The Woman Racket (1930)

The Woman Racket (later retitled Lights and Shadows) is a 1930 MGM pre-code romantic/crime melodrama. I have heard that it was originally shot as a silent film but that only the talkie version survives. It’s one of MGM’s early attempts at a hardboiled feel, which works fairly well.

It begins with a police raid on the Blue Moon speakeasy. Patrolman Tom Hayes (Tom Moore) takes pity on one of the hostesses, Julia Barnes (Blanche Sweet) and allows her to escape. They go out together, they fall in love and they get married.

The problem is that Julia likes glamour excitement and pretty things and you don’t get much of that married to a cop, on a cop’s salary. Tom is decent enough and he’s crazy about her but he’s a cop through and through.

She succumbs to the temptation to pay a visit to the Blue Moon.

And she’s tempted to fall back into her old wicked ways. The marriage is on the rocks.

Pretty soon she’s the mistress of the owner of the Blue Moon, Chris Miller (John Miljan). But her old life doesn’t appeal to her so much any more and she’s riddled with guilt.

There’s also the matter of her friend Buddy (Sally Starr). Buddy is a sweet kid and a promising chanteuse but Julia is worried that the wicked Chris Miller will corrupt her. And Chris has every intention of doing just that. Julia wants to save her Buddy from making he mistakes she made.

The other problem is that Chris isn’t just a nightclub owner but also a bit of a gangster, in a modest way. So Julia and Buddy could get mixed up in some very shady goings-on if they’re not careful.

The Wall Street Crash happened in late October 1929. The Woman Racket was released in January 1930 which means that production would have been well underway or perhaps even completed) before the Crash hit. Which means this is a Jazz Age movie rather than (like so many pre-code films) a Depression movie. And it does have a Jazz Age feel.

Blanche Sweet had been a major star in silent films but failed to make a successful transition to talkies. In this film she’s trying to achieve a mixture of mildly hardboiled with sweet and good-natured and she does a fairly decent job but by this time new time new stars were starting to emerge, who did this sort of thing better. But there’s really nothing wrong at all with her performance here.

John Miljan was one of the great slimy oily villains of the early sound era. Maybe he wasn’t quite in the Warren William class but he was very nearly as good. He’s in deliciously sinister manipulative form here.

The plot is serviceable enough. There are moments that betray its stage origins (it was based on a successful play).

The ending is slightly contrived but the final confrontation in total darkness is quite well done.

Is it really pre-code? Not overly, although it is fairly obvious that Julia really is Chris’s mistress and she is of course a married woman. She was a hostess as well as a singer and the title of the movie suggests that perhaps we’re intended to assume that the hostesses at the Blue Moon are part-time prostitutes. It’s possible that that element was more evident in the original script but was seriously downplayed in the final cut.

I enjoyed The Woman Racket and I’m happy to recommend it.

The Warner Archive DVD is fine.

The Key (1934)

The Key (1934) is one of four pre-code movies included in the Warner Archive DVD set William Powell at Warner Bros. The Key was directed by Michael Curtiz. The script (based on a play by by R. Gore Brown and Jocelyn Lee Hardy) is by Laird Doyle.

The setting is Ireland in 1920. Ireland is a dangerous place. Tensions are high between the Sinn Fein separatists and the British troops. British soldiers are constantly being shot by snipers.

Captain Andrew Andy Kerr (Colin Clive) is a British intelligence officer and the stresses are starting to get to him. His wife Norah (Edna Best) worries about him.

Then Captain Bill Tennant (William Powell) arrives on the scene. He has just been posted to Dublin. He had a colourful career, full of brave deeds and scandals. The scandals invariably involve women.

Bill and Andy are old friends.

Things could get awkward, since Bill Tennant and Norah have a shared past - a passionate love affair before she met Andy Kerr. That’s all over now. At least that’s what Bill and Norah thought.

Dublin is more and more unsettled. It’s more or less open guerrilla warfare.

Andy’s task is to track down Sinn Fein leader Peadar Conlan (Donald Crisp). A very dangerous task indeed.

Bill and Norah soon discover that they’re still madly in love. Breaking this news to Andy is not going to be easy.

Obviously this could all end very badly, with plenty of emotional turmoil and the constant background threat of sudden death.

