orgy, wallowing. And I love it!"), but as soon as she receives a telegram from her dear Alan - telling her that he's getting a divorce and wants to marry her - she lets go of everything and travels to Paris to meet him. Unfortunately, her reputation gets to Alan first, and he isn't that interested in having her for a wife anymore. For the second time in a row, she fails in getting the man she wants.

"Now, let dear Steve comfort you!", the naïve public hopefully thinks. Oh no - he's a gentleman. He leans back as problems get solved between his love interest and Alan-the-pig. There's always a champagne bottle to keep him company.

There were more sexual tension between Shearer and Montgomery in The Divorcee (review here), in their of-three-silent-clips-consisting-scene they shared in that one, than in this entire film. It feels like they should have switched Hamilton's and Montgomery's parts.

But it's a great film, and Shearer is that typical pre-code woman she always should have been able to play all through her career.

Private Lives

Director: Sidney Franklin

USA 1931

84 min

My favourite of this bunch. It starts off with cutting between two weddings - Elyot (Montgomery) being married to Sibyl (Una Merkel), and Victor (Reginald Denny) to Mandy (Shearer). We see the couples happily going away on their honeymoons, and soon we understand that Elyot and Mandy have been married to each other, due to their new inquisitive partners.

And it isn't finished there - the two newlywed couples happen to spend their honeymoons at the same hotel - door to door! It is of course only a matter of time before Mandy and Elyot bump into each other.

This is an insane comedy/drama, based on a play by Noël Coward. The snappy, insinuating dialogue and the blabbering of the characters who constantly interrupt each other remind me of the screwball comedies of the 1940's. I can however never decide whether Una Merkel's character is cute and neurotic or just insanely annoying. But the fighting scene with Shearer and Montgomery is hilarious - and I read at IMDb that Montgomery (unintentionally) was knocked unconcious while filming that scene! No wonder - it looks really hectic and temperamental to me.

In short - Private Lives is a wonderful and entertaining movie with Shearer and Montgomery at their absolute best. If you haven't seen it yet - DO IT.

Shearer and Montgomery in Their Own Desire.

Shearer and Montgomery in Strangers May Kiss.

Shearer and Montgomery in Private Lives.

Symphony of Six Million

Symphony of Six Million

Director: Gregory La Cava

USA 1932

94 min

A City --

Six million human hearts -

Each with a dream --

a hope -- a goal ---

Each soul a vagrant

melody in the eternal

Symphony of Life!

Well, you wouldn't be surprised by a laugh from a modern audience at that intro - but it actually sums up the spirit of this film pretty good.

A lovely pre-code melodrama, about a poor and loud Jewish family living in the ghetto. It doesn't take too many minutes into the film until you realize that one of the three children, Felix Klauber, has high ambitions - he wants to be a doctor. His best friend is Jessica, another poor ghetto child with a spine problem, Jessica.

Felix and Jessica being bullied by some tough guys.

Felix reads a book while playing chess with his temperamental father.

We jump ahead a few years. Felix (Ricardo Cortez) is now a beloved doctor in the ghetto, and Jessica (Irene Dunne) is a school teacher for blind children - all the while limping around because of her spine defect. Felix seems to enjoy his life and get energy for helping those in need, but his brat brother Magnus has some other plans for his talented brother. Magnus manipulates their mother to convince Felix that she doesn't enjoy her life, and that she wishes for him to get a doctor's practice in the fancier part of the town so the family can move. Said and done (who wouldn't do anything for their mother?).

Still best friends, Felix visits Jessica and the blind children every once in a while.

"Oh, Felix, I don't like it here..." That spineless woman!

We take another leap in time. Felix now has a fancy office uptown, and financially supports his whole family. He is too busy with appointments with frustrated high society women who wants to be examined by their handsome, young doctor, that he nearly looses all contact with his family - and Jessica. When he misses an operation on one of Jessica's blind boy students, and he sadly looses his life, Jessica gives him an eye-opener to get nightmares about. What has happened to Felix? What happened to his strong will and moral? Is he happy with his life, even if it includes a lot of money and social status?

A sick boy, waiting for his favorite doctor - Felix Klauber.

