'G' Men (1935), William Keighley.

And in the mid 30s, studios turned stars who had played charismatic gangsters into cops.  James Cagney plays a young lawyer who becomes a government agent who predictably ends up battling the thugs he grew up with on the Lower East Side.  Despite the simple plot and political impetus, 'G' Men is a good film.  The photography is beautiful and scenes are well staged as in the shot below where Ann Dvorak catches sight of a kidnap victim.  The cast has great character actors like Robert Armstrong as thin lipped, squinty eyed hard-ass who hates all the new recruits including Cagney.  Although crafted to conform to Joe Breen's vision of a cleaned up Hollywood, 'G' Men is packed with violence.  The final sequence, taken from John Dillinger's real life shoot-out at a Wisconsin hunting lodge (and echoed beautifully in 2009's Public Enemies), would give Sam Peckinpah a run for his money.

There was only one scene that approached pandering, and that was one in which the Department of Justice begs a group of anonymous lawmakers for weapons.  "The Department of Justice is handicapped," says the mandarin, "When Hugh Farrell died in that slaughter, he didn't even have a gun to defend himself.  A federal agent is not permitted to have a gun.  Gentlemen!  Give us national laws with teeth in them... and these gangs will be wiped out!"  While I'm not saying that national forces don't need weapons --I did think it was a little too simple of a line drawn from A to B!

The Ape Man (1943), William Beaudine.

Pretty thin gruel.  Lugosi plays a scientist who has, through the course of his experiments, taken on ape-like characteristics (a stooped walk and excess facial hair).  From the first moment we see him, sleeping on a bed of straw in a cage he is sharing with a gorilla, Lugosi looks like he has given up.  His character is neither very menacing nor very sympathetic.  What was he working on anyway?  We don't know!  We just know his half-assed experiments gave him some uninspiring side-effects.  While testing a cure, we witness a shabby performance of stretching and exclaimations that his back is straightening up.  Jeesh, someone should have just gone to the drugstore for some Robaxacet!   Story ambles on with the help of a newspaper man and girl photographer (played by Louise Currie, the "Katherine Hepburn" of Monogram).  Also features requisite guy in plastic ape costume, Emil Van Horn, who apparently lived off the proceeds of said costume but was evicted from his apartment and lost his general livelihood when it was stolen in Pensacola, Florida! This may be a good a time as any to point out that there are websites devoted to "Gorilla Men," actors that played apes for a living!

http://www.members.shaw.ca/gorillagallery2/gorillamenclassic/gorilla_men_index.htm
http://gorillamen.blogspot.com/

Illegal (1955), Lewis Allen.

Victor Scott demonstrates some theatrical lawyering.

OK.  People are going to tell you this movie is a stinker, a two star dud that pales next to Edward G Robinson's A-pictures, that it was all they would give him during his greylist period.  The last bit may be true, but forget the rest!  Now, before you accuse me of loving everything Robinson appeared in, let me tell you that sentimental claptrap Our Vines Have Tender Grapes made me want to throw up from the first frame. Fair?  Yes, Illegal is a pulp film --hey, some contemporary critics thought Double Indemnity was trash-- but it's quite entertaining.

Robinson plays District Attorney Victor Scott who suffers a professional tumble when he mistakenly sends an innocent man (Deforest Kelley) to fry in the electric chair.  (What?  If it happens in the first few minutes, it's not a spoiler)!  After going on a whisky spree, he settles for cheap and tawdry antics as a criminal defense lawyer, attracting the interests of a local racketeer who wants him on the payroll.   The film is not sluggish and is stuffed with smart lines.   Nina Foch plays a strangely complex character, a cool and collected blond raised by Robinson after her father dies who becomes his legal assistant.  I was a little puzzled by the idea that she should have been his love interest-- Daddy issues!  This movie even has an imitation Marilyn Monroe, "Angel O'Hara," played by Jayne Mansfield who demonstrates what looks like fake piano playing in several scenes.  In this movie, everyone's a little grubby! 

