Michael Curtiz Ranked Part 3

In this third part, things start to get really good. Beginning with some entertaining but f F flawed films, this run up to my top 20 Michael Curtiz films features some real little-known gems.

You can find Part One and Part Two at these links.

ALL ENTRIES CONTAIN SPOILERS

40. 20,000 YEARS IN SING SING

Although he was a director known for genre-hopping, it’s probably fair to say that Michael Curtiz’s Pre-Code Hollywood career was heavily characterised by Melodrama. Aside from the odd Comedy or Horror film, most of his other output had a least a smattering of the sticky, tear-drenched stuff about it. I’m a big fan of well-done Melodrama and Curtiz was getting better at it all the time but sometimes the unabashed ludicrousness of the more manipulative brand of Melodrama can scupper even the best attempts of a skilled director. In the case of 20,000 Years in Sing Sing, the arrival of a woefully melodramatic final act ends up scuppering what for its first two-thirds had been a very effective hard-bitten Prison Drama.

20,000 Years in Sing Sing tells the story of Tommy Connors, a vain, temperamental young gangster who is sentenced to a long stretch in Sing Sing prison for robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. Seeing the sentence as merely another moment that will affirm his legend, Tommy swans into Sing Sing confident in the knowledge that his associates have bribed the warden to give him special treatment. What Tommy doesn’t know is that this warden ain’t for bribing! 20,000 Years in Sing Sing begins as a promising battle of wills between Spencer Tracy’s Tommy and Arthur Byron’s warden. The film was based on the non-fiction book by the actual Sing Sing warden Lewis E. Lawes, who granted Curtiz access to the actual prison for some rare-for-the-era location shooting. Lawes was also given the right to approve the final screenplay, which might explain why the warden is portrayed as such a virtuous and authoritative figure. It doesn’t quite explain why in the final reel he also acts like a naive schmuck but we’ll get to that. In the meantime, the film is great. Scenes of Tommy trying to balance his own power and comfort are enjoyable and there’s a very funny sequence involving intelligence tests that betrays the presence of Brown Holmes in the writer’s chair. Holmes had co-written Curtiz’s previous gem The Strange Love of Molly Louvain and was also responsible for another prison film released that same year, the classic I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. His touch is evident in many witty exchanges and a genuinely exciting high stakes prison break sequence which doesn’t pull its punches. The fact that this sequence comes in the middle of the film unfortunately hopelessly upstages the limp finale.

Alongside an excellent Tracy, Bette Davis returns for her second Curtiz film. Given that Curtiz had petulantly made her life hell on the set of the previous Cabin in the Cotton, it’s surprising how many films they went on to make together. Perhaps Curtiz was eventually convinced of her talents or perhaps her rising star was just too powerful for him to fight against. For her part, though she detested Curtiz, Davis respected his excellence as a filmmaker. It’s a shame that her role here is ultimately consumed by the third act melodrama because her appearances up until that point are enjoyable and already show a progression from her showier performance in The Cabin in the Cotton. Davis plays Tommy’s girlfriend, working with associates on the outside to try and spring him but also arousing his suspicions that the nefarious Joe Finn is taking advantage of his absence to move in on his woman. Her visits to the prison showcase not only her dramatic and comedic skills but also her considerable chemistry with Tracy. Apparently the two got on well and always wanted to make another film together but ultimately this was their only screen collaboration. The third lead, Arthur Byron, is not up to the standard of his co-stars. While that is admittedly a high bar, he stumbles through his lines with distracting amateurism which is a problem when he is supposed to provide the moral heart of the film. 

Byron’s inadequacy also plays a part in accentuating the ridiculousness of the film’s final stretch. When Tommy receives a telegram at the prison telling him that his girlfriend is critically ill after a car accident, the warden allows him to go free on the condition that he promises to return in 24 hours. It is utterly preposterous that the warden would make a deal like this with a character like Tommy, allowing him to walk out the door unescorted, but I suppose we’re supposed to glean some kind of lesson about trust and honour from it. In order for such a bold plot point to have any chance of being believable, we’d have to have seen much more development of the Tommy/warden relationship and the emergence of a mutual respect. The lack of this is more down to the screenplay than anything, although with such a short runtime it would’ve been hard to fit in this crucial emotional component without losing the whole prison break sequence. 20,000 Years in Sing Sing could really have benefited from at least another twenty minutes. 

While Tommy is out of the prison, the melodramatic side of the story fully kicks in with deathbed theatrics from Davis and her shooting of a treacherous associate for which Tommy takes the fall. In the process, he saves her neck and, in his voluntary return to prison, the warden’s reputation but as a result he’s fried in the electric chair. So what’s the moral here? See where being honourable gets you? An initially didactic setup just gets swallowed up by the clamour for lurid dramatic beats. Nevertheless, 20,000 Years in Sing Sing is still enjoyable even as it disappointingly lets go of the reins. Curtiz demonstrates his eclectic directorial flair once more, with the prison break scene and the inventive title sequences that bookend the film particularly standing out. It was remade in 1940 as Castle on the Hudson, but a quick glance at a plot synopsis reveals that they didn’t fix any of the daft plot details second time round.

39. GOD’S GIFT TO WOMEN

Like its predecessor in Curtiz’s filmography, the lamentable A Soldier’s Plaything, God’s Gift to Women was originally completed as a Musical but ended up being trimmed when that genre briefly fell out of favour with the public. Unlike A Soldier’s Plaything however, God’s Gift to Women does not feel like a film that has been butchered. The fact that you can’t tell that there’s anything missing suggests to me that the musical numbers probably felt like incongruous padding and slowed down the well-realised proto-Screwball energy. Also unlike A Soldier’s Plaything, God’s Gift to Women is actually funny and enjoyable. Based on Jane Hinton’s play The Devil was Sick, it tells the story of Toto Duryea, a French playboy whom legend has it is a descendant of Don Juan and has inherited the great lover’s power over women. When American tourist Diane Churchill rebuffs his advances, Toto finds himself instantly smitten and pursues her relentlessly. But there are obstacles to his ardour, including a disapproving father, a party of hedonistic hangers-on, an army of adoring ex-lovers and a medical diagnosis that finds Toto’s weak heart is liable to give out at the smallest hint of sexual excitement. The stage is set for an effective farce and, working with a witty screenplay by Raymond Griffith, Frederick H. Brennan and Joseph Jackson, Curtiz escalates proceedings wonderfully. Many farces blow their stack in an over-eager hurry to get farcical but God’s Gift to Women takes its time with a slow-paced half-hour setup, the effect of which is to make the second act madness all the more amusing.

The most common criticism of God’s Gift to Women is that Frank Fay is miscast as the leading man. Fay was an extremely popular vaudevillian, often referred to as the first ever stand-up comedian, but he was also one of the most hated men in Hollywood, a notorious bigot and violent drunk. God’s Gift to Women was his fourth collaboration with Curtiz but by this stage his star was very much on the wane, rapidly being eclipsed by the rise of his then-wife Barbara Stanwyck. Fay cuts an odd figure in an age dominated by masculine leads, his light passivity living up to the homonym of his surname. It’s easy to imagine this material having been played more forcefully by Clark Gable or Cary Grant but Fay’s sickly neurosis brings a likeable quirkiness to proceedings and reduces the level of troubling aggression inherent in so many early Rom-Coms. If the level of female interest in Fay seems implausible to many, the unlikeliness of his romantic ubiquity becomes part of the joke, emphasising the amusing notion of inherited magnetism. Those scoffing at Fay having to dodge the romantic attentions of Louise Brooks and Joan Blondell should also recall that he was married to Barbara flippin’ Stanwyck!

It would be easy to dismiss God’s Gift to Women as thin and unconvincing but it is a film that is very much aware of its own lightness and implausibility. These characteristics make it all the more amusing and, at 72 minutes, it has the brevity and pace to carry them off. Although there’s a sense that the film longs to be raunchier (Toto being forbidden to kiss a woman seems patently euphemistic), its breezy cheek hits just the right level of suggestiveness before tumbling into vulgarity. There are some moments of light Pre-Code titillation such as Joan Blondell in her knickers and a three-way catfight on a bed, while the less oppressive censorship of 1931 allows for the heavier implication of adultery which in turn unleashes the farcical staple of the gun-wielding cuckold. Screwball comedies often failed to stick the landing, with tacked on happy endings that clashed with their cynical battle-of-the-sexes narratives, but God’s Gift to Women ends with a nice twist and a bit of sweetly-subverted black comedy as an intended funeral is quickly converted into an impromptu wedding.

A Soldier’s Plaything may have made people suspect that Comedy was not Curtiz’s strength but he proved to be a director who could turn his hand successfully to just about any genre. The key is the material itself, which is much stronger here. Curtiz doesn’t deploy any directorial flourishes because the script doesn’t demand them. He merely sets the scenes, winds up the players and lets them loose, resulting in a breezy, fun little entertainment that rewards the curious cinephile and the comedy enthusiast.

38. THE UNSUSPECTED

Michael Curtiz’s dabblings in Noir tended to combine Noir elements with other genres. Angels with Dirty Faces had hints of Noir but was more of a Gangster picture; The Sea Wolf was nautical Noir mixed with seafaring Adventure; even the beloved Mildred Pierce, an acknowledged classic of the genre, is as much a Melodrama as it is a Noir. By comparison, The Unsuspected feels like a straight Noir with its convoluted plot about murder, blackmail, alcoholism, romance and sordid obsession. The screenplay by Ranald MacDougall, adapted by Curtiz’s wife Bess Meredyth, is dense with information but it manages to impart it all with refreshing clarity provided the viewer keeps their eye on the ball. It feels like the sort of film I ought to love and I did enjoy it but there’s something about the clean way it unfolds that makes The Unsuspected feel a bit too mechanical. What I love about the best Noir is the overwhelming atmosphere and Curtiz had proved himself adept at creating this with his work on Mildred Pierce. Even as it skirts the edges of the genre, Mildred Pierce firmly establishes itself as Noir by way of an intangible but constant sense that the air hangs heavy with smoke and the thick scent of perfume that gets down the back of your throat. The Unsuspected, by contrast, gives us a satisfying mystery with an oddly uninvolving feel.

