The Matinee Idol

Matinée Idol, The (1928)

*** (out of 4)

Charming silent film from Capra has a famous actor (Johnnie Walker) deciding to take a vacation to the country where he ends up, accidentally, in a small play where he gets fired by the lead actress (Bessie Love). To play a joke, the actor and his producers decide to take this small play to Broadway but they don't tell the lady that she just fired a famous face. This film was for many decades considered lost before a print turned up and it's good that it did because this is an extremely charming little gem that has the perfect mix of romance, comedy and drama. I was really surprised at how entertaining this film was but it's got a pretty smart little story even though you will have a hard time believing that this actress wouldn't be able to tell that both actors playing against her was the same person. I think Capra handles the material quite well and really delivers an entertaining film. What I enjoyed most is that the film seemed so natural and so smart that you really did get a feel as if you were really watching and seeing a small town acting squad. I've read that Capra learned from these types of groups growing up and it really seems like there's a lot of love being thrown towards these small actors and plays that are often overlooked. The comedy of the film works quite well as the play itself, a real misfire, is actually very funny even if the country actors feel like they're doing dramatic work. We get to see the play acted out twice and each time the film is able to get many laughs. The more dramatic stuff also works well because we can all understand the hurt feeling of trying to be and thinking you're doing good work only to have people laugh at you. Walker and Love both turn in fine performances and their chemistry together also makes the film even better. Love clearly steals the film with her charm and energy that practically jumps off the screen. Johnnie Walkers character is called the greatest "Black Face Comedian" and it seems to be an off note of Al Jolson but it's still pretty good. This isn't one of Capra's best known films and while it's not as powerful as some of his later day stuff, there's still enough here to make it worth viewing.

Frank Capra directed March 1928's "The Matinee Idol," his third movie for Columbia Pictures. The director was in his comfort zone by handling this romantic-comedy, a genre he returned to time and again at the peak of his career. The storyline involved the fictitious tale of a female heart-throb Broadway actor, Don Wilson, a.k.a. Harry Mann (Johnnie Walker), who is on a leisurely drive when his car breaks down in a remote area near a traveling stock company's theater tent. The owner's daughter filling in as the manager, Ginger (Bessie Love), had just fired the main actor and is looking for a replacement. Up walks Wilson. The play is later seen by Wilson's Broadway producer. He wants to take the supposed drama to New York where he knows the sophisticated city audiences will find it hilariously campy. Surprises await when the play hits Broadway.

Capra shows an uncanny ability to wring the heartstrings of his viewers, unleashing tear ducts galore. He also displays a knack for handling crowd scenes, made up of both country folks and urban sophisticates, another Capra trademark. "The Matinee Idol" proved to be the pinnacle to Johnnie Walker's screen acting. He was one of so many Hollywood performers who never made the transition to talkies. He left film in 1932 after receiving only small roles that hardly paid him anything to survive. For Capra, however, the two movies in his first year at Columbia proved to be a welcome respite from comedian Langdon as well as a chance to prove his brand would soon resonate with the public like no other director before had.

THE MATINEE IDOL is a superb comedy, and much much more. In a way that suggests his later masterpieces, Frank Capra masterfully mixes comedy and drama in a unique way. And the result is the creation of genuinely real characters in a very real world - a world that can be loving and cruel.

A bunch of Broadway theatre producers stumble on a country theatrical troupe, who are really quite bad. So they decide to put the troupe into a Broadway show - so that they can be laughed at by the sophisticated New York audience. The results are funny for us too, but Capra manages to make us feel for the players as they work their hearts out to stop the audience laughing at their drama. Stunning stuff.

And the magnificent performance of Bessie Love is key to the success of this comic-tragic feel. Johnnie Walker is also excellent as the Broadway star who falls in love with her. And Capra displays, in this early film, the attention to detail and an understanding of humanity that would characterise all his later work. Just watch the country audience - the characters he captures so beautifully without being condescending. They might be funny people, but they are also real. Of course we can see this in the work he did with Harry Langdon too.

Capra was certainly a master - and this wonderful silent film is a testimony to his genius. Make sure you see it.

This Frank Capra fellow just keeps getting better and better. This quick, 56 minute long feature is a real little gem of Capra's early career, further refining his combination of comedy and drama around winning performances. It's also another portrait of the little guy winning over the big guy, even if the win isn't exactly the way one might expect. I think he's already got an authorial stamp, though there's no need to discount Elmer Harris who had written every film Capra had made since leaving Harry Langdon's employ.

