Tag Archives: Jack Conway

Libeled Lady (1936)

Posted on by
Reply

The topical sweet spot of screwball comedy, journalism, and ocean-liner romances makes Libeled Lady feel like a quintessential 1930s movie. Trusted studio director Jack Conway and the stars peg it as prime MGM.

Spencer Tracy is Warren Haggerty, the managing editor of the New York Evening Star. He’s pulled away from the altar because the paper has made a major boo-boo. In his absence, they erroneously published a story about aristocrat Connie Allenbury. Before they can quash the story, her influential father James (Walter B. Connolly) gets a copy and prepares to slam them with a libel suit.

There’s only one man who can save the paper from utter ruin, and so they go tracking down a real firecracker named Bill Chandler (William Powell) all across the country and all over the world. Of course, he’s right under their noses all the time, barely able to pay his hotel bill.

The two men converge on one another, looking to feel each other out because they both have something they need. It makes for great comedy because this situational irony underpins every proceeding action. Likewise, Tracy and Powell taking stabs at each other is one of the great cinematic pleasures in life because they both have a knack for it. Ultimately, Chandler leverages his position and agrees to bail them out for a small fee.

It calls for him to “marry” Haggerty’s girl. The peeved bride-to-be is Jean Harlow, who makes the part something because she’s a girl who can give it as well as she takes it. Gladys is conscripted into their ploy, and it’s the absurdity that such a picture thrives on. Once Chandler has “married” Gladys, he will woo Ms. Allenbury, and then the Evening Star will either retroactively have proof for their baseless story or, better yet, new fodder will be whipped up. The loopier the better, and they make it stick.

Harlow’s character is indignant and also proves her to be one of the great comediennes, schmoozing with her faux husband and hamming it up with the boys. The intertextual relations between Powell and Harlow certainly help matters, because you can read their real relationship into the convoluted pseudo-couplings of the film, all played for comedy.

Bill gets to work meeting the jovial Mr. Allenbury and his far more guarded daughter. As part of the game, he coaches himself on all types of fishing, including anglers because his mark is an avid fisherman; Loy’s quick to pick up that Mr. Chandler is quite the “angler” himself. He even has a fishing instructor sent to their honeymoon suite to learn how to hook curtains and lampshades (if not fish).

Of course, Loy and Powell prove themselves to be another cinematic dream team. My wires probably got crossed somewhere, but to my mind, they’re one of the most prolific screen couples ever. Libeled Lady is another ticklish feather in their cap.

Their excursion out on the stream bed devolves into a wonderfully goofy corralling of a fabled trout as Powell goes splashing and stumbling through the frigid waters. What’s most curious about the moment is how it’s not drummed up with a lot of score, but we just have the sound of the water as Powell struggles hook, line, and sinker like any of us would. He’s an amiable hero, and though it’s funny, it’s a turning point: the moment Loy likes him for real. Perhaps he realizes too that if he tries to be something different, it’s really possible to change (Maybe it’s just a good joke).

But he and Loy have some wonderful moments of more sentimental chemistry. It makes the relationship feel less like the required beats of a plot we know must end badly when he’s caught in a lie. If you’re like me, you like them together, and you have goodwill from the movies they made previously. We want the best for them no matter the screwball antics at the film’s disposal.

These moments are suspended in time. And what’s more, for these isolated instances with Harlow and Tracy out of the frame, they nearly steal away the picture and make it their own like so many others. It’s a credit to the strength of the ensemble that you’re never going to forget their other scene partners completely. They’re too shrewd and incomparable as performers in their own right.

Tracy throws out the middle man, and Conway forgoes any kind of interstitial exposition, allowing the newspaperman to cut straight to the chase with Mrs. Allenbury, reasoning with her to drop the libel suit. The fact he’s cut out all the fancy stratagems shows his genuine desperation. Part of it is Chandler.

Haggerty has the feeling the man he’s hired might have been working on the wrong girl — his girl — though it’s exactly the opposite. He was working so well on the right girl that it affected him, and he found himself changed. He’s falling in love.

The two men have a pointed conversation of innuendo as Myrna Loy looks on without the foggiest notion, or maybe she just doesn’t care. Instantly, the ball is in Tracy’s court; he seems to hold the power because he knows the other man’s secret. He’s caught him in something.

