ABCs at the Movies: The Doubles Round!

[Fran]

[dot-matrix]

The Motion Picture Guide,was not impressed.  "Crude hillbilly melodrama has Holland as an artist who takes to the hills for solitude and inspiration, but falls for the lovely Merkel when he spys her skinny-dipping.  Long takes of a typewriter with a barely legible sheet of paper explain the action.  King became on of the most consistently talented directors in Hollywood, but he shows little of his later abilities in this awful effort."

Neither was the New York Times reviewer (August 15, 1930). "Parts . . . are not with merit, but often it is muddled and lethargic.  This critic gives a pretty thorough description of the start of the story: "LaGrange is in the habit of picking the brains of his friends and acquaintances and using what information he obtains to put into popular magazine serials.  This author thinks so little of his literary contributions that he does not permit his pretty daughter, Sybil, to read them.  This girl, however, gathers that her father does not have his soul in his work and says that he puts a lot of funny ideas on paper."
     "Brandon Hurst plays Mr. Taine, the elderly husband of a flirtatious creature.  Mrs. Taine sets her cap at Aaron King, an artist, but this handsome young man falls in love with Sybil."   

[Ellemeno]

From IMDb: For nearly 20 years, no other actress in America was the recipient of so much effort to make her a big movie star than Marion Davies. As mistress of the powerful media mogul, William Randolph Hearst, Davies appeared in one lavish film production after another. Hearst's seemingly bottomless pockets spared no expense and Marion lived like a queen both on screen and off. (Their huge California mansion, now called Hearst Castle, crowned a coastal estate of unstinted extravagance, while the saltwater sequence for FLORODORA GIRL was filmed in the waters in front of the enormous Santa Monica beach house Hearst built for her.)

Never one to put on airs, Davies won the hearts of her fans and the other Hollywood stars with her warm generosity and good spirits. On the screen Hearst preferred seeing her in heavy historical romances, but she much more enjoyed light comedy fare which better displayed her talents. Which is exactly what she does in FLORODORA GIRL, getting to sing & dance a little, playing a member of the famed sextet, looking for love with the right boy but not willing to compromise her morals in the search. Davies had been a Ziegfeld Follies Girl before being carried off by Hearst; the film poses a few questions about love and success which must have given Marion something to ponder

[southendmd]

IMDb comment:  1930. Silents were dead, talkies were king & it was William Haines golden Hollywood year. His pictures - he starred in 3 - made enough money at the box-office to make him the top male movie star of that year. THE GIRL SAID NO is one of those films.

It is very much a typical Haines comedy, with lots of silliness based on his boyish character (although he was 30, he plays a college kid). His wealthy father dies, leaving his family penniless and Haines in need of finding money. The plot revolves around his attempts to make good in a new job, where he tries to impress Leila Hyams, the pretty secretary he meets there.

Also in the cast are Francis X. Bushman, Jr. as Haines' rival; Clara Blandick (Auntie Em in THE WIZARD OF OZ 9 years later); and the ubiquitous Polly Moran. The inimitable & irrepressible Marie Dressler appears in only one scene, but it's a dandy. She plays a very rich potential client who mistakes Haines for her new doctor, which generates a hilarious slapstick sequence. With this one 10-minute segment, talkie comedy was off to a very good start.

[MaineWriter]

==from Filmsite.org==

Two brothers, Monte (Ben Lyon) and Roy Rutledge (James Hall) leave Oxford to join the British Royal Flying Corps and become fliers during World War I. Both brothers are rivals for the love of beautiful "Platinum Blonde", sexy siren Helen (an 18 year old Jean Harlow), who has fickle, two-timing affections. With sensational aerial photography. At $3.8 million, the most expensive film to date.





Isn't this a great picture? It's the premiere of the movie at Graumann's Chinese Theater in Hollywood.

[dot-matrix]

This one is so obscure that it's not even listed on IMDb    even in Warner Baxter's Bio 

[Meryl]

From Wikipedia:

Just Imagine is a humorous science-fiction movie musical presented by 20th Century Fox in 1930, directed by David Butler, to console audiences distressed by the Great Depression.

The film was set in the year 1980, and it depicted the conventional expectations of technological progress associated with that "distant future" date. A large dirigible hangar was used to house a huge, detailed, large-scale model of a modern city, complete with suspension bridges between towering skyscrapers, multi-lane elevated roadways, and a flock of flying machines flitting around above the city as another level of traffic. To modern viewers, the city resembles an implausibly exaggerated version of 1930s New York City.

The plot involves a man from 1930, who is experimentally revived from the dead by a team of physicians who have no interest whatsoever in him after he awakens. Two young men who have observed the process as guests of one of the nurses kindly take him in hand and show him (and the audience) the wonders of 1980. He also gets to travel to Mars, which turns out to be inhabited by friendly humans, each of whom has an evil, otherwise-identical twin.

The man from 1930 is played by El Brendel, an ethnic vaudeville comedian of a forgotten type: the Swedish immigrant. The citizens of 1980 are now identified only by an alphanumeric code (the hero is "J21," and the El Brendel character is quickly dubbed "Single Zero," pronounced "Single Oh."). Instead of a sexual revolution, there is rigid government control of relationships between the sexes; marriage partners are chosen or approved by judges of an official marriage tribunal, while the only legal babies come from vending machines.  J21's trip to Mars is motivated by the fact that he needs to make a spectacular contribution to society in order to be allowed to wed the high-status female of his choice, LN18. One detail interesting to modern viewers is the huge change depicted in the style of men's suits, a change that in reality has never taken place.  There is also a running gag concerning homosexuality, a reminder that this film predates the infamous Production Code.

[southendmd]

From Wikipedia: King of Jazz was the nineteenth all-talking motion picture filmed entirely in two-color Technicolor (not just color sequences). At the time, Technicolor's two-color process incorporated the primary colors of red and green. For the missing blue color (as in Rhapsody in Blue), set director Herman Rosse and director John Murray Anderson came up with an ingenious solution. Tests were made of various fabrics and pigments, and by using an all gray-and-silver background, they arrived at a shade of green which gave the illusion of peacock blue. Filters were also used to simulate the blue color, resulting in pastel shades rather than bright colors.

King of Jazz marked the first film appearance of the popular crooner, Bing Crosby, who, at the time, was a member of The Rhythm Boys, a vocal trio with the Whiteman Orchestra.

***
To get an idea of the two-color process, here's a trailer:(3:43, go to 0:32 to skip the credits)

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqc9iNSTrmQ[/youtube]

[MaineWriter]

==from The Texas Archive of the Moving Image==

Also known as 'The Port of Missing Men' this western was set on the Texas-Mexico border.  The story is based around a cowboy who is wrongly accused of terrorizing a town.  He has to prove his innocence by finding the real perpetrator.  This film is famous for a chilling scene where the cowboy and his friend come across a saloon full of dead bodies.

Also of note is the appearance of Emilio Fernandez who went on to become a famous director in Mexico.

Bob Steele is most notably known for his role as Curly in Of Mice and Men and in the 1960s comedy series, F Troop.

Dir. Trem Carr, J. P. McCarthy.  With Bob Steele, Al Jennings, Caryl Lincoln, Al St John, Emilio Fernandez.



==comment==

I feel like I am ready to take a few baby steps back to normal here. I hope others are too. L

[Artiste]

Any clip... trailer of it?

Yes, getting slowly, and hope surely back to the usual... way of coping like Heath did for reality worth living he did!!

Hugs!!