Who wouldn't go to the doctor more often if he looked like Ricardo Cortez?

When he finally realizes that he wants to spend more time with his family, he gets to them just in time for his father to get a brain tumour. And who does his family think is the most suitable person to operate him, if not Felix.

It is no surprise that the director behind this enthrilling film is Gregory La Cava, directing My Man Godfrey (1936) four years later. The whole film is very beautiful and engaging - I especially admire the operating scene where Felix is forced to perform brain surgery on his own father. The music grows more and more intense, until it abruptly stops dead when Felix grabs the first operating instrument. It almost feels mean - in an important and intense scene like that, a little musical distraction would help to tell the film apart from real life - but oh, no. This is serious stuff, and you're supposed to feel it.

Behind the camera is cinematographer Leo Tover, also responsible for the photography work of two other films I've reviewed - Thirteen Women (1932) and I'm No Angel (1933).

As Felix grabs the scalpel, the merciless silence falls upon us.

Felix Klauber - not so popular in the ghetto anymore.

A great example of the beautiful photo by Leo Tover.

One more thing. Before seeing this film, I had only encountered Cortez in sleezy bad guy parts (something he is exceptionally good at), so I had some worries that he wouldn't be able to put off a serious dramatic role. But was I wrong? Oh, yes.
More Cortez for the people!

Grand Hotel (1932) + Extras

Grand Hotel

Director: Edmund Goulding

USA 1932

112 min

I just re-watched this pre-code masterpiece as the sky opens and releases an Atlantic Ocean outside. A not too inconvenient experience - especially when I'm accompanied by the newly purchased Mick Lasalle book "Complicated Women - Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood" on my cigarette breaks.

So anyway. Besides having five of MGM's greatest stars in the leads, having an ingenious script by William A. Drake (original novel by Vicki Baum), Grand Hotel also offers a feast for the eye by the enchanting cinematography of William H. Daniels (having photographed other Garbo vehicles such as Anna Christie, Mata Hari, Queen Christina, Anna Karenina and Camille).

Scene: The Baron's (John Barrymore) first encounter with Flaemmchen (Joan Crawford) is a perfect example of the magnificent camera work in Grand Hotel. Look how she constantly blows smoke in the Baron's face - not too respectable!

I won't go into the plot too much, for two reasons, being; just a few words about it wouldn't do it justice, and you don't need to know more than that Grand Hotel is a witty drama taking place in (what else?) the fancy Grand Hotel.

Hollywood veteran Lewis Stone, as doctor Otternschlag, couldn't be more wrong (and yet strangely accurate...) when he as both an introduction and a final statement to the film states:

"Grand Hotel... always the same. People come, people go. Nothing ever happens."

And I must say that I am quite impressed by the extra material on the Warner Bros DVD edition of the film. Aside from a short documentary on the film, there are amazing film documents from the Grauman's Chinese Theatre premiere of Grand Hotel - with Conrad Nagel responsible for all the movie stars checking in at the film theatre!

And there aren't quite a few of the stars, neither. Aside from Crawford (with husband Douglas Fairbanks Jr), Lionel Barrymore and Wallace Beery from the cast, "Mr. and Mrs. Irving Thalberg" appear, in the company of Clark Gable. Also Jean Harlow, who states that she can't write with gloves on, handsome Robert Montgomery and the film industry mogul Louis B. Mayer, among others.

Well, what's the use of me telling you about it? Take a look for yourself here:

Another funny special feature is the 18 minute long Grand Hotel parody Nothing Ever Happens (1933), which is as hilarious as it seems hallucinogen inspired. Witty spoken songs mashed with Busby Berkeley girls, who simultaneously throw their legs in the air whether they are at the hotel desk or the busy kitchen.

The actors are no famous, and most of them only made about three or four pictures in total, but that only adds to the refinement of the famous actor/actress mockery. Greta Garbo's ballerina Grusinskaya is simply called "Madam", and the baron is simply "The Baron", while the other characters are wittingly re-named as Scramchen (Flaemmchen), Prizering (Beery's Preysing), and my favourite; Waistline (Lionel's Kringelein).

