One Night at Susie's

Billie Dove. whose profile photo on imdb looks a whole lot like Mae West. or maybe West was copying Dove? most of Dove's films were silents; she disappeared right after the start of talkies. Here, Dove is Mary, soon to marry Dick (Doug Fairbanks Junior), but Mary is a chorus girl. Dick's mother runs a boarding house for mobsters. and she's determined to turn them into ex mobsters, and find other occupations. so when Dick takes the blame for a murder, everyone's plans are turned upside down. off to prison! but while he's in, he keeps writing projects for Mary to perform on the outside. although she spends a lot of time with the mobster, who's more available now than Dick is. and when bigshot producer (aussie Claude Fleming) takes an interest in her, she spends a lot of time with him too. what's going to happen when he gets out? can they go back to just depending on each other? story by Fred Brennan; appears to have stressed out and offed himself at age 60. directed by John Dillon, who died young at a heart attack at 49. this one is your typical mobster film. no surprises here.

Although the young leads are Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Billie Dove, the real standout performer in this short and old fashioned drama is Helen Ware in the title role of One Night At Susie's. Ware runs a boardinghouse and it specializes in catering to all kinds of criminal types. She also has an adoptive son in Fairbanks who she's kept clear from the folks she hangs out with. He grows up with aspirations to be a writer, in fact his character is an aspiring Joseph Sheldrake who wrote the play that Katharine Hepburn got her big break in Morning Glory.

So imagine Ware's concern when she finds out that he's fallen for chorus girl Billie Dove. Not good enough for her kid. Fairbanks is a young romantic at heart or believe me he would not have framed himself for the murder of a Park Avenue rake who made advances on a chorus girl.

But as he says all that time he's been given he's polishing up his writing between time on the rock pile. And he's letting Dove take credit for it as if she were Clare Boothe Luce. Not a great situation for Ware.

One Night At Susie's is unlikely to get a remake or a director's cut re-release. It is horribly dated, in fact dated even at the time it was released. If it weren't however for Ware who is one tough dame and makes all the men around her jump.

If you are a fan of Fairbanks or Dove than you might want to check it out. But I'd really see this one for Helen Ware.

It's difficult to pinpoint exactly what's wrong with this and why it doesn't work. Not all, but a lot of pictures made in 1929 seemed like they were made by people who had never made a sound film before - that's because they were. This feels like one of the worst examples yet inexplicably this was made towards the end of 1930 when most directors had figured it all out. They haven't even got the excuse of having to make it on the awful Vitaphone discs because this was made using state of the art sound recording yet somehow its stilted, slow and theatrical delivery is as bad as anything that came out in 1929.

J F Dillon had been directing silent movies for ages and perhaps he had just got so used to that style of acting that he thought it should be used in the talkies as well? Two years after making this he made the excellent CALL HER SAVAGE, so he did know how to direct a talking picture - unfortunately he doesn't demonstrate any of that skill with this. This is one of those films you get in documentaries showing how difficult it was for some directors to adapt to sound. It's glacially slow - each line is excruciatingly dragged out of the actors as though they are addressing an unfriendly political meeting. There's no natural pace, nobody acts like real people do - they're just actors walking to the middle of the stage where they then deliver their lines.

There's absolutely zero engagement with any of the characters, you couldn't care less about what happens to them because they're not real. Billie Dove, Howard Hughes' latest squeeze, is pleasant enough but she's not particularly memorable. Also making hardly any waves of interest is Douglas Fairbanks Jr - in a few months' time, Mervyn LeRoy would show the world that Fairbanks could act in his LITTLE CAESAR but in this he's less than one dimensional with as much depth and personality as a shadow on a grey slab of concrete. With the bizarre make-up needed for the bright lights, he spends most of this movie looking like a grinning simpleton that someone has given two black eyes to. The only person who does make an impression is the eponymous Susie played by Helen Ware....but it's not a good impression - she is truly terrible! If you want an example of being stagey, over-theatrical and plain awful, look no further. She makes a rather bad film a very bad film.

There is however a couple minutes of brilliance in this and that's the famous court room scene. Presumably they thought that after half an hour all their audience would have fallen asleep so soon to be superstar cameraman, Ernest Haller and J F Dillon had a bash at that expressionist malarkey whilst nobody was looking. Those few dreamlike minutes of shadows disturb you from your comfort creating a jolting sense of isolation, uncertainty and fear of the unknown. You will certainly sit up and start to think you're watching something very interesting but this flash of brilliance is sadly just a flash - it then reverts back to its dull lugubrious pace.

This film is just full of tired movie tropes - the tough - in this case older - retired gun moll with a heart of gold (Helen Ware as Susie) and the foster son who is everything to her who becomes the unjustly imprisoned man (Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as Dick), the girl who loves the convict and does what she must to keep his soul alive (Billie Dove as Mary), etc. If that was all there was to it I'd say don't bother.

However, the photography is to die for. Cinematographer Ernest Haller includes shots of elevators shafts that actually express dread and a nightmarish courtroom scene in which a judge presides from a giant bench and its shadow is cast upon the defendant who looks tiny in comparison. The two women in his life sit in individual chairs in the darkened room and look on. No lighting, no lawyers, no spectators. A giant modified lady justice sits behind the judge, blindfold off sword drawn. Absolutely breathtaking.

I don't know why Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is second billed here, because he is barely a supporting player. Instead this is the tale of two women. First there is Susie - Fairbanks' foster mom and apparent widow of a gangster who helps gangsters she knows settle their differences and go straight. BUT she is not absolutely religious about the straight part. The gangs live in a tough world with tough realities, and she realizes sometimes bad apples must be dealt with by meting out the ultimate penalty. After all lady justice is not blind, as signified in the courtroom scene. The other woman is Mary, the chorus girl that John loves and via her profession doesn't run into the most honorable guys around.

There is some unintentionally fun stuff here courtesy of early talking Warner Brothers. For one, there are some scenes that WB is just too small yet to handle. They don't have the cash to show big theatre scenes, and they do their best, but the lack of budget shows. Then there is the choreography. These are bored chorines. They basically look like they are playing a continuous game of Hopscotch. Paging Busby Berkeley! Finally there are the gangsters. I have to give WB credit, they did come up with some "mugs" for the parts, but none of them leave a lasting individual impression. Not exactly Bogart or Cagney. But it's a good start.

Finally the precode material. On the serious side, the aftermath of a rape. On the humorous side tough bird Susie trying to get into an evening gown assisted by...her butler??? You won't see THAT after the production code era begins!

And finally, what really makes this film stay with me. How DID that last act that the screen does not show but is relayed via a telephone call get done? Are the gangsters and Susie telepathic or something? She never did call them and tell them to do anything. Perhaps it was something that the usually lax production code insisted upon. Watch and see what you think.

Early, Early Talkie that has some very Interesting Moments. The Opening as a Motley Crew of Gangsters encircle a Table as a Matronly Moll, Played by an Imposing and Grim Helen Ware, a Post-Rape, a visually Battered and Brutalized Billie Dove, and an Expressionistic Courtroom Scene that is Stunning.

The Remainder of the Film is Not so Exciting as it Clunks along with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Stiffly going about His usual Non-Acting Performance. Miss Dove is a Curvaceous Creature and Her Wares are on Display but even Her Beauty can't stop Helen from Stealing the Picture.

Heavily Melodramatic as these Embryonic transitional Movies Tend, it is still Worth a Watch for its Fancy Cinematography and a Powerful Central Figure of a Female Mobster.