Fast Workers

Snappy film that looks and feels like a Warners film, this MGM film bristles with sexual tension. John Gilbert is terrific as the construction worker who tangles with smart dame Mae Clarke and pal Robert Armstrong.

Gilbert had his problems at MGM with LB Mayer, but his talent shines thru the rotten films they assigned him. And this film is a perfect example. It's a B film about the loves and lives of menial workers but Gilbert makes it an event. He's confident, sexy, and terrific as the worker who falls into the clutches of a "working girl." The three stars are quite good. The supporting cast includes Herman Bing, Sterling Holloway, Vince Barnett, Bob Burns, Nora Cecil, and Virginia Cherrill.

As mentioned elsewhere, this film finished off Gilbert's contract with MGM. Mayer had done his best to ruin Gilbert's career by assigning him bad films, but Gilbert is really good in this film as well as THE PHANTOM OF Paris and DOWNSTAIRS.

Two steelworker buddies are real FAST WORKERS when it comes to romancing & dumping the women in their lives - until a loose lady with a shady past shakes up their complacency & threatens their friendship.

According to cinematic legend, all the talkie MGM films starring John Gilbert were dreadful - the result of a bitter hatred between Gilbert (the highest paid star in Hollywood, with a $1.5 million contract) & studio boss Louis B. Mayer. A determination on Gilbert's part to fulfill the contract, and a campaign instituted by Mayer to destroy Gilbert's career - including spreading the rumor that Gilbert's voice was 'high & feminine', culminated in several unwatchable movies.

Not entirely true. The Studio had a huge financial investment in Jack Gilbert and was not going to completely cut its own throat by showcasing him in nothing but dreck. However, of the 8 MGM talkies in which he appeared as solo star (1929 - HIS GLORIOUS NIGHT; 1930 - REDEMPTION; WAY FOR A SAILOR; 1931 - GENTLEMAN'S FATE; THE PHANTOM OF Paris; WEST OF Broadway; 1932 - DOWNSTAIRS; 1933 - FAST WORKERS) most were certainly rather ghastly.

FAST WORKERS was a sad end to Gilbert's MGM contract. Although it boosts some fine moments in the alarmingly vertiginous opening scenes atop a skyscraper (for once using decent rear projection), back on the ground it descended into turgid romantics which were a waste of the stars' talents. Unattractive & depressing, the film could easily be subtitled The Tawdry Lives Of Unpleasant People.

Gilbert was always trying to push himself as an actor, attempting to produce the best performance possible. But the script and the cheap production values gives him no assistance. It is to Mayer's eternal shame that the actor who was the most popular male star at the end of the silent era and who made a great deal of money for MGM, should be treated in such a shabby, humiliating way at the end of his career.

The film was also a Studio letdown for director Tod Browning, who had helmed several splendid silent Lon Chaney shockers and whose talkies included the classics Dracula & FREAKS. His career would soon spiral into obscurity.

Robert Armstrong and a funny Sterling Holloway offer fine support to Gilbert, as do Mae Clarke, Muriel Kirkland, pretty Muriel Evans and unbilled Herman Bing & Nora Cecil, but it's all to no avail. The picture was doomed & John Gilbert was out the door, his contract expired.

It must be stated that there was nothing at all strange or unnaturally high about Gilbert's voice. As a matter of fact, it was of medium range & rather cultured & refined - which was the crux of the problem, of course. While it is possible that no voice could have ever matched the perfect one viewers heard in their minds while watching his strong, virile silent roles, the reality was very different from what they were expecting (imagine Robert Montgomery's voice coming out of Clark Gable's mouth). Gilbert was doomed from his first scene in his debut talkie; his war with Mayer only intensified the agony.

At Garbo's insistence, John Gilbert would return to MGM later in 1933 to appear as her love interest in QUEEN Christina, but she was the star and Gilbert received below-the-title billing. He would make only one more film - THE CAPTAIN HATES THE SEA for Columbia in 1934. Then he retired to his villa to live a life of drunken, sybaritic obsolescence. He was planning to return to the screen to costar with his last lover, Marlene Dietrich, in THE GARDEN OF ALLAH when he suddenly died on January 9, 1936 of heart failure, forgotten by most of his former fans. John Gilbert was only 36 years old.

There were two main reasons for wanting to watch 'Fast Workers'. Primarily that it was silent film star John Gilbert's MGM swansong and one of his sound pictures, that are not very well regarded at all generally (in a few cases understandably so but others are not bad). Also that it was directed by Tod Browning, known more for his horror films, so he was an interesting choice for director and especially for a type of film that if done right would have been quite light-hearted and witty.