The Unsuspected isn’t wanting for a good cast or fine performances. Claude Rains is as reliable as ever in the central role of a true crime radio show host who seems to attract death. Constance Bennett is wonderful as his producer while Audrey Totter is delightfully vile as his manipulative niece. Fred Clark’s unusual, elongated face is always a welcome sight. Joan Caulfield as his ward and Michael North as the man who claims to be her husband are a touch bland but the characters surrounding them are sufficient to mask that fact. The plot is always intriguing and builds to an exciting chase finale, so I’m not entirely sure what it is about The Unsuspected that failed to fully engage me. It feels like a pan full of delicious soup-bound ingredients floating in tepid water that refuses to absorb them. 

It sounds like I’m being very hard on The Unsuspected and a lot of that stems from the high expectations I had of discovering a hidden gem here. Once I strip away the unfair factor of that personally-plotted disappointment, I’m left with an efficient and entertaining film that I would tentatively recommend to fans of the genre but it doesn’t come close to being among my favourite Noirs. 

37. THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN

Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a contentious novel, perhaps more so with each passing year. Its satirical depiction of racism undoubtedly stems from the anti-racist intentions of the abolitionist Twain, and yet the book also dabbles too often in the broad stereotypes of minstrel show comedy in its depiction of the slave Jim. Twain got more progressive as his career went on but his forward-thinking attitudes did not mean he was completely immune to the influences of the society in which he lived. Consequently, adaptations of his work that hail from less enlightened times are often to be approached with trepidation. Michael Curtiz’s adaptation of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn came out in 1960 with the Civil Rights era well underway and fortunately that is at least partially reflected in the film. While there is a certain naivety and vulnerability about Jim, it is depicted as a part of his personality rather than as representative of his entire race, the implication easily inferred from Twain’s numerous superstitious black characters. But there are other problems inherent in adapting Twain for the screen. A lot of the considerable appeal of this great writer comes from his eloquent prose. In the case of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, he writes in the title character’s voice and the witty malapropisms and endearingly simple worldview add a satirical weight to the reading experience that cannot be replicated on film. The picture Twain paints so vividly in his writing can often seem just plain corny when performed by actors, especially precocious youngsters.

Fortunately, Curtiz’s Huckleberry Finn is one of the better Twain adaptations I’ve seen. Some fans of the novel have taken issue with the changes it makes but such literary purism generally displays a naive ignorance of the art of adaptation between mediums. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is such an episodic novel that its events lend themselves freely to rearrangement and some of the alterations, such as the removal of a climactic spotlight-grabbing cameo by Tom Sawyer, feel necessary in keeping the focus on the titular protagonist. At first child actor Eddie Hodges seems like he might be a tad too cloying but as the film progresses and the audience settles in to his performance he becomes highly watchable. Archie Moore is similarly adequate as Jim and Tony Randall, receiving top billing as “The King of France”, is enjoyably over the top. James Lee’s eventful screenplay preserves plenty of the novel’s vignettes and the gallery of quirky supporting characters is used as a good excuse to pepper the film with familiar character actors including Finlay Currie, Andy Devine, Harry Dean Stanton, Sterling Holloway and, in the biggest piece of stunt casting, Buster Keaton. They all help to bring colour and character to a film that manages to keep its head above the waters of mediocrity for most of its runtime.

By this stage of his career, Curtiz had lost a lot of the vitality and invention evident in his earlier work but there was a sense of professionalism that never disappeared. Though that quality alone could result in a certain sterility in lesser films, on occasions when the film had other strong aspects it helped audiences feel they were in a pair of safe, capable hands. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a film that epitomises that latter point. It feels safe and consistently enjoyable, if rarely exciting. It’s a good adaptation and a good evening’s entertainment.

36. WHITE CHRISTMAS

My generation has this thing where we recommend our favourite films from the 80s and 90s to someone, then when they don’t like them we go “Oh, you probably had to grow up watching it.” I’ve done it myself with films like Short Circuit and Flight of the Navigator and I’ve had it done to me with films like The Goonies and Hook. While it’s a convenient get out clause for those who don’t feel like defending their favourites on any other grounds except nostalgia (and, given Short Circuit was one of my picks, I’m aware there is often a lot with which to reckon), it’s also not an invalid reason for loving a film. Frequently it’s as interesting to hear a personal story about what a film means to someone as it is to read a review of the content alone. You’ll be pleased to hear that all of this isn’t a precursor to launching into a long overshare about my prior relationship with White Christmas. The truth is I don’t really have one. I watched it once many years ago at a seasonally inappropriate time and wrote it off quickly as a bit weak. The reason for this long winded build up is to introduce another variation on the “if you’d grown up with it” defence that has helped me contextualise my second viewing. That would be the “Ah, but if you watched it at Christmas…” gambit.

It’s fair to say that White Christmas is very much a film intended to be watched during the festive period. As well as its December timeframe, picturesque Vermont setting (eventually snowcapped), cosy pacing and songs about snow, snow, snow, White Christmas is calculatedly sentimental in a way designed to warm the cockles of anyone who has had to choose between the TV licence and central heating bill. Viewed with a seasonally softened heart and a lightly mulled stomach, I’m sure the film has a heightened effect. So here I am again, watching it in the middle of summer (not that anyone told the weather) and trying to adjust according to the advice of those who watch it every December. With all this in mind, I did enjoy White Christmas to a certain extent this time round. I can completely see how it is a classic to those for whom it is as much part of winterval as chestnuts roasting on an open fire and Jack Frost nipping at their noses. For me, it was just good with a few great moments and a nice overall feel, but not enough to tempt me into making all my Christmases white from now on. Ho-ho-hope that’s enough.

White Christmas was Michael Curtiz’s first film for Paramount and he makes the most of the big budget at his disposal. The film has a sumptuous look, with Loyal Griggs’ sparkling Technicolor cinematography giving it the sense of polished joy it requires. Several of the big production numbers are bold, arty affairs enhanced by striking colour palettes and while no one routine really stands out there are plenty of good ones that keep up the momentum of the thin plot. That plot, or lack thereof, proved a major problem for screenwriters Norman Panama and Melvin Frank who spent an excruciating eight weeks trying to make sense of and rewrite Norman Krasna’s original screenplay. The story that eventually emerged, involving a couple of ex-soldiers and a pair of female nightclub singers joining forces to stage a show to boost business in their old General’s failing Vermont hotel, meanders along amiably. This turns out to be the correct choice for this kind of film, since it is less a plot that is required than a few bare branches from which to hang baubles. A bit of romantic to-ing and fro-ing and some heaped on pathos involving the aging General just about keeps the audience’s attention but it is the regular bursts of Irving Berlin’s music and Curtiz’s excellent staging that impress above all. The slightly dreary Count Your Blessings bagged an Oscar nomination but the amusing Sisters (performed twice, once by the women and once by the men), the childishly lighthearted Snow, and Love, You Didn’t Do Right by Me are the standouts. The latter number is a solo piece for Rosemary Clooney, in which she demonstrates how much better she could’ve been if she wasn’t saddled with a floundering romantic plot with the much older Bing Crosby.

White Christmas’s other couple, Danny Kaye and Vera-Ellen, fare a lot better. Though Kaye is slightly stifled by the occasionally sluggish material, he is always fun to watch anyway. His part was originally intended for Fred Astaire, who turned it down, and then Donald O’Connor, who had to pull out due to illness, so as a late replacement Kaye does fine. But he is thoroughly upstaged, as is everyone else in the cast, by Vera-Ellen, whose elfin energy is the shot in the arm White Christmas really needs. She is the best dancer in the cast, with her performance to the instrumental version of Abraham being one of the few roof-raising moments, and her easy charm cuts through the film like a hot shovel through snow, in sharp contrast with Crosby’s hangdog, lumbering performance. Obviously he had to be there to sing the title song, which bookends the film, but he feels markedly more tired than in the previous decade’s Holiday Inn, a film in whose shadow White Christmas inevitably resides. The latter film, unlike Holiday Inn, at least sidesteps the indignities of blackface but it does feature an extended musical centrepiece known as Minstrel Number which romanticises minstrelsy and implicitly yearns for a time when blackface was not taboo.

White Christmas builds to a big, sentimental ending which will either delight or nauseate depending on how good a job the film has done of winning you over. I remember the first time I felt very much nauseated by its glorification of the military but this time round I was far more receptive. Placing the film in its proper context, it’s important to remember just how soon after the war White Christmas came out and how this kind of salute to soldiers was still very much about the individuals rather than the institution of the army. The original audiences who made the film a hit would’ve been filled with those affected directly by the war and, sentimental though they undoubtedly are, I believe the scenes are respectful and sincere, which in my book makes them effective and affecting. Dean Jagger’s General, somewhat marginalised for long stretches of the film, is thrust into the spotlight at this stage and Jagger’s wonderful performance is so moving that it makes you wish he’d featured more heavily. It’s the only way to end a film of this kind and this time I allowed myself the warm glow it was inviting me to share, without even the artificial enhancements of Christmas port and chocolates. While it didn’t quite reach the level of a classic for me, White Christmas is suitably leisurely festive viewing and I might be tempted to reach for a copy on future Christmas afternoons, even if it won’t become a yearly tradition. 

35. ROMANCE ON THE HIGH SEAS

Across the course of his lengthy career, Michael Curtiz established many collaborations with actors that lasted across several films. Perhaps the most famous of these working relationships was with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, while the iconic success of Casablanca highlighted Curtiz’s use of Humphrey Bogart, even though he only played supporting roles in several of their films together. Claude Rains, Kay Francis and Bette Davis are other examples of big stars who made multiple movies with Curtiz, but surprisingly underdiscussed are the director’s handful of films with Doris Day. Curtiz and Day made four films together, one a year between 1948 and 1951, but they rarely get a mention in discussions of the director’s work. Perhaps this is because of the perceived triviality of the Hollywood Musical or maybe these particular films just aren’t considered major works, but they hold a place of great significance in Day’s filmography given that Romance on the High Seas was her debut film role. Whatever you make of the ultra-lighthearted film itself, Day’s performance is a hell of a debut effort, exuding star quality and confidence from the outset. She was cast as a late replacement for the pregnant Betty Hutton and Curtiz was so impressed with her audition that he had no qualms about casting her in the leading role. As a newcomer, Day gets fourth billing but she is blatantly the main attraction, getting the lion’s share of the screentime and majority of the songs. The seemingly effortless optimism and charm that became her trademark is already evident here, although Day was going through her second divorce at the time. You’d never know from watching the film. It feels like she could bring the sun out with a single smile. This was the oft-underrated but widely embraced power of Doris Day.

