Arizona

A very solid good picture from 1931 is finally seeing the light of day via the new TV channel, GET/TV. We watched it last night.

First of all you need to know the picture and sound of this 83 year old film is much better than might be expected. Perhaps withheld because of long term friction between Columbia Pictures and John Wayne.

Set in West Point and later in Arizona, Wayne plays a football hero who finds it necessary to break up with a girl he realizes he doesn't love. He soon finds out she's the b...h from hell, and her reaction will impact on several other people.

The script and acting is just fine.

An American drama; A story about an American army lieutenant whose former girlfriend marries his commanding officer out of revenge causing complications down the line. This pre-code melodrama is a stagebound production about false accusation and romantic shenanigans. It contrives a plot about a mix-up but it contains holes at almost every turn, never really generating any suspense. The main characters are written as scoundrels without many redeeming features and it is too silly to be moving. June Clyde is likeable as the excitable younger sister full of energy and life. John Wayne wilts despite his alacrity.

I suppose this is what they used to call a "woman's picture." Laura LaPlante, a fetching, if gnomish blonde, plays Evelyn Palmer, a New York girl (what she does for a living is never revealed) who's been dallying with dashing West Point cadet Bob Denton, played robotically by a very young & handsome John Wayne. When she is dumped unceremoniously before Bob's graduation, Evelyn woos & eventually marries his mentor, Colonel Bonham, played by Forrest Stanley more like a stuffed-shirt British army officer than an American who's spent years in Arizona. The big complication is that, once the newlywed Bonhams relocate to Arizona, Denton shows up for duty &, despite Evelyn's triumphant attitude toward him, Denton takes a fancy to Evelyn's sister, Bonnie, who's the cutest flapper I've seen in ages.

This plot, made today, might have a bit more nastiness in that; it's as close to a "Cruel Intentions" as you're going to get in 1931. That Bob & Evelyn are having a sexual relationship is implied, of course, & it's amusing how, later in the picture, every time someone's about to say it, that person is interrupted or hushed. More than that, though I saw this on the Starz Western channel, it's more like your average sophisticated thirties melodrama than a western. The cigarettes are in boxes, gowns are worn to dinner, & the Colonel's house in Arizona is strictly Long Island.

The film features some amusing stock footage of an Army-Navy football game, as well as military maneuvers. But without giving anything away, the film unwinds & then winds up in a pretty cliched manner. For John Wayne fans, it's bound to be extremely disappointing, but for those of us who are intrigued by the early days of Hollywood, good & bad, it's not such a bad way to spend an hour. But it was way too silly to be moving, & it's by the numbers mix-up plot never really generates any suspense.

Melodramatic soap opera about a young lady named Evelyn (Laura La Plante) who is in love with West Point football hero Bob Denton (John Wayne) - unfortunately for her, he's somewhat of a brash ladies man who says, and these are his very words, "My women understand me - they take one look and know they can expect nothing". Hmmm, well she doesn't seem to understand that and expects to marry him - but he dumps her when he realizes how serious she is about him. So she sets out to get even by actually marrying Bob's boyhood guardian (without Bob's knowledge) and moving to Arizona with the poor older man who is completely clueless about her former relationship. Soon Bob is assigned a post there and stirs things up when he begins a romance with Evelyn's flirtatious sister (June Clyde).

This is a very interesting, well done film - okay, I never could understand why women in movies sometimes marry the "wrong man" just to get even or just because they can't get the man they really want. Laura La Plante plays a role here that isn't exactly a very likable person, yet she is such a charming, likable actress herself, her character does manage to come across in an appealing way. John Wayne is okay too (and he doesn't look too bad in his tight-fitting cadet uniform pants, I might add). June Clyde, by the way, gives a very enjoyable performance here playing the cutesy, bubbly flirt to the hilt. A good film, worth seeing.

I suppose that on the plus side for John Wayne in this film he got to put on a football jersey which up until recently he had been wearing for the University of Southern California. Here he plays a cadet who kicks the winning field goal in the Army/Navy game before graduating West Point.

The Duke is the foster son of Colonel Forrest Stanley and after graduation he's been assigned out in Arizona to the army post that Stanley is commandant of. Before leaving he rather callously gives the air to Laura LaPlante who he'd been seeing. Laura doesn't take the breakup well and without Wayne knowing it, makes a play for Stanley who she marries. She's out living in Arizona with Stanley and her sister June Clyde before Wayne arrives at the post.

John Wayne fans should realize that this is not the Duke they're accustomed to. He's playing the kind of hero/heel part that Tyrone Power later perfected so well. It doesn't wear well on Wayne at all.

In fact as I watched Arizona and did a little research on it, I saw that it was remake of a silent film of the same name that starred that greatest of swashbucklers Douglas Fairbanks. No wonder I thought that this was a film better played by someone like Tyrone Power.

In the Citadel Film Series book, The Films of John Wayne, Arizona is listed under its later title of Men Are Like That. My guess is that the title was changed to not confuse viewers with the later Jean Arthur William Holden western Arizona. Of course the title need not have been changed at all, but I suspect this Arizona was re-released to take advantage of John Wayne's burst into major stardom following Stagecoach. Harry Cohn could do little else because John Wayne was pointedly not working for Columbia Pictures after Cohn fired him and later tried to blackball him in the industry. There was never any new Duke product for Columbia after Wayne became a legend.

Probably only the Duke's most devoted fans would want to see Arizona.