The Valiant (1929)

Thanks to TCM’s daylong celebration of the preservation efforts of the George Eastman House, I was able to view Paul Muni’s first film effort, The Valiant, directed by William K. Howard and released by Fox in 1929. The film would earn the Austrian born, New York bred Muni the first of his six Academy Award nominations, each and every one in the Best Actor category. He’d lose the second-ever Best Actor statuette to colossal movie star Warner Baxter (In Old Arizona), but Muni’s time in the sun was coming: he would be nominated four times between 1934 and 1938, winning the award in 1937 for his portrayal of Louis Pasteur. (Muni bookended nicely: his last nomination came in 1960, in his final film, The Last Angry Man.) Along with his rival at Warner Brothers, Edward G. Robinson, Muni dominated screens in the thirties — his star exploding after title roles in a pair of 1932 films, Scarface, and the astonishing I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. All but forgotten by contemporary audiences, Muni was an actor’s actor and one of the biggest stars in the world. He was a chameleon, able to transform himself into whatever his role called for, whether it was suave gentility or brute physicality, regardless of age or nationality, and he could do any accent required — though he famously told Irving Thalberg that he was “about as Chinese as Herbert Hoover” when the boy wonder cast him in The Good Earth.

The Valiant opens auspiciously: Muni shoots an unseen man in some drab big city flat and wanders out onto the street, and eventually into the local precinct, where he confesses. In short order he’s thrown behind bars, tried, and sentenced to die in the electric chair at Sing Sing — a rapid-fire chain of events that Muni takes in stride. He seems resigned to his fate in moralistic, Old Testament sort of way. He tells his captors his victim deserved to die, and that he realizes that he too must be punished in accordance with the law.

The dramatic thrust of the film lies not in the identity of the victim or the motive for the crime, but in the real name of the killer himself, which Muni stubbornly refuses to divulge. Instead, he assembles the moniker “James Dyke” from a police station wall calendar. (The earliest instance of this particular film cliché I’m aware of.) Cut to the prison, where we learn that not only is Dyke a model inmate, but that his sensational case has even provided him the opportunity to write moralizing newspaper editorials, making his story and face known to a fascinated nation. In Ohio, the elderly Mrs. Douglas sees the condemned man in the paper and wonders if he could be her son Joe, gone without a trace these fifteen years. Her daughter Mary and Mary’s fiancé Robert (the popular Johnny Mack Brown) make the trip to New York in an effort to learn the truth, but although the film makes it abundantly clear to the audience that James Dyke certainly is Joe Douglas, Joe is able to convince the desperate young woman that he is not the loving older brother who used to read Romeo and Juliet to her when she was a little girl. Instead, in the sort of turn that could only happen in an early Hollywood tearjerker, “Dyke” claims to have known a man named Joe Douglas during the war, and to have seen the youth die heroically in the trenches. I’ll call it quits after this in order to spare as much of the ending as possible — Mary is then able to leave the prison with her chin up, believing that her brother died a hero and now able to return home to marry free and clear of any potential scandal.

This is an engaging movie, and thankfully it’s short enough (only 66 minutes) that one can get through it without ever feeling taxed. First is Muni: the abilities that would see him become the preeminent dramatic actor of the thirties are evident; he’s simply light years ahead of everyone else in the film in terms of ability and intuiting the medium. More than that though, Muni has that intangible something, the charisma, the screen presence, the “it” that has characterized actors such as Cagney, Dean, and De Niro throughout film history. The Valiant is a rudimentary early talkie, but Muni owns the thing.

Speaking of which, the film is notable for its technical accomplishment. While the cameras are static (there are a few close-ups), and the sets are theatrical, there are some fine “special effects” shots that appear during various flashback sequences, when a young Muni is superimposed over a medium shot of the character (usually his Whistler’s Mother-like ma) doing the remembering. And although it boasts no musical score, the sound in the Eastman print is crisp and clean, with all of the spoken dialogue easily understood. Part of that owes to the simplicity of the Oscar-nominated writing itself: a great many of the Fox theaters chains were rural (compared to those of Paramount and MGM), and consequently numerous Fox features were targeted at the uneducated or the unsophisticated, who nevertheless frequented American movie houses in droves. All of the characters deliver their lines deliberately, and with no small amount of silent-era pantomime, but it’s also apparent that the writing itself was been simplified in order to facilitate easy understanding. The narrative moral of the movie — and even its title — speak directly to rural audiences about the corruption of city life. A good mid-western boy was called to the war, and at its end was lured to the city instead of back to his home — and there he was obliged to do murder. Audiences are warned that even a young man worthy of the film’s title, The Valiant can still be ruined by the perils of the city, and that in forsaking his home and his family, he has sufficiently challenged the fates to destroy him.  

