Last night's movie was "Min and Bill"(1930), an early MGM talkie starring Marie Dressler as "Min", the owner of a rundown hotel on a wharf in an unnamed beach town. Wallace Beery is "Bill", her long time tenant, a brawny, happy-go-lucky fisherman and something of a wise guy. He loves Min in a BFF kind of way, and brings back bottles of bootleg liquor from various ports o' call for the two of them to share, and drink their troubles away. Min has in her care a teenage girl named "Nancy Smith" (Dorothy Jordan), who she informally adopted when Nancy's mother "Bella" (Marjorie Rambeau), abandoned Nancy at the hotel as an infant. Bella is a total floozy, so Min has told Nancy her mother is dead to spare her the heartbreak and embarrassment. Min works Nancy hard at the hotel, but isn't harsh when she slacks off. She's curt with Nancy, but her elephant-hide demeanor is a front, because she really loves the girl. But, she doesn't want her to end up like herself, stuck in a waterfront flophouse, so when Nancy quits school, she reads her the riot act and sends her off to live with foster parents, an educator and his wife who are from the upper class. Nancy cries and protests: "Please, Min! Please don't send me away. I won't cause any more trouble." She loves Min and their life on the wharf; it's all she's ever known and its a tear jerking scene. You'd better get out your handkerchiefs.
Min's a tough old bird and believes she's doing the best thing for Nancy by sending her away, but even though she only shows her grouchy side, she can't fool Nancy, who knows Min loves her.
While Nancy is away, she comes to like her new life and appreciates her foster parents. During this time, her mother Bella revisits the wharf and the hotel, and quizzes Min about "her kid". Min uses the same ruse she used on Nancy, in reverse. She tells Bella Nancy's dead. "She was awful frail, y'know." Bella accepts this but doesn't really believe it. In her own aggressive way, she's as tough as Min. She seems to have money, also. Later we see her on an ocean cruise. Nancy is older by now, about 18, and she has a fiance, a nice boy from Boston. Nancy has become sophisticated after living with her foster family and is dressed in the latest fashions. She's come a long way, but she still wants Min in her life, so when the cruise ends, she visits her at the hotel while her fiance waits in the car. Nancy offers Min to come live with them after they're married, in their big, new house in the city. "You'll have your own room and a flower garden to tend." Nancy wants to take care of Min the way Min took care of her, but Min will have none of it. "Ha. Can you imagine me tending flowers?" Her psuedo-cynical shell is too tough to penetrate. Sentiment and reciprocity only make her turn further away from Nancy, who she loved like a daughter but could never show her true feelings. But even if Min can't outwardly show love to Nancy, she's sure as hell gonna protect her from her trampy birth mother Bella, who saw Nancy on the cruise and thought she was a rich snot. Bella had no idea that Nancy was her grown-up abandoned daughter; neither knew the other. But now Bella has decided to visit Min at the hotel, at the same time Nancy is there making her offer.
This is a Depression-era movie, staged like a play, and - overall - you could call it depressing. That doesn't make it any less tremendous, however, not only for the acting, but for the gamut of emotions evoked. There are even hijinx comedy scenes, such as the Buster Keatonish out-of-control motorboat scene in the early going with Nancy and Min. There are relaxed "buddy" scenes between Beery and Dressler, but really, as Bill he's just a supporting player. Plotwise. a more accurate title would've been "Min and Nancy." It's interesting to see, from a historic point of view, the technical development of cinema by 1930, with moving cameras, crane shots and high production values. This looks like a modern film. We're so used to seeing low budget stuff that it's easy to forget that epics were made in the Silent era, and MGM was at the forefront of high quality releases in the sound era, with Irving Thalberg at the helm, the greatest motion picture executive who ever lived. Besides Dressler and Beery (who have a knockdown, drag-out comic fight at one point) the other two leads shine: Dorothy Jordan as Nancy and Marjorie Rambeau as the unlikeable Bella. The ending is what I'll call a triumphant downer. Get out your hankies again. Two Big Thumbs Up for "Min and Bill", verging on Two Huge. The picture is razor sharp.
