I did not see more than a handful of contemporary releases that came close to the smart pacing, narrative sophistication and honest passion of these older films.

Though I will give a strong nod to 500 Days of Summer and Funny People, two fine films. Both are beautifully written, carefully structured and oh what a relief, they vigorously espouse what can only be described as (mostly) conservative values, a welcome relief in this post-modern age where nihilism passes for, ahem, cutting edge entertainment.

But I roll with classic Hollywood, silent movies and films from Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Keep in mind that most of the movies on my list were produced on modest budgets, never intended as studio blockbusters.

I’m not claiming that any of these movies are classics like The Crowd or Seven Samurai. I am saying that these ten films are grand entertainment from Hollywood’s great dream factory and well worth seeking out.

Ernest Torrence, John Gilbert and Mary Nolan fight over the last drop of water in Desert Nights, 1929.

10. Desert Nights, 1929, starring John Gilbert, Ernest Torrence and Mary Nolan. Directed by William Nigh. Titles by Marian Ainslee, Adaptation by Endre Bohem.

This was Gilbert’s last silent movie. To an adoring public he was known as The Great Lover. At one point, Gilbert was the highest paid actor at MGM earning a cool million a year. But Gilbert, enormously self-destructive, got into hot water with his boss L.B. Mayer and then booze, babes, and sound finished off a great career.

Here, Gilbert plays Hugh Roland, the woman-starved manager of an African diamond mine. Lord Stonehill, Ernest Torrence, and his daughter Diana, Mary Nolan, arrive to visit the mine. But they are impostors who grab a sack of diamonds then kidnap Roland. The trio ends up stranded in the Kalahari Desert. Not knowing how to survive in the sun-baked waste, the thieves are forced to rely on their hostage in order to stay alive.

Mary Nolan, real name Mary Imogene Robertson, born into poverty on a Kentucky farm, was at age 15, a Ziegfeld beauty nicknamed “Bubbles”—draw your own conclusions. With shimmering blond hair and a shirt open to her waist, Nolan gives off Pre-Code heat like a destroying angel.

Mary Nolan, studio portrait. Before liquor, drugs and a string of abusive relationships destroyed her career and her life.

She’s a scrumptious dame who enjoys the feel of a rifle in her arms as much as a man. Nolan, almost totally forgotten, was even more self-destructive than Gilbert. A string of abusive men—including MGM fixer Eddie Mannix—beat her to a pulp. She ended up a hopeless heroin addict, and in 1948, Nolan died in Cedars Sinai of Los Angeles weighing just 70 lbs. She was 43 years old.

Desert Nights has a running time of just sixty-five minutes. It moves like a bullet and combines action and romance in a nifty, unpretentious package.

Here’s a clip from the first few minutes of the film. Gilbert gets a look at Nolan’s exquisite face at about the three-minute mark. His reaction shot is beautifully modulated. And watch what Mary does right after she hooks Gilbert.

–

9. Parole Girl, 1933, starring Mae Clarke, Marie Prevost and Ralph Bellamy, directed by Eddie Cline. Screenplay by Norman Krasna.

This film is definitely a B movie elevated by Mae Clarke’s memorable performance. Parole Girl—fabulous title—is another Pre-Code goodie that explores one of Hollywood’s most durable stories: a (sorta) good girl gone (sorta) bad, only to go (truly) good once she meets the right man.

Clarke plays a sympathetic con artist who ends up in jail—the scene where she begs for mercy is gut-wrenching—and once behind bars she swears vengeance against the department store manager, strait-laced Ralph Bellamy, who refused to give her a break.

When she exits prison Mae is wearing a shockingly post-modern geometric hairdo that frames her as a sleek, deco avenger. The film is stuffed with plot contrivances that, upon reflection, are just plain bizarro. But Mae’s sincere and naturalistic acting style gives credibility to the whiplash plot turns. Her revenge is tricking Bellamy into a sham marriage—don’t ask.

Mae Clarke, her geometric haircut makes her look like a sleek Deco avenger, Parole Girl, 1933.

This little gem zips along at a dazzling pace, clocking in at—hey, I’m sensing a pattern here—sixty-five minutes.

The photography is lush and effervescent, filled with gorgeous shots that you don’t expect from a Columbia programmer. The Director of Photography was Joe August who in the 20’s and 30’s shot films for John Ford, Howard Hawks, Lewis Milestone and Frank Borzage.

Mae and her gold-digging sidekick Marie Prevost—former Sennett cutie-pie she died an alcoholic, alone and broke in a cheap hotel room—are down at the heel dames, always dressed at the height of fashion. Even the notoriously cheap and vulgar head of Columbia Pictures, Harry Cohn, understood that no matter how poor was a depression-era girl, the public yearned to see their stars draped in furs and bias cut silk gowns.

Mae Clarke is best remembered for getting a pineapple in her face—here’s my post about that famous scene—but if not for her fragile mental state, she could have been one of Hollywood’s greatest stars. TCM programs this beaut every once in a while, so check their schedule.

