NFR Project: 'Wild Boys of the Road' (1933)

 

NFR Project: ‘Wild Boys of the Road’

Dir: William Wellman

Scr: Earl Baldwin

Pho: Arthur L. Todd

Ed: Thomas Pratt

Premiere: Oct. 7, 1933

67 min.

There’s a lot to unpack here. This is another of the Warner Brothers’ gritty realistic productions so common from the studio in the 1930s. It was slated to be much more downheartening than it eventually became. It is also a movie that haunts my nightmares.

Wild Boys of the Road documents the true-life plight of hundreds of thousands of teenagers who left their homes during the Great Depression and went on the bum, looking for work. Two friends, Tommy (Frankie Darro) and Eddie (Edwin Phillips), hit the rails and start traveling across the country, looking for better times. They meet young Sally (Dorothy Coonan), dressed as a boy, and the three pal up and head for Chicago, where Sally’s aunt lives. That destination turns out to be a whorehouse, which is promptly raided. The three move on.

Disturbingly, a railroad worker (Ward Bond) rapes another young woman, and is pushed to his death by the hoboes. Later, the kids are leaving the train as it pulls into the yard. Eddie hits his head on a signpost, and falls over the tracks. While the others watch helplessly, the train severs his leg.

I was far too young when I saw this scene as a kid. Director Wellman surely knew how to stage the scene; the flurry of edits that conveys the horror of the moment is unforgettable. Again and again as a child, I ran over the seeming inevitability of doom.

A local doctor completes the amputation of Tommy’s leg, and the three continue. They wind up in New York City, where Eddie, trying to earn some money with which to start a job, falls in unknowingly with some gangsters and is arrested for robbery.

The pals go before a judge, and Eddie give a stirring speech about the unfairness of it all, and asks the judge to lock them up. In the original screenplay, the kids were sent to reform school, much as they would in real life. Somebody at Warner Brothers must have been convinced that that much realism would not be acceptable, so they rewrote the ending so that the judge decides to help them all.

Despite the imposed happy ending, the film is a blistering look at normal people’s lives and the struggles they faced.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Imitation of Life.

 

 

NFR Project: 'The Three Little Pigs' (1933)

 

NFR Project: ‘The Three Little Pigs’

Dir: Burt Gillett

Premiere: May 25, 1933

8 min.

This Disney color short subject was a big hit, has become a classic, and was originally antisemitic.

First, the good news. The animation studio’s developing understanding of the mechanics of making a cartoon film meant that the end result was immediately convincing in conveying the movements of its anthropomorphic characters, leading the audience directly into the fantasy of the film. Its ability to delineate character almost instantly meant that the viewer was hooked. There is something intensely compelling about top-notch Disney effort. It’s the gold standard, at least in America.

The story is an adaptation of the familiar fairy tale – one pig builds his house of straw, the second of sticks, the third of bricks. The first two cavort and play while their industrious, wise brother slaves away crafting his brick mansion. “Who’s afraid of the big, bad wolf?” the first two sing. Of course, the wolf is nearby.

The villain blows down the house of straw, and the house of sticks. The two brothers find refuge in their practical brother’s home. Now the bad news. The wolf dresses up like a Jewish peddler, complete with huge nose, whiskers, and Brooklyn accent, and knocks on the door. “I’m da Fuller Brush man!” he exclaims. “I’m woiking my way t’rew collitch!” Underneath his appearance, a snatch of klezmer-like background music plays.

Obviously, this was problematic, so Disney actually went back and changed that scene. In the new version, the Wolf appears as himself, clad only in spectacles (the soundtrack stays the same). It was one of those egregious prejudiced assumptions of the day, that found a place in mass media alongside similar depictions of Black people and Asian-Americans. This kind of corrective wouldn’t work for the feature-length, breathtakingly racist Song of the South (1946).

After a second unsuccessful attempt to enter, disguised as an orphaned sheep, the Wolf finally climbs down the chimney, where he lands in a boiling kettle laced with turpentine. Screeching and dragging his behind on the ground, he exits. The three pigs celebrate – then a knock is heard at the door! The first two pigs cower under the bed! Ah, but it was their industrious brother playing a trick on them.

The cartoon was so popular that it was billed above the feature in some cinemas. The success of the song “Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf?” made it into kind of a Depression-era anthem, right up there with “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” The Wolf was hard times; it knocked at the door but was ultimately vanquished, a form of wish-fulfillment desperately needed by audiences of the period.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Wild Boys of the Road.

