Sidewalks of New York

The directors of this film, Jules White and Zion Myers, were the directors of the successful Dogville Comedies at MGM. They were rewarded by being given a feature film to direct, that film being Buster Keaton in Sidewalks of New York. I'm sure Keaton was insulted being considered one step above canine stars at MGM, by reading his biography I know he was angry at the autocratic ways of Jules White who was used to directing four-footed stars and thus went about telling Buster how to be Buster. On top of that, their ideas of comedy just did not mesh. Jules White liked mayhem as comedy. This served him well at Columbia with the Three Stooges, but not here with Buster.

The story revolves around wealthy Homer Van Dine Harmon (Keaton) who has sent his assistant (Cliff Edwards) out to collect the rent at the tenements he owns. Edwards is sent home without the rent money and shoe prints on his face. Homer returns to the East Side with Edwards in tow to get the rents himself and winds up in the middle of a neighborhood fight between the kids on the street. At the same time he meets the older sister of one of the tougher kids, Margie (Anita Page), and falls in love at first sight. Margie's brother Clipper is on the verge of getting into serious trouble with the law by hanging around with hoodlum Butch. Homer decides - partly out of real concern for the kids, partly out of pining for Margie - to build a gym where the kids can play safely and get off of the streets and away from bad influences like Butch. Needless to say Butch is unhappy about this development and decides to get rid of the meddlesome Homer when he instructs Clipper to turn what is supposed to be a harmless play into an opportunity for a fatal accident. Will Clipper go through with it? Will Homer get the girl? Watch and find out.

There is one part of this film that is genuinely funny and inspired, and that is when the shy Homer is trying to figure out how to propose to Margie. He follows Cliff Edwards into a record store and Edwards has Homer use the titles of popular songs as the material for his proposal and record the whole thing. This seems to be working out quite well until Homer hits the last song title Cliff holds up, at which time he makes a comment that doesn't quite fit the rest of the recording and is certainly no way to conclude a proposal. This gag was good enough that Buster refurbished it years later when he was a gag writer on "Neptune's Daughter" and he used it in a scene between Red Skelton and Betty Garrett.

This film was a real disappointment to me overall. The gags largely consist of chases, food fights, and prolonged routines that have no sense of timing and just get tiresome. If not for the fact that this film is part of Buster Keaton's filmography I'd say avoid it entirely and find something more worthwhile to do with 74 minutes of your life. Since it is Keaton, it's probably worth one viewing just to say you've seen it.

SIDEWALKS OF NEW YORK (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1931), a Buster Keaton production directed by Jules White and Zion Meyers, offers comedian Buster Keaton a different type of comedy, that involving social issues. A sort of forerunner to what later developed into "The East Side Kids" comedy-drama series over at Monogram (1940-45) that featured the notable cast of Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall and Gabriel Dell, all of whom originated as "The Dead End Kids" based on their characterizations from the 1935 Broadway drama and 1937 film based adaptation, DEAD END. SIDEWALKS doesn't focus completely on the youths by letting Keaton take second precedence, but on Keaton's character as one who offers his assistance in helping boys of the slums (labeled as "The East Side Kids" from a newspaper clipping) by steering them on the right direction of life, with humorous results. Reportedly labeled, even by Keaton himself, as his "worst movie," SIDEWALKS, according to sources, proved to be his most successful MGM comedy to date, something that even Keaton couldn't understand.

Opening from the skyline view of New York City with an off-screen vocalist singing "East Side, West Side," before camera sets precedence on the lower east side of Manhattan, the pattern is immediately set with the introduction with a group of kids, led by Clipper Kelly (Norman Phillips Jr.), playing baseball on the street. Poggle (Cliff Edwards), personal secretary to millionaire landlord, Homer Van Dine Harmon (Buster Keaton), arrives by limousine into the tenement district to collect rent money from the tenants, resulting to a riot. Returning to Homer's mansion with injuries and minus the money, Harmon decides to do the job himself, meeting with the same results. After Homer gets punched by a tough blonde named Margie (Anita Page) for grabbing hold of her brother, Clipper, trying to get away, he immediately falls in love with her (Homer: "do you believe in love at first site?"). Instead of pressing charges on the urchins in the courtroom, Homer, for the sake of Margie, and with Poggle's assistance, helps the tough youths by providing them the Harmony Hall Boys Club. Butch (Frank Rowan), a neighborhood mobster wanting to steer the boys to his level of crime, intends on having Harmon fail in his purpose by using Clipper in a series of robberies dressed as "The Blonde Bandit."

Definitely a far cry from Keaton's usual flare of creative comedy from the silent era, the is MGM's attempt in trying something more different than originality. Keaton is still the "stoneface," but under MGM regime, continues on being a prat-falling, lovesick bumbler. Unlike his previous MGM assignments, Keaton isn't called "Elmer," nor is he under the direction of Edward Sedgwick. Rather than having one director, SIDEWALKS has two. In some ways, it helps to a degree, succeeding more in areas of inserted comedy than plot. A pity the emphases wasn't on both that would have helped considerably. Regardless of its poor reputation and little known overview in Keaton's filmography, there's still some funny material worth noting: The courtroom scene with Homer on the witness stand with lines and situations repeated to perfection in the Three Stooges comedy short, DISORDER IN THE COURT (Columbia, 1936); a fixed wrestling match between Homer and "One-Round" Mulvaney (Syd Saylor) at the athletic club; Homer's proposal to Margie with the use of a phonograph record; and Homer's preparation of roast duck dinner with Margie and Clipper. The Harmon stage presentation of "The Duke and the Dancer" subtitled "Bad Habits Don't Pay" with Keaton in drag doesn't come off as well as it should, and neither does the final minutes resembling that of an "Our Gang" comedy for Hal Roach Studios come off with any hilarity.

