1936: The Great Ziegfeld

Jack Billings: Florenz Ziegfeld’s up one day and down the next. If he got $10,000 tomorrow, he’d spend it on the girl he happened to like tomorrow night. You wouldn’t want to waste your time meeting a fellow like that.

Little Egypt: Oh, not if I met him on the right night. – The Great Ziegfeld

I know that the “job” I have assigned myself in writing this blog is not particularly hard (watch movie, write about movie, return movie to Netflix), but tackling a three hour musical bio-pic about an early twentieth century Broadway producer is rather daunting. That said, I found The Great Ziegfeld, the 1936 Best Picture, to be an exciting and often delightful film in a “classic Hollywood” sort of way. The biography presented here is much sanitized from what I imagine Florenz Ziegfeld’s (yes that was his real name!) life must have actually been like, but there’s a lot to enjoy here from some classic 1930s extravagant musical productions to a charming performance by William Powell as the title character.

The story starts at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair when young promoter Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., is about to lose his shirt trying to promote a strongman at the fair’s midway. Ziegfeld turns his fortunes around when he hits on the idea of selling the strongman’s sexuality to the audience, letting woman touch the big man’s muscles (his arm muscles you pervs!) in order to draw a crowd. Soon Ziegfeld and his muscleman are touring the country until a rigged fight between the strongman and a lion drives Ziegfeld into the first of his many bouts of bankruptcy.

Ziegfeld next travels to Europe, where he steals French singing sensation Anna Held (Best Actress winner Luise Rainer) from under the nose of his rival promoter, Jack Billings (Anthony Daniels). When Held’s singing alone doesn’t draw a crowd, Ziegfeld invents the modern image of celebrity-addicted diva by claiming Held bathes in gallons of milk daily (he even orders the milk and refuses to pay the bill to get headlines). The two fall in love and are married. Ever restless, Ziegfeld then creates the renowned Ziegfeld Follies, a revue show of various musical numbers and talent acts, that becomes his most successful legacy. Along the way, Held catches Ziggy making eyes to another singing star, the Lindsay Lohan-esque Audrey Dane, and leaves him. Ziegfeld remarries, this time to famous actress, Billie Burke (frequent Powell love interest Myrna Loy). Ziegfeld makes and loses several fortunes before the Great Depression finally wipes his out one time too many. Planning a comeback despite the odds, Ziegfeld dies a classic overly-dramatic death: showgirls dancing in his head while he mutters “Make the stairs higher” his constant mantra throughout the film (it refers to his concern that the show be visible and enjoyable to even the people in the cheap seats.)

There is a lot I liked about this movie. The Ziegfeld character is always happy and likeable. I liked the young Ziegfeld’s antics as he conned and lies his way to success (in one notable scene, when his strongman is losing publicity to a planned lion vs. bear fight, he starts lodging complaints with the SPCA!). His underhanded methods get whitewashed and outright forgotten as the movie progresses (he does very little scheming in the second half), which is too bad. A movie built entirely around a huckster can be a lot of fun. The musical productions are also very good, particularly the nearly nine minute “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody” a continuous tracking shot that follows the music and dancers up a towering staircase (the scene cost two hundred thousand dollars to shoot, much more than Ziegfeld’s actual productions).

The movie is not without its flaws. As noted, a lot of Ziegfeld’s darker side is only hinted at. His womanizing is reduced to a misunderstanding with a drunken Dane and a lot of the seedy underbelly of the entertainment world is outright ignored (there’s no crushing poverty or casting couches to be found here). I think a remake of the film using today’s eyes and a more honest account of Ziegfeld’s life could be pretty enjoyable. This modernized account could also tackle the uncomfortable blackface performances. The movie’s pacing is a little bizarre. Despite being a musical, there are no music production sequences until nearly an hour in the film and probably 80 percent of the musical sequences take place in the second hour. (This is not one of those musicals where characters break out in song in everyday life. The musical numbers are all part of theater performances within the movie.)

That’s Fanny Brice, you disrespectful punks

Finally the movie has a lot of cameos from people who were probably big names in 1936 but are kind of obscure today. I imagine movie goers must have been like “Holy Shit! That’s Fanny Brice!” when the musical comedienne appears on screen but today’s audience (except for Barbara Streisand aficionados) are probably more likely to ask “Who the hell is Fanny Brice?”

I don’t imagine everyone watching today would enjoy or could tolerate The Great Ziegfeld, but personally this movie exceeded my expectations and in my mind ended up being a pretty good biography.