However, soon after, Tracy stands astounded at his news desk as his nemesis waltzes in with his fiancée. They just went dancing, and she’s not going to oust him as they had planned. There’s nothing particularly elegant about the blocking because there doesn’t need to be. This time Harlow’s in the middle of the frame, though favoring her “husband,” and we have quite a different dynamic. This round goes to Powell.

For all his grousing, we begin to feel a little sorry for Tracy. If this keeps up, he’s going to be jobless and girless. A lovely bit of narrative verve and confluence brings them together in one space to have it out as we always imagined they would. We go ping-ponging with every imaginable plot twist one could imagine, and we would expect nothing less for such a screwy story. But the joy is watching everyone end up where they need to be, and the cockeyed journey to get there is just about as fun courtesy of our stars.

MGM was always hailed as the studio with more stars than there are in the heavens. I take this to be attributed mostly to prestige pictures and early Oscar bait. However, Libeled Lady is a reminder that screwball comedies are no less indebted to the studio system. Very rarely have we seen a picture hum with stars of this caliber.

4/5 Stars

Love Crazy (1941)

Posted on by
1

love crazy 1.png

Love Crazy puts William Powell and Myrna Loy in their wheelhouse as the lithe and sprightly romantic partners placed at the center of this screwball comedy.  Steve Ireland (Powell) is in a terribly good mood getting home in his taxi singing ditties as he makes his way up to surprise his wife Susan on their wedding anniversary.

All of which is an encouraging change of pace because Hollywood often made the nagging of marriage look like a real ball and chain. For once that’s not the case. They want a romantic second honeymoon full of dancing, escapades, and a dinner served backward. It’s the fact that he can never get enough time with his wife to suit either of them. Well, there you have the film in a nutshell anyway.

Except storytelling 101 tips us off that the film will have to begin swinging like a pendulum in such a way that both our lovebirds in this connubial comedy will no longer be so inseparable. The main instigators prove to be his overbearing mother-in-law who inserts herself into all their plans. The other is a former flame, Gail Patrick at the most delightful I’ve never known her to be, who playfully cajoles him to have some fun. She’s married but acts as if she’s still single and ready to mingle.

You would think he already had more excitement than he could take getting trapped in the elevator shaft with this frisky female and the elevator boy (Elisha Cook Jr.). Proving I’m no comic snob, I heartily enjoyed watching Powell’s head get clunked around. It’s a resoundingly hilarious image.

love crazy 2

However, he forgot about who was waiting for him back home. It’s the lesser of two evils to sneak out for a drink with Isobel and while his wife has to step out he uses his worst possible lifeline to get away from his aggravating mother-in-law. It doesn’t take too much for the root of doubt to sneak up and it only gets worse when Ward Willoughby (Jack Carson) is introduced as a studly archer in an undershirt. What else? Now both spouses have someone to be jealous of.

It hearkens back to the days where the sitcom hadn’t been invented yet because we didn’t have TV so instead, there were films like this which function around all the most cringe-worthy bits of comedic irony, namely mistaken identity and all sorts of misunderstandings. But like its predecessor from the year prior, I Love You Again, the steam slowly begins to evaporate off about midway through.

Because the main subplot becomes the whole plot in a way that provides some gags but on the whole feels tired and worn out. I want to see Powell and Loy together or at least more of Patrick and Carson who actually bring a lot of comedic chops to the picture. In fact, one of the more hilarious wrinkles involves Powell getting the other man interned at the sanitarium only to have him escape later. But it means very little to the integrity of the story. That’s part of what makes it so enjoyable.

Otherwise, Powell plays up his insanity to string along his wife so she can’t divorce him. His main showcase is at a party where he emancipates a fleet of hats trying to play up his looney side, followed thereafter by a string of other coincidental mishaps. His wife knows it’s a game but the man he’s christened “General Electric Whiskers,” who he met at the party, is actually a doctor who thinks he’s very sick indeed.

This all feels like fairly uninteresting fluff. Meanwhile, the film’s finale relies on another bout of concealed identity but to its credit, it circles back on the things that made it laudable before, entering back into the apartment complex. There the chaos of all those individuals from earlier is heightened in close proximity with a supposed crazy man on the loose and the police after him. They are aided by Willoughby and Steve is helped first by Isobel and then his wife.