The Valiant (1929)
Directed by William K. Howard
Starring Paul Muni
Released by Fox Film Corporation (20th Century Fox) 
Running time: 66 minutes
Availability: Just aired on TCM, previously quite rare. Poor quality copies on ioffer.com. 
Grade: B, historically significant. 

The Patent Leather Kid (1927) & The 1st Academy Awards

How can we discuss The Patent Leather Kid, and not dedicate a few paragraphs to the very first iteration of the Academy Awards? We can’t, so hang in there and we’ll get to the film shortly — err … eventually.


The brainchild of MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was originally formed to nullify (or mollify, if you prefer) the labor unions that were threatening to wreak havoc on industry production. As things turned out, Mayer’s cadre of power players didn’t have that kind of juice, but ever the pragmatist, he recognized that the Academy might still have some value as a PR mechanism. Concerned citizens all over the country were editorializing about the evils of the motion picture business, so Mayer imagined that the Academy could intervene with the Hays office and effectively self-police the business. The idea for the Academy Awards came a little later, after Mayer, his attorneys, and president Douglas Fairbanks managed to push $100 Academy memberships off on almost 250 more actors, writers, directors, producers, and technicians. The idea of an annual awards banquet is a natural outgrowth of such organizations, and the Academy Awards of Merit became Hollywood’s ingenious way of glamorizing itself and promoting its product to the world.

Nobody knew what to expect that first year, except for a good meal. The 270 attendees at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel that May evening were absolutely unconcerned about winning and losing — the results had been announced ninety days before the actual banquet was held — on the back page of the Academy Bulletin. (It wasn’t until the following year that Mayer realized the tremendous upside in keeping the results a secret until the big night.) The nomination and voting process had been painful to all involved — such things are hard to get right the first time around. Ballots actually had to be administered twice: many members failed to follow directions and nominated films from earlier years like Stella Dallas and Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, both from all the way back in 1925. Then the whole affair was almost ruined by Al Jolson and  The Jazz Singer — committee members decided it was unfair to put the landmark talkie up against silent fare, so they ruled it ineligible and instead recognized the Warners with the Academy’s first special prize. Likewise for the cinematic juggernaut known as Charles Chaplin. He was eligible in multiple categories, but the committee decided to remove his name from consideration and give him an honorary award as well — killing four separate birds with one stone by recognizing his “versatility and genius in acting, writing, directing and producing The Circus.” Chaplin was the inarguably the most famous man in the world at the time; he would have certainly swept the awards. Some authors have suggested his name was removed from ballots due to his abrasive reputation in industry circles, but this is rubbish — had Chaplin and The Circus swept the very first awards, other industry players may have lost interest and the whole enterprise could have died. It is also important to remember the depth of friendship that existed between Chaplin and Fairbanks. Regardless, for the sake of the awards themselves it proved a wise decision.

The first banquet was also a private affair — the only one not broadcast in some way to the public. For the five-dollar ticket price, guests danced and enjoyed a sumptuous meal, all hosted by master of ceremonies Fairbanks. When it was time to recognize the evening’s winners, Mayer took only five minutes to call each of them to the head table to collect their statuettes. Best Actor Emil Jannings missed the ceremony — he had already received his award and was on a steamer bound for Germany, making him officially the first winner in the awards history.* At the time performers were nominated for their body of work over the course of the eligibility period; Jannings was up for his roles in The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh, while his only fellow nominee was the much younger Richard Barthelmess, nominated for The Noose and the other subject of this essay, The Patent Leather Kid.

Twenty-one year old Janet Gaynor was named Best Actress for her work in a trio of features: Seventh Heaven, Street Angel, and Sunrise; besting Louise Dresser and Gloria Swanson, each nominated for a single performance. The practice of nominating actors and directors for multiple films would only last through the first three ceremonies, as it skewed votes towards the nominee with the most work under consideration, making an apples to apples comparison impossible. All in all, fifteen statuettes were awarded that evening in twelve categories, including Chaplin’s special award and one for the Warner Bros., for bringing The Jazz Singer to the screen. (Both cameramen recognized in the Cinematography category for Sunrise received a statuette.)