1935: Mutiny on the Bounty

I’ve never known a better seaman, but as a man, he’s a snake. He doesn’t punish for discipline. He likes to see men crawl. Sometimes, I’d like to push his poison down his own throat. – Fletcher Christian on the despicable Captain Bligh, Mutiny on the Bounty

Unnecessarily Long Personal Aside: Life is weird sometimes.  Last week, I received the usual email notice from NetFlix (unofficial sponsor of Operation: Oscar) that the next film in my queue, 1935’s Mutiny on the Bounty was on its way. About three days later, I received another email from Netflix saying they had gotten Mutiny on the Bounty back from me and were sending the next movie, even though I had never received Mutiny and they were sending me not the next movie in my queue after that (The Great Ziegfeld) but the one in the second slot, The Life of Emile Zola. So I get Zola, and while I’m debating whether or not to send it back and request Mutiny again, for the purity of the blog, I get another email from Netflix saying Ziegfeld wasn’t available at the nearest distribution center,  which was why they sent me Zola, but they were sending me a copy of Ziegfeld from another location post-haste. So now I have two Best Picture winners, neither of which are what I WANT to watch next and seemingly the only way to actually get the one I want is to send the other two back. Fortunately, my friend and coworker Eric Schwartzberg found a copy of Mutiny at his library (who still uses the library?) and got it for me, so for a brief period of time I had the next THREE Oscar winners in my home at the same time. Thanks Eric! Anyway, on with the review

Mutiny on the Bounty is actually a pretty straightforward adventure tale about the terrible conditions in the British Navy in the 18^th century and how one cruel captain’s obsessive need for control and domination created a near naval catastrophe. The movie starts with Lieutenant Fletcher Christian (Clark Gable) pressing men into service on a two year mission aboard the HMS Bounty to retrieve breadfruit plants from the island of Tahiti. The Bounty is captained by the very stern Captain William Bligh (Charles Laughton) who shows the men he means business by – on the day the boat is to set sail – ordering the continued lashing of a man who has already died from the punishment. Bligh’s answer to pretty much every situation is a lashing, from insubordination to a man falling overboard. Christian tries to stand up to Bligh when he can, while also forming a friendship with young Midshipman Roger Byam (Franchot Tone)a first timer whose rank has been purchased so he can compile a Tahitian-to-English dictionary for his father.

Conditions on the Bounty worsen as rations are cut amongst the enlisted men (but not the officers) and the lashings continue. Even when the men reach Tahiti, Bligh is like that strict teacher on your senior trip who reminds the class they are here to learn (or dig breadfruit trees, as the case may be), not play. Byam and Christian both fall in love with Tahitian ladies while sneaking away from the captain. Finally on the return trip home, Bligh’s actions become unbearable (he cuts water rations to the men to keep the breadfruit trees alive) and Fletcher leads a mutiny while Byam tries to keep order in the boat.

Charles Laughton was sort of the Daniel Day-Lewis of his day – a highly praised, exceptionally skilled actor. Even though he is one of the baddest bad guys in the history of cinema, Bligh never hams it up. Even though he loves ordering lashes, he’s never twirling his Snidley Whiplash moustache as he does so. There’s a scene very early on, where he puts down Christian for getting his commission through wealth while noting he (Bligh) was a “self-made man,” that really goes to explain Bligh’s insecurities. Because he was of a lower class, he is constantly paranoid the upper class will humiliate him and enjoys hoarding the power he feels he earned. Clark Gable, who I am not usually a big fan of, steps up to the plate remarkably well in trying to balance his duty to king and country with compassion and concern for the men beneath him. Laughton and Gable reportedly had real life animosity that carried over to the film: Laughton was a homosexual who traveled with a beefy male companion and Gable was a huge homophobe. My only complaint is that several times, in the prologue and towards the end, it’s mentioned that the mutiny changed how lower ranked men were treated by their officers, but this seemingly important plot point is never shown nor expanded upon.

Mutiny on the Bounty really has something for everyone: Adventure, romance, lashings (and how!), Riverdancing, topless Clark Gable, 18^th Century British Maritime Law, topless Charles Laughton (!) and moral speechifying. It’s really a pretty terrific and exciting movie about a very fascinating footnote in history. If you do rent the DVD, be sure to check out the extras which includes a 10 minute documentary short that serves as an epilogue to what happened to the Mutineers.