Romance on the High Seas is caught between the sort of film I love and the sort that drives me crazy. On the plus side, I adore big Technicolor Musicals aimed primarily at stimulating the pleasure centre. In the negative column, I generally find farces based around jealousy and romantic misunderstandings to be excruciatingly annoying. Romance on the High Seas takes a little too long setting up its premise of a married couple, Elvira and Michael Kent, who are constantly suspicious of each other. For their anniversary, Elvira books a surprise cruise to Rio de Janeiro but Michael says he is too busy at work to go. Suspecting his new secretary has something to do with this, Elvira pretends to take the trip alone but instead sends Day’s Georgia in her place and under her name. While Elvira remains behind to spy on her husband, the equally suspicious Michael hires private detective Peter to follow his wife on the cruise and spy on her for him. Believing Georgia to be the real Mrs. Kent, Peter battles his professional ethics when he begins to fall in love with her. Although they are billed above Day in the credits, Janis Paige and Don DeFore pretty much disappear from the film once Day sets sail and, with the business of the plot dealt with, this is where the film picks up. Peter the PI is played by Jack Carson, himself in the process of a run of Curtiz-collaborations but, unlike in his great turns in Roughly Speaking and Mildred Pierce, he feels a bit miscast here. His faltering romance with Georgia provides a throughline but it is really just the opportunity to watch Day be delightful and belt out some numbers that drives the thin but enjoyable film from hereon in. Elsewhere, Oscar Levant, never much of an actor but always adept with a hangdog one liner, is fun as Georgia’s down-to-Earth boyfriend and Eric Blore, in his single scene as a hypochondriac ship’s doctor, demonstrates his ability to steal a scene even from Day. 

For the majority of the runtime though, Romance on the High Seas is clearly Day’s picture. There are some big names working behind the camera, with Julius and Philip Epstein writing the screenplay, additional dialogue provided by I.A.L. Diamond and choreography by Busby Berkeley. Given that pedigree, Romance on the High Seas doesn’t quite live up to its potential, with a script that could do with being a bit sharper and surprisingly straightforward musical numbers that you’d never know were the work of the famously ostentatious Berkeley. Fortunately, the songs themselves by Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn are quite good. The sappy but strongly melodious It’s Magic bagged an Oscar nomination but the highlight is the jauntily cynical Put ‘em in a Box, Tie ‘em with a Ribbon, Throw ‘em in the Deep Blue Sea, performed with deft comedic resignation by Day. She throws herself behind every performance with such gusto that even a half-hearted composition like the silly I’m in Love is fun to watch. A few other cast members also get memorable numbers. A clearly uncomfortable Carson is ably supported by The Samba Kings for the playfully misogynistic Run, Run, Run and a cameoing Avon Long has a blast barrelling into the middle of the film to perform The Tourist Trade. The fact that there is no real showstopper is in keeping with Romance on the High Seas’ easygoing nature. The film embraces its own soap bubble lightness and if audience members can do the same they’re likely to have a good time, even if it’s not one that’ll linger in the memory all that long afterwards. Fortunately, Doris stuck around longer.

34. THE LADY TAKES A SAILOR

The Lady Takes a Sailor is a peculiar little Comedy with a terrible title. Still, it could’ve been worse. After all, its working title was The Octopus and Miss Smith! In terms of content, the film itself could’ve been worse too. The Lady Takes a Sailor isn’t so much held in low regard as almost totally forgotten but those who do happen upon it are often pleasantly surprised by its quirky charm and highly unusual plot. This is the story of Jennifer Smith, head of the struggling Buyer’s Research Institute. Having secured a deal for additional funding, Jennifer celebrates by going out sailing and is caught up in a storm. She is rescued somewhat reluctantly by a man who claims to be called Davy Jones, who surfaces in a strange underwater sea-tractor. After a run in with an octopus, Jennifer’s rescuer drugs her and sets her ashore to be discovered by the Coast Guard. When asked where she has been, Jennifer tells the truth and becomes a laughing stock. Claiming she can prove her story with photographs she took, she discovers that the film from her camera is missing. When the institute who promised to provide her business with extra funds withdraws its offer, Jennifer sets about a one-woman mission to find Davy Jones and recover her missing film. But Jones, actually submarine engineer Bill Craig, has his own reasons for wanting to keep his identity and his invention a secret.

The main thing that tends to put people off The Lady Takes a Sailor nowadays is how sexist it is. Screwball comedy of the 40s, despite featuring some of the era’s most prominent and interesting female characters, often deferred to the dominant patriarchal ideologies of the time. So when The Lady Takes a Sailor takes a breather from its captivating madness in order to insert a moral, it is that old disappointing chestnut about how career women are denying their womanhood and ought to secure the love of a good man and be installed in the home where they belong! If you can disregard this typically sexist Golden Age attitude (and, as a big fan of the following year’s Annie Get Your Gun, I’ve certainly had practice) then there’s a lot of fun to be had with The Lady Takes a Sailor. Jane Wyman is utterly delightful as the desperate Jennifer, driven to extreme measures by one unfortunate encounter, and Dennis Morgan makes a decent foil for her as Davy/Brian. Many viewers find his character too unpleasant in his treatment of Jennifer but it is not uncommon for Screwball to escalate its central relationship to the point of all-out war before the inevitable romantic conclusion and, until it unfortunately chooses to validate one of them, Everett Freeman’s screenplay presents us with two equally determined rivals outdoing each other at every turn. The heated back-and-forth and trading of humiliations is the bread and butter of this genre and the battle for the camera film becomes quite exciting, even including a car chase at one point. 

Everett’s screenplay includes lots of quirky characters to enhance the fun, including the wonderful Eve Arden in another wisecracking friend role. Arden executes one of the best immediately-turning-to-alcohol reaction shots I’ve ever seen. Also entertaining are Stanley Prager as an enthusiastic cab driver who is delighted to be told “Follow that car!” and a scene-stealing Tom Tully as a bumbling but determined private detective. Unfortunately, Everett also increasingly resorts to feeble slapstick as the film goes on, which never quite reaches that level of Preston Sturges wildness that might have made it work. Michael Curtiz could turn his hand to most genres but he seems uncomfortable whenever the physical comedy escalates. The switch from Jennifer and Bill being enemies to being lovers is also thoroughly unconvincing, hammered into the story at a late juncture by way of an uncomfortably non-consensual kiss. It’s a shame when the wheels start to come off the wagon in this overreaching third act because up until that point I thought I might have stumbled on a hidden gem. It isn’t enough to undo the fun I had beforehand but the sexist moralising, undersold romance and weakly executed slapstick do sink The Lady Takes a Sailor’s chances of achieving the greatness at which it briefly hinted.

33. THE COMANCHEROS

During the making of The Comancheros, Michael Curtiz found out he was terminally ill and shortly after its release he died of cancer, aged 75. As final films go, The Comancheros is a perfectly respectable full stop on an incredible career. This was certainly a better film to go out on than the majority of his then-recent output would’ve been, although it is not clear how much of the film was directed by Curtiz and how much by its star, John Wayne, who stepped in to direct when Curtiz was too sick to continue. Wayne was fresh off his own directorial debut, a bloated Epic Western called The Alamo that brought him to the brink of bankruptcy. Whether he was especially enthusiastic about jumping back into the director’s chair again I don’t know but he clearly did a serviceable job. You can’t detect the join between the two directors’ footage, which probably says more about Curtiz’s decline than it does about Wayne’s potential. Still, with its continuous forward motion, nicely incorporated narrative asides and amiable sense of humour, The Comancheros is a solidly entertaining night at the movies. 

Based on the novel by Paul I. Wellman about the titular outlaw gang who smuggle guns and liquor to the Comanches, The Comancheros has a predictably iffy attitude towards Native Americans that was starting to disappear in the new decade but to which a few old school Westerns defiantly clung. The Comanches here are either wailing, faceless killers or buffoonishly drunken comic relief and neither function is comfortable to watch. Fortunately, the focus is more strongly on other conflicts, chiefly that of Texas Ranger Jake Cutter and Paul Regret, a gambler who accidentally killed a judge’s son in a duel gone wrong. James Edward Grant and Clair Huffaker’s screenplay weaves a delightful proto-Midnight Run relationship between this central odd couple and the film is at its best when they are pursuing, outwitting and clashing with one another. For the whole opening hour when this is the case, The Comancheros comes close to excellence. An extended side quest for Cutter which involves impersonating an imprisoned gun runner in order to infiltrate his gang introduces Lee Marvin into the fold. His appearance lasts less than twenty minutes but he makes his mark with a big performance that would ultimately lead to Wayne recommending him to John Ford for the titular villain in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Unfortunately, at the hour mark the entertainingly uneasy alliance between Cutter and Regret becomes an official friendship as Regret proves his mettle and Cutter reciprocates by using connections to solve his legal problems. From thereon in, the pace of The Comancheros slows significantly, its finale becoming a bit plodding just when it should be ramping up the tension. A completely superfluous eleventh hour romance is also tacked on to thoroughly unconvincing effect.

Nevertheless, The Comancheros manages to be a comfortingly familiar, late-era Golden Age Western. Wayne, whose previous collaboration with Curtiz in Trouble Along the Way actually stretched his acting abilities, is firmly back in his standard Western tough guy persona, which fortunately is all this role really demands. Stuart Whitman is a little below par as his wily prisoner and it’s hard not to wish that one of the original choices for the role, James Garner, had got the part instead. The scenery-chewing Marvin aside, the only other performance of real note is Guinn “Big Boy” Williams in an amusing one scene cameo as the gunrunner whose identity Cutter assumes. Sadly, Williams, like Curtiz, died shortly after The Comancheros, making this his last film too. There are other things to recommend The Comancheros, including a rousing Elmer Bernstein score and striking colour cinematography by William H. Clothier. When these two assets came together following a short prologue and the words “THE COMANCHEROS” were emblazoned in striking red letters across an epic Western landscape accompanied by a blaring cacophonous fanfare, I practically punched the air. If the subsequent film didn’t quite deliver fully on this moment, neither did it disappoint completely. For all the bumps along the way, I still got the fun Western Adventure I was hoping for.

