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More often than not, the tale of an actor's vocal woes was simply a cover story for a studio's own greed, spite or incompetence (see, e.g., Louise Brooks, John Gilbert and Clara Bow, respectively).
But in the case if Russian-born Olga Baclanova, the myth is right on the money.
A native of Moscow, Baclanova was a star of stage and screen in the early days of the Soviet Union, and received the title of Merited Artist of the Russian Federation, the USSR's highest honor for artistic achievement.
In 1925, Baclanova toured the United States with the Moscow Art Theatre then stayed behind to try her luck in Hollywood.
She made a handful of films in the two years before talkies — including a pair of classics (below) — then found herself, thanks to a thick Russian accent, limited to "exotic" parts and B-pictures.
Baclanova abandoned Hollywood for the Broadway stage in 1933 and had at least one big hit, Claudia, which ran for two years. Baclanova returned to Hollywood briefly in 1943 to make a screen version of her Broadway hit and then permanently retired from the movies.
She died in Switzerland in 1974 at the age of 81.
Although her movie career was relatively brief, Baclanova made three classics which have stood the test of time:
The Man Who Laughs is a macabre little love story that begins with a decadent king's order to carve a permanent grin into the face of a boy whose father has been convicted of treason. The boy grows to manhood earning an unhappy but lucrative living as a circus attraction, shunning all human contact but that of the young blind woman who travels with him.
Through a series of twists plotted by the great Victor Hugo, whose novel L'Homme Qui Rit was the basis for this movie, the man (Conrad Veidt in a first-rate performance) finds himself elevated to Britain's House of Lords and ordered against his will to marry a brazen duchess (Baclanova) with a fetish for his ruined face.
Depending on who you believe, either Bill Finger and Batman creator Bob Kane concocted the Joker from a photograph of Veidt in full Man Who Laughs makeup; or illustrator Jerry Robinson conceived the Joker from a playing card and then fleshed out the character based on a photograph of Veidt that Finger provided.
In The Docks Of New York Baclanova plays Lou, an abandoned wife making ends meet as a prostitute in a waterfront bar.
Two of Hollywood's most successful writers, Jules Furthman and John Monk Saunders, wrote this story in the style of Eugene O'Neill, with all the action taking place in one evening and the following morning. A sailor on shore leave (George Bancroft) pulls a suicidal young woman (Betty Compson) out of New York's harbor and over the course of an evening, takes a liking to her and proposes marriage.
It sounds like the stuff of Hollywood fantasy, an early stab at Pretty Woman, say, but everyone involved handles the story soberly and realistically and the movie reminds me more than anything of O'Neill's Anna Christie which would be adapted the following year as a vehicle for Greta Garbo's first talkie.
Baclanova in particular breathes life into what could have been a stock character, playing Lou as a hardened cynic when plying her trade in the dive bar that sees most of the movie's action but as a beaten down survivor in private, defeated and without illusions.
"Do you think he can make you decent by marryin' you?" she asks Compson after hearing of Bancroft's proposal. "Until I got married, I was decent!"
While The Docks Of New York is not as visually interesting as von Sternberg's later work featuring his greatest star, Marlene Dietrich, it's more relatable and moving. Here — before he descended into wretched excess and maybe even madness — von Sternberg was still in touch with the needs and interests of his audience, still trying to tell a story, still trying to connect with real universal human emotions. I think it's possibly the best work of his career.
Finally, you don't want to miss Freaks, which is wildest and most modern of all the horror movies that were released during the early sound era.
Helmed by Tod Browning, who not only directed Dracula but also ten Lon Chaney vehicles, Freaks is a story of exploitation and revenge centering on the lives of those circus performers once described as "sideshow freaks."
In this one, Baclanova plays the cruel circus performer Cleopatra. She seduces and marries the star of a traveling carnival (little person Harry Ealres), hoping to loot his fortune. Things don't work out quite like she planned.
Despite Browning's sensitive treatment of his stars, the combination of sex, horror and forbidden love proved too much for audiences and censors alike, and after a brief release, the film was withdrawn from circulation for more than thirty years.