In short, it's a comical little gem! And have I been so nice as to let you watch it? Of course! It's totally bizarre:

Quotes

Grusinskaya: I want to be alone. I think I have never been so tired in my life.

Otto Kringelein: Wait! You can't discharge me. I am my own master for the first time in my life. You can't discharge me. I'm sick. I'm going to die, you understand? I'm going to die, and nobady can do anything to me anymore. Nothing can happen to me anymore. Before I can be discharged, I'll be dead!

Dr. Otternschlag: Believe me, Mr. Kringelein, a man who is not with a woman is a dead man.

Preysing: I don't know much about women. I've been married for 28 years, you know.

Grusinskaya: I don't even know your name.
Baron Felix von Geigern: [laughs] I am Felix Benvenuto Freihern von Geigern. My mother called me "Flix".
Grusinskaya: [joyously] No! Flix! Oh, that's sweet. And how do you live? And what kind of a person are you?
Baron Felix von Geigern: I'm a prodigal son, the black sheep of a white flock. I shall die on the gallows.

Time to let you enjoy some colorized work of mine - I've been a little cheap on them lately!

I'm No Angel (1933)

I'm No Angel

Director: Wesley Ruggles

USA 1933

87 min

Yes, I'm quite into pre-code right now. So blame me.

It's time for another Mae West-written 1933 comedy starring herself and Cary Grant - and this time an even better one than She Done Him Wrong! At least in my opinion.

West plays Tira, a seducing circus performer swaying her hips "north, south, east and west" (don't know about that, but her body language sure oozes sex). Behind the stage her favourite waste of time is finding rich men and using them. In one of the first scenes she even gives an unforgettable advice to a young friend of hers:

Always remember, honey. A good motto is: "Take all you can get and give as little as possible". Don't forget, honey. Never let one man worry your mind. Find 'em, fool 'em and forget 'em!

That is a dangerous lady! And of course, the Hays office had a lot to say about this one. For instance they had to change the title of a song from "Nobody Does It Like A Dallas Man" to "Nobody Loves Me Like A Dallas Man". But grieve not - there are so many obvious sex insinuation in this film that you loose the count after only a couple of minutes.

Cary Grant appears as a rich, genuine man named Jack Clayton, who manages to grab Tira's heart for real. But of course, there are many men from Tira's past that want to stand in the way of her romance - not to mention the head of the circus, who doesn't want to loose his main attraction to something as trivial as marriage. They manage to frame both Tira and Clayton, leading to a misunderstanding that cancel their marriage plans. What follows is one of the most entertaining courtroom scenes I've ever seen in a comedy, full of snappy dialogue and wise cracks.

Trailer:

How could one not love this meaty, seductive female version of Groucho Marx? I recently read an (unintentionally) amusing blog post from som crappy blogger, accusing Mae West of not writing her own screenplays. Why? "Mae West was illiterate, and told other people what to write down, and then she took the credit for their work."

Aaallright... So if Dostoevsky had read Crime and Punishment aloud for me, and I had written it down - would I be the author of that masterpiece? Oh, it would have made me so sore if he took the credit for my work, then. Fucking idiot.

I've also read that many hate West's singing voice. Why? It's got swing in it, power and character. The last two films I've seen with her, I've never been bored with one musical number. I like it!

Tira and her monkey. "Beulah, peel me a grape."

Anyway, I have fallen for Mae West. And the fact that she's rather cram herself into those nasty corsets than loosing weight, becoming a sex goddess woth that healthy figure, and continuing seducing men, much younger than she, on-screen well into her 80's. She was 85 when she seduces a 34 year old Timothy Dalton in the, apparantly very bad, film Sextette (1978). By then, she was known as "The Queen of Camp". Now, isn't that something? She really loves herself, and that's what's so admiring. At least when it's well-deserved.

Okay, so any favourite scenes of mine from this film? The whole picture is pure delight (I gave it a 9 out of ten on IMDb), but some comical tops are:

• Clayton's first visit at Tira's apartment, when he awkwardly tries to say goodbye to her, just as he understands that she wouldn't mind him staying a bit longer. Those seconds of ambivalence are just hilarious.
• All scenes with the three black maidens. Sure, they're stereotypical black women, but that's what makes it so great. They really love their employer, giggling every time she receives another phone call from a man, or a knock on the door. The dialogue between them and West is top notch.

