This Day and Age

This Day And Age is a rarely seen cult classic about high school youth during the beginning of the Roosevelt years and was directed by Cecil B. DeMille. In his sound period DeMille never did stories like this, but he was not totally unfamiliar with them. His last silent film The Godless Girl involves some Christian kids and jocks muscling an atheist club in their high school because atheism equals hedonism in their's and the Victorian Cecil B. DeMille's eyes.

But there's no mistaking the gangster threat to this small town. As Prohibition is ending, the local mob is trying other rackets and is using the old protection scam under the guise of a guild for craft workers like tailors. When Harry Green refuses to knuckle under, chief enforcer Charles Bickford kills him in front of student leader Richard Cromwell. Later on a set alibi and smart lawyering by defense attorney Warner Richmond discredits Cromwell on the witness stand. After that Bickford kills another of their friends Michael Stuart who was breaking in and frames another Oscar Rudolph for the crime.

In a plot situations that was later used in the Dead End kids film Angels Wash Their Faces, several of the kids are given honorary government jobs for a day like mayor, district attorney, and judge. Using that power plus the charisma of leader Cromwell the kids from several schools unite, there's a few hundred of them giving us the crowd scenes that DeMille films all have. They kidnap Bickford and use some persuasion to get at the truth.

It wouldn't be a DeMille film without a little sex thrown in as well. Judith Allen gets the job to pique the interest of Bickford's bodyguard Bradley Page and separate him from Bickford which she does accomplish.

This Day And Age was accused of promoting fascism which charge DeMille strongly denied. But there's no doubt here that mob rule has definitely taken over this town and traditional law and order has broken down.

By the way, the real mayor of the town played by Samuel S. Hinds has a very interesting political perspective on the situation when the fertilizer hits the cooling unit. You'll have to see the film to get what I'm talking about if it's ever broadcast.

And let's hope TCM does broadcast it.

Great performance from Charles Bickford, and a cameo appearance by John Carradine at the beginning of the film with a moustache. Apart from seeing how student power can make things work, I didn't think much of the characters. It doesn't mean that the acting wasn't any good, it's just that the writing of the characters lacked substance. Because Bickford would go on to appear in 'Tarzan's New York Adventure' and 'Reap the Wild Wind' in the same year, this film is significant because Cecil B. DeMille could draw out a performance from Bickford that would set him on the road to antagonistic characters. This film isn't story led, it is performance led. You learn nothing from the story, but it is a good calling card for Bickford and indeed Carradine.

1933's "This Day and Age" was certainly an unusual choice for director Cecil B. DeMille, a modern tale of vigilante justice sandwiched between more typical historical assignments such as "The Sign of the Cross" and "Cleopatra." Charles Bickford gets top billing as Louis Garrett, a ruthless gangster well known to authorities, due to his ability to beat the rap every time. After he murders an elderly Jewish tailor much loved at the local high school, then putting a neat frame on an innocent student, the entire student body bands together in an intricate plot to gain a rock solid confession. First, lovely Gay Merrick (Judith Allen) must use her seductive wiles to distract Garrett's number one bodyguard (Bradley Page), while the others kidnap his boss, tie him up, and hold him prisoner over a pit filled with rats! (one wonders how they discovered this weakness, but it's not important). Most of the featured youngsters didn't enjoy successful careers, while certain uncredited ones remained quite busy over the decades, especially Donald Barry and Sidney Miller. Richard Cromwell's career reached a high point here, while Judith Allen went on to play W. C. Fields' daughter in "The Old-Fashioned Way" (reduced to bit parts by 1940). The most interesting billing goes to 'John Peter Richmond,' who would soon permanently change his name to 'John Carradine,' seen (with moustache) only in the opening moments as Assistant Principal Abernathy, who simply announces the names of our most prominent students (this was the only time in the three years he used that name that he was actually billed on screen, 22nd out of 23 players listed). Carradine actually debuted with Richard Cromwell in 1930's "Tol'able David," where he was listed as 'Peter Richmond'; his birth name was 'Richmond Reed Carradine,' but for some reason his mother always called him 'Peter!' Apart from 1956's "The Ten Commandments" (DeMille's last film), Carradine's early work for the director included voiceovers and bits in "The Sign of the Cross," "Cleopatra," and "The Crusades." Other similar efforts from the early 30s included "The Cat's-Paw," where mayor Harold Lloyd conquers big city corruption, and especially "Gabriel Over the White House," where the President himself (Walter Huston) takes the law into his own hands.

Utterly preposterous story of civic-minded high-school kids who perform a vigilante mission to bring down a local crime boss. I understand that it's only a movie; the possibility of this actually happening is almost nil, but the story doesn't even make sense on its own terms. How did the gangster Louis Garrett even get away with the murder of Herman the Tailor when there was an eyewitness who saw him emptying the till and the dead body lying four feet away? Anyway, Louie beats the rap and the kids go Bronson on him, kidnapping him and coercing him to sign a confession in front of a judge or else be dropped into a pit of live rats. It would have been funny if Louie, who's not such a nice guy, had stayed in character, refused to sign the confession and then had the kids prosecuted, since they committed about a half dozen violations of the US Code themselves. But like I said, it's only a movie. Pure fantasy at its dumbest.

Gangster Charles Bickford shoots and kills tailor Harry Green in front of a high-school witness, but the rules of evidence confound justice. The kids at the high school are upset; Green was a popular fellow. Realizing that the law as practiced in the courts is no match for gangsters, they decide on a plan to kidnap him and hold a trial of their own, even if it requires getting the truth out of him by strangling him with a hanging rope, or allowing Bickford's henchman, Bradley Page, to rape Judith Allen to distract him from rescuing his boss.

There's little doubt that director Cecil B. Demille took Fritz Lang's M and converted it into a melodrama of youth pushed beyond endurance. In doing so, he has created a movie that is in favor of that fine old American tradition, lynching. Demille and screenwriter Bartlett Cormack have stacked all the evidence on the lynch mob's side, and made them handsome and well-groomed young Americans of every background, one devoid of every irony of Lang's movie.

I have seen two or three other pre-code movies which come down on the side of lynch mobs, but never an A picture directed by that director of epics of every type. It's an astonishing work.