More stars than there are in the heavens - Reviews #50

Here's a review of the star-spotters' dream that is The Stolen Jools, plus where the genre went next and some stuff about my computer habits which I've decided to bore you with.



SHORT: The Stolen Jools (William C. McGann, 1931) is a slapdash early talkie short, but for any fan of the period it's a must, with arguably the finest collection of stars ever assembled for a film. Or at least for a film bankrolled by a cigarette company to fund a TB clinic. Sure, the plot is woeful and the writing is sloppy, even inane, with stars repeatedly introduced by someone saying "Aren't you..." and then their name, while the best bits are over way too soon. But you do get Buster Keaton being knocked over, Wheeler & Woolsey taking the law onto their own hands, Jack Oakie telling a cop that Fay Wray is Jack Oakie, a fun in-joke about Winnie Lightner's signature tune Singing in the Bathtub, and Joe E. Brown yelling. The cast also includes stars Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck (and then-husband Frank Fay), Bebe Daniels (and spouse Ben Lyon), Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, Laurel & Hardy, Edward G. Robinson, Norma Shearer (it's her "jools" that get pinched), Victor McLaglen, Edmund Lowe, Warner Baxter, Richard Dix, Maurice Chevalier, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Loretta Young, Richard Barthelmess, character actors Eugene Pallette, Charles Butterworth, George E. Stone, J. Farrell MacDonald, Gabby Hayes and the entire Our Gang gang. It wasn't the first all-star movie, Warner's The Show of Shows (featuring Lightner's hit song) and Paramount on Parade were earlier full-length features that did a similar thing, but those films were restricted to showcasing a studio's roster of famous faces. The charitable nature of The Stolen Jools meant the biggest stars from MGM, Warner, Paramount and RKO could all appear - pretty exciting for inherently trivial star-spotters like myself.

The all-star model would reach its artistic and commercial zenith during World War Two, albeit within the constraints of the studio system, in the shape of Warner's Thank Your Lucky Stars - perhaps the most purely entertaining film I've ever seen - and Paramount's Star-Spangled Rhythm, along with lesser entries like Hollywood Canteen (Warner), Stage Door Canteen (RKO) and Follow the Boys (Universal). These big-budget extravaganzas weren't made solely for philanthropic purposes, but performers do seem to have been lent from one studio to the next with more grace than usual. The all-star film enjoyed a colourful renaissance in the '60s with How the West Was Won, The Longest Day and It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, though there were no cast-iron classics to speak of.

I watched tons of Daffy and Bugs cartoons on YouTube last year and was enjoying some classic Lee & Herring on the comp just the other day, but Stolen Jools is the first film I've caught on the internet this year. It seems revealing - or perhaps merely an indictment of users' attention-spans - that at the time of writing 45,000 people have watched the first section of the movie, and only 4,000 bothered to catch the final part. Perhaps they just tuned in to see Wallace Beery. You can watch the film here. The print quality is poor, but we're lucky to have this curio at all, since it was considered lost for many years - even if in all honesty it merits a (2).

Maurice Chevalier and Wilde without words - Reviews #8

Lady Windermere's Fan (Ernst Lubitsch, 1925) - As a play that's essentially a torrent of epigrams flooding over a skeletal, improbable plot, Lady Windermere's Fan isn't the most obvious fare for silent comedy. In the hands of legendary director Ernst Lubitsch, though, it translates into a touching and memorable film - if a little slow and lacking in giggles. There are some notable changes from the play, largely to make the baddies more humane and the damsel in distress more innocent. The plot is this: Lord Dartington (Ronald Colman) is in love with Lady Windermere. When her husband starts throwing money at a fallen woman (Irene Rich) - she fears the worst. But as becomes clear alarmingly near the beginning of this adaptation (the revelation usually comes at the end of Act Two), he's got a very good reason for doing so. The best of silent acting, indeed most silent acting, proves a lie of those ludicrous melodramatic spoofs employed by lazy contemporary TV shows in which actors who've clearly never watched a film from before 1986 gesticulate wildly and pull absurd, exaggerated expressions. Here, both Rich and Colman show what silent performance was really about: they're subtly expressive, striking just the right balance between what they make obvious and what is implied, or left to us to imagine. Ronnie is notable as a male lead for making the transition to talkies so effortlessly, but he was a major silent star and here he shows why. There are a couple of particularly nice bits of acting: his declaration of love in the opening scene and the sequence where he tells Lady Windermere of her husband's cheque book. The Windermeres are a bit wet (pun entirely intended), and a touch bland, but that means that when Wilde's machinations start tossing them around, we do feel for them. If The Lubitsch Touch isn't quite refined, it's still in evidence, with a few innovations that pave the way for the Pre-code sauciness of Trouble in Paradise, et al. The binoculars sequence, in which a series of men train their goggles on the pouty Rich as she attends a horse race, is very cleverly done, followed by a scene with a shrinking screen that follows Edward Martindel as he follows her. That sense of invention keeps this ambitious film interesting, despite it being shorn of the source material's most obvious asset. (3)
NB: I saw the 89m version held by the American Film Institute and included on the More Treasures box-set (thanks to the University of Leeds library). Apparently there is now a 133m version doing the rounds.

***



Also from More Treasures comes the SHORT film A Few Moments With Eddie Cantor (Lee DeForest, 1923), the star's first sound appearance, back when he was starring on Broadway in Ziegfeld's Kid Boots. Filmed in 1923, seven years before he shot to screen superstardom with Whoopee, it finds his wide-eyed, pampered-but-put-upon, slightly risque persona fully formed. Cantor performs a brief excerpt from the show - singing a couple of songs and doing some gags to camera - and that's that. The staging is non-existent (he's just standing on a wooden floor, with no backdrop and no props), but it's seven fun-filled minutes regardless, and a must for fans of the star. (3)

***



Folies Bergère de Paris (Roy Del Ruth, 1935) is a Lubitsch-esque confection with numbers inspired by the kaleidoscopic choreography of Busby Berkeley. It's also the best film I've caught so far this year. The story sees a vaudeville entertainer (Maurice Chevalier with his familiar persona) impersonate a baron (Chevalier again), leading to romantic complications for both. Ann Sothern is the entertainer's good time gal, with Merle Oberon the baron's flighty wife. It's witty and invigoratingly entertaining, with a fine performance by Chevalier in his dual role and a top supporting cast that includes Eric Blore, Robert Greig and Halliwell Hobbes. Despite the enjoyable plotting, the film's finest moments come through the slew of great numbers at both the beginning and the end of the film. The Singing a Happy Song finale, which won an Oscar for dance direction and features several hundred straw hats of varying sizes, is really something, but all the tunes are great: Valentine, Rhythm of the Rain, Au Revoir l'Amour and You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth. This was Chevalier's last Hollywood musical until Gigi, 23 years later. (3.5)