William Powell gets a rather nuanced role here. Bill has been a hell-raiser but now he’s thinking that he should have married Norah when he had the chance. Bill is a man who finds that he will to re-evaluate his life. Powell manages to make him sympathetic even while he’s stealing another man’s wife.

Edna Best is good. In this same year she landed her best-known role, the lead in Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much.

As so often Colin Clive is the weak link. He’s as pompous and stuff as ever which is a problem because the audience needs to sympathise with him as the wronged husband.

Andy is a brave man but a man obsessed by duty. Bill has some sense of duty but given a choice between duty and love he will choose love every time. And given a choice between duty and friendship he will choose friendship every time.

The most pre-code element is that it’s made very obvious that while Andy was out hunting Sinn Fein leaders Bill and Norah spent the night together.

Although it was shot in Hollywood this film has a mostly English cast. The casting of William Powell as a British officer is neatly explained when we’re told he is a Canadian.

The subject matter was potentially dicey. The movies tries not to pick sides but since the two male leads play British officers we inevitably get more of the British viewpoint. It tries to be both a thriller and a romantic intrigue and does so fairly successfully.

William Powell is the reason to watch this one. It’s reasonably enjoyable. Recommended.

The Key gets a very good DVD transfer. I’ve reviewed other movies in this set - The Road to Singapore, Private Detective 62 and the excellent High Pressure.

Sadie McKee (1934)

Sadie McKee is a 1934 MGM production starring Joan Crawford. It’s a pre-code movie. It just made the cut. Had it come out a week or two later it would have been subject to the Production Code. And there are quite a few moments that would definitely not have been permitted under the Code.

Joan Crawford is Sadie, a servant in the household of the extremely rich Alderson family.

Young Michael Alderson and Sadie had had a bit of a childhood crush on each other but of course nothing came of it. She is a servant after all.

Sadie is crazy in love with Tommy Wallace (Gene Raymond). She thinks he’s just swell. But Tommy has to leave town after being caught thieving at his factory job.

In a fit of hopeless romantic passion Sadie decides to go with Tommy to New York. This leads to several very pre-code moments. They find a room to rent. They’re not married so of course Tommy will sleep on the couch. But he doesn’t. They share the bed. And it’s made quite obvious that they don’t share it chastely. But it’s OK, because tomorrow they’ll get married.

There’s trouble in store, in the apartment next door, in the form of Dolly Merrick (Esther Ralston). She’s a night-club singer. She’s glamorous but she’s a cheap blonde and an obvious man-eater. And Tommy has caught her eye. She steals Tommy from Sadie with contemptuous ease.

Now Sadie is stuck in New York and she’s broke. Until she meets Jack Brennan (Edward Arnold). He’s a portly middle-aged tycoon and he’s drunk. He’s alway drunk.

Michael happens to be on the scene and he is convinced that Sadie is a scheming gold digger. It’s obvious to him that Sadie intends to trap the poor hopeless drunken Brennan into marriage.

Maybe because she’s so annoyed at Michael’s obvious contempt for her that’s exactly what she does.

But she still can’t forget Tommy.

This is full-blown melodrama with a whole bunch of classic melodrama twists still to come.

The first thing that makes the movie interesting is that it is pre-code. Which means you cannot assume that it’s heading for a conventional “virtue rewarded and vice punished” ending. In the pre-code era writers could choose to end a story the way they wanted to, rather than the way the Production Code Authority told them they had to end it. And, as a result, at various times the plot suddenly doesn’t go quite where you expected it to.

The second interesting thing about the movie is that Sadie is a woman and she does things for a woman’s reasons. Tommy is a loser and a louse but Sadie is a woman and she loves him anyway and nothing can persuade her to change her feelings. Sadie is a complicated woman. She’s not a stereotypical bad girl. She makes foolish decisions based on pure emotion. She can be calculating and she can be self-sacrificing. She can be cruel and she can be kind. And although she does marry Brennan and his millions in her own way she loves him. But she still loves Tommy. She’s a sympathetic character who can sometimes be unsympathetic. Sometimes she’s just exasperating!

The movie’s third great asset is Joan Crawford who somehow manages to make Sadie’s contradictions believable and manages to persuade us to be on Sadie’s side even when she behaves badly or foolishly. It’s a complex and assured performance.

