Central Park

This movie is beautifully photographed. George Cukor did well by Central Park a couple decades later. In between (and after) -- has the beauty been paralleled?

In this Central Park, there are actual sheep in Sheep Meadow!

There are also the always marvelous Joan Blondell, Wallace Ford, a lion, gangsters, a touching cop losing his eyesight, and as many plots as there are in "Grand Hotel" (though this movie seems less dated than that more famous one.)

Crazy and fun 1930s picture, the way that all 1930s pics seem to be, with sometimes little control or care for the plot. Joan Blundell and Wallace Ford star as the most two attractive bums you could ever meet. Blondell gets a job being a pretty girl for a ball, but little does she know that she's ACTUALLY going to be a switcheroo in a planned robbery of the benefit money! Oh, there's also a lion that escapes and wanders around terrorizing everybody, a nearly blind policeman who fails to catch the insane past-zookeeper who lets the lion free, and Wallace Ford.. is just there responding to everything. It's all pretty crazy.. and pretty darn entertaining!

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.

In New York's Central Park, jobless Joan Blondell (as Dot) flirts with unemployed Wallace Ford (as Rick) as they ogle unaffordable hot dogs. When a wayward baseball strikes the vendor's window, Ms. Blondell swipes two juicy hot dogs, which she shares with Mr. Ford. The two are mutually attracted, and arrange a more proper date. Ford is acquainted with the park cop Guy Kibbee (as Charlie). Mr. Kibbee has one week of work until he is eligible for pensioned retirement. However, Kibbee is no longer a competent policeman - his vision is failing...

Blondell is duped, by gangsters, into working undercover in a "Most Beautiful Girl" contest. Ford smells trouble, and gets into danger of his own. Meanwhile, lunatic John Wray (as Smiley) escapes from his insane asylum. A former keeper at the "Central Park Zoo", Mr. Wray causes trouble for everyone by causing the zoo's killer lion ("Nebo") to escape from his cage, and threaten the environs. Henry B. Walthall (as Eby) is a Kibbee confidante. Harold Huber (as Nick) is the gang leader. Director John G. Adolfi and his cast make this creaky early talkie roar with all their might.

****** Central Park (12/10/32) John G. Adolfi ~ Joan Blondell, Wallace Ford, Guy Kibbee, Henry B. Walthall

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.