Gentlemen of the Press

This is an absorbing early talker, given solid grand with an excellent performance by Walter Houston and the editor of a big city paper. He has had no time, as a single dad, to participate in his daughters life except via phonecalls. A good script keeps the viewers interest alive, but the real wow! in this film is Kay Francis. In her film debut she knocks Houstons socks off, appealing to him not to print a scandalous story about her. She's not the obvious vamp from the silent era -- but a very straightforward, no excuses made, girl about town. She invites Houston to her apt. smiling with innuendo with the line, "I'm sure you'll love my Pekingese!" Houston loves it several times before realizing the tantalizing Kay is also after his son-in-law! It's a shame these Paramountfilms aren't on video. If you get the chance, don't miss this one.

Walter Huston has been working on newspapers for decades, and he's finally gotten to the New York sheets. But he;'s got a daughter, Betty Lawford, at an expensive school, so he quits to become a publicity man.

It's a cynical look at the newspaper racket and its dehumanizing effect on the men who are in it. Huston leads a marvelous cast of first-timers and people who have been absent from the screen for years. Miss Lawford has her screen debut, as do Norman Lloyd, Victor Kilian, and Kay Francis. Charles Ruggles and Brian Donlevy show up for their talkie debuts.

The camera doesn't move around much, which gives editor Mort Blumenstock a lot more to do, but the script is a very good one; it's based on a Broadway show, and director Millard Webb doesn't take many liberties. The print I looked at wasn't very good, but Huston is a powerful actor; the performances are not in the least stagey nor stuck in the silent era.

Gentlemen of the Press is a very early talkie, and boy, does it show. There are long pauses in between dialogue, as though the actors are waiting for the director to talk to them or for the title card to cut them off. Director Millard Webb continually cuts off the actors' heads while framing his long shots. But, if you want to see Walter Huston and Kay Francis in their film debuts, there's only one movie you can rent.

Walter plays a newspaper man who values his career above all else. He's been completely absent from his daughter's life, with only snapshots to remind him of her appearance. After an eight-year period of no contact, he finds out about her marriage while writing about it in the paper. She comes to his office to introduce her new husband, and after a few minutes, he gets distracted by a hot tip and waves them off as he returns to his typewriter.

In the meantime, he has a lukewarm affair with society dame Kay Francis. She turns heads every time she enters a room, and Walter's perpetually drunk pal, Charles Ruggles, paws her. "Come up to my apartment sometime and fight for your honor," he slurs. If you've ever wondered why Charlie got typecast as the comic drunk in his early movies, you can trace it back to this one. This is the first movie I've seen where he actually has brown hair, and it's also his first talkie. Oh, and don't blink, otherwise you'll miss seeing Brian Donlevy for five minutes.

I couldn't bring myself to turn this movie off, even though I desperately wanted to. Nothing about it showed good quality, not even the actors who later turned out to be great professionals in every film. I couldn't believe my eyes, seeing Kay Francis and Walter Huston awkwardly swinging their arms at their sides as they try to avoid looking in the camera. Walter Huston was green, once? Where was the incomparable actor we all came to love by the time 1932 came around? It turns out, he makes an appearance in Gentlemen of the Press after all. In the very last scene makes the movie, he brings out the big guns and shows audiences his mesmerizing acting chops.

Watching a talking picture back in 1929 must have been as novel as watching a 1929 talking picture today. They're unique and so different to what followed just a year later. You feel like you're there with them learning by trial and error how the technology works.

There's a handful of talkies from '29 which were brilliant but most are like this - compared with what was produced just a couple of years later, they could be described as verging on terrible but they're nevertheless fascinating to see. Because technology, techniques and experience progressed so much in just a year films like this were probably unwatchable to a 1930 audience. For us however today it's a lovely snapshot of the evolution of modern filmmaking and indeed of 1929.

GENTLEMEN OF THE PRESS isn't a FRONT PAGE type comedy, it's more of a melodrama for men and it's actually not that bad and reasonably entertaining. Although based on a successful stage play this is not at all stagey or static. The story is about someone whose work-life balance is very much out of kilter, something still resonant today. Keep with it because the very last ten minutes are honestly one of the most genuinely emotionally shocking experiences you'll have. Nearly a hundred years later, that it feels like you've been punched in the stomach shows that despite its shortcomings, it's still worthy of watching.

And so to the shortcomings.....

1. Direction! If ever there was a good example of a making a talking picture for the first time without any experience whatsoever then this is it. Neither the director Millard Webb or his cast had made one of these before and it clearly didn't come naturally to Mr Webb. You can actually see some of the cast leaning over tables to slowly enunciate their lines into the hidden microphone; if you've seen BABYLON or SINGIN' IN THE RAIN you'll laugh when you hear the deafening sound of the doctor's shoes walking across the floor drowning out everything else. You have to view the one with a forgiving heart.

2. Kay Francis! She's truly terrible. Kay had no film experience before this so you might wonder how she landed a leading role. She was infamous as being THE party girl and when spotted late one night at a club doing her thing by the writer he thought she'd be perfect as his vamp. When Millard Webb was assigned to make this film, she decided that she would sleep with him. She knew the system and played it brilliantly.....unlike her acting. When considering how good she was just a couple of years later, she must have looked back on this with utter embarrassment. Her acting style is a combination of abject fear and staring out into the audience to speak her lines. She looks like she's in one of those videos kidnap victims are forced to make by gunpoint. (And that's not to mention that awful haircut!)

3. Walter Huston! Yes, one of early Hollywood's best actors ever doesn't seem to have a clue how to act in his first talking picture. It's so surprising to see the great man being less than fabulous but I suppose we all have to start somewhere. His theatre experience does however shine through at the film's memorable climax.

There are much more professionally made or artistically innovative movies from 1929 but if you want to see one which they were figuring out how to do it as they went along whilst still being entertaining enough to hold your attention, give this a go.

Fluent early talkie with a fairly mobile camera and some fine, restrained acting, especially from the always-amazing Walter Huston, as a star reporter who regrets how his all-consuming newspaper work has kept him away from his daughter (Betty Lawford, also very good). So he quits and takes a high-paying PR job for a mausoleum. executive, cueing some easy mausoleum jokes, and an I'm-drunk-aren't-I-hilarious turn from Charlie Ruggles, as a journalist pal. The plot takes some unpredictable turns, with a chic Kay Francis turning up as a real rotter of a femme fatale, who not only entraps Huston into an unwanted affair but makes a play for his son-in-law. But the finale, involving his daughter and a tragic turn of events, comes out of nowhere and is so sorrowful, it feels glued on. The writer, Bartlett Cormack, was a solid practitioner who also penned "The Racket" around the same time, and the welcome chorus of wisecracking, inebriated reporters might have wandered in from "The Front Page." It's a compelling little melodrama and a must for Kay Francis and Walter Huston fans, but the last seven minutes or so feel like they were dropped in from another movie.