Edward Arnold is excellent as Brennan. The big problem is Franchot Tone whose wooden performance is particularly disappointing since Michael is a potentially interesting character with contradictory motivations of his own.

Sadie McKee is a melodrama that is both straightforward and not straightforward. And Joan Crawford is great in a tricky role. Highly recommended.

Sadie McKee looks great on Blu-Ray.

Private Detective 62 (1933)

Private Detective 62 (1933) is one of four movies in the Warner Archive DVD set William Powell at Warner Bros. Pre-code William Powell is always fun.

There’s a very odd prologue. Donald Free (Powell) is an American diplomat who has just been deported from France. It’s fairly obvious he was no diplomat but an American intelligence agent and the French not unreasonably took exception to his espionage activities. But we don’t find out exactly what he was up to and this entire angle has no connection to the rest of the movie.

Donald ends up having to swim ashore in New York but his problems have just begin. The Depression is in full swing. He can’t find a job and he’s flat broke. Finally he talks his way into a partnership with private eye Dan Hogan (Arthur Hohl). Hogan isn’t just down-at-heel, he’s pretty much down-and-out.

He hasn’t had a client for so long that he’s even more broke than Donald. But while Hogan is lazy and incompetent Donald is a live wire and the agency is soon back on its feet.

Unfortunately Hogan is also dishonest and while his connection with racketeer and gambling club owner Tony Bandor (Gordon Westcott) brings in lots of business Donald is increasingly uncomfortable with the increasingly ethically dubious nature of the agency’s jobs. He doesn’t like frame-ups and blackmail.

Tony has a very big problem. Janet Reynolds (Margaret Lindsay) has won huge amounts of money at his gambling joint. Tony can’t pay her what he owes her. Donald’s job is to frame her so that she can be blackmailed into not pursuing Tony for the money.

Donald falls for Janet straight away. She’s young and beautiful but he’s also attracted to her devil-may-care attitude and sense of fun. She gambles for the kicks, not the money.

The frame-up leads to an unexpected consequence and a possible murder rap.

That’s the plot and it’s a bit thin but quite serviceable. It would have been cool had the spy angle been developed a bit.

The movie’s biggest asset is of course William Powell. Donald is no Boy Scout but he has his limits and he’s reaching the point where he’s going to be totally morally corrupted if he’s not careful. Powell gets this across effectively. He’s always charming but I particularly like him when he’s charming and just a tad ethically challenged.

Margaret Lindsay is pretty good. There’s not quite enough chemistry between the two leads.

Ruth Donnelly is fun as Hogan’s disapproving secretary Amy Moran. Arthur Hohl as Dan Hogan is a sleazeball and a weasel and he’s terrific.

Michael Curtiz once again demonstrates his ability to make good movies in any genre.

A major plus is the 66-minute running time which means there’s no fat at all to this story. It zips along very smoothly.

How pre-code is it? There are lots of drug references. It’s very upfront about the sleazy nature of private detective work. There’s no suggestion that gambling is immoral, as long as you don’t welch on your debts.

The private eye genre was still in its infancy and this movie is only marginally hardboiled. It’s a setup that would, a decade later, have made for a decent film noir.

Private Detective 62 is lightweight but enjoyable and William Powell is just so watchable. Recommended.

Private Detective 62 gets a perfectly acceptable transfer.

I’ve reviewed other movies in this set - The Road to Singapore and the excellent High Pressure.

Footlight Parade (1933)

Footlight Parade was the third of the 1930s Warner Brothers musicals with production numbers by Busby Berkeley. I’ve always considered 42nd Street to be the greatest of the series but having watched it again I think Footlight Parade may be even better.

It has not just great Busby Berkeley dance sequences. It also has Jimmy Cagney! Gangster movies had made Cagney a huge star but Footlight Parade gave him the chance to do what he really wanted to do - to be a song-and-dance man. Cagney is absolutely fantastic.

This time it’s not about putting on a broadway show, it’s about putting on prologues. These really were apparently a thing for a while. They were very short live song and dance shows which would precede the showing of a talking picture in a movie theatre. At the start of Footlight Parade broadway producer Chester Kent (Cagney) is facing ruin. Nobody wants musical comedies any more. Everybody wants talking pictures.

There are these prologues but they’re expensive. Then Chester has a brainwave - pre-packaged prologues which could be moved from theatre to theatre in a single unit. This will be much more cost effective.