8. Tell it to the Marines, 1926, starring Lon Chaney, Billy Haines, Eleanor Boardman, and Carmel Meyers. Directed by George W. Hill. Screenplay by Richard Schayer. Titles by Joseph Farnham.

Tell it to the Marines, 1926. Billy Haines looks on as Lon Chaney romances Eleanor Boardman.

U.S. Marine Sergeant O’Hara, Lon Chaney, in one of the few films in which he’s not in make-up, has his hands full training raw recruits. ‘Skeet’ Burns, Billy Haines, is a brash and uncooperative Marine. And to make things worse, Burns also sets his sights on nurse Nora Dale, the lovely Eleanor Boardman, whom Sergeant O’Hara secretly loves.

This is a lovely and unexpected romantic comedy from Lon Chaney, best known for playing unfortunates like The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera.

Here’s clip where ladies man Haines makes a move on Eleanor Boardman:

–

Chaney (1883-1930) was one of the great stars of the silent screen. He only made one sound movie, the very strange The Unholy Three, 1930, before cancer of the throat killed him. Watching him work without make-up is a revelation and a joy. He plays a classic American character, rigid but fair, tough yet vulnerable. His face is weathered with deep creases, signs of wisdom gained through a lifetime of war and barracks humor. It’s an iconic American performance. Tell it to the Marines was Lon Chaney’s biggest moneymaker.

Lon Chaney as Sergeant O’Hara.

George W. Hill was a fine director who got his start as an assistant to D.W. Griffith. Before becoming a director Hill was an accomplished cinematographer who was known for his skill in lighting leading ladies. In 1929 Hill scored another huge success with The Big House starring Wallace Beery. And in 1930, Hill again hit box office and creative magic with Min and Bill, making Wallace Beery and Marie Dressler MGM’s biggest stars for the next four years. Tragically, Hill was in a serious car accident at the peak of his career. His injuries caused intense physical and personal anguish. In 1933, he was discovered in his Malibu home dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was 38 years old.

7. Bed of Roses, 1933, starring Constance Bennett, Joel McCrea and Pert Kelton. Directed by Gregory La Cava. Screenplay by Wanda Tuchock.

Constance Bennett was an actress who specialized in playing diamond draped society girls. Here, in a witty and carefully structured script by the great Wanda Tuchock, Bennett is a gum chewing—though very well dressed—prostitute, who, in league with her wisecracking sidekick Pert Kelton, get hapless men drunk before robbing them. The hard-boiled tone of the film is economically established in the first scene where, released from jail, the prison matron cautions Kelton: “Miss Brown, you’re much too impulsive.” Drawls Pert: “I ain’t got an impulse left.” Constance and Pert sashay around with hands resting languorously on their hips. They whistle at men and call them “big boy” before heartlessly taking them to the cleaners.

This is yet another Pre-Code stunner, with dialogue and narrative details that disappeared after The Motion Picture Code was enforced in 1934. It’s a moral fable deliciously soaked in sin and gin.

Constance Bennett meets and is mightily attracted to handsome and rugged Joel McCrea, the honest skipper of a cotton boat. But she chooses to score big by tricking a wealthy publisher into—here we go again—a sham marriage. Will Constance live a life of loveless luxury or will she choose true love as the wife of a river rat?

Constance Bennett, studio portrait. For three wonderfully informative essays about Constance and her entire dysfunctional show biz family, head on over to Self-Styled Siren.

Bennett, a clotheshorse thin as a willow, strains a bit in the role of a bawdy hooker. It’s not who she is. Bennett’s inner patrician fights the character’s wanton nature. Nevertheless, this is one of Constance Bennett’s most surprising and interesting performances.

I couldn’t find any clips from the film but I did find this great 1937 “educational” short of Bennett demonstrating her daily beauty routine. Highly informative.

–

Anyhoo, back to Bed of Roses. Pert Kelton, a talented actress who excelled in playing hard luck tramps, was cast as the original Alice Kramden in The Honeymooners. But Kelton was blacklisted during the McCarthy era and replaced by Audrey Meadows. In her later years, Kelton was featured in a series of Spic and Span commercials that fixed her image as a product pitcher. Bed of Roses is longer than Desert Nights and Parole Girl—by two minutes. We who work in contemporary Hollywood have a lot to learn about structure, narrative economy, and pacing from Hollywood’s Golden Age.

6. The Godless Girl, 1929, starring Lina Basquette, Marie Prevost and Tom Keene, directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Story by Jeanie MacPherson. Titles by Beulah Marie Dix.

During production of The Godless Girl, Lina Basquette, recent widow of Sam Warner, found solace in the arms of ace cameraman  Pev Marley—always a smart move for an actress who wants to guarantee a glamorous celluloid image.

We tend to forget that Cecil B. DeMille was, at one time, a pioneering visual stylist. In 1928, DeMille hired Lina Basquette for the lead role in The Godless Girl. In her outrageous and addictive memoir, Basquette claims that during the private casting session with DeMille, he reached into her blouse and fondled her breast, assuring her that he only wanted to make sure she was a cooperative actress. She was.