32. LITTLE BIG SHOT

There are few things that put me off watching a piece of media more than aggressively delivered cuteness. Doe-eyed camera-hogs, be they human or animal, live action or animated, more often tend to nauseate than delight, even tipping over into creepy sometimes. This is why I’m almost entirely unfamiliar with the career of Shirley Temple, Hollywood’s dominant moppet for a large chunk of the 30s. Now I’m not a monster. I love children, I find animals interesting as long as I can view them from a distance, I go “awwww” when Dumbo’s ears flop out. But I prefer to be disarmed by spontaneous cuteness rather than actively seeking it out, and when it is foisted upon me some combination of the suppressed cynic and shameless contrarian that I once was surfaces with a vengeance. The more sustained the fluffy attack, the more extreme the reaction is likely to be. Give me a kitten calendar for Christmas and I’ll have twelve new paper aeroplanes by early March.

All this is by way of saying that I wasn’t especially looking forward to watching Little Big Shot, Warner Bros.’ attempt to launch a rival sweetie-pie star to wrench the golden lollipop out of Shirley Temple’s chirruping gob. But in all honesty I was won over pretty quickly because that new child star, five year old Sybil Jason… well, she’s just so damn cute! Maybe I’ve mellowed a little since I’ve become a dad myself but looking at still photos of Shirley Temple giving it the full cutesy-wutesy still makes me wince whereas Jason seems to exude a heart-warming charisma and talent that goes beyond the mere batting of eyelashes. Of course, she is asked to do the whole precocious routine including an extended act involving songs and celebrity impressions, but even this plot-derailing sideshow didn’t turn my stomach as I thought it would. Jason is at her best when she’s just acting though. Her helpless waif routine is heartbreaking and her crying scenes are alarmingly real in a stagey kind of way. What can I say? I’m a big softie after all. Every time she turned on the waterworks I wanted to go upstairs and wake my son up for a cuddle.

It’s not all about that one winsome poppet though. As adorable as Jason is, her shtick would get old pretty quickly if there wasn’t a decent film on which to hang it. Fortunately, Little Big Shot has plenty going for it. It has a screenplay co-written by future Casablanca scribe Julius J. Epstein, a strong adult cast that includes King Kong’s Robert Armstrong, Glenda Farrell in her third Curtiz collaboration and the wonderful Edward Everett Horton who gets a more substantial role here than in many of his other films. The plot is surprisingly violent, beginning with a gangland murder that orphans Jason’s character and ending with a kidnapping by the same mobsters. Even the heroes played by Armstrong and Horton are a couple of conmen illegally hawking watches to suckers. Their redemption story is simple, warm and pacey, perfect for a 78 minute runtime, and there’s an almost Chaplinesque mix of pathos and humour in the scenes of them adapting to looking after a child. The dialogue is smart and the sentiment delivered with a hard-edged grit that makes it all the more moving. 

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Little Big Shot but it really is a very charming film. By all accounts it is a bit of a knock-off of the Temple film Little Miss Marker from the previous year so maybe I ought to give that a try and finally give Shirley the chance she probably deserves. I’m tempted to say I’m probably Team Jason when it comes to the battle of the child actresses but hey, why pit them against each other? For all Warner Bros.’ attempts to set them up as rivals, in a charming postscript to Jason’s short career she and Temple made two films together and became lifelong friends. Awwwww!

31. THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE ARE FREE

By the time The Best Things in Life are Free was released, Michael Curtiz could practically direct a Musical Biopic in his sleep. If you count the Bix Beiderbecke-inspired Young Man with a Horn, this was Curtiz’s fifth film in the genre, with the fictional My Dream is Yours residing in an adjacent subcategory. He’d made good ones (Yankee Doodle Dandy, I’ll See You in My Dreams) and bad ones (Night and Day) but crucially Curtiz hadn’t fallen into too predictable a pattern. Young Man with a Horn and the subsequent The Helen Morgan Story (his final Musical Biopic) presented versions of the standard rise and fall alcoholism story but the far less melodramatic I’ll See You in My Dreams and Yankee Doodle Dandy offered up a leisurely, lighthearted form of storytelling which placed the emphasis on the songbooks of their respective subjects. The Best Things in Life are Free is a variation on that approach, telling the loose story of songwriting trio Buddy DeSylva, Lew Brown and Ray Henderson with as easy-going, warm-witted drift through the hits that is punctuated by plenty of music and a couple of surprisingly excellent production numbers. In comparison with the big MGM Musicals, this 20th Century Fox film feels fairly modest but the choreography of Rod Alexander captured in Leon Shamroy’s muted colour cinematography has a down-to-earth magic all of its own. 

There’s a vague plot about artistic ambitions and loyalty rattling around in The Best Things in Life are Free but it is subservient to the general hanging out vibe. It’s no surprise to discover that a lot of the details in the film are not accurate but the focus here seems to have been on creating a fun dynamic and a likeable group of characters rather than hammering the details into a standard framework. The screenplay by William Bowers and Phoebe Ephron (Nora’s mum) ensures these people are enjoyable company and their mismatched dynamic keeps things lively. The quartet of leads all do well, with the standout being Ernest Borgnine. Not the actor you’d necessarily expect to find in a Musical, Borgnine holds his own in the song and dance moments and excels in the dramatic ones as the comically short-tempered Lew Brown. His boisterousness is balanced out by the unassuming family man act from Dan Dailey and the slick narcissism of Gordon MacRae as Ray Henderson and Buddy DeSylva respectively. Sheree North, as the fictional singer Kitty Kane, is also great. Though her singing voice is dubbed by Eileen Wilson, North’s dancing is excellent and she heads up the two pivotal numbers, Black Bottom and the exceptional Birth of the Blues, in which she dances a very sexy duet with Jacques d’Amboise.

Given its 104 minute runtime, there are moments when the essential plotlessness of The Best Things in Life are Free is a bit of a problem but there’s usually a nice little scene or piece of music just round the corner when things start to sag. There’s a particularly amusing anecdote (the truth of which I can’t account for) in which the trio attempt to write the worst possible song they can imagine for Al Jolson, only to see it become a smash hit. Of course, the presence of Jolson does mean that we get hit with another blackface scene. While true to the era and the image of the celebrity it is depicting, there is an unpleasant conservative defiance in the insistence on continued use of blackface in an era that was finally beginning to move away from it, especially since the film clearly uses it a little more than the Jolson anecdote requires. Still, by the end of The Best Things in Life are Free I was entertained and uplifted, which seems to be the film’s major aim above any delusions of greatness. In fact, the film’s dedication to its own small-scale modesty is exactly what makes it so thoroughly charming.

30. GOODBYE AGAIN

Michael Curtiz made six films across the course of 1933 (and did ten hours of reshoots on another) so some inconsistency in quality was almost inevitable. Starting out with the classic Mystery of the Wax Museum, Curtiz was then stuck with lesser material in the awkward Melodrama The Keyhole and the confused Crime Thriller Private Detective 62. Curtiz did his best to enliven the films but his decent direction couldn’t quite make either one work. By contrast, Goodbye Again works brilliantly with seemingly minimal effort on Curtiz’s part. Clearly based on a play, this proto-Screwball delight mainly features a lot of characters jabbering in rooms and, as a director who famously focused more on the technicalities than the stars, Curtiz wisely just winds them up and lets them go. 

The absurdly zany screenplay by Ben Markson is distinctly Pre-Code in its exploration of famous author Kenneth Bixby’s dalliances with his persistently horny, now-married ex Julie. Despite the exhaustive attempts by Julie’s husband and family and Bixby’s secretary to prevent the infidelities, it is heavily implied that they happen on numerous occasions throughout the film. This is a delightfully amoral Rom-Com which appears to be thumbing its nose at the very rigid moral guidelines that would soon by forcibly imposed on cinema for decades. Its argument, and such a thing can be detected even in a production this wilfully zany, seems to be for a greater permissiveness in life, with those trying to enforce societal demands on lovers repeatedly coming in for mockery. When leads Warren William and Joan Blondell collapse laughing on the bed at the film’s climax, it almost feels like a fourth-wall break as the actors delight in just how much they’ve gotten away with, punctuated by the full-stop of an implied bedding without the soon-to-be de rigueur “let’s get married” precursor.

Both William and Blondell had appeared in previous Curtiz films but they had been stifled, he by miscasting and she by marginalisation. Here they are given the chance to shine, with William in particular proving hilarious as the refined author whose hedonistic indulgences eventually turn him into a gleeful, cavorting child. By contrast, Blondell plays it relatively straight, providing a much needed anchor amidst the escalating lunacy. Although William emerges as the highlight, the show is very nearly stolen by Genevieve Tobin as the purring Julie whose pursuit of Kenneth is exhaustive. The comedy here is often deliberately silly. Goodbye Again is the sort of farce where no-one can open a door without unexpectedly finding another character lurking behind it. But Markson’s script balances the larksome flapping with plenty of verbal wit and a penchant for situational absurdity that culminates in an impromptu trial in a hotel room. The viewer is never quite sure where Goodbye Again is going next or how close we are to a conclusion. When it does suddenly end after a goofy sequence with William pretending to commit suicide to gain Blondell’s attention, there’s no real sense of closure. The impression is less that the material has run out and more that you can’t possibly keep something this wilfully bizarre and frivolous going for more than 66 minutes. Goodbye Again is wise to bail when it does and, given the nature of the film’s peculiar style, the hurried non-resolution just feels like one more of its delightful playground games. Narrative satisfaction be damned when we’re having this much fun!

29. BLACK FURY

Films like Black Fury are often criticised retrospectively for not living up to their subversive potential. The oppressive Hays Production Code was especially good at neutering films with left leanings as it forbade the overt criticism of authority figures that was so central to their ideologies. Even before the Code was in force, Curtiz’s essentially pro-worker film The Cabin in the Cotton found itself slapped with an introductory disclaimer about how the studio weren’t taking sides. It can be frustrating for modern-day lefties like myself to watch these films forced towards more centrist conclusions but to denounce them altogether because of this seems reductive when films like Black Fury were instrumental in laying the table for future unrestrainedly progressive cinematic diatribes. It has to be assumed that filmmakers who wanted to get messages out that were deemed too radical must’ve placed a certain amount of trust in their audiences to read between the lines, just as latter day audiences need to apply some historical context before wagging their fingers at a film for not portraying something that it couldn’t reasonably be expected to get past the censors.

