Bulldog Drummond

VERY early talkie from 1929. It stars Ronald Colman as a wealthy WW1 veteran--Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond. He sets out to help people in trouble. He gets a letter from the mysterious Phyllis (Joan Bennett) who believes her father is being held against his will and tortured in a nursing home. She wants Bulldog to rescue him. He agrees and is helped by his faithful valet and annoying best friend Algy (Claud Allister).

Most early talkies are boring stiff affairs but not this one. It moves quickly, is lots of fun, has exciting action sequences and has a great Oscar-nominated performance by Colman. The sound recording is good and the video is as good as can be expected from a 1929 film. The only negative about this is Allister as Algy. He plays his role WAY over the top and comes across as annoying and unfunny. Halfway through I wanted that guy gone! Him aside though this is an enjoyable and fun early talkie.

Melodramatic, overacted, and occasionally senseless, but who cares? Colman is almost devestatingly charming in his first talkie, Bennett is lovely (but a bit whiny at first), and Algy is a first class twit. The villains are vile, the action is fast once you adjust, and Colman is a sheer delight to watch. Why there hasn't been a major Colman revival is beyond comprehension.

I recently watched a few early talking pictures back to back, one of them "Coquette" starring Mary Pickford and the other "Bulldog Drummond." I watched "Coquette" first and thought it was pretty representative of how terrible early talkies were. Atrocious acting, static direction, incomprehensible sound recording. But I was willing to go a little easy on it because of the limitations that existed for movies from that time period. But then I watched "Bulldog Drummond" and thought, no, it was possible to make good sound films in 1929.

"Bulldog Drummond" isn't a classic by any means, but as films from that time period goes, it's pretty easy for a modern day audience to watch. The direction and camera work are fluid; they don't have that feeling so many movies from this time period do that the camera was planted in one spot and never moved. The sound is well recorded and the dialogue easy to hear. But mostly, I was struck by how much better the acting was. This film shows why an actor like Ronald Colman went on to have a robust career in sound films while actresses like Mary Pickford did not.

Colman snagged an Oscar nomination for his performance in this film, which might seem like an oddity by today's standards, but given the competition at the time he seems to be acting in a completely different medium from so many of his contemporaries. William Cameron Menzies also received a nomination for the film's fun art direction, which runs the gamut from cozy country cottages to mad scientist laboratories.

I know this film launched a whole series, and while the original didn't leave me really inspired to watch the others, I had a good time with it.

Grade: A-

Bulldog Drummond is best known for being the debut of Ronald Colman in sound pictures. It was one auspicious debut to say the least.

A whole lot is written about the stars who could not make the transition to sound, mainly because for one reason or another their voices did not match the screen persona they created. The other reason is that many tended to overact in the way they had to in silent films to put across their feelings.

But there are several examples of those players who voices completely matched their screen personalities so much so that I can't envision them in silent films. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy and W.C. Fields in comedy were so much better in sound I can't see how they did it silent films. Gary Cooper was another, his Montana drawl perfectly fit his screen image. William Powell's years of stage training and that perfect diction helped him bridge the transition.

But Ronald Colman was something unique. The greatest voice in the history of cinema, a man you could listen and be enthralled by him reciting your local yellow pages. His perfect Oxford English was so right for his character of English adventurer Bulldog Drummond.

This was the first Drummond film and the part was to be played by several other actors including Colman again. But this film seems to have set the format out. Drummond, a veteran of the World War, was your typical upper middle class English gent who's just plain bored by a rather useless life. He takes out an advertisement basically putting himself out in the way Edward Woodward did sixty years later in the television series The Equalizer. Of course he gets several replies back, but Colman responds to a note from American Joan Bennett.

It seems that Bennett's uncle, an American millionaire, is being held captive by Lilyan Tashman and her associates in a disguised asylum where they have him drugged and gradually turning over his fortune.

Bennett is a sweet young thing, but the role with real bite in it is Lilyan Tashman doing the kind of part Gale Sondergaard did later on. Tashman kind of has a thing for Colman, mainly because he's a man who doesn't fall for her charms as chief assistant Montagu Love has. No pun intended, but Montagu's practically her love slave.