The Chester Kent prologues are a huge success. But he has a deadly rival - Gladstone Prologues. And Gladstone keeps stealing Chester’s ideas. Chester is also being cheated by his chiselling business partners.

He has to come up with new ideas constantly and he’s in danger of cracking under the strain.

He has woman problems as well. His ex-wife is trying to fleece him. He’s fallen for a no-good dame, Vivian Rich (Claire Dodd). He doesn’t know it but she intends to take him to the cleaners as well. If only Chester would realise that his faithful secretary Nan (Joan Blondell) is the right girl for him and that she’s crazy in love with him.

Meanwhile mousy little typist Bea Thorn (Ruby Keeler) is hoping for her chance to show what she can do on stage. We just know that she will get her chance.

Naturally Dick Powell is on hand as well.

There’s just enough plot to keep things ticking over.

Cagney is amazing. Charismatic beyond belief, hyper-active, bouncing off the walls, talking faster than a machine-gun. He did that in his gangster movies as well but here he demonstrates his ability to be incredibly likeable.

And Cagney can play the driven dedicated producer and then do the song and dance stuff as well (and he was a superb dancer). He dominates the movie to a much greater extent than the producer characters in 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933.

Teaming Cagney and Joan Blondell was definitely a winning move. Not everybody likes Ruby Keeler but I think she’s sweet. And Claire Dodds makes a terrific calculating uber-bitch.

And then there are the Busby Berkeley numbers. The cat number is cute. The Shanghai Lil routine offers the promise of sin in the tropics. And the Honeymoon Hotel number is a joyous and very risqué celebration of adultery. The highlight however is By a Waterfall. Berkeley’s production numbers were staggering triumphs of organisation as Berkekley uses girls to create wild moving abstract paintings. Was there any way he could have made things even more difficult for himself? You bet - how about doing the whole thing in a gigantic tank, including underwater shots from multiple angles? The result is breathtaking.

Footlight Parade has less of a Depression feel than the earlier movies. It’s cheerful and optimistic. It’s such a total immersion in style class. Very highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933.

High Pressure (1932)

High Pressure, released in 1932, is one of the movies William Powell made during his time at Warner Brothers.

The Warner Archive released a four-movie DVD set of some of the lesser-known less remembered movies William Powell made during his time at Warner Brothers.

One of these movies is High Pressure, released in 1932. Powell is Gar Evans, a company promoter. He is not a con man. Well, not exactly. He will not do anything that is actually illegal. If he’s going to promote a company that makes bicycle clips there has to be an actual factory that manufactures actual bicycle clips. Gar’s genius lies in persuading investors and the public that such a company makes the finest bicycle clips ever devised and that the company will soon be bigger than Standard Oil.

In this case it’s a company that makes artificial rubber from sewage. “Colonel” Ginsburg (George Sidney) assures him that the process actually works and produces actual artificial rubber. He has seen the formula devised by the genius scientist. Thus reassured Gar sets out to create the necessary hype. He will sell people on the idea that the Golden Gate Artificial Rubber Company is a goldmine and that they would be crazy not to put money into it.

It’s all about creating the right impression. If you rent a luxurious suite of offices, expensively furnished, in a fancy office building people assume the company really is going to become a vast business empire. Everything gives the impression of prosperity even though the impression has been created by borrowed money. And he has an uncanny ability to persuade people to offer him insanely attractive deals, such as halving the rent on the suite of offices.

Gar is careful not to tell any actual lies. He simply presents the truth in an imaginative and artistic way.

Soon the company is booming. The stock price is skyrocketing. Nothing can stop the Golden Gate Artificial Rubber Company. And the great thing is, it’s all on the level. The artificial rubber processing system really exists. At least Gar assumes that it exists. The Colonel assured him that the inventor had assured him that it works. It must be on the level. It has to be. Gar would just feel a bit happier if they could actually find the inventor. Nobody else has been able to make any sense of his formula.

If the invention doesn’t exist they’ll all end up behind bars.

Gar has woman problems as well. He’s been stringing Francine (Evelyn Brent) along for years but his promises of marriage never seem to come to anything. Francine is getting fed up. She’s also suspicious that Gar might have his eyes on his new secretary, a pretty blonde.