The Big Steal (1949), Don Siegel.

How ya gonna get out of this, Halliday?  You gotta a bridge handy?  Or maybe some GOATHS?

Ah, William Bendix, Sylvester the cat thoundalike and memorable messed up serviceman from The Blue Dahlia!  Love you big lunk heavies! The Big Steal is a chase movie all the way, set in Mexico.  Jane Greer is great as a sourpuss who falls for a pretty boy with a sleazy pencil mustache.  She slowly grows to tolerate Robert Mitchum as they set off in search of aforementioned jerk that ripped them both off.  When I first started this blog, I wanted to focus on "classical" B-movies, but I must admit that these high-contrast late noir Bs of the 50s are stealing my heart. 

Boy, I wish I were at a 1950s Mexican resort.

The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938), Anatole Litvak.

 SPOILERS AHEAD!

A First National picture that has Edward G Robinson riffing yet again on Little Caesar.  Caesar had an overtly aggressive psychopath heading a dopey, intimidated crime gang; The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse sees Robinson mastermind a gang in the guise of an inquisitive, intellectually curious and gentle Park Avenue physician. 

Revealing unabashedly to the nurse he employs that he's secretly researching criminal ways in order to publish observed findings and better educate police, Clitterhouse shows her gems he grabbed from his wealthy clients.  He latches on to a gang while looking for a fence to relieve him of the goods; though eccentric (overly talkative, using a strange soft-r upscale accent) he wins the gang's trust and slowly takes over the planning of increasingly more daring robberies, all in the name of research.  Clitterhouse is characterized by a purely logical mind:  his behaviour becomes more and more outrageously risky, but he justifies it as necessary in his quest to gather data first-hand. 

I was fascinated how the film builds Clitterhouse to be a strangely alluring and yet asexual character.  I would also argue that despite his lack of stereotypical good looks, Robinson has come across as more attractive in other roles:  less flimsy and more emotionally invested.  Bogart's tough guy "Rocks" is jealous of and threatened by Clitterhouse's fine clothes and fancy words.  But he is more intimidated by Clitterhouse's power over women.  The gang's head is a tough blonde named Jo who gravitates towards Clitterhouse, wearing flashier and flashier outfits with no apparent effect.  Although he shows no real interest in either women, Clitterhouse arouses the same unquestioning loyalty from his nurse who, it is implied, assisted in providing him with an alibi because of her attraction to him. 

The story flips, transforming the vulnerable academic into the aggressor.  The film concludes with a courtroom scene which struck me as one of the strangest made during this time period:  a character guilty of murder gets off the hook!  How did the studios get away with this?  I have been racking my brains since last night - are there any other examples of characters that get away with murder while the Production Code was in effect?  

Butch:  "I gotta brother in the university."

Clitterhouse:  "Indeed!  Well, I must add that to your case history.  Which university?"

Butch:  "See, what's the name of the joint... Harvard."

Clitterhouse:  "Harvard!  Really!  What does your brother do there?"

Butch:  "Preserved in alcohol- he's got two heads."

The guys relieve Vogue Furs of its contents.

King of the Zombies (1941), Jean Yarbrough.

Oh yassuh, I be scared!  Well, this one is drenched in the "scaredy Negro" vibe, but if you can tolerate it, King of the Zombies actually has a decent script with enough funny lines to keep it buoyant.  Today's zombies (thank you George Romero) are mainly about identifying slowly approaching formerly dead people and smashing them to a pulp.  It seems in the 40s there was a lot more fascination with the secrets of voodoo:  the chanting, the transference of souls from the dead to the living.  And if they could bring you a drink on a tray, well that was fine too.

King of the Zombies acknowledges the outside world just a little:  this is a wartime flick and its evildoer is an austere Austrian (close enough) doctor, who resides on an unnamed island that is reachable if you get blown of course while aiming for the Bahamas.  Mantan Moreland plays the frightened black American (and Dr Sangre's extreme dislike for him is a little unsettling).  However, not to fear, they also take several whacks at the Irish (literally) as a kind of second-rate superstitious lot.  There's a lot of loose ends (what the what is going on with Mrs Sangre?) but fairly engaging!

