Among many other adventurous explorations of the studio’s vast catalogue, the manufacture-on-demand Warner Archive Collection has been particularly active in making available on DVD so-called “pre-code” titles — those sex-and-innuendo drenched early talkies that the studios pumped out to entice Depression-era audience into theaters until rigorous enforcement of the Production Code beginning on July 1, 1934 brought an end to the fun. There are ten (!) more especially rare ones coming next month (see below), but first I want to review two old favorites that came out recently — “Hollywood Party” and “Fashions of 1934” — as well as one I’d never seen before, William Wellman’s notorious, eye-popping “Safe in Hell” (1934).
Safe in Hell (1931)
Cited as the pre-code to end all pre-codes in several books and documentaries in recent years, “Safe in Hell” doesn’t offer anything extraordinary in the way of skin or innuendo, but it’s chockablock with the kind of situations and characters that would be verboten on screen for nearly three decades commencing in mid-1934. Dorothy Mackaill, an undeservedly forgotten star of early talkies (her 1932 “Love Affair” with Humphrey Bogart also turned up on DVD this month from the TCM Vault Collection) plays a prostitute who flees New Orleans with the help of her boyfriend (Donald Cook) after killing a john (Ralf Harole). Or at least so she thinks.
The boyfriend takes her to a tawdry Carribean island without an extradition treaty with the U.S., where she checks into a hotel managed by Nina Mae McKinney with perhaps the biggest collection of sleazeballs I’ve ever seen in a movie — among them Gustav von Seyffertitz and John Wray. Vowing to remain faithful to the boyfriend who she “marries” in a minister-free ceremony, Mackaill holds them off — as well as the island’s even slimy jailer (Morgan Wallace), who eventually frames her for murder. Another of her twisted admirers (Charles Middleton), a disgraced lawyer, mounts an able defense, but Mackaill finally opts to confess and be executed rather than be turned over to the slimy jailer.
Under Wellman’s blunt direction, “Safe in Hell” makes the 1929 version of “The Letter” (released by WAC earlier this year) look like family entertainment by comparison. The acting is uniformly better than in many early Warner talkies of this era. The transfer has scratches and speckles, but looks better than I expected for a film that’s resided in the margins of film history for most of the past 80 years.
I’d not seen “Fashions of 1934” in its entirely since a mid-1970s showing at the old Theater 80 St. Marks in the East Village. Released in February 1934, this comedy is most famous for its sole musical number, a real doozy. Sammy Fain and Irving Kahal’s “Spin a Little Web of Dreams” inspired Busby Berkeley to some of his most outre work at Warners, involving chorines posing as human harps and “Venus and her galley slaves” (forming a 60-foot galleon) as well as showgirls wearing little but ostrich features.
This extended number, available for years on DVD as part of a Berkeley compilation disc, is finally available in the context of a highly entertaining movie that represents the sole teaming of William Powell and Bette Davis — under the capable direction of William Dieterle, normally a drama specialist who also helmed Powell in the Lubitch-like bauble “Jewel Thief” (1932), another title crying out for a WAC release.
Not for the first nor the last time, Powell plays a con man. This one starts out selling designs for new Paris fashions — surrepticiously sketched by Davis and/or photographed by Frank McHugh — to New York knockoff artists before graduating to a more elaborate scame. This one involves a former girlfriend from Hoboken who’s posing as a duchess (Veree Teasdale, who warbles the infectious “Web of Dreams”), her blustering fashion designer lover (Reginald Owen, whose French accent is even shakier than Teasdale’s Russian one), ostrich feathers belonging to the tipsy Hugh Herbert, and a musical revue where the Berkeley number turns up.
Davis was not fond of this movie, which sees her as glammed up as she ever got during her peroxide period — courtesy of her longtime collaborator, the Australian designer William Orry-Kelly, who also executed those barely-there ostrich feature creations. Davis may also have been irked because her character apparently isn’t getting any action in a movie where everyone else, including Frank McHugh and Hugh Herbert, clearly are.
