The Wet Parade

Probably Upton Sinclair's novel was ambiguous so the MGM film version had to be equally so. But The Wet Parade was made and released before the public's verdict on Prohibition was in. At the end of 1933 the 21st amendment to our Constitution was passed repealing the 18th amendment banning liquor. The cure was worse than the disease.

The Wet Parade deals with two families headed by Lewis Stone and Walter Huston. Stone is a southern colonel who likes his branchwater and bourbon and Huston a New York hotelier who also is a drinker. The culture of drink is inculcated in both families.

Two who missed it are Stone's daughter Dorothy Jordan and Huston's son Robert Young. Alcohol claims family and friend all around them. And Prohibition just seemed to make it worse.

Among the rest of the cast look for outstanding performances from Neil Hamilton as Jordan's brother, Jimmy Durante as a Prohibition agent , and Myrna Loy as a flapper who abandons Hamilton in a crisis. In the case of Hamilton he did in real life develop a serious drinking problem.

A good film that was made before it's time.

The Wet Parade has a very powerful message, and at a full two hours, it's one of the longest movies to ever come out of the 1930s. The film chronicles the use of alcohol in the United States before Prohibition, and the effects of the law in its early years.

Starting out in the South, the film shows how alcoholism can devastate a family and ruin lives. Lewis Stone is the patriarch, and he gives a rare performance full of emotional turmoil. This pre-Code film shows what other films wouldn't be able to show for decades. Lewis is taking a buggy ride with his daughter, Dorothy Jordan, and he's so drunk, he has to pull over and vomit in the bushes.

With an unhappy end to that part of the story, we the see the attitudes of Lewis's children, Dorothy and Neil Hamilton. Dorothy vows to never touch a drop and wishes alcohol would be taken away from the entire country, but Neil discovers the euphoric feeling and develops a habit of his own. Up in the North, Neil is living in a hotel run by Robert Young and his parents, Walter Huston and Clara Blandick. Walter is also a drunkard, and much to his horror, the newspapers announce the possibility of Prohibition. Robert, Clara, and Dorothy are ecstatic at the prospect of no one being able to drink alcohol anymore, but it doesn't occur to them that people will break the law and continue to drink.

This movie is such a heavy drama, I must caution you before you rent it. Regardless of your views on alcohol, it's pretty upsetting to watch. If you think alcohol is the root of all evil, or if you think it's the men who abuse it who are the villains, or if you think Prohibition was a terrible mistake-there's a message in this movie for everyone. It flows beautifully from one person's story to the next, connecting them but still keeping them separate so the audience can see how the problem permeates different families. Robert Young isn't even in the start of the film, but he ends up being the lead of the story. Fans of his television career need to rent this movie to see him give a once-in-a-lifetime dramatic performance. He's different in this film from any others he made, and he pours his heart out scene after scene.

Kiddy Warning: Obviously, you have control over your own children. However, due to violence and adult themes, I wouldn't let my kids watch it.

If I had one piece of advice for people wanting to try out films of the 1930s, it would be to check out any movie with Walter Huston in it. From Gabriel Over the White House to Kongo to The Beast of the City and more, the man was in some of the weirdest and most interesting films of the period. Here we have a film about the dangers of alcohol, made a year before prohibition ended. The film seems to be both anti-alcohol and anti-prohibition, which makes for some fascinating think-work about what the movie is really trying to advocate.

The film starts with Lewis Stone's Colonel Sanders-looking Southern patriarch, whose daughter (Dorothy Jordan) is trying to get him to quit drinking. After a short while we move North to a fresh-faced Robert Young and his lush of a father Walter Huston. The two stories eventually intersect as Young falls in love with the daughter. Prohibition passes which leads to a tragedy for Young, who decides to become a treasury agent and is partnered with Jimmy Durante (!). From here the movie hits a bit of a lull as we get a fairly typical T-man story until the final minutes, which are exciting.

The film offers some great moments such as the haunting image of Lewis Stone's final fate or the powerful scene where Walter Huston's wife confronts him about his bootleg liquor. The cast is excellent. The performances are melodramatic but in the best way. In addition to the stars already mentioned, we also have Neil Hamilton, Myrna Loy, and Wallace Ford. Not a bad lineup.