Don Wilson (Johnnie Walker) is famous on Broadway for his blackface performances, and he's so tired of the fame and the women throwing themselves at him for it, that he happily agrees to take a weekend in the country with his producer Arnold (Ernest Halliard) where they end up stopping outside the makeshift tent of the traveling acting troupe led by Jasper Bolivar (Lionel Balmore) and his daughter Ginger (Bessie Love). They lead their troupe in a Civil War play of such amateurishness that it derisively entertains the little traveling party, with the added benefit of Don getting a tiny role in the play when ginger fires the actor, using the false name of Harry Mann, and getting some good laughs in the process. It gives Arnold the idea of bringing the troupe to Broadway to add to the revue.

So, like most of Capra's films up to this point, this is essentially a two-act production. In this, the first half is the more purely comic take on what's going on with Don having a whale of a time making Ginger flustered during the performance, getting laughs from his friends, and the rest of the provincial audience taking it more seriously (though with Capra still getting some very good comedy out of them at the same time, like the elderly man who can't hear even with his ear horn and the young son who lies to him about what people are saying). There's been a certain imbalance to Capra's films where one half works materially better than the other, and I think this might represent something of a serious change for him. For, while I do think the second half works better than the first, it's actually the second that I end up having more problems with. It's just that the second half's highs are so very high at the same time that Capra and Harris were refining their output in a way that was really conducive to bringing all of the elements together.

The Bolivar performers come to Broadway with Don maintaining the farce that he's just nobody Harry Mann by using his blackface to appear before them as Don and taking it off when he must appear before them as Harry. There's a masquerade where Jasper drinks too much, and we get to their premiere the next day. The premiere is exactly what the audience would expect with the cosmopolitan crowd taking in the pratfalls of the provincial troupe bumbling their way through the performance with Don in blackface mugging in the background, and it's all countered by Jasper attending the performance in the crowd, highly expectant of a great reception and getting derision instead. It's surprisingly crushing to watch, and it's all cut together in the middle of this botched performance that is really funny at the same time. I think this is successful tonal whiplash, intentionally throwing the audience back and forth making us both part of the problem in enjoying the pain of the poor provincial actors not understanding why they're being laughed at while also sympathizing with them in equal measure.

So, by losing, they end up winning because they teach Don a lesson who decides that he has to make up for it later.

It's another instance of the little guy beating the big guy, but it's done in a way that is more of a moral victory than a literal one. They don't take over Broadway, but Ginger does win over Don's heart, and Don gets Ginger to forgive him his part.

It was during Jasper's pain that I decided that this was the film for me. I think the whiplash works, but I'm just ever so slightly put off by it at the same time, and the ending wrap up feels a bit thin, though I do buy it overall.

It really is kind of amazing to see Capra forming so distinctly and executing so well so early. He feels like he's in complete command of the physical production from the subtle and effective direction of actors to the clear use of visual language (even a couple of jokes through intertitles), and his scripts are creeping up in quality at the same time. I shudder to think of how sound is going to send everything backwards, and it's just right around the corner.

"The Matinée Idol" is an unremembered gem of a silent film. Columbia was still a poverty row studio in 1928, but this production is every bit as polished as anything that MGM or Paramount would have put out at the time. The story revolves around the star of a Broadway Revue, Don Wilson (Johnnie Walker), who is a black-face comic. The management of the theater thinks that Don has been working too hard, so they advise a rest in the country. The group drives out to a small town where their car breaks down. The whole town - including the mechanic - are all at the "show" - the most recent play by the Bolivar players, the star of which is Ginger Bolivar (Bessie Love). Don is just looking for the mechanic when he stumbles into an audition for a bit part involving a love scene with Ginger. He gets the part because the other applicants are just so bad. The show is just terrible, but the town thinks it is terrific as do the Bolivar players. The show is a Civil War drama - or at least it's supposed to be. Instead it turns out to be more like the play that Buster Keaton invaded in "Spite Marriage", except here everyone is playing Keaton. The fact that the Bolivars are playing it straight with unintentionally hilarious results gives our urban visitors ideas on a way to enliven their New York revue at the expense of the Bolivars' dignity.

Bessie Love gives the same perky performance here that she always does, but at this point in her career she is on the way out since the age of 30 was a magic number for actresses at that time. The coming of sound gives her career about a two year revival as she stars in "The Broadway Melody of 1929" and several other musicals in 1929 and 1930. When the early musicals fall out of favor with the Depression-era public Bessie is back on the poverty row circuit once again, leaving films pretty much altogether from 1931 until World War II.

As for leading man Johnnie Walker, this was pretty much his first and last hurrah in both silent and talking pictures. He had supporting roles before and after this one, but it was his only starring one. This is surprising since he is so engaging here.

This film is one of the best of the silent romantic comedies that I've seen. It certainly has that Frank Capra "feel-good" touch about it, even at this early stage of his directing career.