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By the late '20s, William Haines' screen persona had settled into a formula, giving his films the same sort of predictable inevitability other MGM formula stars of the day excelled in (like Lon Chaney and Greta Garbo).
In Haines' films, he played an obnoxious cut-up who pursued women dubious of him and squandered his talents and duties until he fell from grace - at which point he wised up, matured, won the day and the woman. The settings changed, but the story was always the same.
You either like William Haines or you don't. Some find him funny, others obnoxious (some, like myself, find him funny and obnoxious). Even Haines naysayers would have to admit that, in his infantile, improvisational antics and edgy, out-on-a-limb rambunctiousness, he was willing to go where no other comedian had gone before (save, perhaps, Harry Langdon). In Haines' work one can find the seeds of Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Jonathan Winters, and even Andy Kaufmann. And like most of those comics, Haines was also adept at playing serious scenes when required.
The Smart Set takes place in the world of polo. Read the formulaic plot described above, imagine stock polo footage, and you have most of this movie.
Having not seen an MGM film in awhile when I wrote this review, I had forgotten what a smooth machine Thalberg and Mayer had running at MGM during this time period; even this average, non-blockbuster film has a smooth, professional finish. Thalberg or his assistants make sure the scenario plows straight and true to its foregone conclusion. The unpredictably of Haines' wild actions, though, keep your interest (one scene seems particularly to presage Jonathan Winters). An on location car chase is imaginatively shot. One night scene of Haines alone on the polo field is especially moody. And a scene with Haines crying for his lost horse is as bizarre as it is effective.
The Smart Set also stars Alice Day as the love interest, and Jack Holt and Hobart Bosworth as poloing rivals.
The Smart Set has been broadcast on Turner Classic Movies with an okay film score by Marcus Sjowall.
The same print has been released on DVD-R by Time Warner Archives.
Muchly much has been written about Grand Hotel, one of the slickest entertainments MGM concocted, so just a few thoughts for the road:
Grand Hotel was the first Hollywood film designed to showcase a wide array of top talent in one ambitious dramatic setting. This I knew, but I hadn’t previously realized that Grand Hotel created the template not only for future star vehicles centered on one setting, but also for the disaster genre and the disaster genre parodies. When John Wayne’s 1954 The High and the Mighty dropped the Grand Hotel format on a plane and added a disaster, that film paved the way for Airport, The Poseidon Adventure, and The Towering Inferno. The High and the Mighty was also the key inspiration, even moreso than Airport, for Airplane! And so it goes.
Irving Thalberg’s artistic instincts were correct in not shooting Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford in the same scene. In the MGM “universe”, these actresses occupy different worlds and their characters were in fact opposites, one ethereal, elusive and mysterious, the other earthy, open and street-smart. To modern-day eyes, Crawford ‘s acting is more believable, but Garbo, even when over-the-top, has an indefinable old-world allure that makes Crawford look cheap in comparison (Rudolph Valentino had the same qualities in comparison to his ‘30s counterparts).
As for the men, John Barrymore’s more subtle acting holds up better than Lionel Barrymore’s flamboyant performance, and Wallace Beery – is Wallace Beery no matter the costume or accent.
The Warner Bros. DVD contains a fine, but too short, documentary on the making of Grand Hotel, a promo short of Grand Hotel’s premiere, containing rare shots of MGM actors and the film’s director, Edmund Goulding, trailers, and a bizarre and not very funny Warner Bros. short parody of Grand Hotel. No complaints about the quality of the print - it looks great to me.
Grand Hotel is recommended for fans of classic Hollywood actors, those who enjoy a good, Saturday afternoon story, and as an example of sophisticated 1930s Hollywood product at its polished best.
Daybreak lost $100,000 for MGM, and it’s not hard to see why. The film unsuccessfully straddles the line between Stroheim-ish decadence and slick, feel-good, romantic MGM gloss. Attempting to appeal to both sensibilities, it’s successful in neither.
Based on a book by Austrian novelist Arthur Schnitzler (whose work was also the basis for Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut), Daybreak features a cad as the protagonist, Ramon Novarro (playing a William Haines-type character, only not funny), an Austrian lieutenant who pursues shy, sweet Helen Chandler, then insults her when he makes clear he wants her only as a mistress. The most logical thing happens next (logical if you’re in tune with the vibes of early ‘30s movies): within seconds, the insulted sweet music teacher casts Ramon out of her life, flees to the arms of the sneering, sweating, debaucherous Jean Hersholt, who earlier tried to rape her (Jean Hersholt!), and becomes, overnight, an angry, cynical, gambling, seen-it-all woman of the world.
Of course.
