The Devil's Holiday

Turgid by today's standards and pretty stagy, yet THE DEVIL'S HOLIDAY offers solid performances by Nancy Carroll as a party girl who lands a hick (Phillips Holmes), in from the wheat belt, in a scam. As Hallie, a woman who no scruples and who hates men, Carroll won an Oscar nomination in a flashy role. Holmes is also excellent as the sensitive and naive youth.

Hobart Bosworth and James Kirkwood (as the father and brother) are oddly effective in their stereotypical roles. Ned Sparks and Jed Prouty play a couple of sharpies, and Zasu Pitts has a small role as the hotel operator. Paul Lukas shows up (badly cast) as a rural doctor.

While the plot veers toward the ludicrous, the actors remain solid and convincing, no easy job.

Right from the start, you know what you're going to get. A well made (amazingly well made for 1930) fast-paced, crazy romance with a subtle sense of humour. Possibly it's Nancy Carroll's best film?

The first few minutes set the scene: in a stylishly lit hotel telephone exchange, chiseller Ned Sparks is searching, like many others for Hallie, a girl whose talent is to persuade businessmen by her 'favours' to sign any deal. This scene is a symphony seediness with wonderful 1930s accents: Zasu Pitt's a droning midwest descant against Ned Sparks' crazy deadpan Gangsterville. In just those first minutes, you know two things: 1) this is going to be good and 2) this is NOT one of those typically terrible, stagey, static pictures so common in very early talkies. It has a much more modern feel than you might expect from 1930. If you didn't know you might guess that this was made years later.

Then the screen lights up a Hallie, Nancy Carroll appears. It's probably the lighting but it seems like all the light, the life and the energy is coming from Nancy Carroll. For the next hour she glows and completely owns every frame. You can see exactly why these businessmen would be persuaded by her presence to agree to whatever deal she is being paid to promote. It's not just her pretty face, it's her joy, love of life and bubbly personality which makes her so irresistible to men. It's an astonishing performance - she should have won the Oscar instead of Norma Shearer in THE DIVORCEE; she's ten times more believable.

In fact the whole film is ten times more believable than Norma Shearer's film. Well, it is when you're watching it - but don't think about the plot too much. Besides Nancy Carroll, the other reason this is so good is down to its director Edmund Goulding. He actually wrote this (and wrote the music too!) so this was his pet project - he loved this film and put all his skills and efforts into it.

The result is a completely enthralling, naturally acted pot boiler. You don't notice how stupid the plot gets, you don't notice that Hallie's love interest, Phillips Holmes is the most pathetic, feeble-minded drip in the world. That someone so full of life as Hallie could love someone like this is absurd but you'll be so drawn into this that you'll not question it. That's the skill of a good movie: to make the unbelievable believable.

Nancy Carroll plays a young, worldly woman who baits young men for a confidence trickster in the form of the dead-pan delivery vehicle - Ned Sparks. Her victim is the young Phillips Holmes in probably one of his better roles. He is the son of wealthy farming stock of whom the patriarch is Hobart Bosworth delivering his lines as if preaching a sermon in the quaky-voiced method so fondly used by actors of his august vintage.

Carroll and Holmes marry despite opposition from Bosworth and Holme's fiery brother - James Kirkwood. Of course the marriage is a sham, the idea was for Carroll to get a cheque for $50,000 from Bosworth to walk away. Complications ensue. Just realize that many of these pot-boilers seem to have been brewed from the same recipe,

Nancy Carroll became a very popular star in the early reign of talking pictures and perhaps had the good sense to retire at the top of her game in 1938 (she did come back to do some later work from 1948 onwards). She was a vivacious creature and an all-round talent in that she was originally a singer and dancer from the stage. She is an asset to this picture as she appears at all times to be so natural.

Phillips Holmes was a handsome leading man who started off promisingly and then never seemed to go anywhere. Tragically his life was cut short during the war in an airplane accident.

Hobart Bosworth was already 68 in 1930 when this picture was made and his style belonged to an age even further back - but it is interesting just for that very fact. He is a living link to the acting style of the last quarter of the 19th Century.

James Kirkwood was an actor who had taken up directing, but as he apparently didn't get many calls for the latter type of work, decided to revert to the former. He was around for many years - usually in bit roles as the years progressed.

Also in the cast were Paul Lukas as a forceful psychiatrist and Morton Downey as a tenor.

Yesterday night I watched 'The Devil's Holiday'. It says a lot about the quality of the film that this morning I am struggling to remember enough of it to jot down a few brief impressions. Nancy Carroll definitely looks nice and plays (mostly) well, at least she is putting in a lot of effort. Hobart Bosworth (who plays the father of the man she marries) and James Kirkwood (the older brother) are likewise doing well. I found Phillip Holmes (as Carroll's husband) annoying: He is overacting and all in all unconvincing. The storyline is alright, but director Edmund Goulding wastes several chances for making more of the plot and giving it some wit and sparkle. The dialogues are somwhere between uninspired and awful - awful especially toward the end of the film, which has an irritating sickly-sentimental quality that I found offputting. All in all nothing memorable, I am afraid.

Beautiful manicurist Nancy Carroll (as Hallie Hobart) sets her sights on handsome Philips Holmes (as David Stone), the son of wealthy wheat farmer Hobart Bosworth (as Ezra Stone). Professing to hate men, Ms. Carroll is only interested in luring Mr. Holmes in for a lucrative business deal. Holmes easily falls in love, but older brother James Kirkwood (as Mark Stone) brands Carroll a low-life gold-digger. To get even with the straight-laced Stone family, Carroll accepts Holmes' marriage proposal. Then, while Carroll and the family negotiate the cost of her departure, she falls unexpectedly in love…

Well, make that expectedly… "The Devil's Holiday" is a creaky, but worthwhile "early talkie" drama. First of all, it features Carroll's second-place finishing "Academy Award" performance as "Best Actress" (Norma Shearer won for her "Divorcée"). At the time, Carroll was a considered a "new" talking pictures star; in that respect, she was the first "talkie"-dominant actress to move in on the "Quigley Poll" top ten list of established "silent" stars. Carroll was #10 in 1929, and seemed assured of super-stardom with the new dramatic range she showed in "Devil's Holiday" (where she displayed real sweat and tears).

Holmes is also at his best, playing the love-struck rich kid with wide-eyed innocence. And, he gets one of those great "smacked on the staircase" scenes. Holmes falls in love three times in this movie, but only for Nancy Carroll. She and Holmes had great chemistry, as you'll see; and, box office returns dictated they would be re-teamed fairly quickly (for the close to, but not quite "Stolen Heaven"). Writer/director Edmund Goulding manages well considering it was early 1930. You also get two pioneer players, Messrs. Kirkwood and Bosworth, in featured roles; and, the minor cast members are used very well.

******* The Devil's Holiday (5/9/30) Edmund Goulding ~ Nancy Carroll, Phillips Holmes, James Kirkwood, Hobart Bosworth