Manhattan Tower

Surprisingly entertaining B-movie about intertwined lives during a typical day in a downtown office tower. The cast is attractive, and there's a suitably despicable villain who gets what he deserves. Starts out looking like it's going to be a Grand Hotel knock-off but only one story is covered. Later a hint of the bank run of American Madness is thrown in sketchily. Like other such contemporary lower case pictures with similar styles & themes (such as Hotel Continental from the same year, which really IS a Grand Hotel knock-off), it has no street exteriors --saving money -- and moves satisfyingly fast with second-tier actors showing their stuff. But this one is distinguished by a really unusual scene-changing device making use of the skyscraper's vertical architecture really well. Made by a no-name company with a Gower Gulch list of techs and creative talent behind the camera.

I had no idea this type of production could be so good.

I don't know what to make of the rave reviews of this movie on IMDB. They *all* praise the story, which is really awful.

I wanted to watch this movie because of curiosity about the director, Frank Strayer. He directed the early movies in the Blondie series and he was surprisingly adventurous for a b-movie director (one entry was even a musical). I was surprised that someone with so much artistic ambition was so forgotten.

Manhattan Tower may be a good explanation of why.

The movie starts very well, establishing the hustle and bustle of a skyscraper, with workers and business people toiling away and with birds-eye looks at the hectic streets below. There are quirky and original shots, most notably the way traveling through the elevator shaft is used to indicate height in the building.

Unfortunately, the movie is painfully dull, involving a bickering couple and a sleazy executive. The story is as thin as gruel, both unpersuasive and completely predictable (hence my confusion at the IMDB reviews). The acting is abysmal. The financial stuff is a bit unclear. The comic relief of the drunk guy and the pill-popping receptionist fails to work.

This, perhaps, is the difference between someone like Lewis Milestone and someone like Frank Strayer. They both liked to play with the camera, but the former understood that trick shots are nothing if you don't have a solid story behind them.

In its defence, nobody involved with the production of this had ever seen a motion picture before and the verb, 'to act' was not one which any of the cast had ever come across. Alternatively, this might just be inexcusably awful.

This has to be one of the worst pictures I've ever seen. That something can be this atrocious defies logic. The world is fortunate that Remington Pictures was so short-lived if this example is anything to go by. Apart from those clicking elevator noises which fascinate me in early thirties movies, the only thing which made me watch this to its absurd denouement was to satisfy my morbid curiosity to see how it managed to get increasingly worse with each passing minute. Quite an achievement.

The only picture I can think of that's worse is MURDER AT MIDNIGHT and that's also directed by this guy, Frank Stayer...hmm. OK, he uses some interesting wipes between scenes but unfortunately these lead to the scenes if you can call them that. If you want to put someone off ever watching a 1930s film, show them this.

This was a cheap rip-off of the excellent SKYSCRAPER SOULS (1932) but made apparently by amateurs. It's so awful however that it's almost insulting to real films like SKYSCRAPER SOULS to mention this in the same breath or be on the same IMDb site. Imagine you showed the Mona Lisa to a six you'd child and said 'copy that.' The child might be able to create something which looks like the real Mona Lisa but you'd hardly exhibit it in The Louvre!

Take some exterior and lobby shots of the Empire State Building. Add in some touches of Rockefeller Center. Blend plots from GRAND HOTEL and SKYSCRAPER SOULS, and sift out the more blatant Pre-Code elements and you've got MANHATTAN TOWER, a very pleasant little B movie.

It's a well-constructed movie, with a goodly number of second-ranked players which focus around Clay Clement, a womanizing executive, Irene Rich as his wife, tired of his cheating and anxious to get a divorce so she can marry Hale Hamilton, who is also concerned about buttressing a shaky bank. Director Frank Strayer does a fine job of mixing major and minor characters, and cinematographer Ira Morgan of some offers some fine camera-work. Editor Harry Reynolds does some fine work, even though some of his cuts don't quite work; his moving wipes achieved by taking the camera up through floors gives the unfortunate sense that the shutter has stuck midway between frames. Once you get used to the effect, you'll likely admire the technique, while understanding why it didn't catch on.

Nonetheless, it's a nicely concocted movie, with some good talent, including James Hall in his last movie, elegant Irene Rich (unfortunately slow in her line readings) and a stuttering Walter Brennan. It's by no means a great work, but it will pass an hour of your time very pleasantly.

Manhattan Tower is a 102 story building that is essentially a city unto itself. Which means that it has all the problems that a small city has. Today's problem is a greedy womanizing manager of National Products Corporation named Kenneth Burns (Clay Clement). He is flat broke because he gambled his money away on bad stocks. His wife, Ann (Irene Rich), wants a divorce from him so that she can start a new life with David Whitman (Hale Hamilton), but there's no way Kenneth is going to let his meal ticket go.

Coinciding with Mr. Burns is Mary Harper (Mary Brian). She's Mr. Burns secretary and he can't keep his hands off her, much to the dislike of her fiance, Jimmy Duncan (James Hall). Fighting off Mr. Burns--or rather downplaying Mr. Burns' grabbiness because she wants to keep her job--became the least of her problems after she drained her bank account and gave it to Mr. Burns to invest. She didn't know he was loose with money and she was clearly too naive to give it much thought. The money she lost wasn't just her own, it was hers and Jimmy's to start a new life together.

Now Jimmy had two reasons to hate Mr. Burns.

Going on concurrently with the aforementioned was an attempt of the tower bank to stave off its biggest clients from withdrawing their money. If they withdrew then the bank would collapse. Dave Witman was going to try to quietly convince the bank's biggest clients to stay, but the genie got out of the bottle.

It was quite a madhouse in the Manhattan Tower, but you got the impression that everyday was a madhouse. I thought the romantic excursions of Mr. And Mrs. Burns were superfluous considering so many movies in the 30's had that element. It's almost like it was a requisite part of any script. Romantic trysts aside this was a good movie with plenty of entertainment and even a little suspense.

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