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.