“It’s a nightmare,” director William Beaudine, many years later, quoted himself as saying when he was shown a footage assemblage from “Hollywood Party,” an eventual expensive flop that finally limped brieflyu into theaters on June 1, 1934 — one month before the Production Code took effect. Producer Harry Rapf, who was shepherding perhaps MGM’s most troubled musical (four of other musicals were abandoned on orders of Irving Thalberg in the early ’30s) hired Beaudine to shoot a new ending in which this incoherent musical mismatch is revealed as a … a nightmare suffered by the film’s star, Jimmy Durante, who is playing “himself.”
Seven other directors — George Stevens, Edmund Goulding, Richard Boleslvasky, Sam Wood, Charles Reisner, Russell Mack and Roy Rowland — labored for months over what was originally called “The Hollywood Revue of 1933,” and envisoned as a followup to Rapf’s plotless all-star musical smash from 1929. The final result is only one of two MGM films from the classic era to emerge with a directorial credit (the other being the 1947 Greer Garson disaster “Desire Me”).
A like number of writers were involved, with only lyricist Howard Dietz (who was also head of MGM’s New York publicity office) and playwright Arthur Kober receiving credit. James Wong Howe gets sole credit as cinematographer, though you can bet others were involved.
The nonsensical plot opens with a trailer (following Garbo’s final shot from “Queen Christina”) showing Durante playing “Schnarzan,” who wants to keep a rival jungle hero (George Givot) from obtaining ferocious lions owned by “Baron Munchausen” (radio comedian Jack Pearl, who appeared with several cast members in “Meet the Baron,” another flop that was filmed and released while “Hollywood Party” was still in and out of production).
Durante throws a huge party, and though the names of Garble and Garbo are dropped in the opening number by Rogers and Hart the biggest stars who actually show up are Laurel and Hardy, on loan from the MGM-affiliated Hal Roach, who get top billing over Durante. Their two scenes were reportedly added as a box-office lure in post-production. The second one, which pits them against Lupe Velez in an egg-cracking competition, is the movie’s comic high point. The Three Stooges, accompanied by their obnoxious former vaudeville partner Ted Healy as they often were during their brief MGM period, also have an amusing sequence. Though Gable, Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow and Joan Crawford were originally announced, we only get a brief appearance by Robert Young.
More sustained comic contributions come from the martini-dry Charles Butterworth (as an oil millionaire) and Polly Moran (as Butterworth’s wife). The latter ends up getting seduced by Durante and reprising “I’ve Had My Moments,” a lovely Walter Donaldson-Gus Kahn ballad introduced earlier in the film by its highly forgettable juvenile leads, Eddie Quillan and June Clyde.
Also turning up is Mickey Mouse (voiced by Walt Disney), who trades imitates and trades insults with Durante before introducing a Technicolor cartoon, “Hot Choc-Lat Soldiers” which is song by none other than lyricst Arthur Freed (who would eventually move the MGM musical beyond the limitations of the tin-eared Rapf).
The musical grab-bag includes the suggestive “Feelin’ High” by Walter Donaldson and Howard Dietz, introduced by a mysteriously unbilled Shirley Ross and Harris Barris and accompanied by an elaborate Berkeley-style production number most likely staged by his imitator David Gould (Seymour Felix and George Hale also have dance “arranger” credits).
Rogers and Hart wrote something like 18 songs for what became “Hollywood Party,” but only two survived besides the innuendo-laden title song, performed by Frances Williams (best remembered, if at all, for introducing “As Time Goes By” in a 1930 Broadway show). “Reincarnation” is a bizarre novelty song delivered by Durante to a group of scientists, while “Hello” is a garguantuan production number introducing Baron Munchausen that seems to have been hugely influenced by numbers that Harry Ruby and Bert Kalmar composed for Groucho Marx in “Animal Crackers” (1930) and “Duck Soup” (1933). Unfortunately Pearl, who never appeared in another movie, was no Groucho Marx.
Besides Durante, Pearl and a sizeable contingent of scantily-clad chorines, the number employs African “natives” (at least some clearly in blackface) who sing about “Trader Horn” and “King Kong,” the latter also referenced in Pearl’s subsequent monologue.
