Central Park

A Warners B that crams a lot into just under an hour, and belongs to no genre. It's a comedy! It's a tragedy! It's a drama! It's Warner Brothers social consciousness! Joan Blondell and Wallace Ford, both unemployed and living in the titular park, meet, flirt, and get into adventures, mostly involving her being hired by thugs posing as cops to help throw a charity event at the Central Park Casino. Meanwhile, in the Central Park Zoo, a keeper is abusing a lion, and is about to be confronted by a former colleague, who has escaped from the loony bin. So we've got gangsters, Depression romance, a sympathetic cop going blind (Guy Kibbee, plunging deeper than usual), and a lion loose in the park. It's fast and lively, far livelier than the usual output of John Adolfi, who tended to drag scenes out. It may have been filmed in Burbank, but the combination of stock footage and studio footage is expertly assembled, and the mad-lion sequences are satisfyingly frightening--I wouldn't be surprised to learn that extras WERE harmed during the making. Blondell is in her beguiling sexy-sassy mode, and Ford may not have been her strongest lead ever, but he gives good Forgotten Man.

Never a dull moment, but all over the map. In its short 58 minute run time, it's got elements of the Depression, romance, gangsters, a psychopath on the loose, an aging cop with just one week to go before he gets his pension (gosh will anything go wrong?), a grisly murder straight out of Tod Browning, and some pretty scary stunt scenes involving a lion. Joan Blondell is as charming as always and she has good chemistry with Wallace Ford, but since this one tried to pack too much other stuff in, we don't get enough of it. While you can certainly do better if you're looking for a pre-Code film, it has a certain entertainment appeal in all of the things that go on. Much as I like Joan Blondell though, what stands out are the lion scenes, and I'd love to know more about how they were filmed.

Central Park (1932)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Dot (Joan Blondell) and Rick (Wallace Ford) are both as broke as broke can be when they meet each other in Central Park. After stealing a couple hot dogs to eat the two agree to meet up later in the day. They both end up getting small jobs by the police. Rick gets one from a nice policeman (GUy Kibbee) who is losing his vision. Dot thinks she's working for cops for a charity benefit but she's actually getting double crossed by a gangster.

CENTRAL PARK is without question one of the strangest films you're ever going to see from this era of Hollywood. I'm going to guess that the screenwriter had written four or five incomplete scripts and just decided to throw bits and pieces of all of them into one film. This movie starts off dealing with the depression, which is something rare for this era. It then turns into a cute romantic comedy. Then, out of nowhere, it turns into a bizarre murder film with a nut escaping from a mental hospital. Then it turns into a film about an escaped lion. Oh, then we get back to the woman being double crossed by gangsters.

As you can tell, there's all sorts of crazy stuff that happens in this film and what's even more shocking is that they pack it all into a short 58 minutes. Is this a good movie? Not really but with so much weird stuff going on you can't help but be entertained. The greatest thing going for the picture are the three leads who deliver fine performances. Again, with such a short running time they don't get too much to do but what's here is a lot of fun. Blondell and Ford have a lot of nice chemistry together and Kibbee is always watchable no matter what he's doing.

CENTRAL PARK isn't a well-known movie, which is a shame. I'm sure if more people watched it it could gain a cult following because of how nuts it actually is.

Set entirely in Central Park (albiet a studio bound, rear projection version of it), this is one of Warner's most fascinating 60-minute lightning rounds, with Joan Blondell as the out of work Roxy usherette who gets caught up with gangsters (in her first scene she steals a hot dog from a vendor, out of starvation). On hand are Wallace Ford as the "Forgotten Man" who falls for her, Guy Kibbee as a Central Park cop, and John Wray as a sociopath on the loose.

If that isn't enough plot for an hour, there's a lion that escapes from the Central Park Zoo, and I don't know if it's special effects or just brilliant editing, but I'd swear that the extras and stunt men where REALLY put in harm's way with this animal, especially in the horrifying scene in the cage.

I have to address another reviewer's question about the "appeal of Joan Blondell." I totally disagree. Blondell's pre-code output is worthy of its own book. She was a master of rapid fire dialogue and wisecracks, with excellent comic timing. She instilled energy into films that are now unimaginable without her (GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933, NIGHT NURSE, BIG CITY BLUES, DAMES, etc), and if nothing else was the best co-star James Cagney ever had (BLONDE CRAZY, FOOTLIGHT PARADE, HE WAS HER MAN). I'd vote that her performances survive intact, and haven't dated a bit in 75 years (which I cant say for Garbo, Shearer, Crawford and some other shining lights of the era).

A lightning-paced Grand Hotel knockoff that crams more incidents into its brief running time than most films twice as long. It's a marvel of fat-free story telling, hokey, predictable and rarely less than delightful. Manhattan's famous landmark is re-imagined as an urban Sherwood Forest filled with merry paupers, evil bandits, benevolent Irish cops, homicidal madmen, and even a herd of braying sheep. Destitute Wallace Ford and Joan Blondell meet in the park, trading flirtatious smiles and glib wisecracks in the face of hunger and homelessness. The action quickly shifts into overdrive when Joan is suckered into a gangster's robbery scam. Meanwhile, a vengeance-seeking psycho prowls the park and an abused lion escapes from the zoo. John Adolphi, director of George Arliss' screen vehicles, seems to bask in his freedom from stodgy period pieces, taking lurid pleasure in protracted fistfights, gory lion maulings, and Blondell's plunging décolletage. His lowbrow enthusiasm is infectious. With Guy Kibbee in a rare non-comic turn as a park patrolman dreading retirement, John Wray as the giggly, eye-rolling maniac.