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Four Feathers, The (1929)

June 23, 2017 Film Dialogue Leave a comment

Pre Code Hollywood Season: FD Cinematheque

The Four Feathers (1929)

Directors: Merian C Cooper, Ernest B Shoedsack

Cast: Richard Arlen, Fay Wray, Clive Brook, William Powell, Theodore von Eltz, Noah Beery Sr., Zack Williams, Noble Johnson, Phillippe De Lacy, Harold Hightower, Rex Ingram

81 min

The Four Feathers is a 1929 American war film directed by Merian C. Cooper and starring Fay Wray.^[1] The picture has the distinction of being one of the last major Hollywood pictures of the silent era.

It was also released by Paramount Pictures in a version with a Movietone soundtrack with music and sound effects only.^[2] The film is the third of numerous film versions of the 1902 novel The Four Feathers written by A. E. W. Mason, and the cast features Richard Arlen, Clive Brook, William Powell and Noah Beery, Sr.

Cast

Richard Arlen as Lt. Harry Faversham
Fay Wray as Ethne Eustace
Clive Brook as Lt. Jack Durrance
William Powell as Capt. William Trench
Theodore von Eltz as Lt. Castleton
Noah Beery, Sr. as Slave Trader
Zack Williams as Idris
Noble Johnson as Ahmed
Philippe De Lacy as Harry, age 10
E. J. Ratcliffe as Col. Eustace
George Fawcett as Col. Faversham

Accolades

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

2006: AFI’s 100 Years…100 Cheers – Nominated^[3]

References

Jump up^ Hall, Mordaunt. “New York Times: The Four Feathers”. NY Times. Retrieved July 22, 2008.
Jump up^ IMDB entry
Jump up^ “AFI’s 100 Years…100 Cheers Nominees” (PDF). Retrieved August 14, 2016

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Benson Murder Case, The (1930)

June 23, 2017 Film Dialogue Leave a comment

Pre Code Hollywood Season: FD Cinematheque

The Benson Murder Case (1930)

Director: Frank Tuttle

Cast: William Powell, William Stage Boyd, Eugene Pallette, Paul Lukas, Natalie Moorhead, Richard Tucker, May Beatty, E H Calvert, Mischa Auer, Guy Oliver

65 min

The Benson Murder Case is the first novel in the Philo Vance series of mystery novels by S. S. Van Dine, which became a best-seller.

Plot outline

New York dilettante Philo Vance decides to assist the police in investigating the death of another man-about-town because he finds the psychological aspects of the crime of interest, and feels that they would be beyond the capacities of the police, even those of his friend District Attorney Markham.

Vance investigates the circumstances under which the body was found and reconstructs the crime sufficiently to determine that the murderer is five feet, ten and a half inches in height. Together, Vance and Markham investigate Benson’s business associates and romantic interests until Vance manages to pierce the murderer’s alibi for the time of the murder and force a confession.

Literary significance and criticism

The novel was very loosely based upon a real-life case that had made headlines, the unsolved 1920 murder of bridge expert Joseph Bowne Elwell.

It was considered a roman à clef because the circumstances under which Elwell’s body was found—he was shot to death in a room in his home which was found to be locked from the inside, and he was not wearing his toupee—are duplicated in the novel. Modern knowledge of ballistics reveals that one of the central premises of the novel is fanciful, because the reconstruction of the height of the murderer is impossible (Dashiell Hammett had said as much at the time, in a 1927 book review).

“The first and best, partly because Van Dine had the real-life model of the Joseph Elwell murder (1920) to hold his fancy in check.”^[1]

“Vance spots the murderer almost immediately but doesn’t reveal him, allowing Markham and Sergeant Heath to fix the guilt on five successive persons by circumstantial evidence.”^[2]

Film adaptations

Paramount Pictures released The Benson Murder Case (1930) a film version directed by Frank Tuttle and starring William Powell as Philo Vance. The film was moderately faithful to the plot of the novel. Paramount also released a Spanish-language version, El Cuerpo del Delito, written by Catalan writer Josep Carner Ribalta (1898–1988), and co-directed by Cyril Gardner and A. Washington Pezet.

