#maidel turner

[byneddiedingo]

Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff in The Raven (Lew Landers, 1935)

Cast: Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Lester Matthews, Irene Ware, Samuel S. Hinds, Spencer Charters, Inez Courtney, Ian Wolfe, Maidel Turner. Screenplay: David Boehm. Cinematography: Charles J. Stumar. Art direction: Albert S. D'Agostino. Film editing: Albert Akst. Music: Clifford Vaughan. 

The Criterion Channel includes The Raven in its collection of pre-Code horror movies, but in fact the movie started filming after the Production Code was introduced, and director Lew Landers had to negotiate over details in the script. The enforcers were nervous about "excess horror," and in particular wanted the film not to show any details of the operation that Dr. Vollin (Bela Lugosi) performs on Bateman's (Boris Karloff) face. Even so, censors took aim at what they called "horror for horror's sake," and The Raven was banned in several countries. The defense from Universal Studios that the movie was a tribute to Edgar Allan Poe impressed nobody. It's still a fairly creepy movie, largely because the filmmakers managed to include some torture devices from Poe's stories like "The Pit and the Pendulum." The poem "The Raven" mainly gives Dr. Vollin an excuse to explain to everyone that the bird is a symbol of death, but it also prompts a rather silly dance recital by the object of Vollin's obsession, Jean Thatcher (Irene Ware). Vollin is a neurosurgeon who saves Jean's life after she's injured in an automobile accident. She's engaged to another surgeon, Dr. Halden (Lester Matthews), and when her father, Judge Thatcher (Samuel S. Hinds), stymies Vollin's interest in Jean, Vollin takes his revenge. He has a collection of torture devices and an old house outfitted with gimmicks like a bedroom on an elevator and a secret room whose walls close in on people trapped in it. Karloff's Bateman is a bank robber who escaped from San Quentin and is on the run, so in the guise of giving him plastic surgery to change his identity, Vollin instead disfigures him, and then makes him play servant at a house party to which Halden, the Thatchers, and various other guests are invited. Madness ensues. The movie's chief virtue is brevity -- it runs 61 minutes -- so it never gets tedious even though it also never gets either scary or plausible.   

[brennerrama]

MOVIE QUOTE OF THE DAY:

“I haven't enjoyed myself this much since Huey Long died!”

Maidel Turner in State of the Union (1948)

#stateoftheunion1948 #stateoftheunion #capra #frankcapra #moviequotes #moviequoteoftheday

[mariocki]

The Raven (1935)

"The raven is my talisman."

"Curious talisman. Bird of ill omen. A symbol of death."

"Death is my talisman, Mr. Chapman. The one indestructible force, the one certain thing in an uncertain universe - death."

[letterboxd-loggd]

Whom the Gods Destroy (1934) Walter Lang

April 26th 2020

[outoftowninac]

THE FOOL’S GAME

1920

The Fool’s Game is a play by Crane Wilbur. It was originally produced by John Cort starring Maude Fealy. 

"The Fool's Game" deals with that oldest of the social problems, the eternal triangle, and the marriage of convenience. Miss Fealy is seen in the role or Betty Marshall, a young society woman who enters into a loveless marriage with a rich man in order that aha may later marry the society idler with whom she has be come Infatuated.

The play was tried out on the West Coast in spring 1919. In some productions, Wilbur, a former actor, appeared. 

Before the casting of Maude Fealy, Adda Gleason was billed above the title. It was no coincidence that Fealy was cast as she had recently become Cort’s daughter-in-law. 

The Fool’s Game opened in Atlantic City at Nixon’s Apollo Theatre on the Boardwalk on January 26, 1920.  Others in the cast included: Leonard Willey, Virginia Case, Corbet Morris, O. Henry Gordon, Maidel Turner, Mary Emerson, Edward J. Keenan, and Josephine Dupree. Wilbur did not appear. 

After AC, the play moved to PA for a one-night-only performance at Scranton’s Academy Theatre on February 2nd. Then off to Syracuse NY where...

The Fool’s Game died on the road, never playing Broadway, only the Boardwalk.