Admittedly the acting is at times amateurish, but if you like your horror genuinely disturbing, this is a must-see movie. And I don't mean faux disturbing like Hostel or Saw or any of those other slaughterhouse cheesefests with stock characters and recycled plot lines. Freaks is too real to dismiss as playacting and no pose of ironic detachment can shrug off the violence done to the "freaks" and in turn by them. It's a movie that will get under your skin — or anyway, it got under mine.
Best Picture of 1932
Best Actor of 1932
Best Actress of 1932
Best Director of 1932
Best Supporting Actor of 1932
Best Supporting Actress of 1932
Special Oscar
My choices are noted with a ★. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔.
I have previously posted about some of the movies and performers from 1932. Click the highlighted link to read those essays: Scarface, Trouble in Paradise, Laurel and Hardy, I Was Born, But ..., Mädchen in Uniform, Paul Muni, Fredric March, Jean Harlow, Kay Francis, Miriam Hopkins, Ernst Lubitsch, and cinematographer Lee Garmes.
We've been on a bit of a Lyle Talbot kick here at the Monkey lately, reviewing (and recommending) his daughter Margaret's very fine book The Entertainer: Movies, Magic and My Father's Twentieth Century, and driving down to the AFI-Silver last weekend to see Three on a Match, the best of Talbot's pre-Code movies.
With another Lyle Talbot double feature on tap this weekend, Katie-Bar-The-Door and I returned to the AFI, this time for a pair of films in which he co-starred with the great Barbara Stanwyck.
The Purchase Price was the second of three movies Talbot made for director Wild Bill Wellman, who as much as anybody championed Talbot's early career in Hollywood. In this one, Talbot is a bootlegger who has been "playing house" with nightclub chanteuse Stanwyck. She's had enough, he hasn't, and with his hired underlings hot on her trail, she hides out by selling herself as a mail-order bride. When she gets off the train in North Dakota or Wyoming or wherever, she finds farmer George Brent waiting for her, and bang-o, they're married. Only they get off on the wrong foot and even though she's soon enough eager to climb into his bed, Brent spends all his time sleeping on the floor.
Complications ensue in the form of snow, sleazy bank managers and a randy local string-puller who proves that no matter how small the pond is, there's always a bigger fish eager to eat the small fry.
With plenty of Wellmanesque touches—drunks, rough humor, and fist fights—it's all fun enough and fast enough to smooth over the abrupt about-faces in character motivations this 68-minute Warner Brothers feature treats us to.
Less comprehensible are Stanwyck's feelings in the bottom half of the double bill, Ladies They Talk About.
The story is simple enough. Stanwyck gets caught helping boyfriend Lyle pull a bank job and winds up serving two-to-five in San Quentin, but the twists and turns in the subsequent love story—"I love you I hate you I love you I shot you let's get married!"—happen so fast and for no apparent reason that even filmgoers as forgiving as Katie and I found ourselves looking at each other in bemused befuddlement.
Warner movies of this era were very short, typically clocking in around 65 minutes and moving at such a breakneck pace that even studio executives worried they were shortchanging their audience. In this case, co-directors Howard Bretherton and William Keighley stripped away every ounce of context and exposition, leaving nothing for the audience to hang its emotional hat on. Add in a women's prison that's more fun than a college sorority house and the goofiest prison break in movie history and you've got yourself a drama that inadvertently veers into camp.
Of the two films, The Purchase Price is the better showcase for Lyle Talbot's talents. For a would-be gangster/stalker, he's friendly, forgiving and generous to a fault, and quite frankly, I thought he was a better match for Stanwyck than George Brent was. Pity Wellman didn't think to swap the roles, but this was only Talbot's third movie at Warners and Brent was the more established of the two.
That's the way it always seemed to go in Talbot's career—a missed chance here, a bit of typecasting there, and his star was falling almost before it had had a chance to rise. The road to journeyman actor is inevitably paved with coulda shoulda woulda's. But hey, he worked with Barbara Stanwyck, not once but twice. That puts him way up on the rest of us.
Margaret Talbot, author of The Entertainer: Movies, Magic and My Father's Twentieth Century, will be introducing the best of her father Lyle Talbot's films at the AFI-Silver on Saturday.
Three on a Match is the story of three classmates—bad girl Joan Blondell, good girl Bette Davis, and rich girl Ann Dvorak—who meet three very different fates. A pre-Code classic, Three on a Match packs episodes of drug addiction, adultery, prostitution, blackmail, kidnapping, child neglect, suicide and Bette Davis in her undies into 63 breakneck minutes. It also features the best performance of Lyle Talbot's career as a weak-willed hoodlum who invites Dvorak to take a walk on the wild side.
