I was going to put together my list of the ten best movies of 2010, but I think I only saw two, and one of them, Hot Tub Time Machine, is such a shoo-in for the Oscar this year I thought why bother.
Instead, in the spirit of pure narcissism—and because I'm still working on my marathon essay on the years 1906-1914 and have nothing else to post—here are the ten subjects I most enjoyed writing about in 2010 (click on the highlighted link to read the original post):
She was an actress in the early days of sound best remembered now for getting her neck bitten in Bela Lugosi's Dracula. But I love her for uttering my favorite line of dialogue from the World War I flying ace movie, The Last Flight:
"What are you changing your shoes for?"
"On account of I can walk faster in red shoes."
9. Norma Shearer It's fun—occasionally—to admit you're wrong and when I picked Norma Shearer as the best actress of 1931-32 for her performance in the comedy Private Lives, I had to admit I had been wrong in dismissing her so quickly in the past.
8. Ham Actors You remember that Oscar ceremony where Wallace Beery beat John Barrymore around the head and shoulders with a rotary dial telephone? You don't? Well, it happened, at least here at the Monkey.
7. Movie Lists I think I once vowed never to do a list—so, of course, this year I did two. Or three, counting this one.
6. The Aging Of Greta Garbo But for an anomalous couple of weeks when somebody's droid app led to 3500 hits a day on my post about Popeye the Sailor, this post—a chronological series of photographs of Greta Garbo, ranging from childhood to old age—is the most popular one I've ever written.
5. Anita Page Did you ever fall in love with a hundred year old dead actress you're not married to? You did? What are you, some kind of freak?
4. Leave It To Beaver In Japanese Actually, I mean Yasujiro Ozu's classic comedy I Was Born, But ..., the story of a couple of mischievous boys who discover their dad is a middle management toady who survives as the butt of his boss's jokes. Why? "He pays my salary."
"Then don't let him pay you," his son says.
"Yeah!" the little brother adds with the implacable logic of a six year old. "You pay him instead!"
2. Very, very old movies I still say a rocket hitting the moon in the eye is one of the greatest images in the history of movies.
1. The Marx Brothers Only a fool would write an eight-part, 12,000 word essay and not claim it as his favorite post of the year. Well, the Monkey may be crazy, but he's no fool.
Anita is a nice, round 100 today. Well, she would be if she hadn't died at the age of 98. But like Lon Chaney and Douglas Fairbanks, I'm sure she's still out there somewhere.
Tomorrow, I'll be back on the Greta Garbo kick. In the meantime, here's a repost of an essay I wrote about her some time ago, coupled with my favorite pictures of her.
I have to confess, before I started writing this blog, I had never heard of Anita Page, but now that I've seen half a dozen of her movies and read a bit about her, it's clear that she was just as cute as the proverbial bug's ear and no doubt somebody you would have been lucky to know. Certainly Herschel House must have thought so—the Navy pilot was married to her for fifty-four years, until his death in 1991.
Mostly Page played sweet innocents who found themselves in a melodramatic load of trouble (see, for example, Our Modern Maidens), but her turn in Our Dancing Daughters as a self-absorbed, gold-digging be-yotch who tricks Joan Crawford's millionaire boyfriend into marrying her was unforgettable and should have presaged a longer career. Louis B. Mayer, a warped frustrated old man, saw to it that it didn't.
Well, you take what you can get.
Our Dancing Daughters was the first movie written specifically for Joan Crawford and it made her a star. It's the story of a rich, wild girl (Crawford) with an addiction to short dresses and the Charleston who loses the love of her life to an even richer, wilder girl (Page, also in a star-making role), all while soaking up Jazz and bootleg booze in fabulous art Deco palaces that could only have existed on the set of an MGM movie. None of this is meant to be taken seriously—just another Hollywood studio clucking its tongue at girls gone wild even as it exploited the phenomenon to rake in box office bucks.
What's not to like?
Although she had only just celebrated her eighteenth birthday when the movie hit the theaters, Page is absolutely convincing in her ruthless pursuit of the man, first putting on an act of virginal innocence to entice him then exploiting him to the hilt after she lands him.
In the movie's penultimate scene, Page is drunk, evil and standing at the top of a staircase. No prizes for guessing what happens next.
"Our Dancing Daughters was my picture," she said years later. "I say that because I did the acting. Joan Crawford danced her way through it. I acted my way through it."
