Rubber Tires

Bessie Love and Harrison Ford star in this brisk comedy about a family that travels west to California to pay the back taxes on their house. Bessie is the brains in the family, and Ford is a sometime boy friend. Ugly cars and the desolate countryside of 1927 America make this an amazing capsule of long-ago America.

May Robson is the mother, Erwin Connelly is the father, and Junior Coghlan is the kid. John Patrick plays the "he-beauty contest" winner on his way to crash Hollywood. There's also a stereotypical Jewish junk man and his son, Moe, but no credits. The VHS copy I have is rough and the music is god-awful classical stuff tacked on. This might have been a better film in 1927 because Bessie Love and Harrison Ford were MGM stars and this film is a Cecil B. DeMille production directed by--of all people--Alan Hale! Also actress/scenarist Zelda Sears was involved. This must have hit just as talkies changed Hollywood forever. Bessie Love would win an Oscar nomination the following year for The Broadway Melody, and May Robson would win an Oscar nomination for Lady for a Day. Harrison Ford, however, would make a couple talkies and then retire from films in 1932.

The title suggests a a testosterone-fueled motor-racing film but actually proves a likable vehicle for the charming Bessie Love set in rural 20's California that ends with a lively car chase across some very rugged terrain.

May Robson looks not a day younger than she did ten years later in the original 'A Star is Born', the amiable leading man is the other Harrison Ford and the director (believe it or not) is THAT Alan Hale!

I didn't realize that Alan Hale enjoyed a brief career as a director in the 1920s. If the most amusing and delightful "Rubber Tires" (1927) is typical of his output, he was indeed an extremely competent artist who could not only produce great performances from his players, but extract plenty of smoothly pleasant fun from his script. Mind you, his players, led by the delightful Bessie Love, handsome Harrison Ford, heart-of-gold if seemingly grouchy May Robson and amusingly luckless Erwin Connelly, were certainly mighty talented to start off with, although Hale assuredly brings out all their natural charisma. His locations and the cars themselves also prove enormous fun to look at. In contrast to his own movie presence, Hale's touch and timing are not in any way heavy, but surprisingly light and subtle. True, there is a comically emphatic Jewish trader who moves the action along most successfully. Hale skilfully uses this frantically conventional figure of fun to make a splendid contrast with the hazard-prone, cross-country trekking Stack ensemble. I enjoyed Miss Bessie Love's ingratiating performance a lot more in this charmingly diverting excursion than her rowdy little trouper in "The Broadway Melody" (1929) or her nondescript heroine of "The Lost World" (1925).

Leave it to DeMille, Bessie Love and Harrison Ford to squeeze the last drop of fun out of an otherwise mundane scenario Actually this movie is quite a romp and offers some good laughs, especially if you know a little about automobiles and travel in the 1920s, Bessie Love is, as always, delightful and Harrison Ford is steady as usual. He often seemed to be paired with the best leading ladies, e.g., Love, Clara Bow and Constance Talmadge, and generally rises to the occasion.

The film also serves as an "inadvertent documentary" with many glimpses of 1920s American life. Depicting toil and trouble on the road like the Joads, but not quite as bad. Miles of smiles, as they say.

I must say I had no idea of how many great silent titles are available on YouTube Premium. Some have great scores, some have haphazard and annoying music and some have no accompanying music at all, But It's a new treat for me to see new , mostly unfamiliar titles and revisit old favorites. Check it out.