Perhaps my opening rant makes Black Fury sound more sanitised than it is. In fact, the film comes across as fairly pro-union and features a very unflattering depiction of the police, an essential element given that the plot was based on a 1929 walkout at a Pennsylvania mine in which Polish miner John Barkowski was beaten to death by private company police officers. The depiction of a similar incident here was one of the things that made Black Fury so controversial and it found itself banned in many territories for fear it would stir up trouble. This didn’t prevent it becoming a success though, resulting in the first Oscar nomination in a Curtiz-directed project going to lead actor Paul Muni (the Academy accepted write-in votes that year and while Muni wasn’t officially nominated, he ended up being second on the ballot). To modern audiences, Muni’s performance probably seems like the most dated element of Black Fury. Adopting a broad Eastern European accent and portraying every emotion with the natural restraint of The Hulk, Muni cuts a fairly ridiculous, though not unentertaining, figure. This sort of bold overacting was often prized highly in early sound cinema (check out Walter Brennan’s hurdy-gurdy-flurdy performance as a Swedish lumberjack in Come and Get It, which won the first ever Best Supporting Actor Oscar the following year) and again we have to adjust our preconceptions to allow for it. If you can do so, Black Fury emerges as one of Curtiz’s strongest early films.

Curtiz was never a director with a consistent political identity visible onscreen so he is able to guide Black Fury through its compromised ideological waters with maximum dramatic impact. His focus is on character and situation rather than sanitised rhetoric which is, in this case, the correct approach. If the social realism has been forcibly muddied (and the narrative’s heroic climactic intervention of the US government makes clear that it has) then give the audience a strong human story to enjoy while they pick the political bones out of it. So we get a romantic triangle that influences but doesn’t overwhelm the plot and intermittent action that punctuates the dominant debate. Muni’s Joe Radek is a comparatively apolitical protagonist, caught between polarising influences and occasionally inadvertently influencing others with drunken or impulsive actions. This tendency escalates towards a fantastic conclusion in which Joe’s anger leads him to begin hiding in the mine and blowing up company property. These sequences are enhanced further by the art direction of John Hughes, whose underground sets are realistic and atmospheric.

Although elements of it are undoubtedly dated, Black Fury may be even more effective today than it was in 1935, providing you go in with a film historian’s eye. Although its politics might seem to be all over the place, it’s important to remember that in an industry primarily focused on delivering escapist stories of middle and upper class characters, a working class issues film was a political statement in itself. 

28. THE STRANGE LOVE OF MOLLY LOUVAIN

Here’s a fun game that cinema snobs can play. When you meet another person you suspect of also being a cinema snob (look for the palpable sense of superiority and aversion to Marvel posters), walk up to them and say the words “Strange Love of.” Some of them might mistake it for a Kubrick reference with a superfluous preposition, and these people can be dispensed with forthwith with the obligatory derisive snort. Others may answer “Martha Ivers”, in reference to Lewis Milestone’s 1946 Noir, and in this case you may have found a friend but these are Tier 2 cinema snobs. The Tier 1, top drawer content-bigots will invariably answer “Molly Louvain”, in reference to Michael Curtiz’s much more obscure Pre-Code multi-genre film, at which point you know you have found a kindred spirit with whom you can walk around snickering haughtily at people who answer “Martha Ivers.”

That’s all nonsense of course but there is a rush of glee inherent in finding a little gem like The Strange Love of Molly Louvain lying largely ignored and unloved, not to keep for your own uppity ends but to share with your fellow film-lovers at their soonest possible convenience. It is a curious beast, combining genres as disparate as Screwball Comedy, Gangster, Romance, Weepie and Social Satire, all packed into 73 minutes. In truth, the timeframe is too tight to adequately contain everything The Strange Love of Molly Louvain tries to do but this admirable ambition shines through and Curtiz manages to blend the tones so seamlessly that we never see the join. It helps enormously that he is working with far better material than in most of his previous films. Based on a play by Maurine Dallas Watkins who wrote the original play of Chicago, the film is adapted by Brown Holmes and Erwin S. Gelsey who between them notched up credits on classics such as I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, Gold Diggers of 1933 and Swing Time. In comparison with the stilted dialogue of Curtiz’s previous The Woman from Monte Carlo and Alias the Doctor, The Strange Love of Molly Louvain’s screenplay is clearly a cut above, with lines that combine a conversational naturalism with a heightened theatrical wit. A great cast keep that latter quality adequately in check, essaying a group of down-to-Earth, flawed and struggling human beings who never once threaten to become didactic ciphers. In fact, the conspicuously Pre-Code content here betrays a more level-headed, adult attitude towards unwed mothers, sex and cohabitation outside marriage and even lesbianism, subjects that would often be portrayed in a very different manner under the puritanical Hays Code. We also see a lot more of lead actress Ann Dvorak’s legs than we might have several years later, but the film’s generally sympathetic attitude towards permissive behaviour makes even this gentle titillation feel more sex-positive than merely exploitative.

The Strange Love of Molly Louvain begins as a fine Melodrama with comic overtones as the titular Molly finds herself used, impregnated and abandoned by a frivolous rich suitor and forced to turn to a sleazy small-time gangster to support her. Adored by a naive young bellhop, Molly inadvertently drags him into a life on the run when the law catches up with her de facto partner. This is the stage where a fourth love interest enters the picture, bringing with him the fast-talking, gritty zip of the previous year’s The Front Page. While Dvorak is terrific in the lead role, it is the arrival of the superb Lee Tracy as unscrupulous newspaperman Scotty that really elevates the film. He and Dvorak have a fascinatingly lively chemistry despite him lacking the matinee idol looks of a conventional leading man. But The Strange Love of Molly Louvain adheres very little to the standard rulebook (in reality, Dvorak fell for Leslie Fenton who plays the no-good gangster, and their decision to elope and go on a year-long honeymoon together unfortunately ended up having detrimental repercussions for her promising career). 

With so much to juggle in so little time, The Strange Love of Molly Louvain inevitably ends up giving short shrift to one of its genres, in this case the unwed-mother Weepie strand. Though Molly’s illegitimate daughter ends up playing a crucial part in the story, their bond is never sold to a sufficient degree to inspire actual emotions and ends up feeling more like a plot device than a real human connection. Despite their strong chemistry, the culmination of the romance between Dvorak and Tracy feels a little unconvincing too, although there is a pleasing sense of ambiguity that suggests the nature of Molly’s “strange love” likely means there will be plenty more twists and turns to come in place of the happy ending we’ve grown to expect. After all, in terms of the heap of trouble she is still in as we fade to black, there’s an impression that the ongoing trials of the female sex are more the point to take away than some neat resolution that would undermine the social relevance.

If the dramatic elements are sometimes given less emphasis than required, I was delighted to see that this was to the benefit of the comedic ones. As soon as Tracy first barges into the room, The Strange Love of Molly Louvain sizzles with rapidly flung witticisms and streetwise 30s colloquialisms that ramp up the pace. There’s a borderline Marx brothers anarchy to some of the scenes with the reporters and police, with amusing bits of physical business punctuating the snappy exchanges. Unlike in Alias the Doctor, where Curtiz’s efforts to elevate the material were clearly visible, in The Strange Love of Molly Louvain the director makes himself largely invisible. We feel there’s a steady hand on the wheel at all times but we’re too engrossed watching and listening to the players to really think about the man who has so deftly extracted these performances. This is the first Curtiz film in which success feels like it has been obtained through the work of the actors and writers rather than despite them. It is crucial that the perfect director was chosen for this material though. As a man whose reputation would come to rest on his ability to turn his hand to any genre, Curtiz feels like the natural choice for a film that contains about five of them.

27. MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM

Like many others before me, I came to Michael Curtiz’s Mystery of the Wax Museum having already seen the excellent remake, House of Wax. It is testament to the strength of Curtiz’s film that it easily withstands a viewer already knowing the secrets of its plot, coasting by on charm and atmosphere despite its title foregrounding the importance of the mystery element. As with the previous Doctor X, predicting the killer’s identity ahead of time does not reduce the subsequent chills caused by their nefarious ends. While Doctor X had been a goofier spookshow, Mystery of the Wax Museum combines a nice strand of humour with an emotionally affecting study of obsession and loss. The final unmasking of the murderer is delivered with especially powerful pathos as his countenance cracks to reveal his disfigured face twisted in a momentarily heartrending look of shame. It is perhaps the greatest moment Curtiz had directed up to this point, on a par with the unmasking of Lon Chaney’s phantom in the 1925 The Phantom of the Opera.

Mystery of the Wax Museum uses many of the same cast and crew as Doctor X, including stars Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray and art director Anton Grot. Grot’s work once again proves instrumental in creating the eerie but fun atmosphere, made all the more disconcerting by the anaemic pop of two-strip Technicolor. While Grot had filled Doctor X with oodles of bubbling flasks and smoking beakers, the mad scientist caricatures are toned down in line with Mystery of the Wax Museum’s increased sense of baroque tragedy. The lively comedy supplied by Lee Tracy’s reporter in Doctor X is here provided by Glenda Farrell as the wisecracking reporter Florence Dempsey, whose investigation dominates the screen-time more than the nominal stars Atwill and Wray. Farrell is great fun and it’s a refreshing change to see a comedic female lead with such drive and agency in a film of this era.

Like Doctor X, Mystery of the Wax Museum feels like a small but perfectly formed piece of Pre-Code Horror. While the former remains more fun, Mystery of the Wax Museum has a couple of moments that stand out above anything Doctor X has to offer and, while Andre de Toth’s 1953 remake House of Wax may be the better film overall, it owes its success to the groundwork laid by Curtiz and co. The aforementioned unmasking trumps the same scene in the remake, which attempts to up the horrific effect but does so at the expense of the human emotion that is so crucial in giving Mystery of the Wax Museum its enduring impact. Given the success of his duo of Pre-Code Horrors, it’s a great shame Curtiz only revisited the genre once more with 1936’s Boris Karloff vehicle The Walking Dead.