As an entertainment piece, I think it's solid. But it has added value as a historical curio, allowing modern audiences to get perspective on the thoughts and feelings at the time regarding an important period in our history.

Upton Sinclair for once wrote a novel with a balanced look at the social problem of chronic alcoholism and the discredited law meant to address it - Prohibition.

It deals with two families - a rural southern family, the Chilcotes, who live on a large plantation with the patriarch being a hopeless lifelong alcoholic (Lewis Stone). here not exactly Judge Hardy. In the north there is the Tarleton family, who run a New York City boarding house while dad is always tipsy.

The two families come together when Roger Chilcote Jr (Neil Hamilton) travels to New York to finish his book and takes a room in the Tarleton boarding house. But he gets involved in heavy drinking and he, too, becomes a hopeless drunk. His sister goes to New York to try and sober up her brother where country mouse (Persimmon Chilcote) meets city mouse (Kip Tarleton). They both think Prohibition will solve all of their familial problems, but in fact it just makes matters worse to the point of tragedy. And there have never been more speak easys in New York until the sale of alcohol was against the law.

So Kip marries Persimmon and joins up with the government forces meant to bring down all of speak easys. But the government is only half heartedly fighting, and Kip and his colleagues are underfunded. This is probably one of John Miljan's best roles as Kip's boss who does his job because it is the law, but he is extremely verbally cynical about how useless he thinks it all is. It was good to see Miljan, who had a problem with the bottle himself, playing a normal person rather than some kind of uber villain for a change.

The worst part of the film? L.B. Mayer really liked Jimmy Durante so he basically manufactures a role that is completely unsuited for him as Kip's partner in busting up saloons. Durante even gets an introduction and an "entrance" in the grand comedic style of vaudeville. I just don't think Durante's schtick worked in this picture. He was put to much better use in "Hollywood Party", one of the last precodes.

With Myrna Loy as a saloon keeper who doesn't exactly stand by her man in times of trouble, and with Wallace Ford in a supporting role as a rambling reporter, this one does a good job explaining the attitudes surrounding the lead up to prohibition and the complete failure that the law was after it was enacted with tons of unintended consequences.

Victor Fleming's "The Wet Parade" (1932) would be an appropriate double feature companion to "Reefer Madness". But while it shares that film's exaggerated (insert hysteria here) style, it is a much higher budget production and ultimately delivers a balanced and well- reasoned message.

It also has an all-star cast, although many of them are very early in their careers. The story centers around an old southern family, the Chilcotes; Lewis Stone, Dorothy Jordan, and Neil Hamilton (Commissioner Gordon on television's "Batman" series). Other name actors included Walter Huston, Robert Young, and Myrna Loy, Wallace Ford, and Jimmy Durante.

The film is almost an epic as it covers a 15-year span from 1916 to 1931. During WWI Congress expands federal regulation with a wartime measure called the Food Control Act (regulating grain among other things). This leads to the ill-advised Volsted Act and the 18th Amendment outlawing liquor (insert nationwide "Prohibition"). But prohibition curtails only legal drinking, and gives criminal elements a huge base of potential customers. Although much of the demand is met by smuggling (especially from Canada) and domestic distillation, there is quick money to be made with bogus product. Criminals simply take bulk denaturated (meaning unfit to drink) cleaning fluid ( a mix of ethyl alcohol and methanol) and package it as a name brand product. The film shows an excellent sequence of this process.

The film also shows the consequences of consuming this product; blindness or death.

The intention of the film is not to promote drinking but to illustrate a bigger evil, the unintended consequences of the government's ill-advised attempt to prohibit the activity. "The Wet Parade" was a rare example of mainstream Hollywood's willingness to openly take a side in a political issue. In doing so they risked alienating a huge potential audience (the President had vetoed the original legislation and it took legions of pietistic voters to pass the 18th Amendment). The effectiveness of the "The Wet Parade" message no doubt contributed to the passage of the 21st Amendment the following year (1933), which repealed nationwide prohibition. Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.