'Fast Workers' to me is actually one of Gilbert's better talkies, 'Downstairs' being his best of the ones where he is the main lead. While it is not a great film and could have done with a much lighter touch later on, it does charm and amuse initially and actually looks and feels competent (something that was not the case with a couple of Gilbert's other talkies, it is much better than 'Redemption' and 'Way of a Sailor'). While the flaws are evident and glaring, a lot works in 'Fast Workers' favour.

One being Gilbert. The role is not a likeable or well fleshed out one, but Gilbert brings a lot of personality and confidence to it and has a lot of appeal. Mae Clark has charm and is at ease with her less serious moments and Robert Armstrong, despite his character being too much of an idiot at times, is amusing. Most of the acting is good. Browning provides some of the best direction of any of Gilbert's talkies, despite some heavy-handedness later on, most of them being badly directed but Browning directs with style and crispness as well as some nice atmosphere (namely because he was one of the few to actually give the impression that he was comfortable in sound pictures).

Visually, 'Fast Workers' is also one of Gilbert's better looking talkies. It doesn't look static and there are some nice visual touches photography-wise without being too clever, the production looks as if a good deal of time and effort went into it. The writing is fun and intriguing in the first two thirds or so and the story mostly engages.

It is an uneven film, having said all of that. Things takes a dramatic turn later on and it becomes heavy on the melodramatic sentiment, pretty ridiculous and almost too mean-spirited, very different to what became before. Browning's direction does as said get too heavy later on and the script loses coherence in the final third too. The central chemistry is too often bland and is agreed pretty turgid. Would have liked the characters to have fleshed out more, these are not really characters worth rooting for, most pretty amoral, and any negative characteristics are sometimes exaggerated.

Not all the acting is great, Sterling Holloway for example came over as annoying and out of place. The ending belongs more in a horror film and doesn't gel with the rest of the film.

Concluding, not a bad film and one of Gilbert's better talkies. Still could have been better though. 6/10

Despite its being the work of seven different writers, "Fast Workers" succeeds as an interesting and unusual story very well moved forward with clever dialogue delivered by a large cast of great actors.

Mae Clarke was a welcome surprise. She was given a chance to perform and she did! Ms. Clarke was a uniquely attractive actress, who too often -- as in "Frankenstein" -- didn't have much to do except look pretty and react.

Here, though, she was a pivotal character, and boy did she grab hold and carry the part beautifully.

This one role should have boosted her to major stardom.

Robert Armstrong reached his pinnacle as the impresario in "King Kong," and seemed to play that type of character afterward. Here, though, he played something completely different and he too showed enough talent to prove to casting directors and audiences he should have also been a major star.

Sterling Holloway had what might have been his best part. Instead of the fey characters he did awfully well, he was a real person, one of the crew working the high iron, with a distinctive personality -- as had all the characters in this play-become-movie -- who seemed real (or at least movie real).

John Gilbert was first billed and was, at the time, still the biggest name in the cast. He didn't really still have the looks that had catapulted him into the highest galaxy of stars, but he did still have the talent.

And he did have the best line of the movie, the last.

"Fast Workers" was part of a 24-hour marathon of Mae Clarke films on Turner Classic Movies, presented 20 August 2015. This type of retrospective is exactly why The Good Lord gave us video recorders, to be able to save for more convenient times a whole day of motion picture history and entertainment.

Mae Clarke today is known mostly for getting a grapefruit smashed into her face, but anyone seeing more of her work has to be convinced she was a major talent and, therefore, should have been a major star and should be far better known today.

I highly recommend "Fast Workers."

One cannot help but wonder how this film could have been made, even at the height of the era of mass production at the Hollywood dream factory. It is frankly utterly boring and I had lost interest totally two thirds of the way through. It will be of interest only to scholars and film buffs tracking the demise of the career of John Gilbert. That was my reason for viewing it. The basic plot is implausible and there is too much talk and obscure dialogue. The direction is heavy handed and it appears as if the director considered it a chore. Browning was at his best with macabre/horror type films and he is all at sea here. If Mayer was intent on destroying Gilbert's career, then there is no better proof of evil intent than casting him in such a vehicle in his final role under contract to MGM. It could have been intended only as a second feature/programme filler. As a jazz follower I am convinced the leading black musician(uncredited) in the cabaret scene is Lionel Hampton, then totally unknown, who within a very short time became a leading figure of the swing era in the Benny Goodman Trio/Quartet and later a highly successful band leader in his own right.