Wings was named Outstanding Picture on the strength of its commercial success, while Sunrise was given the prize for Unique and Artistic Picture. In one intriguing legend about those first awards it is said that the Board of Judges (comprised of one delegate from each of the five branches, plus Mayer) had originally selected King Vidor’s The Crowd as the winner over Sunrise, but Mayer was the lone holdout, arguing that Vidor’s depressing study of New York city life was not the credit to the industry that Sunrise was. After an all-night debate, the other judges finally gave in. Ironically, though Mayer is remembered as being rough around the edges and a something of a tyrant, he got that one right. Although The Crowd is a truly extraordinary film, Sunrise is … astonishing. What’s even more noteworthy is that The Crowd was an MGM product while Sunrise came from Fox. The shrewd foresight displayed by Mayer in arguing against his own film for one of the Academy’s most prestigious awards ruled out any possible suggestions of collusion, legitimizing the awards before they even got off the ground. The rest is history.

{* And it couldn’t have gone to a more rotten guy. In the wake of talking pictures Jannings’s thick accent made a career as a Hollywood unlikely, so the Swiss-born actor decided to head for Germany. He wrote to the Academy, asking to be given the award in advance of his ship sailing, “I therefore ask you to kindly hand me now already the statuette award to me. I want to take this opportunity to extend to you my heartfelt thanks for the honor bestowed upon me, which fills me with pride and joy which I shall cherish all my life as a kind remembrance in recognition of my artistic activities in U.S.A.” After he returned to Germany, Jannings continued to make films, most notably The Blue Angel (1930) with Marlene Dietrich. He would also sympathize with the National Socialists. Throughout the thirties he appeared in one Nazi propaganda film after another; in 1941 Goebbels bestowed upon him the title of “Artist of the State.” Jannings tried to reconnect with Hollywood after the war, but this was obviously impossible. He relocated to Austria and became a citizen of that country in 1947. He died of liver cancer three years later. His Academy statuette remains in Berlin.}

———

Richard Barthelmess’s Hollywood story began in 1916, when stage star Alla Nazimova cast him in the screen adaptation of her hit play War Brides. Barthelmess’s matinee idol looks and effortless screen presence ensured not only more roles, but stardom: he made eleven films the following year, and signed a contract with D.W. Griffith in 1919 and immediately appeared opposite Lillian Gish is a pair of films: Broken Blossoms and Way Down East, cementing his stardom. Gish would gush, “He has the most beautiful face of any man who ever went before a camera.” Barthelmess would continue as one of the biggest names in the industry, even becoming one of the original 36 founders of the Academy.

Like so many of his contemporaries, Barthelmess discovered he wasn’t nearly as well suited for the talkies, though he held on to his career a great deal longer than many: appearing in twenty sound pictures — though never in a notable performance. Barthelmess retired from acting in the mid-thirties, but returned to perform in the 1939 Howard Hawks classic Only Angels Have Wings. All in all, Barthelmess enjoyed a Hollywood career that lasted 25 years, with his greatest role coming in The Patent Leather Kid, a First national blockbuster released in 1927.

It’s a long movie, coming in at well over two hours, and it takes the acquired taste of a silent film enthusiast to get through it in a single sitting. Barthelmess plays the unnamed title character (if he’s got a real name, we never learn it), a Hell’s Kitchen prizefighter eyeing a shot at the title. Everyone in New York is rooting against him though — he’s an arrogant pug who fancies himself a dandy and insists on having his hair combed between rounds. Barthelmess looks the part: he’s an attractive and statuesque man who moves around the ring like he’s had some training. Had the movie been made a decade later, Barthelmess’s part undoubtedly would have gone to James Cagney, though the two actors are dissimilar. All of the fight scenes come over as authentic, with large crowds and believable atmosphere. It’s at one of his fights that the Kid meets Curley (Molly O’Day), a dance-hall girl who like everyone else in the arena came in hopes of seeing him knocked on his ass. Their eyes meet between, and just before putting his opponent down for the count, the Kid shouts at Curley to hang around after the fight. Intrigued, she ditches her date and lolls by the locker room door. A romance is born.

The US entry into the war is announced in one of the film’s best scenes. The Kid hears a commotion in the streets below and shouts down to the newsboy for a copy of the Times. As he scans the cover and begins to search for the sports page, we see the headline: “War Declared!” Curley enters the room and asks he’s heard the big news, but the Kid thinks she’s talking about the latest prediction of his defeat in the fight columns. The extent to which director Al Santell is able to milk the Kid’s reluctance to join the war effort is surprising, particularly given the film’s extensive running time and how abruptly it transitions from the New York fight game to the trenches of the western front. At first we think the Kid is simply disinterested in the world outside the ring — a fighter who only thinks about the fight game. Before long, as his friends enlist or are drafted, we realize he’s just scared. More than scared — he’s a coward, terrified of “guns n gas n bayonets.” After he refuses to doff his cap as the flag marches by on the street below Curley finally gives up on him, writing in a note: “I’m only a girl and can’t fight but I can dance and sing so I’m goin’ to France to cheer up the boys till I learn to be a nurse.”

