Miss Pacific Fleet

This is a horrible film. It's not just horrible, it makes you angry when you realise why it was made so bad.

The only interesting thing about this (besides the electronic monkey) is that it's a classic example of how bad a picture can become when nobody involved wants to make it. Everything about this is excruciatingly awful: the story, the direction, the photography and the acting (especially the acting!) is shambolic.

Joan Blondell, the loveliest actress of the 1930s had had enough of having to play the exact same part in the exact same story with the exact same team and same director in her last four movies. She was a great actress but could see no end to her own personal Groundhog Day so tried to rebel against Warners. Cagney and Bette Davis had done the same and won and become massive stars. Joan unfortunately, maybe because she was going through a messy divorce at the time, didn't.

The studio then forced her do this as punishment. It was made really quickly on a shoestring so looked incredibly cheap. It was made badly on purpose which was Warners' way of crushing her ambition and keeping their asset doing what they wanted. It's so upsetting watching this because this atrocious, badly written, totally unfunny trash was how the studio if not exactly ruined but certainly stifled her career.

Two smart gals stuck in California scheme to win the title of MISS PACIFIC FLEET and its prize money which will finance their way back to New York.

This was the sort of ephemeral comic frippery which the studios produced almost effortlessly during the 1930's. Well made & highly enjoyable, Depression audiences couldn't seem to get enough of these popular, funny photo dramas.

Joan Blondell & Glenda Farrell are perfectly cast as the girls who will try almost anything to grab the needed greenbacks. Although Joan gets both top billing and the romantic scenes, both ladies are as talented & watchable as they are gorgeous.

Whimsical, wacky Hugh Herbert appears as an eccentric business promoter, constantly on the run from his shrew of a wife. Utterly hilarious, he adds greatly to the enjoyment of the film. Behind him comes a small parade of character performers - Allen Jenkins, Marie Wilson, Minna Gombell & Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams - adept at making viewers smile.

Handsome Warren Hull plays Blondell's Marine boyfriend. Movie mavens will recognize an uncredited Mabel Colcord as Jenkins' landlady.

While never stars of the first rank, Joan Blondell (1906-1979) & Glenda Farrell (1904-1971) enlivened scores of films at Warner Bros. throughout the 1930's, especially the eight in which they appeared together. Whether playing gold diggers or working girls, reporters or secretaries, these blonde & brassy ladies were very nearly always a match for whatever leading man was lucky enough to share equal billing alongside them. With a wisecrack or a knowing glance, their characters showed they were ready to take on the world - and any man in it. Never as wickedly brazen as Paramount's Mae West, you always had the feeling that, tough as they were, Blondell & Farrell used their toughness to defend vulnerable hearts ready to break over the right guy. While many performances from seven decades ago can look campy or contrived today, these two lovely ladies are still spirited & sassy.

"Miss Pacific Fleet" misses the boat as a comedy and entertaining film. There are a few good lines out of dozens in a script that seems to have been written for the vaudeville stage. That's the way many of the one-liners play here. And very few are funny. They are mostly, well ... vaudevillian of the earlier, corniest type used by wannabe performers who didn't get very far except to remote small towns in the old days that couldn't afford the top entertainers.

It does have something of a plot, but it's so choppy with uninteresting diversions and sloppy film editing, that there doesn't seem to be much of a story. Into this mess, Warner brothers assembled some of its second-string talent of the period. Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell were just okay in a couple of films, but not even that good in most, including this one. Neither of them was of the status of the top comediennes of the period (Carole Lombard, Jean Arthur, Myrna Loy, Mae West, Barbara Stanwyck, Ginger Rogers, etc.).

The forgetful, feeble-minded Hugh Herbert persona would only go so far until his character became irksome. Here, he just gets by as Mr. Freytag. The fact that he and Allen Jenkins (as Kewpie Wiggins) are the top male stars that Warner Brothers could match for this film says much, and it's not flattering for the film. But then, this screenplay really didn't have a spot for a hero or top male lead. Again, it says a lot about what the studio thought of the film.

I agree with the New York Times reviewer, Frank Nugent, in his critique. He wrote, "Miss Pacific Fleet should not have been impeded in its headlong flight for second place on a double-feature bill. Being placed alone on the Roxy's screen imposes too great a strain upon the picture and the audience..." He calls the film, "a mousey little photoplay." And, of Blondell and Farrell, he quips, "upon whose comic talents the Warners are placing too much emphasis." Nugent asks, "What more can one expect of a sub-Class B picture?"

This film came in 165th out of 178 movies tracked from 1935 - so there were some worse. I don't think many people in modern audiences would be able to sit through this whole thing - at least not awake.

A couple of malapropisms are the best one-liners of the film. Here are the few somewhat funny lines.

Kewpie's Landlady, "Pardon me for protruding, but you're wanted on the phone Mr. Wiggins."

Gloria Fay, "How can you eat watermelon, cucumbers and cheese and then bananas?" Kewpie Wiggins, "Can I help it I like bicarbonate?"

Kewpie Wiggins, "Whadda ya think I got a head for?" Gloria Fay, "Just an excuse to use a comb."

Kewpie Wiggins, "I got a pal. Sgt. Tom Foster. He'd do anything for me on account of I saved his life once." Gloria Fay, "How?" Wiggins, "He arrested me once and I went along without fightin'."

Mae O'Brien, "Suppose you got a black eye. How would ya look?" Kewpie Wiggins, "Out of the other one".

Sadie Freytag, "Nicholas, how would you like to make a hundred dollars?" Nicholas, "I'm sorry, ma'am. I ain't maken 'em anymore. From now on, I'm leavin' that to the government."

One in a series of B pictures that teamed Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell as brassy dames usually on the run or on the make. Here they get talked into a fixed beauty pageant so they can scram California and get back to Broadway and chorus girl jobs. They run a ring toss concession in a carny.

Fast and funny but without much substance, the girls are a good comedy team, usually aided by stock players from Warners: Hugh Herbert, Allen Jenkins, Minna Gombell, Mary Treen, Marie Wilson, Eddie Acuff, Warren Hull, Mabel Colcord, Sarah Edwards, Mary Doran, Jack Norton, and Guinn Williams.

Farrell and Blondell are always worth watching but in between a few laughs there's not much going on here. Hugh Herbert gets the most laughs with his HOO HOO act, mimicked by Farrell at one point, but Hull is pretty dull and no one else has much to do. The boxing angle with Jenkins is pretty lame.

Two young women running a ring toss in a carnival work on entering a contest so they can get back to New York in Miss Pacific Fleet (1935).

The two women are Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell, and they need money so they can return to New York and get chorus work. They decide that Gloria (Blondell) will enter to win $2500 and a trip to New York for two. But they have to get the votes.

Amusing comedy. I'm always amazed and how quickly people talked on screen in those days.

This film was made during the Depression, something to take peoples' minds of off their troubles.

Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell are great as always, and made several films together. Hugh Herbert plays a businessman always trying to get away from his wife. The film also features the usual suspects - Allen Jenkins, Minna Gombell, and Guinn Williams, with good-looking Warren Hull as Gloria's boyfriend.

Cute, light, an artifact of another time.