26. TROUBLE ALONG THE WAY

I admit I wasn’t really looking forward to watching Trouble Along the Way and that was almost entirely down to its truly horrendous poster. It shows a calm, mildly amused John Wayne casually leaning into frame and restraining a panicky Donna Reed by firmly holding both her wrists as she struggles to get free. Given that Trouble Along the Way is billed as a Comedy, I assumed the image was meant to be seen as a lighthearted depiction of the battle of the sexes but it really looks like the first stage of a sexual assault in progress. Fortunately there isn’t really a corresponding moment in the actual film. There is an alarming scene in which Wayne’s character repeatedly forces vengeful kisses on Reed’s character but it is done in hot-blooded anger. While that doesn’t necessarily make it better, it is also less excruciating to watch than the calculated and prolonged actions of a practiced predator that the poster suggests. That one scene aside, the interactions between Reed’s Social Services worker Alice and Wayne’s football coach Steve are largely characterised by the iffy sexual politics you’d expect in a film from 1953 but wrapped in the playful wit of a more restrained variation on Screwball. If you can swallow that bitter pill, there’s an abundance of effective sugaring here to help it on its way down.

The early part of the 50s for Michael Curtiz was mostly characterised by flashy but dry Biopics. A notable exception was the excellent I’ll See You in My Dreams so it’s no surprise to learn that Trouble Along the Way’s superior screenplay shares its writers with that film. Jack Rose and Melville Shavelson have crafted a rich, amusing and fast-paced film that flits comfortably between Romantic Comedy, Domestic Drama, Religious picture and Sports film. The characters, even those whose depictions feel distinctly un-PC by modern standards, are all well defined and the performances are largely delightful. John Wayne, often an actor with seemingly limited range, could occasionally turn in a surprisingly great performance and he does so here as the down-and-out football coach and single father who is hired by Charles Coburn’s elderly rector in an attempt to save his struggling Catholic university. Wayne is charismatic and amusing, forming a great double act with the film’s real scene-stealer, Sherry Jackson as his 11 year old daughter Carole. Rose and Shavelson give Jackson a lot of the best lines and she delivers them beautifully, while also hitting the emotional beats with the maturity befitting a character of her age rather than resorting to infantilised, doe-eyed manipulation. Coburn, despite his infamous white supremacist activities offscreen, was adept at playing these cuddly but shrewd supporting roles and delivers again as the determined Father Burke. Donna Reed has perhaps the toughest job as the officious, clearly-written-by-men Social Services worker investigating Steve and his daughter on behalf of the mother, a positively demonised figure, the inherent misogyny of which is balanced by Marie Windsor’s evident relish in playing the role and the equally detestable male sidekick with whom she is paired (a wittily smarmy Tom Helmore, who you better believe gets punched through a glass window before the film is through!).

From the opening moments and the similar title alone, it’s clear that Trouble Along the Way was conceived as a close cousin to the Best Picture winning sentimental Drama Going My Way. But as the film opens out it becomes clear that it is actually going its own way, until that comparison fades from memory. While it’s happy to oversimplify Carole’s relationship with her monstrous mother, the film refuses to romanticise the relationship with the single father. It is clear that they love each other and that Steve is trying, but the conclusion recognises that this is not necessarily enough and the resolution is left hopeful but open ended. There is a hint of that old conservative chestnut about a child needing both a father and a mother but we aren’t forced to witness a magical transformation with Alice being plugged into the family and instantly solving all the problems. Likewise, the moral stand taken by Father Burke against Steve’s devious methods is recognised by the Father himself as problematic given the impossible position in which he placed Steve. There’s a refreshing moral complexity here, where a lesser film would’ve insisted not only that the religious elder be wholly vindicated but that he also convince Steve back to the faith. Many viewers find themselves troubled by the fact that none of these expectations come to pass but I found the ending of Trouble Along the Way to be immensely satisfying in its ambiguity and narrative maturity.

The undoubtedly outdated sexual politics may make Trouble Along the Way a tough watch for some but the relationship between Wayne and Reed is very much treated as a supporting storyline, with greater emphasis on the father/daughter dynamic. A little more focus on the sporting action might’ve made the film even better but, given the amount it attempts to do, Trouble Along the Way juggles its numerous threads extremely well. It emerges as a flawed but admirably ambitious and always entertaining film and timely reassurance that Curtiz’s directorial flair was still very much alive when paired with the right material.

25. FOUR WIVES

Four Wives is the first direct sequel to Michael Curtiz’s Four Daughters from the previous year. The cast of that film had reunited in the summer of 1939 for the similar but unrelated Daughters Courageous in which they played different characters, but by Christmas that same year Four Wives saw the return of the Lemp family and their assortment of quirky suitors and neighbours. With its Californian beach house setting, Daughters Courageous had been perfect for the summer season but there’s something inherently and cosily Christmassy about the Lemp family’s upstate New York abode, whether there’s snow on the ground or spring in the air. So Four Wives feels more suited for the festive season, reinstating the melodramatic air of Four Daughters, which the subtler Daughters Courageous had traded for a more wistful philosophical approach.

If Four Wives and its follow-up Four Mothers do follow the general rule of diminishing returns in sequels, they also benefit from the growing familiarity of the franchise. Chances are if you enjoyed spending time with these characters the first time round, you’ll probably get something out of doing so twice more. The Four Daughters trilogy is a well worked out series, allowing each of its many characters a moment in the spotlight across the three films. It’s nice to see Rosemary Lane’s Kay getting a bigger bite of the cherry this time round in a lighthearted burgeoning romance with newcomer Eddie Albert’s handsome doctor. Priscilla Lane’s Ann had very much been the focus of the first film, along with breakout star John Garfield as the bad boy outsider she married. The biggest issue Four Wives has to navigate is the fact that Garfield’s character was killed off in Four Daughters, perhaps the main reason that the Lemp-adjacent Daughters Courageous opted for a re-rack. Four Wives deals with this problem by making the fallout from the death of Garfield’s Mickey a major plot point, exploring the complex grief of his widow. One of Four Daughters’ flaws was the rather hurried way it passed from tragedy to hope in a matter of minutes but seeing it as part of this trilogy instead of a standalone film helps to eradicate that problem. Garfield appears here in ghostly flashback, imposed over present day images of those he left behind, an effective callback which also allowed for the largely absent star to be credited on the Four Wives poster.

The returning cast, from Claude Rains and May Robson to the Lane Sisters and Gale Page, continue to make this series of films a treat, while the comedic potential of Frank McHugh seems to have been recognised by the filmmakers who give his blustering Ben Crowley a much bigger part this time round, with the once minor character featuring even more heavily in the subsequent Four Mothers. But if that third and final film in the Lemp saga demonstrates anything, it’s the major importance of the writers and director to the franchise. While all our favourites are present on screen for that final go around, the things they are doing and saying have a disconcertingly different air about them. That’s because they are not written by Julius J. Epstein or directed by Michael Curtiz. Epstein had been present for all the Lane Sisters/Curtiz collaborations, with his twin brother Philip jumping on board for Daughters Courageous and Four Wives. Their writing is exquisitely witty without being overly showy and it created that Lane Sisters onscreen dynamic that is so crucial to the brilliance of these films. By contrast, Four Mothers was left in the hands of little-known writer Stephen Morehouse Avery and, while he does a better job than some have credited him with doing, he can’t come close to recapturing that Epstein brand sparkle that would soon give the world Casablanca. The directorial reins, meanwhile, were handed to the adequate William Keighley, the man whom Curtiz had previously replaced on The Adventures of Robin Hood when it became apparent he couldn’t direct action sequences. While there are no action sequences in the Four Daughters films, the comparative sluggishness of Four Mothers highlights the importance of Curtiz’s kineticism and storytelling verve at whatever pace the material is pitched.

We should take a moment to consider Four Wives as a film in its own right as opposed to how it fits into the franchise, but it’s impossible to completely remove Four Daughters from the equation. Four Wives is not the kind of sequel you can watch without having seen the original. It follows on directly and the emotional core of the material relies on the audience having some kind of connection with the deceased Mickey and knowledge of his unfulfilled talents as a composer. Unlike Four Daughters and Daughters Courageous which can stand alone, Four Wives is propped up by groundwork laid elsewhere and relies heavily on the audience’s desire to see these characters again and learn about the rest of their story. Unlike the latter day trend for sequels to go bigger and louder, Four Wives aims for the same register as its predecessor and if it doesn’t quite reach the same level of quality (and certainly doesn’t match the exquisite Daughters Courageous), it ends up being a very satisfying sequel. The Epsteins keep in mind that a sequel can not only expand on the original’s story but can address issues that it had too. It’s good to know, for instance, that Ann continued to grieve over Mickey rather than just shrugging him off and swinging on the garden gate with Felix.

Although I enjoyed seeing more of Kay’s character, I didn’t think Eddie Albert was a very good fit for her new beau. Albert would become a great actor but in this early role he’s trying too hard to be charming and it feels forced. Four Mothers would subsequently struggle to find anything interesting to do with his character as well. While Garfield had deliberately and effectively disrupted the equilibrium of Four Daughters, Albert just feels wrong for his role and brings a clunky note to the otherwise finely tuned chemistry of the main cast. Thankfully, Albert’s story is only one part of a multi-faceted screenplay which gives everyone a little something to do and balances the weightier material about Ann’s grief with plenty of lively and funny tangents and asides. The film also builds to a wonderful and fantastically directed emotional crescendo involving a radio broadcast of a concert. Curtiz absolutely brings this moment alive, turning something that may have read as merely sentimental on the page into a visually striking moment replete with symbolic psychological resonance. 

Four Wives was the last Lemp family film Curtiz would direct but he bows out on a high, leaving the less compelling Four Mothers to unsuccessfully try and emulate his style. It is testament to the sterling work of Curtiz, the writers and the actors that the third part of the trilogy limps over the line based largely on the good will they’ve built up across two films and one tangentially related masterpiece. Though its small town sentimentality has somewhat fallen out of favour, the Four Daughters series of films is well worth rediscovering for anyone interested in quality 30s Melodrama. It provides light, funny and warm escapism without skimping on real human emotion in all its complexity. Perhaps one day the Lemps will be rediscovered and reinstated as the cinematic icons they briefly were.