Eventually the Kid is drafted, right alongside his stuttering trainer Puffy. The pair head for France as newly minted doughboys, the Kid constantly on the lookout for ways to avoid the front lines. When joining the assault becomes inevitable, he hangs back during the charge, hiding behind a tank as the men around him are chopped down. When Puffy gets hit, he implores his protégé to “give ‘em Hell!” and at the expense of the older man’s life the youth finally discovers his courage. He rises from his foxhole, grabs a satchel of grenades, and charges…

The film’s final sequence is patriotic, sentimental and a little corny, but you don’t mind so much. O’Day chews every piece of scenery in sight, frantic to score dramatic points before time runs out. Barthelmess’s final scenes are characterized by restraint, an actor understanding that the second half of the film is a great deal less about his ego than the first. This sort of redemption narrative would become the worst kind of dead horse in the years to come, beaten again and again by Hollywood as the decades, and the wars, accumulated. Big male star after big male star would make like Barthelmess in a Tinseltown rite of passage, playing arrogant, self-centered kids who go to war and learn what really matters.

The Patent Leather Kid (1927)

Directed by Alfred Santell

Starring Richard Barthelmess and Molly O’Day

Released by First National Pictures

Running time: IMDb: 130 – 150 minutes, my copy: 130 minutes.

Availability: Very Rare, though experienced film foragers can find it.

The Big Pond (1930)

“You even turned our song into a gum advertisement.”

The Big Pond is one of those super-rare early talkies from Paramount. I finally broke down and paid for a copy (along with a few other rare films I'll be posting about in the coming weeks). This has good sound but a washed out picture that looked as if it originated as an 8mm transfer to a thirty-year-old VHS. Nevertheless, it was happily watchable — and what a great poster!

Frenchman Maurice Chevalier plays Pierre, a tour guide in Venice who falls head over heels for chewing gum heiress Barbara Billings (Claudette Colbert). Her father is naturally against the pairing, so he schemes to bring the young man back to the states and puts him to work in the chewing gum factory, thinking the dapper continental will fold like taffy under the strain of real work. Pierre thrives instead, and in due time manages to become the son Mr. Billings never had. However, as he rises in the gum business, he craps out with the girl. He wants to succeed in business, while she craves the romance they shared in Italy. All’s well that ends well though, and even in 1930 Hollywood knew how to neatly package a romantic comedy.

For those of you (like me) who can only take Maurice Chevalier in small, infrequent doses, this is a pleasant surprise. There are a few modest musical numbers, fairly catchy, and the whole thing is so innocuous it’s hard to dislike. One interesting notion is that by 1930 when this was made the U.S. was in the throes of the depression, yet The Big Pond lacks much of the ostentatious, audience-pleasing glamour that would characterize the rags to riches comedies of the mid-thirties. Sure, Colbert is bejeweled in every scene, but the sets haven’t yet taken on the glimmering art deco trappings that would soon take over studio productions, and the script clearly focuses clearly on the value of hard work rather than the zany eccentricities of the wealthy. The Big Pond even takes its shots at the Volstead Act: Pierre finally scores with Mr. Billings when he develops a new line of liquor-flavored chewing gums: scotch, rye, bourbon … and champagne.

In only her fifth film, Claudette Colbert’s mature screen persona is solidly in place, and that unmistakable voice cut through the haziness of my poor copy like something soothingly familiar. Her role is smaller than I’d like, but the performance is exactly as you’d expect: competent, charming, and professional. Her on-screen father, played by first-timer George Barbier, manages to steal the show. Barbier is a delight as the chewing gum king, with a deft comic tough — his chemistry is as good with Chevalier as it is with Colbert. This was Barbier’s first film, though from 1931 to 1936 he would make a rather astonishing fifty more!

What a day it will be when Universal, which owns the rights to The Big Pond, and as many as 700 other Paramount products from the same era, decides to cut loose and either release these for television consumption, or push them out as DVDs on demand in the same fashion as the Warner Archive. We’re waiting.

The Big Pond (1930)

Directed by Hobart Henley

Starring Maurice Chevalier and Claudette Colbert

Released by Paramount Pictures

Running time: 72 minutes.

Availability: Almost impossible.