Success at Any Price

This is a pretty routine gritty early thirties drama which looks like a Warner Brothers picture although it's from RKO. It's pretty well made, reasonably entertaining but nothing special.

I can see what they were trying to do with this: make a gangster picture but without gangsters. Although this is set in the world of business - a marketing company advertising beauty cream, it is a gangster movie without guns. There's the big boss, who's worked his way up to the top but now his future is uncertain. There's his moll, an ultra-glamourous opportunist who is only with him because he's the boss and can shower her with gold and gifts. There's the other members of the gang or rather company licking their boss's boots and making sure their firm is more successful than their rival across town. And then there's the new kid on the block - a rough, tough, fast-talking guy from the streets who doesn't respect nobody including the boss and maybe not even himself. He's ruthlessly going to force his way to the top and he ain't taking no prisoners on the way, see.

This picture almost works, the characters are almost believable and the story is almost exciting but although it's trying quite a clever and original idea, it still feels a little stale. There's nothing wrong with this, it simply doesn't stand out from the pack. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Gets a little annoying after a while with his constant machine-gun style delivery of his words being used for every single line of dialogue. Whether he's ordering an underling to do some dirty work, ordering some flowers or telling someone he loves them, it all sounds like it's coming out of a tommy gun. This is meant to show his focus, his determination, that nothing is going to change the way he looks at life - it doesn't however make him likeable though. You can't grow to care about a caricature.

Colleen Moore is remarkably dour and uninteresting but she's another caricature and is there only to contrast with Genevieve Tobin's over-the-top gold-digging glamour puss. Genevieve Tobin seems to give her character more depth than perhaps even the writers envisaged. Her accent, her mannerisms, her attitudes are all so absurd that you think at first, you're going to absolutely hate her but the talented Miss Tobin turns this potential pantomime villain into a very real person with real vulnerabilities. She is someone you feel you'd like to know more about. Fairbank's character is however just what you see on the screen - nothing more.

...seems to be the moral of this Depression era tale of young Joe Martin (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) which begins at the time of the gangland death of Joe's mobster brother. Joe wants to get money, to be somebody like his brother was, but to do it inside the system so he doesn't wind up prematurely dead in a solid gold coffin like his brother did.

So young Joe goes to work as a clerk in the office where his girlfriend Sarah (Colleen Moore) works as a secretary. At first he chafes at the grind of office work, even gets fired, but the boss (Frank Morgan) likes Joe's moxy and promises him a higher paying position if he can straighten out the mess of an ad campaign he has dumped on his desk by 8PM that night. Of course Joe succeeds.

Joe quickly climbs the ladder of success. It doesn't bother Joe that he has to climb over the backs of other employees and people close to him as he scales that ladder either. Soon Joe has his eye not only on the boss' job but the boss' mistress, Agnes (Genevieve Tobin). He ultimately gets both the job and the mistress, even marrying her although she clearly doesn't love Joe or even care that much about Joe's wealth. She cares more about fun than money, and she has plenty of that since Joe is working late every night. So, in the end, Joe finds himself at the very place he started out not wanting to be - buried - although alive - in a solid gold coffin of wealth. He lacks no possessions but has nobody he can trust with whom to share it. What will become of Joe? Watch and find out.

This film is very well paced and I was particularly impressed with Fairbanks' snappy and gritty performance in a film I'd heard nothing about until it showed up on TCM. And that cast - you'll never see this bunch together in another film. Frank Morgan before he went to MGM, Fairbanks Jr. after Warner Brothers, fine supporting performers Edward Everett Horton and Nydia Westman as an unlikely office romance that leads to matrimony, and finally Colleen Moore. Ms. Moore was a huge silent star who turned her movie money into a fortune in the stock market and didn't really need to continue working in the sound era even though she had a great voice. I think what surprised me here was that she looked so unglamorous compared to her silent film roles. She really looked way too old to be Fairbanks' girlfriend. Part of the problem was her actual age - she was 10 years older than he was. The other part was that she was very plainly and drably dressed and made up such that she almost seemed more like a maiden aunt than anything else.

At any rate, a highly recommended little precode.

Douglas Fairbanks Jr. plays an angry young man working at a large company. Many of his co-workers are college men and he has a strong sense of inferiority because of his high school education. On top of that, he's got a HUGE chip on his shoulder. It's so bad it almost gets him fired, but because he is very talented, he manages to shoot up the corporate ladder. It also helps that he's ruthless and wants to succeed more than anything. Through the course of the film, he manages to be very successful and a complete failure at the same time. How will it all end? Unfortunately, very, very poorly. In fact, it has one of the worst endings I can recall--which is amazing, as up until about a minute before the film ended, I loved it. But the miraculous ending just seemed VERY contrived. My wife suggested that perhaps this terrible ending was tacked on because the new Production Code was about to be implemented (only three months later) and this sappy ending would not upset censors. While I am not sure that this is the case, I do know that the film's miracle ending really annoyed me and Fairbanks' character getting a happy ending just made no sense at all....none.

Here is a picture that not only deserves recognition for its considerable merits, but is one whose existence remains largely unknown, even to those with more than a casual interest in film. Its characters are sharply and honestly drawn, defined primarily by crackling dialog that is both earthy and literate. These are real people, with no illusions about themselves or the world they move in; they speak from the heart, revealing their needs, longings and frustrations. The performances are rock-solid by all the players (and how refreshing to discover one of Frank Morgan's few roles in which he does not dither and sputter). Fast-paced and seamless, the direction is also deserving of special praise.

Admittedly (or arguably?) the ending is less than totally convincing, what with Joe's change of heart occurring too quickly and without sufficient motivation. Similarly, his determination to succeed (yes, at any price) is presented at the start as a result of his gangster brother's having been murdered. This appears unnecessary, and more than a little contrived. He wants to break out of a poor, aimless existence, and has a loyal, loving girlfriend encouraging him to do so. That's more than enough.

Even with those weaknesses punctuating the first and last five minutes of this picture, it remains a first-rate drama that can easily hold its own with a host of better-known films.

Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. stars in a version of John Howard Lawson's play done for the Group Theater. Knowing what I know about Lawson his original work on Broadway had to be different.

For one thing the Broadway cast character names were all Jewish, here they're ethnically neutral. Secondly Lawson was a future member of the Hollywood Ten and he never denied he was a Communist. What he wouldn't do was name other Communists. Knowing that I'm sure the original play was an attack on the big business structure of capitalism itself.

The ethnically neutral Fairbanks is a slum kid who was just witness to a brother shot to dead in the mean streets. He asks friend Colleen Moore to get him into an advertising agency where she works. Still frustrated and angry he comes to the attention of Frank Morgan who had not yet graduated to playing buffoons. He offers Fairbanks a chance to rise and Fairbanks does it with gusto.

Fairbanks even takes away Morgan's mistress Genevieve Tobin who he thinks represents success. In a way she does, a trophy wife who likes to spend with hubby all day at the office earning and accumulating what she does spend.

Watching Success At Any Price, it's title changed from Success Story, you can see where the Marxist polemics are dropped in the story. Still it's a powerful piece with Fairbanks as intense as he was playing Czar Peter in Catherine The Great with Elizabeth Bergner.

The end however is a total cop out and you know Lawson who did help in adapting his work to the big screen had something different in mind.

How different? Think of that film where Rock Hudson played John Wesley Hardin and you'll know what I mean.