Addendum!

Strangely, just after having read the bio on Louella Parsons, I happened to actually visit Hearst Castle (only about 5000 km from Chateau Peresblancs) where we were subjected to one of the worst tours EVER!  (Not to overdramatize).  We were bussed up to the summit and literally shuffled around like sheep: one droning tour guide leading us from the front, and another in the rear snapping and barking at us not to step on exterior tiles or touch anything but the handrails.  Apparently stepping on tile that is already hundreds of years old and sitting out on the California summer sun is a no-no, and even little children were constantly shouted at!  The worst offense, I think (having been to other sites interpreted in a far more intelligent way by the State of California parks system) was the complete lack of balls in the storytelling department and their complete unwillingness to place Hearst in any kind of historical context.  Too scared to talk about anything of substance or fact, they asked us instead to admire all the bric-a-brac Hearst gathered up around him (even though we received very little information on the actual objects, their date, their creators); well, how better to appear great than by wallowing in things of a great age from different cultures, their significance be damned.  Suddenly, Citizen Kane seemed strikingly bold and relevant!

While the exterior spaces were certainly lovely, the Italianate pool and statues matching the Mediterranean climate, how strangely claustrophobic the interiors of the estate were, stuffed with morbid curios.  This completely flies in the face of how I would have imagined 20s film stars whooping it up -- no, they weren't playing out in spacious, beautifully proportioned rooms.  The guest quarters were very tight.  The ceiling of the dining room pushed down upon the interior, made of chunky wooden religious panels taken from Italy.  Dark wooden pews taken from Spain lined the same room - all somber religious iconography.  How did these people enjoy their drinks with all the saints frowning down upon them?  Every space was dark and tight.  There were no long hallways down which guests could escape and play.  Hearst also had a habit of collecting small marble Roman period sarcophagi, which were littered throughout the estate.  Certainly not cheerful objects.  Walking through the "games" room, which was again a patchwork of supposedly ancient and expensive objects but seemed more like a mishmash of periods and styles, the tour guide says, "You can confess now, you came on this tour for decoration tips, didn't you!"  *crickets*  The bus ride down carried the saddest group of tourists.  People who had been bubbling up with Kane trivia on the ride up slumped back into the bus for a long and winding trip back down towards San Simeon. 

Maniac (1934), Dwain Esper.

Jumbo jocks. 

Uh, WOW.  We have flashes of boob, a stick-on beard kit, a guy that raises cats, "Yeahhhh I got thousands of 'em!  I'm in the busssssssssssiness!" and a lot of shouting and screaming and clattering of lab equipment.  And Jumbo Jocks!  I had to crack open Michael Pitt's Poverty Row Studios, 1929-1940 to make heads or tails of this.  Grandfather of the grindhouse movie, director Dwain Esper and his wife Hildegarde Stadie cobbled this and other oddities together, bypassing the censors, distributing the films themselves and reaping substantial profits.  This one is a patchwork of the grotesque and titillating! If you love cats, you may have to cover your eyes...

The First Lady of Hollywood: A Biography of Louella Parsons (2005), Samantha Barbas.

The dead-eyed, insincere smile found on the cover of this recently published biography of Louella Parsons prevented me from picking this book up for several weeks.  I knew I would find its subject  offensive but finally I took the plunge.  

The history of the role of public relations in the film industry is fascinating and this bio is a decent primer on its origins, focusing on one of its most successful early practitioners:  Louella Parsons.  After dabbling in newspaper writing in her hometown of Dixon, Illinois, Parsons worked at Essanay Studios, sorting script scenarios submitted by amateurs.  When Essanay's finances started to wobble (in the middle teens), she searched for work elsewhere and ultimately became attached to William Randolph Hearst's publishing empire.  She was essentially a Hearst employee, protegee, informant, supporter, etc. her entire life.  Parsons happily agreed to monitor the activities of Marion Davies, Hearst's actress mistress and Parsons's close friend, for a stipend one summer.  This technique of befriending younger, more beautiful and more talented people only to later use private information against them, became Parsons's most effective approach and allowed her to dole out tidbits in her movie columns for decades to a receptive mass audience eager to feel more intimately connected to the personalities they regularly viewed onscreen. 