It has to be said that Evelyn Brent is just a little bit dull.

There are some terrific character actors in the supporting cast. Guy Kibbee, who pays the hapless clueless president of the company, is always a delight. And there’s Charles Middleton - Fu Manchu himself!

High Pressure loses focus at times. It’s William Powell who carries the movie and he does so effortlessly. He’s all manic energy and bravado and fast talking slick ultra-confidence. He’s in superb form. Gar is a bit of a scoundrel but he’s so much fun and has so much charm. We don’t care if he’s not entirely honest. He’s so brazen that we want him to succeed.

High Pressure is sparkling entertainment and a treat for William Powell fans. Highly recommended.

The DVD transfer is extremely good.

The Road to Singapore (1931)

The Road to Singapore, released in 1931, is one of the movies William Powell made after moving from Paramount to Warner Brothers.

It’s a pre-code melodrama with a tropical setting. There truly is nothing I love more than sex, sin, madness and scandal in the tropics. The setting in this case is a seedy flyblown port named Khota somewhere in the British Empire, possibly in India or Ceylon.

The heat, the isolation, the boredom all serve to encourage dangerous illicit passions and forbidden lusts.

And apparently some of these outposts of the British Empire really were notorious for steamy sexual liaisons that were not necessarily sanctified by marriage.

There is much consternation in Khota. The rumour is that Hugh Dawltry (William Powell) is back. He left some time earlier after a scandal - a matter of stealing another man’s wife. He has now returned aboard a steamer. Onboard he encountered Philippa Crosby (Doris Kenyon) and she certainly aroused his interest.

He lures her to his bungalow and makes a rather desultory (and unsuccessful) attempt to seduce her. They both know it won’t end there. The attraction is still there.

Philippa has come to Khota to marry the very respectable and dedicated Dr George March (Louis Calhern).

Marriage is a disappointment to Philippa. She was hoping for romance, passion and excitement. George is a crashing bore and is interested only in his work. Of course Philippa is not going to offer any encouragement to Dawltry. He is clearly a bounder. And he drinks too much. And he’s the sort of man who might be dangerous to a lady’s reputation, and to her morals. No, she certainly won’t encourage him. On the other hand dangerous men can be rather exciting. Especially good-looking charming dangerous men.

George’s young sister Rene March (Marian Marsh) is also not immune to the charms of such men. She’s a sweet girl but an incorrigible flirt. And she’s in the mood for playing games.

Naturally George suspects that Dawltry has evil intentions but he’s inclined to assume that Rene is his target. He doesn’t really trust either Philippa or Rene. And he’s aware that it’s an established medical fact that the tropical heat can drive a woman man-crazy. He broods.

Whether Dawltry really does intend to seduce either woman is uncertain, although the thought has certainly crossed his mind. He’s no Boy Scout.

In the pre-code era a screenwriter was under no constraints in regard to the ending of a story. It could end with virtue triumphant, or virtue vanquished. It could end happily, or tragically, or ambiguously. A good pre-code melodrama such as this one keeps the audience guessing about such things.

William Powell gives an assured performance and succeeds in keeping us unsure just how much of a cad Dawltry is. Marian Marsh is naughty and adorable. Louis Calhern is effective as a well-meaning but pompous and ineffectual man who has zero understanding of women. Doris Kenyon is fine as Philippa.

Alfred E. Green was a solid journeyman director who made his best films in the pre-code era, his most famous being Baby Face (1933). His Union Depot (1932) is rather delightful. He wasn’t usually flashy but in The Road to Singapore he pulls off a very ambitious very impressive long tracking shot and it’s not a mere gimmick - it enhances the feel of encroaching tropical madness.

The Road to Singapore is a fine overheated melodrama and it’s highly recommended.

Street of Women (1932)

Street of Women is a 1932 Warner Brothers pre-code melodrama directed by the prolific Archie Mayo.

The subject is marital infidelity and of course the great thing about pre-code movies is that you never know just how stories like this will play out.

Larry Baldwin (Alan Dinehart) is a tycoon who is building the world’s tallest building. In the past three years he has suddenly become immensely successful. They do say that behind every great man there’s a great woman. That’s true here. Except that the woman in this case is not Larry’s wife but his mistress.

His marriage to Lois (Marjorie Gateson) is an empty shell and has been for years.

