Editor’s Note: Freeline Media film critic Mike Fried, author of the Mike At The Movies column, takes a look at a prominent Hollywood director who perhaps deserves more recognition today.
The Career of MERVYN LEROY
Mervyn LeRoy is one of those great directors in Hollywood history, with a career as a director and a producer for 40+ years. Never awarded an Oscar, he was nominated as Best Director for 1946’s Random Harvest. He was credited with launching the film careers of Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren, Robert Mitchum, Clark Gable and Lana Turner and for making Edward G. Robinson a star. He started acting in vaudeville as a child and moved into motion pictures as an actor and a technician; then came into his own at Warner Brothers where he and Michael Curtiz were the studio’s most impactful directors.
But nowhere did LeRoy make an impact than in his pre-code dramas and comedies and I wanted to highlight a few of them since they are currently streaming in the Criterion Channel.
Here we go!
THREE ON A MATCH
***
Although not appreciated when it was released in 1932, this pre-code melodrama has found favor in recent years.
Three girls attend the same school in New York City. They meet later on in life and each light a cigarette on one match and discuss the superstition behind same — although a newspaper article seems to debunk that as a rhubarb put out by the match company to increase sales.
Mary has spent some time in reform school but has straightened up her life. Ruth works as a stenographer and Vivian is married to a prominent lawyer.
To be honest, this is my least favorite of LeRoy’s pre-code films. It’s overly melodramatic and messy and even LeRoy can’t deal with the disconnected script.
And yet it works on some level because the great performances that LeRoy can evoke.
Joan Blondell, Ann Dvorak and Better Davis are terrific as the titular Three and the supporting cast of Lyle Talbot, Warren William, Edward Arnold, Allen Jenkins and, yes, Humphrey Bogart excels.
If you haven’t seen it, it is worth a WATCH … but not a rewatch.
HEAT LIGHTNING (1934)
*** 1/2
Two sisters own a restaurant and gas station in the middle of nowhere in California. There’s tension between the sisters because the older one, Olga, forbids younger sister Myra from seeing her boyfriend Steve. One day two customers walk into the place. One of them is Olga’s ex-boyfriend George, who is there with his partner Jeff and they are on the run for a botched robbery that left two people dead.
This movie was one of the last ones released before the Hays Code was strenuously enforced and, as a result, it was banned by the Catholic League of Decency, which is one of the top reasons to watch it. “Thigh-Pincher” indeed!!!!
But not the only reason. Beside being filled with plenty of mood and dusty atmosphere, the film is led by a terrific performance by Aline McMahon as Olga in one of her only leading roles. The first graduate of Stanislavski’s Method Acting class, she shines. Ann Dvorak is terrific as Myra.
It’s a short film and therefore there’s very little excess fat in the story, which is directed In a rapid fire manner by LeRoy. One of my favorite shots in cinema occurs in this film. When Olga first walks toward George, she moves directly to the camera and a wondrous look of recognition passes over her face. It’s a great scene.
Based on a Broadway play, it almost seems like the distant cousin to Raoul Walsh’s The Petrified Forest — also based on a play — but that doesn’t mean that it’s inferior. Because it’s not — just different. Unlike Petrified Forest, no guns appear until the final moments of the film.
There are nice supporting performances by Preston Foster and Luke Talbot as George and his accomplice, as well as Warner Brothers stock actors Glenda Farrell, Ruth Donnelly and Frank McHugh as two rich divorced dames and their over-garrulous driver whose car breaks down in the unluckiest of places.
I had never heard of this one before and I was glad I discovered it — thank you, Criterion Channel!!
It’s not as good as its “cousin,” but it’s a strong B-picture.
FIVE STAR FINAL
****
A pre-code newspaper film that is as relevant today as it was 94 years ago.
A tabloid publisher forces his ethical editor to dredge up a 20 year old murder case to boost sales. In the old case, a secretary shot her boss after he got her pregnant and reneged on his promise to marry her. The woman is now remarried and the daughter thinks that her husband is her father. But in doing the bidding of the publisher, the editor digs up as much mud as he can find. But in doing so, he causes tragedy to strike.
In Edward G. Robinson’s 1973 autobiography, he wrote that this film was one of his favorites. He didn’t play a gangster but his portrayal as the reluctant editor was someone whose actions were as odious as those of a criminal. His reaction, though, when he hears the tragic news is pure top-notch acting from Robinson. When his secretary tells him to go to another paper, a good one, he replies, “Why not the hot seat at Sing-Sing? That’s where they send murderers, don’t they?” It’s a terrific line thrown off by a real pro.