But the crowning piece of comedy has to do with Powell’s ultimate masquerade as he even sacrifices his beloved pencil-thin mustache for the sake of it all. While not particularly inspired by today’s standards, Love Crazy boasts Powell and Loy in as fine a form as ever. That is enough to enjoy the picture even in its middling moments.

3.5/5 Stars

Boom Town (1940)

Posted on by
Reply

boom town 6.png

Clark Gable was anxious to do a movie about oil — wildcatters as they call ’em — because his father had been an oil man. Of course, MGM was looking to put him in such a picture too and when a certain story was published in Cosmopolitan it would prove the inspiration for Jack Conway’s Boom Town.

The most obvious attraction to this picture then and now is the copious amount of star power. We already mentioned MGM’s beloved Gable but Boom Town has Spencer Tracy, Claudette Colbert, and Hedy Lamarr all readily available. This would be the two men’s final film together out of three outings. It’s not so much that they didn’t like each other but the fact that they were both formidable attractions and Tracy was starting to command top billing.

In an industry consumed with A-list and B-list stars, MGM didn’t quite know how to go about keeping them together and so they never appeared in the same film again. I can’t say that it leaves me heartbroken.

They meet on a plank crossing a muddy mining street. Whether it was purposeful or not you can’t help but recall the fateful meeting of Robin Hood and Little John. Except these two men share the same name. The local saloon keeper christens them Big John (Gable) and Square John (Tracy) respectively. They’re none too amicable at first but after a bar brawl that looks more like lawn bowling, they’re pals enough. Those type of things builds camaraderie in hard-bitten men like these.

Soon enough they are going halfsies on a piece of land “Shorty” has been aiming to drill on. Frank Morgan isn’t much help as the begrudging equipment salesman and so they take matters into their own hands. A lovable Chill Wills plays a drawling Sheriff with a penchant for cookbooks and a decent shot with a rifle.

The film could have been a gusher laden with drama but most of the blasts of energy are few and far between hidden under layers of good luck and hard luck, romantic interplay, and the ever-changing tides of the oil business. Some of these themes would be echoed again in works like Giant (1956) and There Will Be Blood (2007).

The most rewarding scene by far is watching Gable and Tracy brawl it out in an office. By now they’ve both been big men who have known both failure and success. But this strips everything down to the two of them and the woman caught between them.

boom town 8.png

I must admit that Hedy Lamarr’s part is rather uninteresting — little fault of her own — though most would note that she is as alluring as ever as the ingenious socialite and serial eavesdropper who helps McMasters take over the New York market.

Claudette Colbert is compelling enough in a role that reunites here with her It Happened One Night (1934) leading man, though the role was written initially for Myrna Loy and there is an innate sense that if she could have repeated her spectacular turn in Test Pilot (1938), this picture now transplanted to the oil fields would have been better for it. As it is Gable and Tracy do seem to command most of the attention. After all, this is really their story as we watch them rise, fall, and come back clawing again and again.

The final big moment, however, goes to Tracy standing up at the witness stand and even though he and McMasters have long since parted ways, pushed each other out of business, and even come to blows, he still manages to exonerate the man of any wrongdoing.

Because if nothing else they are both oil men with ideals of what the country might be if we take care of our limited resources for our children. You might call “Hogwash” but it’s a nice sentiment anyways and as usual, Spence delivers it with his typical candor that silences any naysayers. However, one wonders what the picture might have been if Colbert and Lamarr were given a bigger stake.

3/5 Stars

Red-Headed Woman (1932)

Posted on by
3

red headed woman 1.png

Ironically Harlow as a Red-Head feels more representative of her projected image than Harlow as a Platinum Blonde (1931). Lil is a malevolent seductress. A homewrecker. The queen of meretricious relations. Simultaneously frisky and fun.

But she’s got one specific man (Chester Morris) on her radar and she makes it her goal to bring him down. Of course, he’s married and he has means. Everything she could want in a man. Perhaps there’s a tinge of actual romance in the air too. She kisses him enough for it to be so.

She continually ambushes him to begin with and he’s not particularly averse to her. He’s not as strong as he would like to think. First, in his office. Then, in a telephone booth and so on and so forth. As strong as he is and as much as he glares at her, there’s only so much he can take. “Red” goes back to her boarding house to regale her roommate (Una Merkel) about her daily victories. It seems she enjoys the hunt, mechanizing her feminine wiles to serve her. But she’s not above knocking back a few drinks slowly sinking into a stupor on the floor with the lively strains of “Frankie and Johnny.” That about sums up the woman we have before us.

