Acteurist oeuvre-view – Clara Bow – Part 3: THE PRIMROSE PATH (1925) & FREE TO LOVE (1925)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
Release Date: 01/29/2021
Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Fox Film Corporation – 1931: A CONNECTICUT YANKEE and SURRENDER
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
A curious pairing for this Fox 1931 Studios Year by Year episode: an unsung WWI drama, but as good as any, William K. Howard's Surrender, starring Warner Baxter, Leila Hyams, and an almost unrecognizable (both his appearance and his performance) Ralph Bellamy; and the Will Rogers version of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, which mainly seems to exist so that Rogers can lasso a lance from a knight in a joust. Spoiler: modernity proves to be more than either King Arthur's Court or Ralph Bellamy want to handle, and we dig into their discontents. Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:...
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Special Subject - Farrow vs. Allen – Part 4: ALICE (1990); SHADOWS AND FOG (1991) & HUSBANDS AND WIVES (1992)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
We say farewell to Farrow and Allen (for now, although we'll probably encounter them individually on the podcast again) with this final episode on their cinematic collaboration, covering Alice (1990), Shadows and Fog (1991), and one of their very best, the ill-fated Husbands and Wives (1992). In the first two, two more Allen characters struggle to live the good life in what couldn't be more different settings, and then we join Allen in meditating on all of the different ways that romantic relationships attempting to function at a high level can go wrong. Then,...
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Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Gloria Grahame – Part 3: SONG OF THE THIN MAN (1947) and MERTON OF THE MOVIES (1947)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
In this Gloria Grahame Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode we get to see more of what MGM was (not) doing with our acteur's career. Underused in Song of the Thin Man (1947), in which she brings the only real noir energy to the final Thin Man film, she gets a similarly brief but memorable role in the Red Skelton vehicle Merton of the Movies (1947), playing the most innocent nymphomaniac in cinematic history. We uncover the legacy of Harry Leon Wilson's 1922 Merton of the Movies novel and surprise ourselves with our appreciation of Red Skelton's acting. Time Codes: 0h 00m...
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Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Warner Brothers - 1931: NIGHT NURSE & BLONDE CRAZY
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
This round of Warner Bros. 1931 brings us two gems by a couple of Pre-Code masters, Roy Del Ruth's Blonde Crazy and William A. Wellman's Night Nurse, showing off the early star charisma of Jimmy Cagney (oozing vulnerability) and Barbara Stanwyck (spitting fire), ably supported by Joan Blondell in both cases. Bonus: Young Clark Gable shows up for another, even nastier 1931 turn. Dave makes the case for Blonde Crazy as a proto-screwball comedy (Warner Bros. does Trouble in Paradise?). And in another Fear and Moviegoing discussion of Now, Voyager, we discuss the...
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Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Gloria Grahame – Part 2: IT HAPPENED IN BROOKLYN (1947) and CROSSFIRE (1947)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
Our second Gloria Grahame Acteur-Oeuvre-view episode includes a curious under-use of our acteur in the all-around baffling musical comedy It Happened in Brooklyn (nevertheless memorable for the chemistry between Frank Sinatra and Jimmy Durante), and a judicious use of her by RKO in Edward Dmytryk's anti-fascist noir Crossfire (also 1947). We try to work out just what Grahame's ongoing avant-garde skit with Paul Kelly (as "The Man") brings to Dmytryk's portrait of a dysfunctional post-war America. One thing's for sure: she sure hates him! Time Codes: 0h 00m...
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Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – MGM – 1931: THE EASIEST WAY & THE CHAMP
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
For this MGM 1931 episode we watched The Easiest Way, a feminist subversion of melodrama tropes by director Jack Conway and screenwriter Edith Ellis, starring Constance Bennett as the fallen woman and a young Clark Gable, verging on stardom, as her judgemental brother-in-law; and possibly the most sentimental movie ever made, King Vidor's The Champ, starring Wallace Beery as a ne'er-do-well ex-boxing champ dad and Jackie Cooper as his passionately devoted son. MGM delivers again in this new round of 1931! Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s: The Easiest Way (1931) [dir. Jack Conway] 0h 43m 55s:...
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Special Subject - Farrow vs. Allen – Part 3: SEPTEMBER (1987); ANOTHER WOMAN (1988) NEW YORK STORIES (1989) & CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS (1989)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
Our Farrow v Allen series continues with four more collaborations: September (1987), Another Woman (1988), Oedipus Wrecks (1989, part of the anthology movie New York Stories), and Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). We count the ways in which Allen mashes up his favourite playwrights, filmmakers, and Russian novelists, trace the development of Allen's "survivor" theme through these movies, and discuss the different flavours of invisible that Farrow brings to them. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, Charles Burnett, in town to present De...
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Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Gloria Grahame – Part 1: BLONDE FEVER (1944) and IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
Welcome to our inaugural Gloria Grahame episode, which is also our final Acteurist Oeuvre-view! In this episode we consider Gloria's first significant movie role, as the cause of Blonde Fever (1944), in which she and Philip Dorn confuse each other and provide occasion for Mary Astor's multiple levels of irony. We then turn to Gloria's breakthrough role in one of our very favourite movies, It's a Wonderful Life (1946), examining it through the lens of Gloria's iconic character, Violet Bick. We consider Violet's thematic link to George at a crucial moment, Capra's...
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Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Paramount – 1931: 24 HOURS and LADIES OF THE BIG HOUSE
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
Our streak of finding gynocentric crime film gems continues with our second Paramount 1931 episode, featuring two movies directed by Sylvia Sidney specialist Marion Gering. 24 Hours pairs a despairing Clive Brook and Miriam Hopkins, haunted by marriages they can't escape in one way or another. And Ladies of the Big House, starring a radiant Sidney as a hapless shopgirl who (like Hopkins' nightclub singer) becomes the target of a gangster's obsession, depicts life in prison as a curious quasi-utopia of racial equality and solidarity among American's socioeconomically oppressed....
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Acteurist Oeuvre-view - Diana Wynyard – Part 7:AN IDEAL HUSBAND (1947) and THE FEMININE TOUCH (1956)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
Our final Diana Wynyard episode has arrived all too soon! We look at her two final key roles, in Alexander Korda's film of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband (1947) and The Feminine Touch (1956), a nurse drama that's better than its silly title. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we cover the 2025 Toronto Silent Film Festival, focusing on three films built around miraculous performances, Victor Sjostrom's The Wind (1928), starring Lillian Gish, Victor Fleming's Mantrap (1926), starring Clara Bow, and Josef von Sternberg's The Last Command (1928),...
info_outlineIn this Clara Bow Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, two crime films from 1925: The Primrose Path, directed by Harry O. Hoyt and produced by Hunt Stromberg for Arrow Film Corporation (which folded the following year); and Free to Love, another Schulberg production, directed by Frank O’Connor. The Primrose Path, a bizarre mishmash of Griffith and gangsters, gives us Clara as a showgirl with a heart of gold, but with very little to do. The more interesting Free to Love finally allows Clara to be the hero of the movie. As an orphan and wrongly convicted ex-con who wants to devote herself to helping other unfortunates, she finds herself thwarted by a sort of minor Batman villain who happens to be the father of her betrothed. Clara’s emotions shine through even the dopey plot and wretched print.
Time Codes:
0h 01m 00s: The Primrose Path (1925) [dir. Harry O. Hoyt]
0h 21m 01s: Free to Love (1925) [dir. Frank O’Connor]
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