The casting of Anita Page (Keaton's co-star in 1930s FREE AND EASY) as the tough talking slum girl isn't very convincing, though Norman Phillips Jr. as her troublesome teenage brother is as acceptable as Frank Rowan's silent era stereotypical gangster role. One of the major faults in SIDEWALKS is its poor editing, more noticeable where Margie disappears from view after leaving Harmon. Scenes where players get struck lightly on the jaw and immediately lying unconscious on the ground is something more of a head slapping/eye-rolling response from disbelief.

As with the MGM/Keaton comedies, SIDEWALKS OF NEW YORK is an odd mix of comedy/drama, yet it somehow manages to become better than the others produced during that time. Rarely shown on broadcast television, this, along with DOUGHBOYS (1930) did turn up as recently as 1978 on a late night showing from WKBS TV, Channel 48, in Philadelphia. Distributed to home video in 1993, SIDEWALKS can be seen occasionally on Turner Classic Movies. (**)

Keaton always referred to this film as a horror. No, it's not "The General" or "Our Hospitality". As in "Doughboys", another sound film with bad reputation which turns out to be very, very funny, Buster is paired with Cliff "Jiminy Cricket" Edwards. The chemistry between them is much better than the later pairing of Keaton with Jimmy Durante. The film is co-directed by Jules White, the driving force behind the Columbia short comedies from 1934 through 1958. We even see Keaton performing a routine done only a few years later by Curly Howard in "Disorder in the Court". Though the routine is more suited to Curly's comedy style, Keaton is very funny in this sequence. White was a director who believed that if something wasn't funny, at least make it fast and make it violent. White's reliance on comic violence is at odds with Keaton's art and is even more apparent in the comedy shorts Keaton made at Columbia in the late '30s and '40s. Interestingly, this film introduces a group of kids referred to as "East Side Kids". Did Sam Katzman get his inspiration here? One will never know.

Sidewalks of New York (1931)

** (out of 4)

Buster Keaton plays a soft slum owner who falls for a woman (Anita Page) living in his building and plans on impressing her by fixing up the neighborhood and trying to make her bad brother a good kid. Keaton hated this film so much because MGM wouldn't let him have any artistic control and to his shock it became his most popular film, which was a bad thing since that told the studio they could do whatever they wanted with him. This was certainly a turning point in Keaton's career and while it's not as bad as its reputation it's certainly not the classics we're use to seeing the legend appear in. The biggest problem with the film is that it tries to be too many things at once and it doesn't do any of them very well. One moment it wants to be a comedy then it wants to be a drama and then we get more touches of a romantic comedy. The screenplay is all over the map and I found it to be too light for a drama and too mean to work as a comedy. There's a pretty ugly scene towards the end of the film when a wise guy tries to force the kid brother to kill Keaton and this stuff just doesn't work. The abuse shown at the kid who is forced to do some pretty bad things really comes off like abuse and it's hard to watch at times. Even though Keaton's hated doing this film he still manages to turn in a decent performance. Sure, this isn't the golden era of his career but he does have a few good lines and gets to show off some of his physical abilities but not enough. Page also comes off very good even though her role isn't written too well. The two actually have some nice chemistry together and make the film a lot better than it has the right to be.

This is another sad example of what happened to the outstanding Buster Keaton when he became controlled by a supposedly "major" studio, but one that had next to no idea of how to make a Buster Keaton movie.

With all the money and facilities available, this movie is not one-one-hundredth the quality of, for example, "The General." Buster Keaton, though, still showed some of the athleticism that make his good movies so good, and co-star Anita Page showed that she is watchable even in horrible movies.

For Keaton, it's a different kind of script, too, in that Buster is a rich guy and has money to try to do good.

Actually, most of the players do pretty well with what they have to work with, and it's a lot better than, for example, "Free and Easy," but "Sidewalks" is probably a title nobody will want to see more than once ... or maybe, since it is Keaton, more than once a year.

This is added after a viewing on TCM, 7 January 2015: Despite my dismal outlook in the previous review, this time around I liked it a lot more.

Partly I liked it more because I paid more attention to Anita Page, who had, I think, a role quite different for her. And she scored.

In previous roles -- that I have seen -- she was just a very pretty girl with no particular strength. Here she was strong as an over-protective sister "and mother and father."

Cliff Edwards was a particular joy. Usually just a with or at best second fiddle, here he showed he too could be a strong character, and his pairing with the acrobatic Keaton was perfect.

Yes, the big studio did not understand what was funny and did not know how to present Keaton.

But my second viewing, contrary to my earlier comment, made me like this a lot more and I raised my rating to seven. And I think everyone ought to see it. At least twice.