A very welcome bonus in the Warner Archive release are surviving pre-recordings are three of the cut Rogers and Hart numbers, as well as alternate recordings of the title song by Ross and another singer. They reported wrote a number called “Prayer” for Jean Harlow, but while the lyrics exist it’s unclear whether she (or one of her voice doubles) ever recorded it before it was scrapped Hart wrote new lyrics for Rogers’ melody and it was introduced by Ross in “Manhattan Melodrama” as “The Bad in Every Man.” At the behest of MGM executives, Hart wrote another set of more commercial lyrics that finally turned it into a timeless classic — “Blue Moon.”
Today’s cornucopia of Warner Achive Collection releases include Edmund Goulding’s legendarily unavailable and terrific “The Constant Nymph” (1943) with an Oscar-nominated Joan Fontaine, Charles Boyer, Alexis Smith, Charles Coburn and Peter Lorre.
Also long anticipated is the DVD debut of King Vidor’s Technicolor adventure “Northwest Passage: Book 1– Rogers Rangers” (1940; Book 2 was never filmed) with Spencer Tracy, Robert Young and Walter Brennan. Also out today are a pair of other Tracy vehicles: Fred Zinneman’s “The Seventh Cross” (1944) with Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy; and John Sturges’ noirish “The People Against O’Hara” (1951) with Pat O’Brien and Diana Lynn.
In addition, two Jeanette MacDonald musical remakes in Technicolor: W.S. Van Dyke and Noel Coward’s “Bitter Sweet,” with Nelson Eddy and George Sanders and Frank Borzage’s “Smilin’ Through” (1942) co-starring Jeanette’s real-life hubby Gene Raymond. Plus a seven-film “Monogram Cowboy Collection” that collects four 1948-51 B westerns apiece starring Johnny Mack Brown and the singing Jimmy Wakely, as well as the slightly more ambitious Trucolor oater “Cavalry Scout” (1951) with Rod Cameron.
Also today, WAC has re-packaged five collections of films previously available as singles and as discounted “Value Paks” as proper box sets in cardboard sleeves at prices that work out to roughly $10 a title. There are five titles apiece starring Elizabeth Taylor and Randolph Scott, six with Lon Chaney (Sr.) and a pair of Tazan sets, one starring Lex Barker (five titles) and the other with Gordon Scott (six). Other previously available titles are being discounted for Black Friday sales that will apparently stretch into next week.
WAC has also taking a bunch of tantalizing pre-orders through mid-December, including Richard Brooks’ “The Brothers Karamazov” (1958) with Yul Brenner, Claire Bloom and William Shatner on Nov. 30.
Dec. 6 will bring WAC’s extremely welcome four-disc, eight-movie “Robert Montgomery Collection” containing the pre-code titles “Shipmates” (1931), “The Man in Posssession” (1931), “Faithless” (1932) with Tallulah Bankhead, “Lovers Courageous” (1932), “But the Flesh is Weak” (1932) and “Made on Broadway” (1933) as well as post-coders “Live, Love and Learn” (1937) with Rosalind Russell and “The Earl of Chicago” (1940) with Edward Arnold and Edmund Gwenn. Concurrently, WAC is releasing four made-for-TV biopics starring Montgomery’s daughter Elizabeth of “Bewitched” fame.
Up for Dec. 13 pre-orders at WAC are five double features of pre-code dramas and comedies made by Warner Bros.: “The Office Wife” (1930) with Dorothy Mackaill, Lewis Stone and Joan Blondell and “Party Husband” (1931) with Mackaill and Donald Cook; “Loose Ankles” (1930) with Loretta Young and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and “The Naughty Flirt” (1931) with Alice White and Myna Loy; “I’ve Got Your Number” (1934) with Blondell and Pat O’Brien and “Havana Widows” (1933) with Blondell and Glenda Farrell; “The Road to Paradise” (1930) with Loretta Young and Jack Mulhall and “Week-End Marriage” (1932) with Young and Norman Foster; and “The Right of Way” (1931) with Young and Conrad Nagel and “The Truth About Youth” (1930) with Young and Loy.