His mistress is successful dress designer Natalie Upton (Kay Francis). She is his inspiration. They are madly in love. They have been having an affair for three years and this being a pre-code movie it leaves no doubt that they have been sleeping together.

Natalie’s kid brother Clarke (Allen Vincent) has been studying in Paris for three years. Now he’s back and that’s going to lead to a domestic cataclysm. Clarke is very very conventional. He is shocked and enraged at his sister’s illicit relationship.

There’s another complication. Clarke wants to marry Larry’s daughter Doris (Gloria Stuart ).

Larry thinks Doris will understand. She has always claimed to be a modern girl who does not believe in all that stuffy old-fashioned traditional morality stuff.

Unfortunately it turns out that Doris and Clarke are actually fanatical believers in the rigid enforcement of traditional morality.

Things are going to get messy.

Despite wishful thinking on the part of many modern critics and cinephiles pre-code movies by and large did not reject traditional morality. They were not trying to subvert that morality. They were not trying to subvert anything. What you do find in pre-code movies is the suggestion that maybe traditional morality doesn’t need to be rigidly and mercilessly enforced and that maybe moral lapses can be forgiven. That’s what differentiates pre-code movies from post-code movies. Once the Production Code started to be enforced there could be no suggestion that moral lapses could be forgiven. Such lapses had to be ruthlessly punished.

Pre-code movies are unpredictable and exciting because you just don’t know which way they will jump. A story such as this could end happily for Larry and Natalie or it could end in disaster for them. It could end in disaster for everyone.

All the performances are solid but Kay Francis is of course the standout performer. She was one of the great pre-code stars and this role is right in her wheelhouse.

Director Archie Mayo made some notable pre-code movies including the superb Svengali (1931). Under Eighteen and Illicit are also very much worth seeing. It was one those reliable journeyman directors for whom I have a lot of respect.

The characters have some depth and there’s plenty of moral complexity. Natalie and Larry realise that the revelation of their affair has hurt Doris and Clarke and they feel bad about that but at the same time they do not believe they have done anything wrong. All they did was to fall in love. Doris and Clarke are savagely judgmental but at the same time we can make allowances for them because they are very young. They’re not capable of understanding that Natalie and Larry need each other desperately.

This is a good romantic melodrama and it’s very pre-code and it’s highly recommended especially if you’re a Kay Francis fan.

The Warner Archive DVD looks very good.

The Man from Utah (1934)

The Man from Utah is a 1934 western B-movie made by Lone Star Productions and it’s one of the many B-westerns John Wayne made in the 30s.

Somehow or other the music track for this movie was lost at some stage and eventually a somewhat unsatisfactory modern music track was added. Fortunately the original dialogue track survived.

When we’re first introduced to John Weston (John Wayne) we think this is going to be a singing cowboy movie but it isn’t.

John Weston arrives in a little town in the West looking for work. When he almost single-handedly foils a bank robbery the crusty but good-natured Marshal Higgins decides he’s found the man he needs to take on a gang that uses a rodeo in the neighbouring town of Dalton as a front for its criminal activities including a series of robberies.

Weston is deputised. He will be undercover, posing as an entrant in the rodeo. It could be dangerous. There have been several mysterious deaths at the rodeo - men who fell foul of the gang. Marshal Higgins can’t prove that these were murders but he has no doubt that they were.

Weston is going to have romance problems as well. He falls for Marjorie Carter (Polly Ann Young), daughter of Dalton’s leading citizen but he has to play up to sexpot Dolores (Anita Campillo). Dolores is mixed up with the gang and she could provide a way for him to ingratiate himself with the gang.

The leader of the gang is Spike Barton (Edward Peil). He has his suspicions of Weston. Weston has some ideas about how the gang uses the rodeo as a cover for its robberies. He also thinks he’s figured out how the murders were carried out.

So it’s going to be a cat-and-mouse game between these two.

A major advantage that B-movies (especially crime thrillers, spy trillers and westerns) enjoyed was that the running times were so short. This one clocks in at just 51 minutes. You didn’t have to think about the pacing. It had to be brisk. There was no choice. This movie moves along very quickly indeed.

There’s lots of rodeo action. It’s all stock footage of course but it’s integrated into the movie pretty well.

There’s lots of action. Of all kinds - shoot-out, fistfights and daring trick riding.