References

Jump up^ Barzun, Jacques and Taylor, Wendell Hertig. A Catalogue of Crime. New York: Harper & Row. 1971, revised and enlarged edition 1989. ISBN 0-06-015796-8
Jump up^ Roseman, Mill et al.. Detectionary. New York: Overlook Press, 1971. ISBN 0-87951-041-2

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Paramount on Parade (1930)

June 23, 2017 Film Dialogue Leave a comment

Pre Code Hollywood Season: FD Cinematheque

Paramount on Parade (1930)

Directors: Dorothy Arzner, Otto Brower, Edmund Goulding, Victor Heerman, Edwin H Knopf, Rowland V Lee, Ernst Lubitsch, Lothar Mendes, Victor Schertzinger, A Edward Sutherland, Frank Tuttle

Cast: Maurice Chevalier, Richard Arlen, Jean Arthur, William Austin, George Bancroft, Clara Bow, Evelyn Brent, Mary Brian, Clive Brook, Nancy Carroll, Kay Francis, Richard Skeets Gallagher, Gary Cooper, Ruth Chatterton, Mitzi Green, Fredric March and many others

102 min

Paramount on Parade is a 1930 all-star American Pre-Code revue released by Paramount Pictures, directed by several directors including Edmund Goulding, Dorothy Arzner, Ernst Lubitsch, Rowland V. Lee, A. Edward Sutherland, Lothar Mendes, Otto Brower, Edwin H. Knopf, Frank Tuttle, and Victor Schertzinger—all supervised by the production supervisor, singer, actress, and songwriter Elsie Janis.

Featured stars included Jean Arthur, Richard Arlen, Clara Bow, Evelyn Brent, Buddy Rogers, Jack Oakie, Helen Kane, Maurice Chevalier, Nancy Carroll, George Bancroft, Kay Francis, Richard “Skeets” Gallagher, Gary Cooper, Fay Wray, Lillian Roth and other Paramount stars. The screenplay was written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, produced by Adolph Zukor and Jesse L. Lasky, with cinematography by Victor Milner and Harry Fischbeck.

Production

Paramount on Parade, released on April 22, 1930, was Paramount’s answer to all-star revues like Hollywood Revue of 1929 from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, The Show of Shows from Warner Brothers, and King of Jazz from Universal Studios.^[1]^[2] The film had 20 individual segments—several of them in two-color Technicolor — directed by 11 directors, and almost every star on the Paramount roster except Claudette Colbert and the Marx Brothers. (Colbert became a star in May 1930 with the release of The Big Pond, also with Chevalier and also released in a French-language version.)

International versions

Paramount also produced a French-language version Paramount en Parade directed by Charles de Rochefort and a Romanian-language version Parada Paramount (Chevalier and Martini also starred in the French version, and Romanian actress Pola Illéry starred in the Romanian version. There was also a Dutch version, Paramount op Parade with Theo Frenkel. The Scandinavian version starred Ernst Rolf and his wife, Tutta Rolf.

Preservation status

Paramount on Parade featured in a 1930 advertisement for Technicolor

The film, including some of its Technicolor sequences, has been restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. The original title sequence and chorus girl number immediately following it, however, are still lost. The sound for two of the Technicolor sequences (“Gallows Song” and “Dream Girl”) are also missing.

According to Robert Gitt, film archivist now retired from UCLA, in a lecture at Pacific Film Archive at UC Berkeley, the film was also released with sound-on-disc for those theaters not equipped for sound-on-film. The archive had a report of the soundtrack for this film still existing on disc until the 1994 Northridge earthquake destroyed a set of discs that a collector was planning to donate.

In August 2010, CapitolFest in Rome, New York showed a 102-minute version restored by UCLA Film and Television Archive. Some sequences are still missing the sound, for some sequences only the soundtrack exists.

List of sequences

“Title Sequence” during Credits with Kay Francis and George Bancroft (lost footage; only sound survives)^[3]
“Showgirls on Parade” with Mitzi Mayfair (lost Technicolor footage; only sound survives)^[3]
“We’re the Masters of Ceremony” Jack Oakie, Richard “Skeets” Gallagher, and Leon Errol introduce themselves as MC‘s of the film

“Love Time” Buddy Rogers and Lillian Roth
“Murder Will Out” William Powell, Clive Brook, Warner Oland, Eugene Pallette, and Oakie
“Origin of the Apache” Maurice Chevalier and Evelyn Brent do a parody of an Apache dance
“Song of the Gondolier” Nino Martini sings “Come Back to Sorrento” (Technicolor; survives complete)
“In a Hospital” Leon Errol, and David Newell
“In a Girl’s Gym” Jack Oakie and Zelma O’Neal