P.S. Here's something I didn't know until just now. In reading about the film on IMDB, I see that Marie Dressler won the third-ever Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as Min. It's certainly well deserved, as you will see. She was also one of our earliest actresses, born in 1868. "Min and Bill" is highly recommended. ////
The previous night we had Lew Ayers, Mae Clark and Boris Karloff in "Night World"(1932), a pre-Code flick about the interactions at a Prohibition-era nightclub owned by "Happy McDonald" (Karloff). It begins as kind of a "many personalities under one roof" light comedy, with a drama emerging at it's core. Line dancers dance and gab in their communal dressing room. Their male director rehearses them after hours, so he can slip into the hat-check room with Happy's wife when no one is looking.
Out front, doorman "Tim Washington" (Clarence Muse) stands in his uniform in the freezing cold, "philosophizing" with beat cop "Tommy" (Bert Roach). Washington's wife is in the hospital. When he calls, the nurse tells him she's resting comfortably, but he's worried. "Resting comfortably is what dead people do."
Everyone in the club seems to know the story of the young man sitting by himself in a booth, getting drunk on bathtub gin, which Happy procures from a bootlegger. "Michael Rand" (Lew Ayers) is the son of a materialistic society woman (Hedda Hopper) who shot and killed his father (her husband) for supposedly cheating on her. The gossip is that his Dad's death has destroyed Michael, who looks destroyed in his booth. When Happy comes over to tell him the club is closing for the night, Michael gets belligerent, then picks a fight which is a big mistake. Happy clocks him and knocks him out, then assigns dancer "Ruth Taylor" (Mae Clark) to look after him upstairs in the office until he regains consciousness.
She watches over Michael, and when he wakes up they get to talking. Ruth likes him, and now the central story takes hold. The next night Michael finds out, from the woman his father was seeing, that the two were only friends - they never slept together. Remember this is pre-Code, so details are pretty much spelled out. The woman claims that Michael's mother hated his father, and that she herself was only a shoulder for him to cry on. They were only friends and his death was flat out murder. Michael doesn't doubt it. He says his mother was a heartless gold digger who never loved him either. When she visits him at the club later that same night, he confronts her with the Other Woman's tale. They argue, and he breaks with her once and for all. Now, he's really ready to get drunk, especially when a slick hoodlum (George Raft) visits Ruth the dancer and asks her for a date, but she refuses. When Raft tries to force the issue, Michael - who's come to like Ruth - punches Raft out cold. Turns out Michael was on the boxing team in college. Now Ruth likes him even more for protecting her. Michael sobers up, orders coffee, and the focus switches back to Happy's cheating wife and the dance instructor.
Out front it's still freezing cold and snowing. Doorman Tim Washington comes inside for a minute, to get a nip of Happy's illicit brandy to keep warm, but moments later after calling the hospital, he learns that his wife has died. The movie has alternated comedy with crime and sexual drama up to this point; now, it takes on tragedy. Tim is beloved by everyone at the club (except Happy's reprehensible wife), and now his wife is dead. Then Happy finds out his wife is cheating with the dance instructor and he fires the guy after beating him up. Meanwhile, Michael Rand and Ruth Taylor drink late-night coffee together, and talk of going away to an "untouched" island paradise, like Bali, where they can get away from all the madness. Then, some hitmen show up. Happy's wife hired them to get rid of him so she could be free to marry the dance instructor. I can't tell you what happens after that, but you get the gist of the story : the back-and-forth inside a nightclub, with various personal scenarios, though not all lives converge.
Busby Berkeley directed the dance sequences, which bear his kaleidoscopic trademark. There's comic relief, from a flamingly gay man and a heavy-set drunk and you also get George Raft, menacing but slick as always. The heart of the movie, however, is Mae Clark, she of the grapefruit-in-face from James Cagney. Clark was a great natural actress, meaning that she comes across onscreen as a real person. Though at first glance the plot seems thin, there's really a lot going on when you account for all the minor conflicts among the various patrons and the other dancers besides Ruth. But in the end, it's Clark's and Ayers' flick. Two Big Thumbs Up for "Night World." The picture is very good. ////
And that's all I know for this eve. Did you turn your clock back? If you do it now, you'll have time to watch both of our movies! My blogging music tonight is the Scriabin Recital by Vladimir Sofronitsky. My late night is Die Meistersinger by Wagner. I hope you are enjoying your weekend and I send you Tons of Love as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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