The Big Trail (1930) was an ambitious epic western that was expected to make John Wayne a star but it didn’t happen. The movie flopped. This turned out to be, perversely, a lucky break for Wayne. He wasn’t ready for stardom then, the John Wayne persona was not yet fully formed and he did not yet have the necessary star quality. He spent almost a decade in the B-movie ghetto but when he did finally get his big break, in Stagecoach in 1939, he was ready. He’d gained a vast amount of experience, his trademark persona was now fully developed and the characteristic John Wayne star quality was there in abundance. After that his career never looked back.

In The Man from Utah you can see the process half-completed. He’s starting to get that easy good-humoured confidence that was such an essential part of John Wayne the star.

This movie boasts a perfectly serviceable plot and while it’s obviously not one of the great westerns there’s a lot for fans of the genre to enjoy. If you’re a fan of Duke Wayne, even better.

The Man from Utah is a fun little movie and it’s highly recommended.

My copy is on an ancient long out-of-print Payless double-feature DVD (it’s paired with a Roy Rogers movie) but the transfer is quite acceptable.

Night Court (1932)

Night Court (later re-released as Justice for Sale) is a very hard-edged 1932 MGM pre-code crime thriller.

Judge Andrew J. Moffett (Walter Huston) is a night court judge and he’s as crooked as they come. He’s also cruel and vindictive.

He has a mistress, Lil Baker (Noel Baker), whom he has set up in a luxury Park Avenue apartment.

Now there’s going to be an investigation into crooked judges, headed by Judge William Osgood (Lewis Stone) who is something of a rarity - a judge who is not on the take.

Moffett will have to try to destroy as much evidence as possible and he will also have to hide his mistress away somewhere. He can’t afford to allow Osgood to talk to her. She knows way too much of an incriminating nature.

Lil is hiding out in a rooming house. Next door is a young couple with a baby. The wife is a good-natured ditzy blonde, Mary Thomas (Anita Page). Quite by accident Mary happens to see a piece of damning evidence. Moffett plans to deal with Mary by framing her on a nonsensical charge of prostitution but he’ll have to move fast. He’s under surveillance.

Mary’s husband Mike (Phillips Holmes) figures out that Mary was framed and he’s out for revenge but he doesn’t realise just how powerful Moffett is. And while Osgood is working to close the net on Moffett he may have underestimated Moffett’s ruthlessness.

While the ending is a little contrived it is rather cool and very effective with a very nifty surprise witness scene.

This is Walter Huston at his nasty best, a fine portrait of evil and arrogance. Walter Huston was absolutely on fire in the pre-code era, delivering one extraordinary performance after another.

Anita Page and Noel Baker are both quite good. Phillips Holmes overacts but he’s playing man under such extreme pressure that this approach actually works.

This is a very pre-code movie. Once the Production Code came in any mention of the truth about crooked judges, corrupt cops and government corruption was pretty much forbidden. This movie makes it clear that the entire system was corrupt from top to bottom, that it wasn’t just a case of one bad apple.

It’s not just the corruption. The movie takes aim at the way vicious stupid cops target the powerless. The Production Code would never have permitted the criminal justice system to be depicted as it really was, a system that provided justice only for those with money.

It’s also crystal clear that Lil is a kept woman. And there are plenty of quite open mentions of prostitution.

This has some of the feel of pre-code gangster movies but in this case the gangsters are judges, lawyers and court officials. There is also perhaps a slight proto-noir vibe with a young couple hopelessly enmeshed in a web of evil from which there seems no escape.

Put it this way, if you enjoy film noir or early 30s gangster movies you will almost certainly enjoy Night Court. If you’re a pre-code fan as well you’ll love it.

It’s fascinating to me that in the early 30s MGM made some incredibly tough movies (and Night Court is very tough indeed). One that comes to mind is another Walter Huston film, the hard-as-nails The Beast of the City (1932). And they made some seriously wild and sleazy movies, such as Kongo (1932) which starred, yes you guessed it, Walter Huston.

The Warner Archive DVD is obviously an unrestored print but it’s quite acceptable.

Night Court packs a wallop. Very highly recommended.

Other Walter Huston movies made in this same year that showcase his ability to set the screen on fire are Rain and Law and Order (one of the greatest westerns ever made).