 

 

NFR Project: 'State Fair' (1933)

 

NFR Project: ‘State Fair’

Dir: Henry King

Scr: Sonya Levin, Paul Green

Pho: Hal Mohr

Ed: Robert Bischoff

Premiere: Feb. 10, 1933

97 min.

My mother’s family loved this movie, as they were farmers from Iowa, exactly who this film is about. It was rare to see Hollywood tackle such a seemingly unglamorous subject. However, the novel on which the film was based was a best-seller, so the adaptation went forward.

The film plays as a kind of wish fulfillment. Here at the state fair, the grim realities of the Great Depression are not present. There is abundance, there are happy crowds. The carnival and the midway are places of exotic excitement. To farm-bound youngsters, the fair must have seemed magical.

This, the first of three film versions (Rodgers and Hammerstein created a musical version in 1945), is led by Will Rogers as the farm’s paterfamilias, Abel Frake. It’s difficult to realize just how popular the humorist Rogers was at the time. His stage appearances, newspaper columns, radio work, and finally film work made him a household name, a homespun sage who could take the mickey out of the rich and powerful.

Here, he plays himself, basically, laid-back and slyly witty. Louise Dresser ably plays his wife. Abel’s hog, Blue Boy, is in the running for the first prize at the fair. His wife’s pickles and mincemeat are in competition as well. Although the movie takes place during the run of the fair, the real subject of the film is relationships and heartbreak. The Frakes’ two nearly-grown children, played by Janet Gaynor and Norman Foster, meet and fall in love with potential partners (one encounter ends happily, the other does not). Their romantic excitement fills the film with energy.

At the end, prizes are won, hearts are broken and mended. Rarely would such a representative slice of American life be committed to film.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Three Little Pigs.

NFR Project: 'Sons of the Desert' (1933)

 

NFR Project: ‘Sons of the Desert’

Dir: William A. Seiter

Scr: Frank Craven, Byron Morgan

Pho: Kenneth Peach

Ed: Bert Jordan

Premiere: Dec. 29, 1933

64 min.

Laurel and Hardy’s best sound film is a compact gem. It moves away from the heavy slapstick of their earlier films and gives them an even more subtle humor, of attitude, reaction, and classic takes.

Here the boys are in their fully formed personas – Stan is the hapless idiot, Ollie the self-important, bossy, know-it-all partner who proves more stupid. Stan is lost in the complexities of the world, but it is Oliver who suffers the most as he tries to dominate and control the chaos around him.

They live next door to each other. Stan is dominated by his wife (their mailbox reads “Mrs. and Mr. Stan Laurel”), whereas Oliver preaches the gospel of self-reliance and male dominance. Both couples are childless – the boys are hardly capable of being father figures. The one film in which they have children, Brats (1930), the kids in question are themselves in miniature. In fact, Oliver, despite his boastful talk, behaves like a naughty boy when in person with his wife 

They belong to the fraternal organization the Sons of the Desert, and are called upon  to attend the group’s convention in Chicago. The boys swear to make the trip, but Stan starts crying when he thinks about telling his wife. Ollie tries to show him how to do it – only to be shot down hard by his own wife.

Ollie concocts a ridiculous scheme whereby he pretends to be ill and must take a trip to Honolulu with Stan to be cured. (A veterinarian is brought in to certify him.) The two escape to Chicago, hamming it up for newsreel cameras, drinking and partying – the great comic Charley Chase plays an obnoxious convention-goer – and having the time of their lives.

They return home only to find their wives out and the front-page headline reading that the boat from Hawaii sank. They hide desperately, trying to think of a way to lie their way out of trouble. Needless to say, after some adventures on a rainy rooftop, the two receive their comeuppance. Stan’s honesty is rewarded, while Ollie takes more blows to the head.

Sons of the Desert lets both Laurel and Hardy take their time on camera. Stan mistakenly eats a wax apple, and we watch him obliviously gag it down for several minutes. Normally, the joke would be over quickly, but Laurel stretches it out with grimaces, looks of confusion, and double takes, getting all the comic mileage out of it that he can. Oliver's gaze at the viewer, looking for commiseration, suspends time for a moment. 

It’s a world in which wives are formidable masters, where Stan enjoys eating wax fruit, and where Ollie turns to the camera and gazes at us in gentle torment. The duo would make more feature films, but none as consistently funny as this.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: State Fair.