Bulldog Drummond would have rated higher with me, but I simply could not stand Claud Allister's portrayal of Algy, Drummond's tag along friend from his club who's the quintessence of every silly sot of an Englishman every done on screen. I mean he's worse than useless, he's counterproductive. Colman should have let Tashman and her goons have him.

Noted radio singer Donald Novis sang a couple of songs in a country inn where a lot of the story takes place. Novis had a great lyric tenor and starred on Broadway and radio as well as making a few films. He's best know for playing the lead role on Broadway in Rodgers&Hart's Jumbo and introducing the song The Most Beautiful Girl in the World. This was Novis's screen debut, but sad to say he never had much of a film career.

For those fans of Ronald Colman, Anglophiles around the world who see in him the best embodiment of the UK national character.

Captain Bulldog Hugh Drummond (Ronald Coleman) is bored. He is bored of peace in a contracting British empire made so by the decimation of everybody who was of fighting age in WWI. Hugh is one of the few survivors of that war and he longs for adventure. So he puts an ad in the paper saying he is looking for adventure, and would rather crime not be involved but won't rule it out.

He gets tons of responses, but the letter of Phyllis (Joan Bennett) asking for help strikes his fancy and especially the mystery she puts around their meeting. She has reserved a room for them in a local inn. On the appointed day Drummond arrives at the inn, goes to the room, and soon in walks a woman dressed from head to toe in black. She uncovers her face, and Drummond is instantly smitten. She tells a rather fantastic tale of how her fabulously wealthy uncle is being held captive in an asylum in a plot to rob him of his assets and how she is being watched by the people who run the asylum. That was why she chose the remote inn in the middle of the night. Now Drummond's friend Algie and Drummond's butler have followed Drummond to the inn, and prior to Phyllis' entry Drummond has locked them in the bedroom. While all of this conversation is going they are listening in.

Now Phyllis could have been a complete crackpot, but in the middle of their meeting in come the people running the asylum and fetch Phyllis back, validating her story. Drummond follows them, gets Phyllis out, manages to grab the uncle too, and then after some clever maneuvers in a high speed chase, makes a bone headed mistake - he takes them BOTH BACK to the inn where the villains found them in the first place. Of course they show up AGAIN. How will all of this work out? Watch and find out.

This is not to say that the villains do not make mistakes or strange decisions. They seem to be running an asylum in a huge castle like structure in which Phyllis' uncle is the only inmate. Nice work if you can get it.

This was a very well done early talkie. The entire film takes place at night, the architecture looks like something straight out of a German expressionist film, and the dialogue and performances are not static or stilted at all. There is clever use of the camera to give the illusion of motion where there really cannot be any, and the same is true for Colman's performance - he was actually wounded badly in WWI and could not use one leg hardly at all. Yet when you think back after watching, you'll swear he was climbing and swinging about like Errol Flynn.

Lilyan Tashman steals the show as the villainess, who for some reason is dressed up in an evening gown for all of this skulking about. Drummond may be her technical enemy, but you can tell by every word she says she is sexually attracted to him, if only she could get him under her spell.

This film was Joan Bennett's first talking film, Ronald Colman's second talking film and first surviving one, and Lilyan Tashman's second talking role. For these three actors, the coming of sound was a boost to their careers rather than the end of them. Of course, Colman had been a star for some years, but his marvelous voice would have made it a pleasure to listen to him recite the dictionary. Watch it for the fun, romance, and adventure of it all.

One more thing, unlike James Bond, apparently Bulldog Drummond was extremely monogamous. In the later low budget Drummond pictures of the late 30's with John Howard in the starring role Drummond is engaged to a girl named Phyllis. The joke of the series is how the planned wedding just never manages to come off because of some mystery into which Drummond becomes entangled. It's good B fun but this is the first and the best of the talking Bulldog Drummond films, largely because of the charming Ronald Colman.