Our Dancing Daughters was one of a series of Hollywood movies seeking to both exploit and condemn the Jazz Age flapper phenomenon. The script called for an undercurrent of tension between Page and Crawford and, boy, is there ever. Years later, Page claimed Crawford physically assaulted her on the set but the mutual hatred didn't hurt their on-screen chemistry any. In fact, despite their mutual loathing, Page and Crawford made two more movies together, Our Modern Maidens and Our Blushing Brides, trading the good girl/bad girl roles back and forth, to great commercial, if not artistic, effect.
Page also starred in the year's Oscar winner for best picture, The Broadway Melody, and received over ten thousand fan letters a week, including nearly a hundred from fascist dictator Benito Mussolini who was infatuated with the young actress.
"Are you starting to believe your own pub- licity?" director Harry Beaumont asked Page during the filming of one of their six pictures together.
"Of course," she said, "Aren't you?"
Our Dancing Daughters is one of those odd silent-sound hybrids of the very early sound era. Made not long after The Jazz Singer, the film has a soundtrack, including several prominently featured songs, but no dialogue, only title cards. I actually find this approach preferable to early talkies such as The Broadway Melody where, for example, Anita Page's dialogue competes with the rustling of her own dress.
Fortunately, sound technology improved rapidly over the course of a year.
MGM's The Broadway Melody, billed as the first "all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing" musical, was the top grossing movie of 1929 as well as the first sound picture to win the Academy Award for best picture, and further cemented sound's commercial future. The Broadway Melody was the top box office movie of 1929 and also featured "You Were Meant For Me" and "Give My Regards To Broadway."
Douglas Shearer out of necessity invented the concept of the "playback"—pre-recording a song that performers would then dance and lip-synch to—when the choreography on a huge dance number that had already been performed and recorded was deemed unsuitable. Rather than bring the orchestra back to the sound stage, Shearer figured out how to reuse the sound from the previous take, and the cast performed the dance number with its new choreography to a playback of the song. This technique became the industry standard for decades.
"I thought Our Dancing Daughters was my picture," she said later, "but Broadway Melody was Bessie Love's. I love good English, and I hated saying things like, 'Gee, ain't it elegant?' In my opinion, silents were much better than talkies. One thing you could have was mood music, which you could have playing throughout your scene to inspire you. The trouble with talkies was, they let you have the music, but they'd stop it when you had to talk, and that was always a let-down for me."
After The Broadway Melody, Page made two more movies with Joan Crawford, and appeared in films with Lon Chaney, Buster Keaton and Clark Gable.
Her final movie for MGM was 1932's Prosperity, starring Marie Dressler and Polly Moran. On the outs with studio head Louis B. Mayer after twice refusing to sleep with him (the second proposition made in the presence of Page's mother), Page served out the remaining years of her MGM contract on loan to poverty row studios, making such low-budget bombs as Jungle Bride and Hitch Hike To Heaven. It was an ignominious end for an actress who just a couple of years before had been second only to Greta Garbo as the studio's top draw.
Page left Hollywood and married Navy flyer Herschel House in January 1937. After his death, she began to make films again, mostly low-budget fare such as The Crawling Brain and Witchcraft XI. On the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Page received a standing ovation at a special screening of The Broadway Melody. She was last surviving attendee of the first Oscar ceremony and died in 2008 at the age of ninety-eight.
Or should I say Blondell crazy? Joan Blondell, that is, who was the winner of the latest Monkey Poll, "Of the previous winners of the Katie Award for best supporting actress, who's your favorite?"
The final totals: Joan Blondell 10; Miriam Hopkins 5; Anita Page 3; and Marie Dressler and Clara Bow 2 each.
While Katie-Bar-The-Door is home sick and I'm working on my essay for best supporting actress of 1932-33, how about a poll? Of the previous winners of the Katie Award for best supporting actress, who's your favorite?
Clara Bow Anita Page Marie Dressler Joan Blondell Miriam Hopkins
It's March 23, 2010, and we here at the Monkey are celebrating the first anniversary of being able to say "We here at the Monkey." I don't know if you're getting anything out of all this blogging business, but I sure am: a chance to re-watch old favorites like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, discover new favorites like Anita Page, Douglas Fairbanks and René Clair, and hear from movie fans, both the living and the dead, from all over the world.