Great stuff.
The show starts at 4 pm this Saturday, December 1, 2012, at the AFI-Silver in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Don't know yet whether I'll be in attendance—I'm actually typing this post three weeks in advance—but I can't imagine I'll introduce myself to Margaret Talbot even if I do attend. The Monkey don't schmooze!
In 1933, the Academy finally got wise to itself and decided to stop with the silly split-award year business. Starting with 1934, the film eligibility year would run from January 1 to December 31, just like you'd expect.
But in order to pull that off, the Oscar season in 1932-33 ran for a record length of time, from August 1, 1932 to December 31, 1933—seventeen months, a record unlikely to be broken. The result was potentially one of the best Oscar years in history, in terms of what was actually eligible: Duck Soup, King Kong, Trouble in Paradise, Dinner at Eight, Design For Living, Red Dust, Boudu Saved From Drowning, The Invisible Man, Queen Christina, Sons of the Desert, Baby Face, The Bitter Tea of General Yen. And on top of that, Fritz Lang's classic M arrived in the United States in 1933, making it eligible for an award come Oscar time. Boy, what a year!
And how many of those films won an Oscar or were even nominated? None. Not a one. The actual winner that year was a high-toned snoozer, Cavalcade, from the usually reliable Noel Coward. It's not a terrible movie, but for my money it's the worst one ever to win the top prize. Which is saying something.
No wonder people like me start alternate Oscar blogs.
PICTURE (Drama)
winner: King Kong (prod. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack)
nominees: The Bitter Tea Of General Yen (prod. Frank Capra); I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang (prod. Hal B. Wallis); The Invisible Man (prod. Carl Laemmle, Jr.); Red Dust (prod. Hunt Stromberg and Irving Thalberg)
Must-See Drama: Baby Face; The Bitter Tea Of General Yen; Blonde Venus; Counsellor At Law; Downstairs; I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang; The Invisible Man; Island Of Lost Souls; King Kong; Little Women; The Most Dangerous Game; The Mummy; The Old Dark House; One Way Passage; Peg O' My Heart; Queen Christina; Red Dust
PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Duck Soup (prod. Herman J. Mankiewicz)
nominees: Dinner At Eight (prod. David O. Selznick); 42nd Street (prod. Darryl F. Zanuck); Gold Diggers Of 1933 (prod. Jack L. Warner and Robert Lord); Trouble In Paradise (prod. Ernst Lubitsch)
Must-See Comedy/Musical: Design For Living; Dinner At Eight; Duck Soup; Footlight Parade; 42nd Street; Gold Diggers Of 1933; Horse Feathers; I'm No Angel; Love Me Tonight; The Private Life of Henry VIII; She Done Him Wrong; Sons Of The Desert; Three Little Pigs; Trouble In Paradise
PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Zero For Conduct (prod. Jean Vigo)
nominees: Boudu Saved From Drowning (prod. Michel Simon); Liebelei (prod. Herman Millakowsky); The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse (prod. Fritz Lang and Seymour Nebenzal); Vampyr (prod. Carl Theodor Dreyer and Julian West)
Must-See Foreign Language: Boudu Saved From Drowning; Fanny; Liebelei; The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse; Vampyr; Zero For Conduct
ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Paul Muni (I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang)
nominees: Nils Asther (The Bitter Tea Of General Yen); Claude Rains (The Invisible Man); Paul Robeson (The Emperor Jones)
ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Marx Brothers (Horse Feathers and Duck Soup)
nominees: James Cagney (Footlight Parade); Charles Laughton (The Private Life Of Henry VIII); Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (Sons Of The Desert); Herbert Marshall (Trouble In Paradise); Michel Simon (Boudu Saved From Drowning)
ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Greta Garbo (Queen Christina)
nominees: Kay Francis (Jewel Robbery and One Way Passage); Katharine Hepburn (Little Women); Barbara Stanwyck (The Bitter Tea Of General Yen and Baby Face); Fay Wray (The Most Dangerous Game and King Kong)
ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Jean Harlow (Red Dust, Dinner At Eight and Bombshell)
nominees: Joan Blondell (The Gold Diggers Of 1933); Miriam Hopkins (Trouble in Paradise and Design For Living); May Robson (Lady For A Day); Mae West (I'm No Angel)
DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: James Whale (The Old Dark House and The Invisible Man)
nominees: Frank Capra (The Bitter Tea Of General Yen); Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack (King Kong); Carl Theodor Dreyer (Vampyr); Fritz Lang (The Testament Of Dr. Mabuse); Mervyn LeRoy (I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang); Rouben Mamoulian (Queen Christina)
DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Ernst Lubitsch (Trouble In Paradise and Design For Living)
nominees: Lloyd Bacon (42nd Street and Footlight Parade); George Cukor (Dinner At Eight); Victor Fleming (Red Dust and Bombshell); Leo McCarey (Duck Soup); Jean Renoir (Boudu Saved From Drowning); Jean Vigo (Zero For Conduct)
SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner:John Barrymore (Dinner At Eight)
nominees: Edward Everett Horton (Trouble In Paradise and Design For Living); Edgar Kennedy (Duck Soup); Guy Kibbee (Gold Diggers of 1933, Lady For A Day and Footlight Parade); Adolphe Menjou (A Farewell To Arms)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Margaret Dumont (Duck Soup)
nominees: Billie Burke (Dinner At Eight); Marie Dressler (Dinner At Eight); Elsa Lanchester (The Private Life of Henry VIII); Una O'Connor (The Invisible Man)
SCREENPLAY
winner: Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, Arthur Sheekman and Nat Perrin (Duck Soup)
nominees: Jean Renoir and Albert Valentin; from a play by René Fauchois (Boudu Saved From Drowning); Frances Marion and Herman J. Mankiewicz; additional dialogue Donald Ogden Stewart; from a play by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber (Dinner At Eight); Howard J. Green and Brown Holmes, from the autobiography by Robert E. Burns (I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang); Grover Jones and Samson Raphelson; from a play by Aladar Laszlo (Trouble In Paradise)
BEST SONG (Reader Voted)
winner: "The Gold Diggers Song (We're In The Money)" music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Al Dubin (Gold Diggers Of 1933)
nominees: "Forty-Second Street" music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Al Dubin (42nd Street); "Isn't It Romantic" music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart (Love Me Tonight); "Remember My Forgotten Man" music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Al Dubin (Gold Diggers Of 1933); "Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf" music and lyrics by Frank Church and Ted Sears (Three Little Pigs)
SPECIAL AWARDS
Busby Berkeley (Career Achievement); Three Little Pigs (prod. Walt Disney) (Short Subject/Animated); Murray Spivak (King Kong) (Sound); Max Steiner (King Kong) (Score); Willis O'Brien, Marcel Delgado and E.B. Gibson (King Kong) (Special Effects); Willis O'Brien, Sydney Saunders and Linwood Dunn (King Kong) (Visual Effects); Carroll Clark and Alfred Herman (King Kong) (Art Direction/Set Decoration); Ted Cheesman (King Kong) (Film Editing); Rudolph Maté (Vampyr) (Cinematography); John Armstrong (The Private Life Of Henry VIII) (Costumes); Jack P. Pierce (The Mummy) (Makeup)
Universal Studio's cycle of classic horror movies officially began in early 1931 with Bela Lugosi's Dracula, but for me, it's Frankenstein that really kicked it off. Boris Karloff and James Whale only made three movies together—Frankenstein, The Old Dark House and Bride of Frankenstein—but it feels like more than that, maybe because this trio of movies established so many of the conventions of the genre. Or maybe because they're just that good.
1932 also saw the release of Scarface, the best gangster movie made before The Godfather despite starring Paul Muni rather than James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart or Edward G. Robinson. But Howard Hawks directed it and given that he makes a serious claim to the title of best American director ever, maybe I shouldn't be surprised after all.
As for the actress awards, I was tempted when I expanded the Katies to the "Golden Globe" format to bump Joan Crawford up from supporting to lead and give her the award for drama. But I like Mae Clarke, the girl who got the grapefruit in the face in The Public Enemy, and I've got a later award in mind for Joan. Feel free to argue with me. My mind is subject to change.
PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Frankenstein (prod. Carl Laemmle, Jr.)
nominees: Freaks (prod. Tod Browning); Grand Hotel (prod. Irving Thalberg); Scarface (prod. Howard Hughes); Waterloo Bridge (prod. Carl Laemmle Jr.)
Must-See: The Champ; Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde; Emma; Five Star Final; Frankenstein; Freaks; Grand Hotel; Scarface; Shanghai Express; Skyscraper Souls; Tabu: A Story Of The South Seas; Waterloo Bridge; What Price Hollywood?
PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Music Box (prod. Hal Roach)
nominees: Monkey Business (prod. Herman J. Mankiewicz); Private Lives (prod. Irving Thalberg); The Smiling Lieutenant (prod. Ernst Lubitsch)
Must-See Comedy/Musical: The Guardsman; Monkey Business; The Music Box; One Hour With You; Private Lives; Red-Headed Woman; The Smiling Lieutenant
PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: À Nous La Liberté (prod. Frank Clifford)
nominees: La Chienne (prod. Pierre Braunberger and Roger Richebé); I Was Born, But ... (prod. Shochiku Film); Mädchen in Uniform (prod. Carl Froelich and Friedrich Pflughaupt); Marius (prod. Robert Kane and Marcel Pagnol)
Must-See Foreign Language Pictures: À Nous La Liberté; La Chienne; I Was Born, But ...; Mädchen In Uniform; Marius
ACTOR (Drama)
<winner: Fredric March (Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde)
nominees: Wallace Beery (The Champ); Paul Muni (Scarface); Edward G. Robinson (Five Star Final); Warren William (Skyscraper Souls)
ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (The Music Box)
nominees: James Cagney (Blonde Crazy); Maurice Chevalier (The Smiling Lieutenant and One Hour With You); The Marx Brothers (Monkey Business); Robert Montgomery (Private Lives)
ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Mae Clarke (Waterloo Bridge)
nominees: Constance Bennett (What Price Hollywood?); Marlene Dietrich (Shanghai Express); Barbara Stanwyck (The Miracle Woman); Dorothea Wieck (Mädchen in Uniform)
ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Norma Shearer (Private Lives)
nominees: Joan Blondell (Blonde Crazy); Claudette Colbert (The Smiling Lieutenant); Lynn Fontanne (The Guardsman); Jean Harlow (Platinum Blonde and Red-Headed Woman)
DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Howard Hawks (Scarface)
nominees: Tod Browning (Freaks); Edmund Goulding (Grand Hotel); Rouben Mamoulian (Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde); James Whale (Frankenstein and Waterloo Bridge)
DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: René Clair (À Nous La Liberté)
nominees: Sidney Franklin (The Guardsman and Private Lives); Ernst Lubitsch (The Smiling Lieutenant and One Hour With You); Yasujirô Ozu (I Was Born, But ...); James Parrott (The Music Box)
SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Lionel Barrymore (Grand Hotel)
nominees: John Barrymore (Grand Hotel); Boris Karloff (Frankenstein); Raimu (Marius); Roland Young (The Guardsman and One Hour With You)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Miriam Hopkins (The Smiling Lieutenant and Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde)
nominees: Joan Crawford (Grand Hotel); Ann Dvorak (Scarface); Aline MacMahon (Five Star Final); Anna May Wong (Shanghai Express)
SCREENPLAY
winner: Ben Hecht; continuity and dialogue by Seton I. Miller, John Lee Mahin and W.R. Burnett; from a novel by Armitage Trail (Scarface)
nominees: René Clair (À Nous La Liberté); Frances Marion (story), Leonard Praskins (dialogue continuity) and Wanda Tuchock (additional dialogue) (The Champ); Christa Winsloe and Friedrich Dammann (as F.D. Andam); from the play by Christa Winsloe (Mädchen in Uniform); S.J. Perelman and Will B. Johnstone (screenplay); Arthur Sheekman (additional dialogue) (Monkey Business)
SPECIAL AWARDS
Lee Garmes (Shanghai Express and Scarface) (Cinematography); C. Roy Hunter (Frankenstein) (Sound); Charles D. Hall and Kenneth Strickfaden (Frankenstein) (Art Direction-Set Decoration); Jack Pierce and Pauline Eells (Frankenstein) (Makeup); Wally Westmore (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) (Special Effects)
