flyinthewine

[flyinthewine]

Mini Review: Her Man (1930)

OVERALL VERDICT: If you watch it for nothing else, DO IT FOR THE FIGHT SCENE! and Slim Summerville slapping people so hard they go dizzy. This little Pathe pastiche of the 'Frankie and Johnny' debacle was recently remastered by Turner Classic and the pay-off is that you get to see all of the following in full HD!

Phillips Holmes plays the most innocent, wide-eyed, bursts-into-song-like-a-Disney-Character, tough and worldly, sailor ever...

He makes a bunch of faces at Helen Twelvetrees till she gets so distracted she falls in love with him...

... Oh and he fights Ricardo Cortez...

... and fights Ricardo Cortez...

... and fights Ricardo Cortez...

...

...

until-his-top-rips-ever-so-neatly-off...The End Watch and enjoy!

[flyinthewine]

What a welcome back ;-)

Asphalt (Joe May, 1929)

[flyinthewine]

10 posts! Tumblr thinks we’re on a roll does it?

[flyinthewine]

“A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.”   - John Barrymore “Hollywood is tied hand and foot to the demands for artificiality of the masses all over the world.” - Lionel Barrymore Films: Grand Hotel (1932) - Arsene Lupin (1932) - Guilty Hands (1931) - A Bill of Divorcement (1932) - Dinner At Eight (1933) - Rasputin and the Empress (1932)  -  Beau Brummel -  (1924) Don Juan (1926) - Twentieth Century (1934) Directors: Edmund Goulding -  Jack Conway -  W. S. Van Dyke / Lionel Barrymore -  George Cukor -  Richard Boleslawski  -  Harry Beaumont  -  Alan Crosland -  Howard Hawks Music: Beau Brummel -  James Schafer

[flyinthewine]

MINI REVIEW: A NOTORIOUS AFFAIR (1930) OVERALL VERDICT: If you don’t have an ‘Examples of Kay Francis Being Inexplicably Delicious’ collection yet, start one and add this to it.

Let’s explain this early talkie trip-up in 5 images or less:

1: Publicity still. Moving on.

2: Kay Francis steals it as ‘the one who is going to sleep with your man. Period.’ And she’s more fun than...

3: ‘the faithful wife’ played (without a hint of irony) by Howard Hughes’s current favourite, Billie Dove.  Ziegfeld girl. beautiful but meh. Married (not to Hughes). FOR NO CONCEIVABLE REASON her character marries...

4: ‘the most dislikeable OK-but-not-great violinist in the world’ - Basil Rathbone, with a characteristically British Italian accent unworthy of his actual brilliance. This is 5 production years before we’d see him fencing backwards over rocks as a characteristically British French pirate that 18yr old me couldn’t take her eyes off. Doesn’t he look good though!

5: ‘the doctor who’s supposed to be better than the husband’ (played by Kenneth Thompson) that Billie Dove plans to run off with. He’s not. She doesn’t. I don’t know why. 'Being played by Basil Rathbone’ doesn’t excuse hideous misogyny. And yet...

Image Sources:  Pale Writer at Wordpress.com  III  Precode.com III IMDB III Me