24. THE CASE OF THE CURIOUS BRIDE

I remember Perry Mason, the criminal defense lawyer who appeared in 82 novels by Erle Stanley Gardner, from my childhood. Actually, that’s not quite true. What I should say is that I remember the 1980s TV movie adaptations of Gardner’s work starring Raymond Burr as the crusading lawyer. No, that’s still not true. In actual fact, what I really remember is the theme tune from that series. I could whistle it for you now. Well, hum it. I’ve never been great at holding a tune.

Truth is a delicate thing, which is a central theme of the Perry Mason stories (or so I hear). Character is also a delicate thing and Gardner himself reportedly despised Warner Bros.’ take on Mason as a sort of dashing, comedic super-sleuth, never stuck for a witty quip or a charming bon mot. In Michael Curtiz’s film of the most popular Perry Mason novel, The Case of the Curious Bride, Mason never even gets anywhere near a courtroom. After racing all over the city to solve the crime, he instead assembles the suspects at a cocktail party for the big reveal. It might seem strange to take a famous lawyer character and then remove the courtroom element entirely but this wasn’t the only change the film made to the source material. As I’ve never read or seen any Perry Mason before (I could hum you that theme tune though…or an atonal approximation of it), I’m only speculating here but is he really the sort of epicurean steamroller who would barge his way into a restaurant kitchen to cook his own meal? And while a fleeting piece of research reveals that he does have a droll associate named Paul Drake, I can’t find any indication that that same sidekick goes by the nickname Spudsy or that he sounds suspiciously like Top Cat’s Officer Dibble. These facts are for the Mason devotees to pick over and I can fully understand why Gardner would be so upset about a film bearing his name and a character purporting to be based on his creation bearing so little resemblance to anything from his work. But as naught but a theme tune hummer who only really knew Perry Mason as “that lawyer played by that guy who killed his wife in Rear Window”, I gorged my philistine chops on this variation on Mason and loved every minute of it.

The Case of the Curious Bride was the second of Warner’s Perry Mason adaptations and one of four outings in the role for Warren William. I enjoyed it so much that I went back and watched the two films that flank it, The Case of the Howling Dog and The Case of the Lucky Legs. While each film has its own merits, they make absolutely no sense when watched together as the character of Perry Mason and the overall tone changes dramatically from film to film. The first entry in the series, The Case of the Howling Dog, is played completely straight and delivers an efficient and gripping, if comparatively dry, Mystery movie in which Mason is ruthless but serious and dedicated. By the third entry, The Case of the Lucky Legs, he has become a drunken, impish, wisecracking cartoon with a rakish energy and a fully-fledged Screwball flirtation with his secretary. The Case of the Lucky Legs shrugs off its central mystery in favour of almost constant mucking about. Though it upset dedicated Mason fans greatly, in all honesty I loved its screwy vitality. Not since Gremlins and Gremlins 2: The New Batch have I come across a sequel that so thoroughly lampoons its predecessor. But nestling between the two films, it is Curtiz’s The Case of the Curious Bride that strikes the right balance between intrigue and goofball antics. So what happened to bring about such drastic changes between the films? Well, to put it bluntly, The Thin Man happened. In the same year as The Case of the Howling Dog was released, MGM released the first of their very popular Thin Man films, which combined a detective story with a healthy dose of irreverent comedy. By comparison, Warner’s first Perry Mason film looked a bit ordinary. So the following year they injected some of that humour into The Case of the Curious Bride and, perhaps egged on by the inevitable arrival of Thin Man sequels, they kept injecting until the Mason series overdosed on silliness. In the fourth film, The Case of the Velvet Claws, they even had Mason marry his secretary Della Street in a transparent attempt to approximate the marital status of Thin Man protagonists Nick and Norah Charles.

Although its reputation currently languishes in The Thin Man’s shadow alongside the other Mason films, The Case of the Curious Bride deserves reappraisal as a very fine Comedy Mystery in its own right. Warren William, in his third Curtiz collaboration, makes Mason into an entertainingly charming, vaguely roguish and delightfully idiosyncratic lead and he is ably supported by the broader slapstick antics of Spudsy, portrayed by Allen Jenkins (who would indeed go on to voice Officer Dibble in Top Cat. Now there’s a theme tune I could reproduce perfectly from start to finish!) and the refined verbal wit of Claire Dodd as Della. Dodd and William have great chemistry and she would become the only actor to play Della twice in the series, although the full-blown Screwball sparring of William and Genevieve Tobin in The Case of the Lucky Legs may be even more entertaining if also rather distracting (although that film could probably be accurately characterised as a series of distractions). Margaret Lindsay, ill-served by Curtiz’s previous Private Detective 62, is good as the old flame who ignites the investigation but if you ever hear The Case of the Curious Bride discussed these days it’s usually in the context of a brief appearance by Errol Flynn in his American debut. Curtiz would make Flynn into a star by the end of that same year but for now he had to be content with being a corpse briefly resurrected in a wordless flashback.

Like most of the Mason stories (so I hear), The Case of the Curious Bride is quite convoluted and you have to be on your toes to keep up. Fortunately, the energy with which Curtiz instils the film makes paying attention very easy and even if you let your concentration wane or drown out some crucial dialogue by going “HEY, THAT’S ERROL FLYNN” the film is sufficiently lively and amusing to entertain even when you’re chasing an inadvertently relinquished thread. Unlike The Case of the Lucky Legs which pretty much went “are you following this? No? Who gives a crap?!”, Curtiz does make an effort to keep things comprehensible and it becomes clear how important a strong director is. The Jazz Singer’s director Alan Crosland did an adequate but flat job on The Case of the Howling Dog and Archie Mayo drew on the same wild, saucy energy he would demonstrate in his work with Mae West and the Marx Brothers to make The Case of the Lucky Legs such a bizarre delight. But Curtiz’s steady hand makes The Case of the Curious Bride feel instantly like the most confident film of the three. He can segue from drama to comedy seamlessly, even getting close to the insanity of The Case of the Lucky Legs with a very silly sequence in which some tear gas has the same kind of exaggeratedly literal effect that laughing gas or vanishing cream has in cartoons. Curtiz also establishes a showy visual language for the film involving the use of dissolves between scenes. In some cases it feels like he is too excited by the technology, with one particular dissolve coming literally a second after the previous one, but generally it works well and fits the lighthearted tone.

As part of a largely forgotten series that is often accused of both bastardising its source and not living up to the franchise it tried to ape, The Case of the Curious Bride is the sort of film that is now only turned up by the sort of inveterate rummagers who share the titular quality of that eponymous matrimonial figure. But for fans of a lively Comedy or a lighthearted Mystery, this is a hidden gem and would make a fantastic double bill with Curtiz’s other classic 30s Mystery film, The Kennel Murder Case.

23. MOUNTAIN JUSTICE

Mountain Justice seems to be one of the most buried films in Michael Curtiz’s Hollywood filmography, which is somewhat perplexing given the fact that it’s by far one of his most interesting films of the 30s. By 1937 Curtiz had become known for bigger films like Captain Blood and The Charge of the Light Brigade but he was still making brief, cheaper pictures like The Walking Dead and Stolen Holiday in the interim. Mountain Justice feels like the ultimate bridge between these two styles. It is short, the last one of Curtiz’s films to clock in at under 90 minutes, but it packs a lot into its runtime and Curtiz is clearly extremely invested in the material. He uses several of his trademark visual flourishes, including actors in silhouette and sprawling crowd scenes, to emphasise the power of Mountain Justice’s progressive social issues messaging, and his acclaimed storytelling skills keep the plot barrelling forward. Most importantly, Curtiz creates an immersive atmosphere of an isolated community but not the sort of folksy fantasy of John Ford’s Judge Priest. Rather, this is a terrifying vision of a backwoods nightmare where the Ten Commandments rule above all else and the threat of violence and lifelong oppression hang heavy in the air. Given the overbearing piety of the Hays Code which was now fully in force, you might expect such a society to be applauded but Mountain Justice is a fiercely progressive film. Though it does succumb to the standard “happy” ending of an ambitious career woman getting married and giving up her profession, she at least does it on her own terms, even if her leading man insists on repeatedly referring to her establishment of medical centres that will help thousands as something she has to “get out of her system” before marrying him.

You could write an essay on how Mountain Justice condemns the oppressive patriarch while embracing the oppressive patriarchy but this minor climactic concession to the dominant morals of the era need not colour the entire viewing experience if you’re willing to slightly adjust your sights. The rest of the film largely manages to walk a delicate line with impressive diplomacy. It condemns the conservative rigidity of an Appalachian community without adopting a patronising or superior attitude and it condemns religious hypocrisy without condemning religion outright. The film’s most memorable image is the silhouette of Robert Barrat’s terrifying father repeatedly whipping his cowering daughter against the backdrop of a framed sign reading “Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother.” This particular commandment plays a big part in Mountain Justice and there’s no clearer moment in illustrating what a reductive and dangerously authoritarian code it is to live by, especially in a community where Thou Shalt Not Kill is so casually ignored. Mountain Justice doesn’t so much make the case against religion as it does plead the case for nuance, context and an open mind. It implores its audience not to reject new ideas out of hand based entirely on the fact that they weren’t the ones they grew up with.

Mountain Justice is a surprisingly brutal film for 1937. It was loosely based on the real life case of Edith Maxwell, who was sentenced to 25 years imprisonment for killing her coal miner father while fighting back against being whipped for staying out late. While Mountain Justice fictionalises the story and changes the names, it preserves the sadistic whippings and grippingly dramatises the fight between father and daughter. It also adds some welcome but perhaps slightly misjudged comic relief in the relationship between Guy Kibbee’s kindly doctor and the long-term fiancé he hopes never to marry, played by the Wicked Witch of the West herself Margaret Hamilton. Kibbee and Hamilton are both very good and have strong comedic chemistry but it seems odd to sandwich a scene of a man being comically strongarmed into a wedding between two scenes of daughters fighting the injustice of their father trying to force them into unwanted marriages. It’s hardly equivalent but thematically that feels like a misstep, although fortunately Kibbee and Hamilton have important roles in the drama too and their presence prevents Mountain Justice from becoming overwhelmingly bleak. More of a problem is George Brent as the romantic lead to Josephine Hutchinson’s strongly sympathetic protagonist. Brent is often denigrated for being bland but in this case it is the writing of his character that really lets him down. I’ve rarely come across a whinier, more ineffectual leading man. He spends the majority of his screentime badgering Hutchinson’s Ruth Harkins about why she can’t just forget about helping people and marry him instead. Refreshingly however, it is Brent who gets marginalised rather than Hutchinson and to an extent the film does seek to condemn his patronising attitude to what he calls “hillbillies”, even if he does get what he wants in the end with little concession to humility.

