ABCs at the Movies: The Doubles Round!

[southendmd]

[memento]

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Gable and Lombard in their only screen pairing. Gambler Babe Stewart (Gable) marries small town librarian (Lombard) on a bet and attempts to hide his secret life from her. Neither star's best film.

[MaineWriter]

==comment==

Another horror movie directed by James Whale. From filmsite.org:  Notable as one of James Whale's bizarre horror films, with Boris Karloff in his first film role. A theatrically creepy story of a group of stranded travelers who take shelter in the mysterious, haunted dark old house of the Femm family. The assorted collection of guests include Philip Waverton (Raymond Massey), his wife Margaret (Gloria Stuart), their friend Roger Penderell (Melvyn Douglas), Sir William Porterhouse (Charles Laughton) and his companion Gladys DuCane (Lilian Bond). The residents of the house include 102 year old bedridden Sir Roderick Femm (Elspeth Dudgeon), a son Horace (Ernest Thesiger), daughter Rebecca (Eva Moore), and a psychotic mute butler (Boris Karloff).

[southendmd]

From IMDb:  Elmer Tuttle (Buster Keaton), a plumber in Paris, is enlisted by beautiful Patricia Alden to help her make her lover Tony Lagorce jealous. Tony, however, is two-timing Patricia with Nina Estrados. Elmer, with the help of his friend Julius, hopes to use the high-society contacts he's made with Patricia to find a market for his new invention, a pistol with a range-finding light. But Elmer's attempts to interest a military leader are mistaken for assassination attempts, and with Tony and half the male uppercrust of France challenging Elmer to duels, he is in hot water not even his plumbing skills can drain away. (With Jimmy Durante)

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from IMDb
Based On Play by Félix Gandéra

Director: Robert Siodmak
Cast:
 Lilian Harvey ...  Eva
 Hans Albers ...  Quick
 Willy Stettner ...  Dicky
 Albert Kersten ...  Professor Bertram
 Paul Hörbiger ...  Lademann
 Karl Meinhardt ...  Direktor Henkel
 Paul Westermeier ...  Clock
 Genia Nikolaieva ...  Marion
 Käthe Haack ...  Frau Koch
 Flockina von Platen ...  Charlotte

A Review:

Good farce

Author: Mark from Los Angeles

This teaming of Lilian Harvey and Hans Albers was without the sensational chemistry UFA was used to in the Harvey/Fritsch films. There were supposedly competitive issues that put Harvey on her guard and challenged Albers' ego. Still, the tension between the two works to the advantage of this stage farce filled with mistaken identities and lover's quarrels.

Lilian plays Eva, a young girl taking some time in a health spa and spending her evenings in the town's vaudeville theatre enamoured by a heavily made-up clown called Quick. Quick takes a shine to her and tries to woo her without make-up and masquerading as the theatre's manager. Unable to resolve her feelings for Quick and the theatre manager, Eva is angered when she finally learns that they are one and the same. But not for long, of course...

Although this film is stage-bound and not a particularly good showcase for any of the main talents except Hans Albers, the mistaken identity and following runaround aren't as tiresome as in some films of that genre. There is some witty dialogue, but the stars are relying mostly on their screen personas to supply the charm. They do so quite effectively from the leads to the supporting cast. The whole thing makes for a lively and somewhat stylish farce.


   No photos or posters available

[MaineWriter]

==comment==

from filmsite.org:  A steamy classic drama, with hot-blooded chemistry between the two stars. Dennis Carson (Clark Gable), head of a Indo Chinese rubber plantation, takes in a female house guest, Shanghai prostitute Vantine (Jean Harlow), running from the authorities. His lusty relationship with the wisecracking Vantine is put to the test when a boat arrives with newlyweds, an engineer Gary Willis (Gene Raymond) and his cultured attractive wife Barbara "Babs" (Mary Astor), and Carson turns his attentions toward Barbara. Eventually torn between the two, he returns into the arms of his bawdy girlfriend Vantine.

[southendmd]

From IMDb:  In an attempt to try and snap some sense into the public and the government about the crime wave (mostly in due to Al Capone, who was a major inspiration for Tony Camonte), Howard Hughes and Howard Hawks brought to the screen one of the landmark early gangster pictures. It's a film that does take its subject seriously (while on one hand one argues that the film is an indictment of crime and peoples responses, one could also argue that it's a subtle indictment of the prohibition), however it's also an exciting, and sometimes wickedly funny, take on a genre that would flourish in the thirties and forties. What comes most surprising (and I mean that as a big compliment) is how it hasn't lost much of its vitality in seventy years. The implied violence in the film is, in fact, shocking in places, and while it lacks the blood content and major shocks of the De Palma remake, it doesn't compromise to showing the (slightly Hollywood-ized) truth of the matter- crime doesn't pay, but sometimes it's all people know.

[Meryl]

From Wikipedia:  FIRSTS

* Tarzan the Ape Man was the first Tarzan film to star Weissmuller, O'Sullivan and Cheeta the chimpanzee. The character of Cheeta was created for this film, never having appeared in the original Burroughs novels.

* It also marked the first film appearance of the chimpanzee most closely associated with the Cheeta role -- not as Cheeta himself, but as the young chimp riding on the back of Cheeta. He would take over the Cheeta role with the third film of the series, Tarzan Escapes. As of June, 2007 he is still alive, living at "Casa de Cheeta" in Palm Springs, California, and has been recognized by Guinness World Records as the longest-living non-human primate in history.

* The film was the first of a long series of franchised Tarzan films running from 1932 into the 1970s, initially starring Weissmuller and later other actors.

* Tarzan's distinctive call was first heard in this film; it was reportedly created by sound recordist Douglas Shearer using special audio effects, including an Austrian yodel played backwards at quickened speed. Weissmuller himself always claimed he had created the trademark Tarzan yell in a yodeling contest he won while he was a boy. He later learned to mimic the famous call so well people assumed that he was the one doing the yell in the films.

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