Barbas maintains that Parsons was an excellent reporter on par with any male colleague, hunting down information at all hours, personally paying informants and eliciting information by employing a variety of tricks (including an oldie but a goodie: playing dumb!).  Barbas's assertion that Parsons's work was evidence of early feminism was difficult for me to accept because of the moral complexity of Parsons' activities.  Is publishing gossip an act of feminism?  Is obtaining friendship and invitations to all the best parties through extortion feminism?  Is a subterfuge of lies about one's identity an act of feminism?  Was Parsons, a divorcee who carried on a public romance with a married politician, a woman who had an army of staff but depicted herself as "just folks" -- all evidence that she espoused to her readers certain female values without abiding by them herself -- a feminist?  "Despite the affable front that Louella presented in her column and to her acquaintances," Barbas writes, "she earned the reputation among her co-workers as being off-putting."  Of course this statement sounds quite similar to accusations leveled at Martha Stewart: the successful business woman being chastised for "unwomanly" (competitive or aggressive) behaviour that is essential to success in business - something that no men would ever have to face.   Without delving into what constitutes a feminist, I'll ask readers to consider perhaps the best-remembered result of Parsons's writing:  the decision to ruin Ingrid Bergman's American career in 1950 by revealing that Bergman had a son out of wedlock.  "While Bergman's career was devastated, Louella's revived," Barbas succinctly concludes. 

Some of the best writing in this biography come from Barbas's research on the reach and power of the Hearst newspapers and in fact portions of this book are just as enlightening about Hearst and the evolution of journalistic writing (from the "story journalism" and "sob sister" writing of the 1920s to the later insistence on the cold, hard facts) as they are about Parsons.  Barbas's writing style is laudably sober despite the appalling actions of her subjects.  Barbas ably disassembles the myth of Parsons having won her position with the Hearst papers, for example, by having witnessed the murder of Thomas Ince by Hearst.  In examining these well-known tales about Parsons, Barbas often returns to Parsons's own autobiography to demonstrate her subject's incredible re-telling of her own life story to suit and protect her interests, much of which is blasted as pure hoke.  Similarly, Barbas often states the truth while also alluding to a great deal more as in the instance where she indicates the profession of Parsons's third husband:  Hollywood abortionist. 

A judgmental person, I had to conclude that Parsons's career constituted pure bottom-feeding.  She had no ability to act herself (and was remarkably wooden in her few onscreen cameos), she had no apparent knowledge of any of the technical aspects of movie-making (although she did, while at Essanay Studios, write a handbook on script writing).   Transmitting the tiniest scraps on impending divorces and affairs - this was her livelihood!  How incredible to me - yet what an idiot I must be considering we are still today inundated with celebrity gossip, having only witnessed the expansion of the industry.   Obviously the industry can't survive without it.  We can only thank heavens Parsons was less politically motivated and not a salivating, rabid Commie-hater.  For this, I'll have to track down a biography of Parsons's greatest rival, Hedda Hopper!

Detour (1945), Edgar G Ulmer.

You know when two men start discussing scars, it's only going to get more interesting.  Nightmarish hitchhiking thriller that's just about entirely filmed with process shots - you know, those  annoyingly fake scenes of actors pretending to drive a car with a stock footage background.  But in this case, the story's too good to worry about whether or not he's really steering all the bends in the roads.  Ann Savage plays just about the most hideous, loathsome, witchy female film character I can think of.  In an interview with Bogdanovich, Edgar G Ulmer reminds us that his leading man, Tom Neale, had many shady misadventures off-screen as well.  Next: must track down Ulmer's The Naked Dawn!