Also for Dec. 13, WAC is taking pre-orders on MGM literary dramas: Robert Siodmak’s “The Great Sinner” (1949), another Dostoyevski adaptation with Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner; George Cukor’s “Edward My Son” (1949) with Spencer Tracy and Deborah Kerr; Victor Saville’s A.J. Cronin adaptation “The Green Years” (1946) with Tom Drake and Charles Coburn; and Delmer Daves’ “Youngblood Hawke” (1964) starring James Franciscus and Suzanne Pleshette.
Olive Films is launching another wave of titles licensed from Paramount in the new year, beginning with three Jerry Lewis titles on Feb. 14 that will be available in Blu-ray as well as on DVD. They are Frank Tashlin’s “Rock-a-Bye Baby” (1958), a loose reworking of “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek”; Tashlin’s “The Geisha Boy” (also 1958) and the utterly atypical “Boeing Boeing” (1965) with Tony Curtis, derived from a vintage British farce recently revived on Broadway.
Olive’s Frank Tarzi tells me they’ll be be releasing 10 more Paramount titles apiece in March, April and May and more in June and July. Among the more tantalizing items on the partial list published at Classic Flix (no dates yet) are Leo McCarey’s anti-communist drama “My Son John” (1951) starring Helen Hayes and Robert Walker (his final performance), which Farran Nehme and I programmed for TCM’s “Shadows of Russia” series last year.
Also: Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Bucaneer” (1938 starring Frederic March as Jean Lafitte as well as the ill-fated, DeMille-produced 1958 remake with Yul Brenner directed by DeMille’s son-in-law, Anthony Quinn); George Stevens’ alcoholic drama “Something to Live For” (1952) with Joan Fontaine and Ray Milland; Mitchell Leisen’s superb noir “No Man of Her Own” (1950) with Barbara Stanwyck; and the William Dieterle newspaper noir “The Turning Point” (1952) starring William Holden and Edmond O’Brien.
Classic Flix (incidentally, the online place we know of that rents titles from the Warner Archive Collection and other MOD programs) also says Hen’s Tooth Video is offering the first authorized DVD release of a pair of excellent Dumas swashbucklers from Hollywood’s classic era in February: Rowland V. Lee’s “The Count of Monte Cristo” (1934) starring Robert Donat and James Whale’s “The Count of Monte Cristo” (1939) with Louis Hayward and Joan Bennett. Hopefully Hen’s Tooth has licensed “Red Salute” (1935) the rest of the pre-1948 Edward Small Productions catalogue, mysteriously unavailable on video since the VHS era.
In the world of Blu-ray upgrades, DVD Beaver is reporting that MGM and Fox will be bowing high-def versions of four Best Picture winners — Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rebecca” (1940), Billy Wilder’s “The Apartment” (1960), John Schlesinger’s “Midnight Cowboy” (1970) and Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” (1977) on Jan. 24, the day Oscar nominations come out. Also reportedly due that day are Blu-ray bows for “Spellbound” (1945) and “Notorious” (1946) — originally announced as part of a Hitchcock Blu-ray set this fall with “Rebecca” — as well as Allen’s “Manhattan” (1979).
And finally, The Criterion Collection will be offering a Blu-ray upgrade of Otto Preminger’s “Anatomy of a Murder” (1959) with James Stewart, Lee Remick and George C. Scott, on February 21. Features include newsreels shot on the set an excepts from a 1967 episode of William F. Buckley’s TV show “Firing Line” where he interviews Preminger.
It’s also worth noting that The Digital Bits is reporting that Universal will be issuing 100th anniversary editions of various catalogue titles on Blu-ray as well as DVD in 2012. Presumably this will include high-definition bows for their ’30s horror classics and some of their Hitchcock titles beyond “Psycho.” Universal will be joining Paramount, also founded in 1912, which after last week’s column confirmed my suspicion that January’s release of “Wings” is the beginning of a new centennial-oriented line.