Finally, she locks her prey in a room with her and throws away the key as it were. In the end, it works. Soon Bill’s marriage with his sensible childhood sweetheart “Rene” (Leila Hyams) is utterly trashed. Lil has got him where she wants him and he resigns himself to this new lifestyle. Divorce follows. She’s got him tied down.

Their life together isn’t perfect as “Red” wants more of a society life with parties and notoriety. And of course, little surprise, there are other men she’s openly involved with. Still, she exploits her charms fishing for compliments, flirting, throwing out typical Harlow baby talk. All the works.

Baby Face (1933) with Barbara Stanwyck seems like an obvious answer to this picture’s themes. And it must be said that while there’s the inkling of an idea here, what the latter film has is a greater resonance because it’s not just a trashy romance propelled by a leading performance. But Stanwyck beyond being a siren also has a depth to her that while not fully fleshed out leads to some amount of conflict.

Here Harlow’s no good and that’s most of the novelty. There’s not a speck of true integrity in her and we are given few cues to why she’s the way she is. Maybe if we were provided more it would be easier to empathize even a little.

Baby Face makes me dismayed because Stanwyck is a tragic figure. Red-Headed Woman gets to me for a different reason. There is no remorse in Harlow’s “Red.” She’s just a sleaze and there’s little interest in anything else. It feels exploitive.

Everything is summed up perfectly by an uncomfortably comical ending. After taking a shot at her former husband and nearly killing him, she finds a life for herself in France with her chauffeur (a dashing Charles Boyer) no less.

F. Scott Fitzgerald purportedly got taken off the picture in favor of Anita Loos because he took the material too seriously. However, I’m inclined to want to see how his rendition would have panned out. For some reason, I cannot find it within myself to laugh at these characters. That’s undoubtedly a tribute to Jean Harlow but it’s still ribald entertainment any way you slice it.

3.5/5 Stars

Libeled Lady (1936)

Posted on by
6

Poster_-_Libeled_Lady_01Libeled Lady has screwball comedy written all over it and that’s perfectly alright with such a glorious cast. Myrna Loy and William Powell reunite once again (for one of their 13 pairings), but we also get Jean Harlow and Spencer Tracy. Amazing!

The set-up is easy and pretty self-explanatory. Warren Haggerty (Tracy) is the managing editor of the New York Evening Star, but while he is reluctantly getting ready to walk down the aisle, he gets the horrific news that the paper sent out a misinformed scoop by mistake. Now Haggerty is faced with a $5,000,000 libel suit from wealthy socialite Connie Allenbury (Loy), and it brings his weddings proceedings to a halt, much to the chagrin of his peeved fiancee (Harlow). This isn’t the first time that their big day has been postponed after all.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place, he goes to one of his former reporters, Bill Chandler (Powell), who really rubs Haggerty the wrong way, but he also happens to be a whiz when it comes to libel. He’s the only man who can get the paper out of the major jam so he leverages his position. Things go down like this. Chandler will ingratiate himself to Ms. Allenby and soon afterward Gladys Benton (Harlow) posing as his wife, will rush in on them. Presto! The suit will be dropped. Simple, right?

It’s the consequences that get even dicier. At first, Gladys absolutely despises being cooped up in a hotel with Chandler and she’s still fed up with Warren. But over time, the close quarters cause Chandler to grow on her. Meanwhile, Chandler tries to learn everything he can about angling, to charm Allenby’s father (Walter Connolly), who is a fishing aficionado.

From the start, his daughter has Chandler pinned as a fake (which of course he is), but by some act of heaven his act actually works and he wins them both over. Worse, Connie is falling for him and he’s reciprocating, but Haggerty is still waiting for the plan to be executed. Gladys is waiting impatiently for her “husband” who she seems to genuinely miss. It’s all a big mess to be sure.

The finale involves the four leads together for one final climactic barrage of pandemonium and spouse swapping. As you would expect everyone ends up with the right partner, but it was sheer craziness to get there. It had been a while since I had seen a screwball, and Libeled Lady is a striking reminder why the genre is so fun. It had me laughing pretty hard whether it was the utter absurdity of the fishing sequence or any of the other madcap moments. It boasts quite the cast too. It’s crazy to think that in only a year Jean Harlow would be gone, a short but vibrant career behind her.

4/5 Stars