Speak Easily (1932)

The best I can say about Speak Easily is it's mildly amusing.

Keaton plays an isolated professor spurred to discover the outside world in this unmemorable plot; Durante is a manager of a traveling dancing troupe.

Speak Easily was Keaton's second-to-last MGM film and the second of three films in which MGM teamed him with Jimmy Durante. Durante fans (are there many now?) probably find much to enjoy here, but Keaton fans can only see Keaton's talents being amazingly wasted. It's sad to see only glimpses of genius sprinkled through the film: Keaton nonchalantly removing himself from a policeman's gaze, gracefully choreographed pratfalls with Thelma Todd... Keaton's scenes with the very funny Todd, minus Durante, are the best in the film.

Keaton was in a bad place when Speak Easily was made. Continual, headline-making conflicts with this wife, Natalie Talmadge, Keaton's alcoholism and his creative conflicts with MGM all contributed to missed days on the set, costing MGM $33,000 in delayed shooting.

Speak Easily has fallen in the public domain and is available in many poor prints on DVD. The best print available is probably in the Warner Bros. Buster Keaton at MGM Triple Feature DVD-R box set. Speak Easily is also shown on TCM.

New to DVD: Salute to the Marines (1943) and Music for Millions (1944)

Salute to the Marines, starring Wallace Beery in Technicolor and Margaret O'Brien and Jimmy Durante in Music for Millions are being released to DVD-R for the first, by Warner Archives.

Check the Warner Archives site for details: 
http://www.wbshop.com/category/wbshop_brands/warner+archive.do

The Wet Parade (1932)

A weird downer of a movie (the poster above shows just how weird; Durante's slayed at the end of the film), MGM's adaptation of Upton Sinclair's novel is like a glossy version of a D.W. Griffith preachathon. It's nearly epic in scope (118 minutes), but bogged down by hammed-up acting and a melodramatic script that couldn't have warranted many raves when the film was new.

The Wet Parade begins in the south, where gentleman Lewis Stone slowly drinks himself to death, his last stop a pig sty. When his son, played by Neil Hamilton, moves to the north, the story and his sister, played by Dorothy Jordan, follow him.

There the binge drinking continues in a hotel best described as Alcohol Central.The owner of the hotel, overplayed by Walter Huston, is a non-stop lush and when alcoholic Neil Hamilton moves in, he's right at home. Robert Young, the most naturalistic and fresh actor in the film, plays Huston's teetotalling son.

Things get worse from there: after prohibition is instituted, alcoholics turn to bad liquor purchased from bootleggers. When Huston kills his wife in the throes of this stuff and Neil Hamilton goes blind from it, Young and Jordan dedicate their lives to irradicating bad alcohol from the planet Earth.

Then it gets even more odd: Jimmy Durante, portraying a treasury agent, is beamed into this movie from another planet, playing his role as if he were teamed with Buster Keaton instead of Robert Young. There's a lot of "ha-cha-cha"s and lame jokes while busting bootleggers!

Without having read Sinclair's novel. it's hard to determine if the story is more anti-alcohol or anti-government intervention (it could be both). Both are shown as very, very bad. Sinclair's politics banned him from the MGM lot when the film was being made, and he wasn't allowed to speak at the film's premiere (though the audience was expecting it). That's cold.

The one scene in the film that really works (and is probably straight from the novel) methodically and with no dialogue shows an assembly line of criminals packaging alcohol unfit for drinking as if it were name brand product. With the exception of this scene, Victor Fleming's direction is rote stuff.

Side note: The film ironically shows footage of Woodrow Wilson signing the 18th amendment into law, when Wilson had actually vetoed the act (thanks for this info, Mary).

The film also features Clara Blandick, Myrna Loy in a small part and Max Davidson in a short, uncredited role. MGM missed the boat in not fully utilizing his talents.

An amusing review of The Wet Parade on Booze Movies.com: http://www.boozemovies.com/2007/07/wet-parade-1932.html
The Wet Parade is not available on DVD or VHS, but has been broadcast on Turner Classic Movies.

Blondie of the Follies (1932)

In the same year that MGM cast Marion Davies in the embarrassing Polly of the Circus, they sort of made amends by casting her in the far more interesting Blondie of the Follies (what was next: Molly of the Midway?).

Blondie of the Follies benefits from two major talents allowed the freedom to do their stuff: Davies and co-screenwriter Anita Loos. In this film, Davies is allowed to show the range of her acting talents, from careful, poignant scenes to parody (in an out-of-place but funny scene with Jimmy Durante, playing himself). Under the hand of Loos and Francis Marion, the dialogue is fast, smart, quick-witted; one would never guess this was the same Anita Loos who wrote sap four years later like San Francisco.

Special mention needs to go to the perpetually old-looking James Gleason, who's given a choice role as Davies' father, attempting to prevent her from leaving their dreary tenement existence for the stage. Often used as stock comedy relief, Gleason was here given a role requiring depth of feeling, and he delivers it.

Blondie of the Follies also stars Robert Montgomery, and Billie Dove as the other compenents of a love triangle, and Zasu Pitts, who's supposed to be Davies' sister (!).

One might guess MGM tried to wreck this film in another completely implausible happy wrap-up scene of the sort the company specialized in. It didn't work - Blondie of the Follies is still worth seeing.

Blondie of the Follies is not available on DVD or VHS, but has been broadcast on Turner Classic Movies.

The Cuban Love Song (1931)

The Cuban Love Song (not to be confused with the late-'20s MGM tune "The Pagan Love Song"), stars opera baritone Lawrence Tibbett as a WWI-era marine falling for Cuban Lupe Velez, while Karen Morley (unadvisably, if you ask me) waits for him to return to the states.

Imagine William Haines as an unfunny opera singer and you'll get the gist of this movie starring yet another annoying jerk we're supposed to cheer for (an early MGM specialty). At least with Haines you had laughs; here, you have "The Peanut Song" sung so many times you wonder if you'll ever eat peanuts again.

Tibbett's voice is a real force; he was one of the all-time great opera singers. I'm sure someone can tell me why he was wasting his time in Hollywood and recording popular tunes on 78s when he could have been onstage singing Verdi and Puccini. At any rate, MGM let Tibbett go after The Cuban Love Song flopped.

Lupe Velez is fine in a role more restrained than her later comedies, and Tibbett is backed up by the bizarre comic relief team of Ernest Torrence and Jimmy Durante (!).Torrence is wasted, and Durante is...Durante.

Warning: Mary found this film quite offensive, exploiting women in general and Cubans in particular; she thinks it may be the worst MGM we've seen. Recommended only for fans of the actors involved, or opera-singing sailors getting tattoos.

Not currently available on DVD. Has been shown on Turner Classic Movies.