This movie was nominated for Best Picture — it lost to Grand Hotel — and was listed as one of the 10 best films of 1931, a year that included Little Caesar, Frankenstein, City Lights, Public Enemy, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Dracula — the first two of which were the breakthrough films for this film’s stars, Robinson and Boris Karloff, who plays an unscrupulous reporter who poses as a reverend to get the story from the accused woman under false pretenses.
It is even more relevant today, as the practice of journalists creating news abounds now without any abatement and without any regard for the consequences. And at the time, it caused a tremendous uproar. Of course that uproar was mostly from William Randolph Hearst who believed this to be a not so thinly veiled attack on his chain of newspapers; he went on the offensive, publishing negative reviews and pressuring theaters not to run the film.
The cast is uniformly excellent from Robinson to Karloff to Frances Starr, HB Warner and Marian Marsh as the accused woman, her new husband and their daughter as well as George Stone and Aline McMahon as other newspaper employees.
Mervyn LeRoy’s direction is crisp and fast-paced, especially when the mother is trying to call the newspaper and get the story stopped. Byron Morgan’s screenplay adaptation of Louis Weitzenkorn’s Broadway play would become the template for the fast-talking newspaper movies that would follow it.
The film was remade a few years later as Two Against the World, the same story set in a radio station and starring Humphrey Bogart. It was a cheap B-movie knockoff by a cheap Jack Warner, who wanted to get as much bang for a buck on the rights to the play.
But WATCH this movie instead — it soars and has real emotion. It gets a bit melodramatic but so did Grand Hotel.
And despite the melodrama, the last 5 minutes of the movie are cinema perfection.
HI NELLIE
*** 1/2
Mervyn LeRoy returns to the newspaper business in this crime comedy drama. A newspaper editor refuses to run a story about a prominent lawyer committing embezzlement and absconding with a lot of money. He doesn’t run the story because he’s not sure about the veracity of the tip that the paper received. The other newspapers in town do run the story and the publisher wants to fire him. When the editor says that his contract doesn’t allow him to be fired, the editor demotes him to the Lonely Hearts column run under the name of “Nellie Nelson.”
This is a film that has a lot of fun with its subject matter. “Hi Nellie” is what everyone says derisively to Brad Bradshaw, the demoted editor, when they run into him.
And Paul Muni is in top form, taking a break from serious roles like I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang and Scarface, and he does a great job with the role.
You can tell that both he and Mervyn LeRoy were having a ball making this film. Muni plays a total wiseacre and LeRoy gets a truly great performance out of him. And the comedy is mined from the fact that while Brad is doing the column, the newspaper’s circulation has increased
And he does the same for co-star Glenda Farrell who plays reporter Gerry Krail, who had been relegated to the Lonely Hearts column until Brad got the job — at which point she is moved back to the newsroom. She’s a whipsmart fast-talking newspaper woman of the type that Rosalind Russell would perfect a few years later.
But it wouldn’t be a real newspaper story if the Lonely Hearts column didn’t intersect with the crime story — and it does in a nicely plotted fashion.
This is a movie that I wish I heard of a long time ago.
It’s terrific fun.
WATCH IT!
I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG
**** 1/2
A World War I veteran comes home and rather than take his old factory job, he decides to go off and seek a job doing construction. He finds that jobs are few and far between, with a lot of willing labor. Since he can’t find work, he slowly finds himself falling into poverty. The veteran, James Allen, goes to a diner with a friend who forces him at gunpoint to help him rob the place. The friend is killed and Allen is caught, tried and sentenced to hard labor on a chain gang.
The influence this film had extended way beyond Hollywood. Aside from the three Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture and Best Actor), the brutal conditions displayed in this film — which was based on the book by real life prisoner Robert E. Burns — was a scathing social commentary film (something Warner Brothers was decidedly not known for) that eventually got the state of Georgia to abolish chain gangs. This film’s inclusion in the 1001 Movies You Need to See Before You Die is not a fluke.
So powerful was the film that the prison warden and the Georgia Board of Corrections sued Warner Brothers for libel. They lost.
Paul Muni’s portrayal of Allen was only his fourth screen foray and came after his memorable turn as Tony Camonte in Scarface. He is thoroughly confused when he’s punched by a guard after he wipes sweat off his brow and a wizened inmate tells him that he needs to ask for permission. Even after he escapes from the chain gang, he lives a life of quiet desperation.