Katie-Bar-The-Door and I are keeping the celebration pretty low key, just the usual collection of jugglers, bikini dancers and session musicians in gorilla suits. We might even squeeze in time for a movie or two.
If you're in the neighborhood, stop on by. We'd love to see you!
For all you snow-bound shut-ins on the east coast of the United States, Turner Classic Movies is showing Our Dancing Daughters tomorrow, Friday February 12 at 10:30 a.m.
I, for one, will be lounging on the couch with Anita Page, Joan Crawford and their gang of rich, rowdy flapper friends. Why don't you join us?
I'm still working on Part Three of my essay on Scarface. In the meantime, chew on some photographs for a while. This is a collection of those actors and actresses who turned in notable performances in 1931-32, but just missed out on a Katie Award nomination. Some of these faces you've seen before, some you will see again.
(To see the list of nominees for 1931-32, click here.)
Edward G. Robinson (Five Star Final) James Cagney and Joan Blondell (Blonde Crazy) Marie Dressler (Emma) (pictured here with Katie Award nominee Norma Shearer) Dorothea Wieck (Mädchen In Uniform) Raimu and Pierre Fresnay (Marius) Warner Oland (Shanghai Express) Jackie Cooper and Irene Rich (The Champ) Anita Page (Skyscraper Souls) Warren William (Skyscraper Souls) Constance Bennett (What Price Hollywood?) Maurice Chevalier and Claudette Colbert (The Smiling Lieutenant)
Did yesterday's posting of Our Dancing Daughters whet your appetite for more Joan Crawford? Well. Long thought lost, Our Waltzing Whelps would have been the fourth movie in the Joan Crawford Flapper Trilogy. Fortunately, a fragment of this film was recently discovered by me just now in one of my notebooks. So without further fanfare, Our Waltzing Whelps, starring Joan Crawford and Anita Page, filmed in state of the art MonkeyVision.
I believe I promised that if any part of the Joan Crawford Flapper Trilogy showed up on the internet, I'd let you know about it. The first leg of the trilogy, Our Dancing Daughters ("leg" being the operative word, as you will see), is back up on YouTube. I present part one here for your no doubt temporary viewing pleasure and provide links to the other eight parts which might otherwise be a bit difficult to track down.
Our Dancing Daughters was the first movie written specifically for Joan Crawford and it made her a star. It's the story of a rich, wild girl (Crawford) with an addiction to short dresses and the Charleston who loses the love of her life to an even richer, wilder girl (Anita Page, also in a star-making role), all while soaking up Jazz and bootleg booze in fabulous art Deco palaces that could only have existed on the set of an MGM movie. None of this is meant to be taken seriously—just another Hollywood studio clucking its tongue at girls gone wild even as it exploited the phenomenon to rake in box office bucks.
What's not to like?
Hopefully one day Turner Classic Movies in association with Warner Brothers will issue the entire trilogy in one tasty DVD package. Until then it remains unavailable in any format. Pity.
By the way, Our Dancing Daughters is one of those odd silent-sound hybrids of the very early sound era. Made not long after The Jazz Singer, the film has a soundtrack, including several prominently featured songs, but no dialogue, only title cards. I actually find this approach preferable to early talkies such as The Broadway Melody where, for example, Anita Page's dialogue competes with the rustling of her own dress.
Fortunately, sound technology improved rapidly over the course of a year.
Anyway, here it is: Our Dancing Daughters. I hope you get as much of a kick (turn-turn-kick-turn) out of it as I do.
Note: For those of you who prefer not to watch your movies in bite-size nuggets on a screen the size of your thumb, Our Dancing Daughters is scheduled to air on TCM on February 12, 2010 at 10:30 a.m. EST. I've already marked my calendar; be sure to mark yours.
Tonight as part of its ongoing series about "Life During The Depression," Turner Classic Movies is showing a comedy starring two of my favorite actresses of the Early Sound Era, Marie Dressler and Anita Page.
I've never seen it and from what I've read, Prosperity doesn't sound like the movie you'd necessarily hang your hat on if you wanted to show off either of these two great stars, but the subject matter—bank failures—is near and dear to my heart and what could be better than a movie starring Marie Dressler and Anita Page that makes you appreciate the role the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation plays in guaranteeing your bank deposits?