Mountain Justice has been described as a Courtroom Drama by some but this is a bit of a misnomer. While there are a couple of trial scenes, they are not framed as the dramatic peaks of the story. Rather the focus is on the near impossibility of breaking free from toxic ideologies in small, isolated communities, so the frame of reference extends far beyond the courthouse. The screenplay was co-written by Norman Reilly Raine who won an Oscar that same year for his screenplay for another social issues film, the Best Picture winning The Life of Emile Zola. I actually think the lesser-known Mountain Justice is the better film, with Curtiz’s direction making it far more cinematic and powerful. Aside from Brent’s annoying character, the main issue is that the film peaks too early. Its final act, though still very good, doesn’t quite manage to sell its escalating horrors with the same impact as the tremendous, disturbing second act that culminates in that unforgettable father/daughter fight. Still, the feeling I had at the end of Mountain Justice was one of great satisfaction, of having discovered another hidden gem in the Curtiz canon which still stands up as a moving, progressive and very entertaining watch. 

22. THE KENNEL MURDER CASE

Poor old William Powell. For years as he was building a career he was most famous for the unchallenging role of bland detective Philo Vance, whom he portrayed in three features and a revue film for Paramount. Seeking more interesting parts, he moved to Warner Bros. where he got the opportunity to work with Michael Curtiz. Curtiz cast him first in Private Detective 62, hardly a huge leap away from the role that made his name. Never mind though, Curtiz cast him again later that same year in The Kennel Murder Case. His role this time was… wait for it… renowned detective Philo Vance!

Whether any of this bothered Powell is hard to say. Certainly his swift move from Warners to MGM in 1934 suggests he may have felt stifled by the decision to revive his version of Vance but then the fact that his subsequent role as another detective, Nick Charles in The Thin Man, made him a superstar suggests that he wasn’t averse to playing sleuths. The MGM trailer for The Thin Man even featured Powell as both Vance and Charles, discussing the former’s successful solving of The Kennel Murder Case. Powell doesn’t seem to be performing the skit through gritted teeth, although the side-by-side comparison does highlight how much more space to make an impact the role of Nick Charles gave him in contrast with the fairly blank Vance. Although other Philo Vance films were made with actors including Basil Rathbone, Warren William and Wilfred Hyde-White in the lead role, the character eventually fell out of favour, perhaps at least partially due to the popularity of the much more colourful The Thin Man leading to a series of films that ran right through to 1947, all of them starring Powell.

Powell’s longevity over Vance’s is the key to why his version of the character is easily the most famous. Powell’s charisma transfers to Vance, who is basically a blank piece of blotting paper waiting to absorb the personality of whichever actor portrays him. So Powell’s sly smile, subtle wit and easy charm make this Philo Vance consistently enjoyable to watch. But Curtiz proves even more valuable than his star in making The Kennel Murder Case easily the most acclaimed of the Vance Mysteries. S.S. Van Dine’s original Vance stories rely more on ingenious details than memorable characters but translation of such methodical material to the screen can be a tricky process. Across 73 lively minutes, Curtiz ensures The Kennel Murder Case never becomes just a boring jumble of stock characters and drily detected revelations. He uses dissolves, wipes and a great pan from the window of one building to another adjacent building to keep the film feeling kinetic even though a large part of it is confined to one small space. 

There is a solid locked room mystery at the centre of The Kennel Murder Case and it is unraveled with persistent forward drive and energy. The interplay between Powell’s Vance and the unmistakable Eugene Palette’s befuddled Detective Heath is amusing and fills the spaces between the intermittent clues. This is a mystery that forsakes the flourish of an eleventh hour revelation and instead presents the gradual piecing together of the big picture, with each puzzle piece creating a clearer vision and occasionally leading to surprising pieces of new information that cast the whole thing in a different light. The brisk pace and brief runtime ensure that the mystery is not spun out to a frustrating length, although the piecemeal approach makes each little detail feel like a separate mini-case in itself. The cast of characters Vance interviews are a classic collection of suspects, all jealous lovers, wronged associates and suspicious foreigners. Mary Astor is the major name among them although standouts are Arthur Hohl as Gamble, the victim’s butler and James Lee as Liang, the Chinese cook who exploits the bigotry of those he meets by playing down his intelligence to meet their racist presuppositions.

The Kennel Murder Case is one of the purest adaptations of a Golden Age Mystery story ever put on screen. It approximates the propulsive power of a pageturner brilliantly without feeling the need to add unnecessary flourishes to the mix. Curtiz’s energetic approach and Powell’s likeable lead performance prevent the film ever feeling dry and the efficiency of the whole thing makes it infinitely rewatchable even when you know the solutions. An extremely fine adaptation and one of Curtiz’s finest films up to this point.

21. ROUGHLY SPEAKING

The Biopic has never been my favourite cinematic genre. The attempt to depict a remarkable life within the space of an acceptable feature runtime often leads to oversimplification, sensationalism, sentimentalism, histrionic melodrama and plain old fact-fudging. Some or even all of these characteristics haunt the majority of Biopics and too often they are not balanced out by good writing or direction so much as an attempt to lean into the existing interest and good will inspired by their subject. Roughly Speaking, however, is different. It is the Biopic of Louise Randall Pierson, a woman who was only known to the public for having written her own autobiography two years previously, which she herself then adapted into this screenplay. The book was popular and acclaimed but Pierson had no previous connection with the public on which to draw and her life, though eventful, was comparatively unremarkable for a Biopic subject. There is no famous hit song which the film can pretend was written in one inspirational sitting or pivotal act of heroism it can repeatedly foreshadow and then dramatically unveil. Rather, Roughly Speaking is a good-humoured, steadily paced depiction of carrying on in the face of adversity and a tribute to remaining true to your values.

Roughly Speaking’s curious shapelessness and soft-pedalling of its themes mirror the unspectacular nature of life. Voices are rarely raised, few tears are shed, not one whiskey bottle is thrown against a wall. The dialogue is witty but not artificial, providing a greater facsimile of how people actually communicate. Sometimes the tone is tricky. In one of the film’s few showy flourishes, a wordless comedy routine depicts Pierson breaking the news of her pregnancy to her husband by putting on a record of the song Rock-a-Bye Baby. He realises the significance immediately and, delighted, he jumps out of his chair and dances round with her. Suddenly realising her condition, he comes to his senses and guides her gently into a chair. This sequence then repeats several times as their family grows quickly. With each new spin, the record becomes more worn out and jumpy and the husband’s enthusiasm more forced, until finally it is he who has to be guided into a chair by his pregnant wife. It’s a nice little bit but in the next ten minutes we get a time jump and suddenly all the children contract polio. That’s a difficult transition to negotiate but Roughly Speaking approaches it the same way it does the majority of its episodes: it handles the emotion with a refreshing dramatic sobriety. Pierson is the picture of Keep Calm and Carry On, before that slogan got co-opted by British nationalists.

Equally as refreshing as Roughly Speaking’s restraint is its progressiveness. Pierson is ambitious and not at all concerned about society’s views on a woman’s duty to her home and husband. This type of woman was occasionally depicted in Golden Age Hollywood films but almost invariably as a misguided upstart whose equivalent of a happy ending was to be schooled by the patriarchy and installed in the home where she finally realised she should’ve been all along. Michael Curtiz had directed a fairly egregious example of such a film in 1933’s Female. Roughly Speaking, however, allows Pierson to exist and find happiness on her own terms. This even includes allowing her to go through a divorce without it being treated as shame and scandal. The great scene in which she calmly and rationally informs her children that the divorce is complete is typical of the film’s level-headed approach. Roughly Speaking doesn’t go so far as to condemn the status quo. To expect that of a 1945 film depicting events from even earlier in the century would be pure naivety. But it seems nearly as radical that the film does suggest deviation from rigid norms as a permissible option, provided you find a susceptible partner with whom to share these choices. Pierson’s first husband is depicted as compromised, never comfortable with a wife who works, especially when she briefly becomes the sole breadwinner. By contrast, her second husband is supportive without any required adjustments, his free-spirited non-conformity facilitating their whirlwind engagement.

The main characters in Roughly Speaking are vaguely reminiscent of the oddballs living on the fringes of society who populated Frank Capra’s hit You Can’t Take It With You. Roughly Speaking’s clan are less overtly barmy, which of course makes them even more slyly subversive. The first half of the film follows Pierson’s first marriage and the birth of her four children, combining a spirited central characterisation with a set of story beats recognisable from melodrama but pitched in a much more subdued register. The second half follows Pierson’s more successful second marriage and the various attempts the couple makes at achieving financial security. In terms of performance, the presence of the always welcome Rosalind Russell is key in keeping the film afloat through some of its longueurs. The original cut was 150 minutes and the film was ultimately edited down twice, with the shortest version being just under two hours. This was the cut I saw and even that admittedly felt long, given the lightness of story and deliberate dramatic economy. But Russell’s confident, realistic and sympathetic performance makes this version of Pierson consistently good company. The tonal shift at the halfway mark also helps prevent the viewing experience from turning stale. The arrival of Jack Carson as the second husband reenergises the narrative and his lively performance establishes an easy, entertaining chemistry between himself and Russell that creates a lightly comedic flavour that dominates even as historical disasters keep throwing a spanner in their family’s domestic progress. Witness the scene in which they joke around together as Carson contemplates a new job as a vacuum cleaner salesman. Their tomfoolery feels refreshingly unforced.

It’s fair to say that Roughly Speaking probably won’t be for everyone. Its deliberate pacing and modest storytelling may seem dry and interminable to those with no interest in this kind of realism. But between Pierson’s sober and earnestly sweet screenplay, Curtiz’s measured direction and the naturalistic chemistry of Russell and Carson, the film emerges as a treat for those who delight in a slice of life narrative. Its niche appeal coupled with the source text’s growing obscurity probably account for Roughly Speaking’s disappearance from the general consciousness but I found it so utterly unique and refreshing that it made me want to get a copy of the book too.