“The Toreador” Kay Francis and Harry Green (as Isadore the Toreador) parody Carmen (Technicolor; survives complete)
“The Montmartre Girl” Ruth Chatterton, Stu Erwin, and Fredric March
“Park in Paris” Maurice Chevalier
“Mitzi Herself” Mitzi Green
“The Schoolroom” Helen Kane, Mitzi Green. Kane sings “What Did Cleopatra Say?” to her class

“The Gallows Song” Skeets Gallagher and Dennis King (Technicolor footage survives; sound missing, current prints use King’s commercial vocal recording of the song.)^[3]
“Dance Mad” Nancy Carroll and Abe Lyman‘s Band
“Dream Girl” Richard Arlen, Jean Arthur, Mary Brian, James Hall, Gary Cooper, and Fay Wray sing “Let Us Drink To The Girl Of My Dreams” (Technicolor footage survives; sound missing)^[3]
“The Redhead” Clara Bow, and 42 Navy men sing “True to the Navy”
“Impulses” George Bancroft, Kay Francis, and Cecil Cunningham
“Rainbow Revels” finale Chevalier and girls’ chorus (including Iris Adrian and Virginia Bruce) sing “Sweeping the Clouds Away” (in Technicolor; survives only in black-and-white)^[3]

Foreign-language versions

A large number of foreign-language versions were shot including:

Galas de la Paramount (Spanish) premiered in Buenos Aires 28 August 1930 and in Los Angeles 7 September 1930; with Ramón Pereda, Barry Norton, Rosita Moreno
Paramount en parade (French) with Maurice Chevalier, Nino Martini, Saint-Granier, Marguerite Moreno, Louis-Jacques Boucot, Fanny Clair, and Charles de Rochefort (Rochefort also directed)

Parada Paramount (Romanian) with Pola Illéry; directed by Rochefort
Paramount op Parade (Dutch) with Theo Frenkel Jr., Mien Duymaer van Twist, and Louis Davids; directed by Job Weening

At Paramount’s Hollywood studio, Ernst Rolf and his Norwegian wife, Tutta Rolf, filmed introductions and sequences for the Scandinavian version. Japanese comedian Suisei Matsui introduced the film in Japan. Mira Zimińska and Mariusz Maszynski appeared in the Polish version, and Dina Gralla and Eugen Rex appeared in the German version. Paramount filmed most of the above versions, along with Czech, Hungarian, Serbian, and Italian versions, at their Joinville Studios in Paris.

References[edit]

Jump up^ “Paramount on Parade”. IMDb.com. Retrieved 2016-02-06.
Jump up^ “Paramount on Parade (1930) – Overview”. TCM.com. Retrieved 2016-02-06.
^ Jump up to:^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Lynn Kear; James King (2009-07-31). Evelyn Brent: The Life and Films of Hollywood’s Lady Crook. Books.google.com.pe. p. 188. Retrieved 2016-02-06.

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Marriage Playground, The (1929)

June 23, 2017 Film Dialogue Leave a comment

Pre Code Hollywood Season: FD Cinematheque

The Marriage Playground (1929)

Director: Lothar Mendes

Cast: Mary Brian, Fredric March, Lilyan Tashman, Huntley Gordon, Kay Francis, William Austin, Seena Owen, Phillipe De Lacy, Anita Louise, Mitzi Green, Clive Brook (narrator)

70 min

The Marriage Playground is a 1929 American Pre-Code drama film directed by Lothar Mendes and written by Doris Anderson, J. Walter Ruben and Edith Wharton. The film stars Mary Brian, Fredric March, Lilyan Tashman, Huntley Gordon, Kay Francis, William Austin, and Seena Owen.

The film was released on December 21, 1929, by Paramount Pictures.^[1]^[2]

Plot

Joyce and Cliffe Wheater, a much-divorced American couple, leave their seven children to fend for themselves as they tour the smart resorts of Europe. Judith, the eldest, takes care of the group. Martin Boyne, an American tourist, meets Judith and the children at the Lido and remembers that he knew their father in America; attracted to Judith, he is quick to sympathize with the problems of the children.

Although he is the way to Switzerland to meet Rose Sellers, his fiancée, Martin delays the trip to help the children through a crisis that threatens to separate them. When he leaves, Judith despairs, feeling that he regards her as only a child, and she decides to take the children to Switzerland; there Martin realizes he loves her, and when Wheater, repenting of his neglect, telephones him to bring the children back, Martin declares that he is marrying Judith and will himself care for the children.