Oscar Trivia: Mutiny on the Bounty holds the distinction of having all three of its leads, Laughton, Gable and Tone all nominated for Best Actor, a feat never equaled. They all lost to Victor McLaglen in The Informer. As a result of this situation, the Academy created the best Supporting Actor and Actress awards in 1936.

Oscar Trivia II: The 1935 awards are supposed to be the first to use the term “Oscar” for the awards statue. The nickname was allegedly coined by Best Actress winner Bette Davis.

Oscar Trivia III: 1935 also marked the first use of Price, Waterhouse to count the tally, a seemingly innocuous gesture that was actually rooted in nearly a decade of vote buying, fights between the Academy and various guilds, and a lot of controversy.

1934: It Happened One Night

“What she needs is a guy that’d take a sock at her once a day, whether it’s coming to her or not.”

“Holy jumping catfish, you drive a guy crazy.”

“By a strange coincidence I was thinking of you…I was just wondering what makes dames like you so dizzy.”- noted romantic Peter Warne (Clark Gable), It Happened One Night

It Happened One Night is generally considered the first screwball romantic comedy and is also one of the first “wacky road trip movies,” one of my favorite sub-categories of film (placing just behind the related “wacky night that changes everybody’s life for the better”). More recent examples of the “wacky road trip” film include Planes, Trains and Automobiles and The Sure Thing, the latter of which is almost a direct remake of It Happened One Night but bolstered (in my mind) by the presence of John Cusack. It is also one of the most successful films in terms of the Academy Awards, becoming the first movie to win the “grand slam.”

In It Happened One Night, Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) has married a playboy aviator to her rich father’s disdain. Her rich father does the only sensible thing and kidnaps his daughter. Ellie escapes her father’s clutches and tries to make her way undetected from Miami to New York to be with her husband.

Meanwhile, Peter Warne (Clark Gable) is a boozing, smart aleck, down-on-his-luck journalist who discovers Andrews on a bus and agrees to help her get to New York if he can have the exclusive on her story (I have to say, my job as a reporter would be a lot better if it involved escorting bratty heiresses around).  Of course, hijinks ensue as the two hit the road. Their bus crashes; they have to escape a shady salesman who has unraveled Ellie’s secret. A man who picks them up as hitchhikers tries to steal their luggage and leave them stranded. And, of course, the two bicker throughout. Is there any doubt, true love will result?

It Happened One Night is pretty amazing because you can see what would become rom-com clichés develop before our eyes. Warne is street-wise and cynical but deep down has a soft heart. His rambling lectures on things as inconsequential as the true definition of a piggyback ride or how to hitchhike seem like the sort of light-hearted diatribes taken from an episode of Seinfeld. Of course, there’s the misunderstanding at the end of the movie that nearly waylays our lovebirds, an almost duplicate of the romantic roadblock that delays lovers in movies like Shrek (well, Ellie’s not an ogre).

The famous hitchhiking scene

Even though the idea of the mismatched romantic duo finding love in each others’ differences is a well-worn and much beloved story device, some of the ways the two lovebirds get along in It Happened One Night would never ever fly today. Besides the quotes from Peter that top this entry, one of which casually advocates physical abuse, Peter’s beloved pet name for Ellie is “brat” and their dependency on each other is pretty much one-sided, unlike later films where both sides tend to learn from and lean on each other. Instead, Ellie mostly makes mistakes (expecting the bus will wait on her to get back or blowing through $4 in the course of a day) and Peter is there to bail her out. The only notable exception is a rather famous scene where Peter attempts to hitchhike to no effect, until Ellie shows off a shapely leg and immediately stops a car. But for the most part, Ellie is helpless as she attempts to get home and needs a man’s help for even the most basic of deeds.

Also puzzling, to me at least, is the tile. For the record, nothing happens in one night as suggested by the film. The whole trip takes about a week and the whole course of the movie takes place in 2-3 weeks.  To paraphrase The Simpsons, this is the most blatant piece of false advertising since The Never Ending Story and The Never Ending Story Part II.

Trivia Note: It Happened One Night is one of only three movies to seep the Big Five at awards night – Picture, Actress, Actor, Director and Writing. The next movie to pull off such a feat wouldn’t come along for another forty years! Not bad for a movie whose lead actress declared it “the worst movie she’d ever made” and who demanded double her usual salary to make it and whose lead actor was forced to make the movie as punishment from his studio.

Also, I made a mistake last week when I said 10 was the most Best Picture nominees ever. It Happened One Night was one of 12 nominees for Best Picture in 1934.