L'or et la chair

This is a movie that was probably great in its time, but would be viewed as a real oddball today. I bought the video because I am a great Frances Farmer fan; she is absulutely beautiful in it. The other stars- Arnold, Grant and Oakie are also excellent in their roles. This is probably one of the very few movies where Cary Grant was not the top star and did not get top billing. The story is a little farsical and somewhat overacted, but is still very entertaining. Three of the supporting actors- Donald Meek, Clarence Kolb and Billy Gilbert- are also interesting to see.

While this fact-based picture is wildly inaccurate in it's depiction Jim Fisk's life and death, THE TOAST OF NEW YORK remains an entertaining portrait of the financial scene in New York during the late 1800s. Three writers are credited with a screenplay that does not skimp on moral and financial complexities (although the film's romantic triangle is handled rather routinely), and director Robert V. Lee manages to keep everything moving at a brisk pace while effectively juggling piercing melodrama with lovely moments of light comedy. Edward Arnold and Frances Farmer contribute terrific performances, and Cary Grant is also memorable playing second banana to Arnold's Fisk - although no one else in the cast makes much of an impression. This lavish, expensively budgeted film was a box office flop when originally released, but it holds up quite nicely all these decades latter and deserves to be rediscovered by a larger audience.

The Toast of New York, despite the lavish look, top-notch cast and occasional bursts of energy, is a ten-ton bore - chiefly, I think, because of the long-winded script and pedestrian direction. Others have commented on the production difficulties and personnel changes which may be responsible for the bland result. Early in the story we are treated to a colorful but talky exposition which sets the plot in motion: On the day the Civil War starts, Jim Fisk (Edward Arnold), itinerant peddler, and his partners in crime (Cary Grant and Jack Oakie) devise a scheme to buy cotton cheaply in the South, smuggle it North and sell it at a high price to New England mills, thus launching the career of one of the fabled financial speculators of the 19th century. But, instead of the whiz-bang, rise-and-fall saga laced with comedy which this introduction leads us to expect, we get 100 minutes of routine montages followed by more expository talk (mostly about financial deals), interspersed with boisterous crowd scenes and tepid romantic interludes with the exquisite Frances Farmer, who plays Josie Mansfield, an aspiring stage actress who is taken under Fisk's wing. None of this ever rises above the mundane. Edward Arnold gives his familiar robust, take-charge performance (see the 1937 screwball comedy EASY LIVING and the previous year's COME AND GET IT which this film resembles in theme and plot); Grant and Oakie are pretty much themselves as well, though the full impact of Grant's screen charisma is blunted in this non-comic role. Farmer is presented more as a comely production value than a full-blooded character. She spends most of her screen time in a series of splendid period gowns uttering banalities that barely suggest the emotional states of her character. She too played a similar role in COME AND GET IT, to far stronger effect. One would expect this kind of storytelling from a Warners assembly-line quickie, but it's terribly disappointing to encounter it in a 100-minute-plus grade-A production by RKO. I'll give it a "4" for Farmer and Arnold.

In my opinion the finest character actor of the 1930s - mid 1940s was Edward Arnold, whose tragedy (although he would not have seen it that way) was that his acting career was not in a period when leading men (with the exception of the Englishman, Charles Laughton) could be fat. Arnold gave first rate performances time and time again in straight dramas and comic parts. But he was plump, in an age when you hoped a make-up man could make you look like Tyrone Power (as the original lyrics of Hooray for Hollywood suggested). Still he got quite some milage out of his abundant acting talent, expecially playing historical rich men: Diamond Jim Brady (in two films), General John Sutter, and here - "Col." James Fisk, Jr. And his performance, abetted by Frances Farmer, Cary Grant, Jack Oakie, Donald Meek, and Clarence Kolb, makes this film stay alive. It is an entertaining film - but is it historically correct.

Well, it has some of the facts (although it's basis in Matthew Josephson's left wing histories of finance are barely correct). Fisk was a greedy man - no denying it. He did get involved in fighting Vanderbilt (allied with "Uncle Dan'l" Drew)in getting control of the Erie Railroad. He did flee to New Jersey with the printing press to continue printing shares of Erie stock away from Vanderbilt's legal writs. He did try to corner the gold market. And he did romance Josie Mansfield (Farmer). But Vanderbilt was no saint - he was as ruthless as Fisk. Drew was a pretty slippery customer too (here seen to be too easily cowed or frightened). Missing here is Fisk's real partner in cunning (apparently also a really close friend too) Jay Gould. Why he isn't in the film is curious. So is the muted character played by Cary Grant. Grant is Ned Boyd, and aside from being an early ally of Fisk, and later his chief critic (in the Gold Panic), he has little to do but pine for Mansfield. In reality, the character is based on Edward Stokes, Fisk's former friend and business associate who turned on him, out of jealousy, and with Mansfield blackmailed the man - or tried to. Stokes would eventually shoot Fisk (who in real life did fall down a staircase, but in a hotel). Fisk died in 1872. One day his tragic betrayal and death would make an ideal movie. But Arnold can't play it - alas!!

This makes for interesting viewing in the wake of Martin Scorsese's THE WOLF OF WALL STREET (2013), even if I only intend checking that one out in time for the Oscar ceremony next month! It is the biopic of 19th century American financier Jim Fisk – a larger-than-life Edward Arnold – who rose to prominence from nothing but ultimately grew too big for his boots.

The film has a nice period flavour, punctuated by the initial comedy sense of Fisk's petty swindles (done in cahoots with partners Cary Grant and Jack Oakie). Their fortunes turn during the Civil War, but Fisk's ambitions are set too high (taking on mild-mannered tycoon Donald Meek and Clarence Kolb as the famed Cornelius Vanderbilt) and his ruthless tactics certainly do not endear him to rivals and 'victims'. Eventually, Grant himself steps out to oppose him: though this has just as much to do with his personal feelings towards Fisk's girlfriend (played by the tragic Frances Farmer) – whom he at first frowns upon but then falls for (when pushed by Fisk himself to take care of her for him, while he is busy making more money for the two of them!).

The whole is typical Hollywood entertainment of the era, the heyday of the biopics (though Warners had cornered the market in this field, the film under review is an RKO production) – even if the subject matter proves necessarily heavy-going to the casual viewer. The sheer professionalism with which this is made also extends to the bit parts – which, surprisingly yet very amusingly, include two of the most likable foils in the classic comedies of Laurel & Hardy, namely Billy Gilbert as a flustered (what else?) photographer and James Finlayson (curiously unbilled) as one of the myriad inventors who turn up at Fisk's firm hoping to be financed.