From TCM's website:
11:00pm [Comedy] Prosperity (1932) Feuding mothers almost wreck their children's marriage. Cast: Marie Dressler, Polly Moran, Anita Page, Norman Foster Dir: Sam Wood BW-87 mins
As always, that's 11 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time here in the United States. I apologize to my readers in Great Britain for the Americentric nature of posts like these, but that's where my television is, can't do nothing about it. (By the way, I used to live in Britain—it really is great. Some day I'll regale you with tales of the World Snooker Championship at the Crucible in Sheffield when I met that year's champion Mark Williams. Some day, but not today.)
Addendum (10/30/09):Prosperity is a pleasant enough comedy to watch, but apparently was not a pleasant one for its participants to make.
● After screening the finished product, MGM fired its first director, Leo McCarey, and ordered the entire movie to be re-shot from scratch by Sam Wood. McCarey got the last laugh though, winning three Oscars during his career and being nominated eight times.
● The movie was the last of nine pairings between Marie Dressler and Polly Moran, who had become a successful on-screen duo during the Early Sound Era. The studio decided to mine a new vein, which didn't hurt Dressler any, who went on to make Tugboat Annie and Dinner at Eight, but it was the beginning of a steep decline for Moran who finished her career performing in bit parts.
● Prosperity also led to anything but for Anita Page, marking the last time she made a movie at MGM. On the outs with studio head Louis B. Mayer after twice refusing to sleep with him (the second proposition made in the presence of Page's mother), Page served out the remaining years of her MGM contract on loan to poverty row studios, making such low-budget bombs as Jungle Bride and Hitch Hike To Heaven. It was an ignominious end for an actress who had just a couple of years before received ten thousand fan letters a week.
● And worst of all, Dressler who was ill throughout shooting was diagnosed with cancer shortly after the film was completed. She died two years later.
I've been neglecting the musically inclined part of my audience—brother Uncle Tom, Mister Muleboy, Who Am Us Anyway, among others—and to make it up to them, I present here what I consider to be the top musical number to appear in a movie in each of the first four Oscar seasons since Hollywood first introduced sound in 1927.
By the way, I'm not choosing songs based on what would have been eligible for an Oscar, which limit the award to songs written specifically for the movie, but am instead choosing the song I think had the biggest impact both culturally and artistically regardless of when it first debuted. Thus, even though "Toot Toot Tootsie" had been a hit for Al Jolson a couple of years before, its appearance in The Jazz Singer was a pivotal moment in the history of motion pictures. As co-star May McAvoy put it "In that moment just before 'Toot, Toot, Tootsie,' a miracle occurred. Moving pictures really came alive. To see the expressions on their faces, when Joley spoke to them ... you'd have thought they were listening to the voice of God."
1927-28: Al Jolson singing "Toot Toot Tootsie" from The Jazz Singer. Unfortunately, there are no clips on YouTube that include the "Wait a minute! You ain't seen nothing yet!" introduction. Well, actually that's not true. There are a couple that include it but the Warner Music Group has made a copyright claim and the sound has been eliminated from those clips. No doubt the sound will be eliminated from this one, too, in a few days. I have The Jazz Singer on videotape down in the basement if anybody wants to come over and watch it. Or you could track it down on DVD. That's what a responsible person would do.
1928-29: "The Broadway Melody" from the Oscar-winning best picture of the same name. The Broadway Melody was the top box office movie of 1929 and also featured "You Were Meant For Me" and "Give My Regards To Broadway."
The song and dance man in top hat and tails is Charles King. Bessie Love is the one arguing with Eddie Kane (whose Francis Zanfield is an obvious nod to Florenz Ziegfeld) while personal favorite Anita Page looks on in horror. Never mind that everybody in this movie seems miscast as veteran stage performers—it's the songs I'm talking about.
1929-30: This one you've seen: Marlene Dietrich singing "Falling In Love Again" in The Blue Angel but here it is again, an encore presentation.
1930-31: And finally, Eddie Cantor performing "Makin' Whoopee" in the 1930 hit musical Whoopee!
By the way, this clip isn't colorized—the movie was actually filmed in an early two-strip color process that had been showing up occasionally in theaters since 1922's The Toll Of The Sea. Movies had been hand tinted even before that. Sounds like another essay, doesn't it. Well, some day, maybe, if you're good.
I was going to put together my list of the ten best movies of 2010, but I think I only saw two, and one of them, Hot Tub Time Machine, is such a shoo-in for the Oscar this year I thought why bother.
