Park Avenue Logger

George O'Brien is a masked wrestler -- he thinks his father will be ashamed that he isn't using the family fortune to become an intellectual. Daddy Lloyd Ingraham thinks George is effete, so he sends him up to the logging camp to toughen him up. Along the way, there's pretty Beatrice Roberts to fight over with Ward Bond.

Although this movie has a screwball comedy start, it quickly turns into a conventional romantic comedy with logging sequences and fights. O'Brien is good in his role, and he only gets to hit Ward Bond, and that only once -- he is a gentleman, after all. Still, it's competently directed by Dave Howard, and the script, while no world-beater, holds together well enough to make this a good, if unexceptional movie for O'Brien fans.

I doubt we'll ever see a director's cut of Park Avenue Logger, I saw a version that had some 17 minutes cut from it. Still I was able to fill in the gaps and we got the kind of B programmer that was released by RKO Pictures that probably was a second feature to a Katharine Hepburn or an Astaire/Rogers film.

The title role is played by George O'Brien whose dad is worried about his son becoming a sissy. Even with the build on O'Brien who definitely was one of the best physical specimens in Hollywood, father is worried about that. Unbeknownst to dad O'Brien is a professional wrestler known as the Masked Marvel and the mask keeps him incognito.

George stays incognito when dad decides to send him up to his Oregon lumber camp to learn the business that got dad his millions. While there he discovers a nasty scheme between his father's foreman Willard Robertson and a rival camp's foreman Ward Bond to bilk both his father and rival owner Beatrice Roberts of lots of money and in the case of Roberts her own land. George also falls big time for Roberts the logging queen of the Northwest.

Bert Hanlon has a nice part as company cook and company agitator for Roberts. Park Avenue Logger is a nice routine action programmer that used a lot of stock logging footage blended nicely in with the players. Not as good as Warner Brothers Valley Of The Giants, but they had a much bigger budget to work with. Might have been better had I seen the whole film rather than a butchered version.

This film is available through Alpha Video. In many cases, and this is certainly one of them, their DVDs are of exceptionally poor quality prints--and this one looks like a copy of a copy of a copy of a videotape. It's ugly, that's for sure.

The basic story idea of "Park Avenue Lodger" is good. However, one HUGE part of the story never is resolved--and it's a shame because it's a really interesting twist.

The story begins with a wealthy father (Lloyd Ingraham) complaining to his friend that his son is a bit of a sissy. The young man (George O'Brien) is very cultured and well-educated, but the father doubts the guy has any ability to work a job that requires muscle and stamina. What the father does NOT know is that the son is quite the macho man--and is a masked professional wrestler!! However, since neither confides in the other, neither knows that they really have a lot in common. Oddly, after the father attempts to change the son by sending him west to work as a logger, there is no mention about the pro wrestling career!! I really wanted to hear more about this and it was clearly a dangling plot point.

Once out west, two things happen. First, the son falls in love with a woman whose family are direct competitors with his family. Second, there are a bunch of thieves working in the logging industry and they will do anything to stop the boss' son from investigating. But, the guy is quite savvy and soon learns the truth--at which point his father shows absolutely no faith in him and will not accept that he's being cheated. How does it all work out? See the film.

In addition to the dangling plot point, I must say that Ingraham plays one of the nastiest, least appreciative and surliest fathers I can recall having seen in a film. I really think they should have toned this down a bit. Overall, a mildly interesting film that simply should have been a lot better. It all seemed very rushed and would have loved it if the film had moved more logically and deliberately.

Motion pictures about logging were almost a staple, but many years ago. No more.

This movie is helped tremendously by some stock footage of trees falling and being slid into the waterway for shipping to market.

George O'Brien plays a city slicker who is also very athletic, quite unknown to his friends and family, who in fact think he's a "sissy," in his daddy's phrase.

O'Brien usually played an active and athletic character, and often was given a chance to show off his physique. In fact, a documentary about him is titled "A Man Among Men," available on YouTube.

Here his character faces two excellent villains, Willard Robertson and the iconic Ward Bond, and he has to deal with a stubborn, even contrary, female character played by Beatrice Roberts, who doesn't seem to be known today, but who was an elegant and talented lady.

Her friend "Margy" is played by an adorable young lady named Gertrude Short, who had a very busy career -- and deserved every minute.

"Park Avenue Logger" is pretty much a bit of fluff, but fun and, in fact, an interesting aspect of Hollywood history, in its cast and its subject matter.

I recommend it and there is a fair version at YouTube.