What bizarre aspect of the American psyche made this theme so popular in the early ‘30s? Even sweet Norma Shearer went this route (in The Divorcee), but the queen of spurned-and-fornicating ex-lovers was Greta Garbo. Her surreal turn as Susan Lenox (in Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise) has to be the quintessential portrayal of this sort of archetype, as she literally sleeps her way around the world in revenge, Clark Gable spurning her at every far-fetched meeting (of course, they really love only each other).
Anyway, MGM filmed two endings to Daybreak, one faithful to the novel (Ramon commits honorable suicide, being unable to pay back money lost trying to win Helen back in a game of Baccarat!), and the other a happy reuniting of the two lovers. They used the latter.
Novarro reportedly attempted to buy this film off MGM and shelve it. To make matters worse, the director Jacques Feyder, who didn’t speak English well, was sick during much of the shooting. The end result is a film of inconsistent tone, unable to please either the women’s audience, who wanted to see Ramon in a likeable role, or those fans of Lubitsch and von Stroheim who like their decadence unprettified.
Daybreak is not available on VHS or DVD, but has been broadcast on Turner Classic Movies.
More of an historical curiosity than an entertaining night at the movies, The Hollywood Revue of 1929 is a quickly filmed (four weeks of long, non-union hours, according to Bessie Love) collection of vaudeville skits and musical numbers designed to present MGM's stars in glorious sound.
Even for the initiated, The Hollywood Revue can be tedious going. A third of the film seems comprised of uninspired musical numbers. The sequences are introduced by Jack Benny and Conrad Nagel; sometimes they're funny, more often not. The editing is awkward bordering on inept, and the camera (no surprise for 1929) is mostly static.
Some of the highlights: a bizarre dance chorus sequence rendered nearly psychedelic with its use of negative photography; a short Laurel and Hardy sequence; Buster Keaton parodying the lascivious dance by Beth Laemmle which preceded him; and Cliff Edwards ("Ukelele Ike"),who enlivens nearly every scene he's in with his visionary version of scat singing.
The world of performers used here is almost too long to list; nearly all of MGM's stars are present except for Greta Garbo, Ramon Navarro, and Lon Chaney (represented by the song "Lon Chaney Will Get You If You Don't Watch Out").
In short, The Hollywood Revue is a very mixed bag, sometimes charming (Marie Dressler, Bessie Love), sometimes boring (Marie Davies' military march), and sometimes inciting one to smash one's television set (Charles King's "Your Mother and Mine").
Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture of 1929. The Hollywood Revue has been released on Warner Archives DVD-R.
Since April, 2002, Mary and I have undertaken an ambitious (some would say foolhardy) agenda of film watching: we are watching every MGM film which still exists (many no longer do), in as close to chronological order as possible. Our agenda encompasses all feature films released by MGM from the studio's creation, in 1924, until 1960, when the classic era of systematic Hollywood filmmaking was, for all intents and purposes, over.
MGM was probably the grandest of the Hollywood studios. It lacked the hard-hitting edge of Warner Bros., but made up for it through sheer spectacle, high, glossy production values and, as their tagline proclaimed, "more stars than there are in heaven". It's also worth noting that proto-EC and proto-Lynchian films such as Tod Browning's Freaks and The Unknown were produced by MGM, as were films of visionary decadence by Erich Von Stroheim, (recommendation: see Stroheim's Greed on a double-bill with P.T. Anderson's There Will Be Blood. Only the strong will survive). MGM also destroyed the career of Buster Keaton, another fascinating but depressing spectacle. Last but not least, MGM featured a trinity of top actresses in the '20s and '30s: Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo, and Joan Crawford. Sometimes sublime, sometimes mediocre and sometimes bizarre (or all three in the same movie), their films were always fascinating.
We began by watching The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the first film MGM released (though not the first film made by the new studio). It is also the film which made Rudolph Valentino a star. Since then, we have watched approximately 115 films, and are halfway through 1931. We're using, as a reference guide, The MGM Story, by John Douglas Eames, which lists films MGM released by year. (If you'd like to follow along with our movie watching, buy a copy of The MGM Story and have at it.) As films from years we've already covered have been made available, we've "backtracked", watching that film, then continuing on with the "current" year. I'll be posting here short reviews of the films we watch in the series, and posting reviews of earlier films we've watched when it's possible to go back and review them.
I'll also be posting miscellanious thoughts and lists on our crazy endeavour and we welcome your comments, comparisons, suggestions, or just plain help in tracking down elusive MGM films we've not yet been able to find. If you have a question about MGM or an MGM film,please post it here. I don't claim to be an expert on MGM, merely a guy watching a bunch of MGM movies. Then again, watching 115 MGM movies in a row can fill your head with a lot of near-useless facts. If you spot mistakes or wish to post clarifications or alternate opinions, feel free to post your comments.
By the late '20s, William Haines' screen persona had settled into a formula, giving his films the same sort of predictable inevitability other MGM formula stars of the day excelled in (like Lon Chaney and Greta Garbo).
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