  "I always thought of you as a one man woman!"

  "Yeah, sure... One man at a time."

• Clayton, when he can't help laughing at Tira's wise cracks in the courtroom scene. He can't help it, he adores her.
• The short Nat Pendleton appearance, as Harry the acrobat, one of Tira's many admirers. Seriously, WAS he in every 1930's movie there was? I don't mind it though, he's an underestimated supporting actor. Always looking like he has more muscles than brains.

Quotes:

Jack Clayton: You were wonderful tonight.

Tira: Yeah, I'm always wonderful at night.

Jack Clayton: Tonight, you were especially good.

Tira: Well... When I'm good, I'm very good. But, when I'm bad...

[winks at Jack]

Tira: I'm better.

Tira: What do you do for a living?

Ernest Brown: Oh, uh, sort of a politician.

Tira: I don't like work either.

Rajah the Fortune Teller: I see a man in your life.

Tira: What? Only one?

Jack Clayton: Oh I'm crazy about you.

Tira: I did my best to make you that way.

Jack Clayton: Look darling, you need a rest, and so do I. Let me take you away somewhere, we'll...

Tira: Would you call that a rest?

Jack Clayton: What are you thinking about?

Tira: Same thing you are.

She Done Him Wrong (1933)

"When women go wrong, men go right after them."

Lady Lou in She Done Him Wrong

She Done Him Wrong

Director: Lowell Sherman

USA 1933

66 min

Here it is - one of the major reasons of the "necessity" of The National Legion of Decency, and Mae West's breakthrough performance. Set in the 1890's, the film has a typical setting for the Depression era audience who wanted to get far, far away from the harsh reality.

Mae West appears as the diamond draped nightclub owner Lady Lou. Wiggling her hips in inhuman corsets and tight dresses (that West apparantly often had to be sewn into), she seduces every man in sight and keep up illegal business with her nightclub partners. With one fiancée in jail, another on the ground floor of the nightclub (Wallace Beery's brother Noah Beery) and a lover on his way up to her room, Lou lays her eyes on a handsome mission director, Captain Cummings (a young Cary Grant). Within a short period of time, the plot ends up including a jealous jail-breaking fiancé, white slavery, murder and a lot of witty dialogue with a heck of a lot of double entendres delivered by West.

This film sure succeeds in cramming in a lot of plot, dialogue and great musical numbers in only just over an hour! You don't have time to get bored with anything; you can only lay back, relax and enjoy.

And don't forget: Mae West was 40 years old when making this film (just a year after her motion picture debut), while Cary Grant was only 29. An admirable woman, indeed!

Gilbert Roland as Serge, Mae West and Rafaela Ottiano as Russian Rita. Both West and Ottiano repeat their stage roles in this film version of the play.

She Done Him Wrong is based on Mae West's successful stage play "Diamond Lil". Even if this was one of the last films that managed to escape the scissors of Joseph Breen and company, a lot of the sexual references and double entendres were cut out when re-writing the script for film. (There was a reason for Mae West to be on trial for obscenity in 1927, right?)

Mae West on trial for obscenity for her burlesque Broadway Show "Sex", 1927.

What worries me though is that I might have gotten my hands on a cut copy of this film on DVD. Everywhere I look it's supposed to be 66 minutes long, but my copy was only 62 minutes. Have I missed out on any West/Grant bathing scene or something? I didn't hear the famous line:

"Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?"

Was that cencored perhaps? According to IMDb this is the film where it's supposed to be in. Damn it. If that's the case, I will sue the DVD store I bought the Mae West box in!

Anyway - a great film I'm guaranteed to see over and over again. Some quotes from the wonderful Mae West-written dialogue:

Quotes:

Serge Stanieff: I am delighted. I've heard so much about you.

Lady Lou: Yeah, but you can't prove it.

Lady Lou: Why don't you come up some time and see me?

Captain Cummings: Surely you don't object to my holding your hand?

Lady Lou: It ain't heavy - I can hold it.

Captain Cummings: Haven't you ever met a man who could make you happy?

Lady Lou: Sure, lots of times.