But even before his troubles heap on, he’s a dour man. Muni went so far as to meet Burns so he could study and become him. And his research paid off as Muni is totally believable here. And at times he plays the character as someone having a large streak of naïveté.
LeRoy’s direction is astounding. He creates the bleakest of motion pictures that he ever made. When one prisoner is let out because his time is up, another prisoner remarks “Red’s getting out, too” and we see a coffin loaded onto a truck. There is little that passes for humor in this film, unlike most other pre-code films. He ratchets up the tension by letting his girlfriend find out he was on a chain gang, but she does and he’s forced to marry her to keep out of trouble.
And the film is not only an indictment of chain gangs and prison conditions, but of the ruthlessness of state officials in lying to prisoners about the terms of their release.
And that ending!!!
This is one of Muni’s best films and it’s one of LeRoy’s best films. There’s no better reason to put it in the queue.
I lit out from Reno, I was trailed by twenty hounds.
Didn’t get to sleep that night ’til the morning came around.
WATCH IT!
LITTLE CAESAR
*****
For all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword – Matthew 26-52
That’s the opening inscription at the beginning of Little Caesar, one of the great gangster movies of all time, with a performance so powerful that it propelled Edward G. Robinson to stardom.
EGR plays Rico Bandello, a small time hood who longs for the big time. He moves to Chicago with his pal Joe Massara. Rico hooks up with a mob outfit while Joe wants to be a dancer and secures a job at a nightclub. Unfortunately for Joe, Rico muscles Joe to help him rob that very nightclub. During the robbery — and contrary to the direct orders of the mob boss — Rico guns down the police commissioner. And his violent crime streak, one that helps him rise to the top, begins. But as with all things in life, rises are often followed by falls, even pre-code, especially when violence and betrayal are involved.
This movie was based on the novel by WR Burnett who would also write the screenplays for Scarface, High Sierra, The Asphalt Jungle and The Great Escape. By all accounts, Burnett’s novel was a huge success. Based upon the notion of a Gutter Macbeth, it sold because it had not been done before. Although Burnett was upset that no Italians were cast in the film — Ah, Hollywood — all the Italians were busy playing Native Americans.
And it’s this film by LeRoy and The Public Enemy by William Wellman that whet the public’s appetite for gangster pictures, although Public Enemy edges out this film in terms of popularity. Yeah, see!
Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. is a bit miscast as Rico’s friend, Joe, but he was definitely a better choice than Clark Gable who was rejected because of his big ears. Glenda Farrell is just okay — she’s been better in later pictures.
EGR’s Rico was not based upon Al Capone but another violent mobster during prohibition. But it really doesn’t matter — the movie is all about Robinson’s performance. He is Mount Vesuvius, the Guns of the Navarone, just waiting to explode at the slightest provocation. And he does.
Credit also must be given to LeRoy who creates an atmosphere of menace as well as a view into the underworld that movie audiences had not yet been privy to. Tight close-ups on EGR create such menace, especially the scene where he walks toward the camera as he goes to menace Joe. It really is a great use of camera work.
Is Rico greater than Cagney’s Tom Powers? I’d probably have to give the edge to Powers because of Cagney’s enigmatic performance — but it’s really close.
And while The Public Enemy might be the better picture, there’s no denying that this movie achieved greatness because of Robinson’s tough guy performance. Rico’s stroll down the street just before being shot is the epitome of self-assurance and LeRoy blocks the scene so well. You know something is going to happen but you don’t know how and LeRoy throws in a fugazy.
And that ending — as classically timeless as the great literature upon which it is based.
This is, hands-down, LeRoy’s best film and while it might not be EGR’s best, he certainly makes this a movie to WATCH.
Fun Fact: the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (the RICO act) was drafted by a lawyer who was a devoted movie buff — but he would neither confirm nor deny that the title was based upon EGR’s character.
Michael Fried has no formal training in movies, except having watched over 26,000+ movies — if not more — in his 60-plus years on this planet, starting with Goldfinger as his first cinema experience. He knows what he likes and he knows what he doesn’t like, and it’s quite often different from the conventional wisdom. He knows that the best franchise is Godzilla and he loves action movies and comedies. He has not been nominated for any awards except some boring insurance awards which has no applicability to movies (with the possible exceptions of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and John Cassavettes’ Big Trouble). He is part of a team that won the 1980 SUNY Albany Trivia content by correctly guessing the question, “Who played the president of Klopstockia in Million Dollar Legs?” So he has that going for him, which is nice.
Contact Mike at moviemike3@yahoo.com and mike.fried@yahoo.com.