Basquette plays Judy, a militant high school atheist. A clash between the atheists and Christians leads to a riot in which a student is killed. Basquette and the Christian Boy are sentenced to a state reformatory where DeMille and his longtime scenario writer/mistress, Jeanie MacPherson, dwell lovingly on the cruelty and corruption of the facility.

This all sounds incredibly heavy handed and it is. It’s also sort of glorious and The Godless Girl makes for compelling viewing. The riot scene, a huge set-piece, is viciously staged and so effective I was chewing my handkerchief throughout. And the shot of a girl falling down the cavernous stairwell is genuinely haunting. Here’s a clip showing the riot and the death spiral. Note the eloquent monorail—specially constructed by DP Pev Marley for this film—shot on the staircase. In this way DeMille nails the geography of the brawl and it’s kinetic effect.

–

Naturally, there’s a love story between atheist Basquette and the lantern jawed Christian, played by Tom Keene. There are two striking scenes where the lovers ink over their prison numbers creating poetic new words—a clever and lyrical touch.

Lina Basquette began her career as a Ziegfeld ballerina. She performed with, among others, Louise Brooks and Desert Night’s Mary Nolan. Lina states that her virginity was such a precious and rare commodity in Hollywood that Mommy Basquette sold her as an 18-year old child-bride to Sam Warner, the Warner brother responsible for bringing sound to the movies.

Constance Bennett,  a guest at the wedding, consoled the unhappy virgin bride, who was, after the ceremony, vomiting in the restroom, with these words:

“Actually, Sam’s not a bad guy—as men go.”

Constance, mercenary to the core, further counseled Basquette: “Just be sure, after you give, you get.”

Studio portrait of DeMille’s Godless Girl. After she left Hollywood in 1943, Basquette became a noted breeder of Great Danes.

Basquette’s Hollywood career was not distinguished, but her private life was, well, epic. She married seven times, compulsively fell in and out of love with drunks, rogues, and liars. She actually rates her numerous lovers in her wacky memoir, Lina: DeMille’s Godless Girl. Among others, Basquette had violent and passionate affairs with heavyweight Jack Dempsey, mobster Johnny Roselli and finally Ludwig, a Nazi.

She also claims that Hitler, in a private audience in Berchtesgaden, offered her the opportunity to be Germany’s biggest movie star. In a scene that seems lifted out of a Mel Brooks movie, Lina insists that love-struck Adolph tried to rape her. As horny Hitler groped, Basquette breathlessly cried out that her grandfather was Jewish. Der Fuhrer quickly lost interest.

The Godless Girl is a compelling and hugely entertaining film, with fluid camera work and some stunning visuals. The film culminates with a massive fire in the reformatory, a jaw-dropping conflagration that rivals the burning of Atlanta in Gone With the Wind.

Next week, the top five movies I screened in 2009.

And here’s my list from 2008.

© Robert J. Avrech

Most actors are remembered for their unique personae. Clark Gable was a man’s man. The humorous gleam in his eye sent daggers to the knees of women everywhere. Bette Davis practically cornered the market on the deeply neurotic woman clawing at the boundaries of love with Baroque fury. Gary Cooper was the classic taciturn American, a solid, self-confident Yankee who spoke eloquently through his silences. Marilyn Monroe is still the paradigm of the woman as vulnerable child waiting to be rescued by a knight in shining armor.

Of course Fay Wray, who played in over eighty motion pictures, is only remembered for her role in King Kong. Thus she is, for better or for worse, the shrieking woman, for all time.

Less common is the actor who is identified and remembered for a single brief scene.

No doubt, Mae Clarke, (1910-1992) real name Violet Mary Klotz, a superb actress who unfailingly revealed complex layers of character in her naturalistic performances, would prefer to be remembered for her finely tuned portrayal of the doomed Myra Deauville, the sweet chorus girl turned desperate prostitute, in the 1931 pre-Code, Waterloo Bridge. But the 1940 version with Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor made Clarke’s film all but invisible. This is a shame for Clarke’s version, directed by James Whale, is excellent, combining gritty realism with lyrical impressionism.

Mae Clarke, a vaudeville headliner in New York, arrived in California in 1929 under a short term contract to Fox studios. She planned to make a few movies, pick up the easy money Hollywood offered, and then return to the stage, her first love.

Clarke ended up staying for sixty-three years.

During that time Clarke appeared in, among other films, Waterloo Bridge, Frankenstein, The Public Enemy, Lady Killer, and Pat and Mike. She worked with such eminent talents as Lewis Milestone, Tod Browning, William Wellman, William K. Howard, Dorothy Arzner and Ernest B. Schoedsack.

Never a stunning beauty, but rather a compelling and distinctive actress of great depth, Clarke’s career was hampered by three failed marriages and an almost disfiguring auto accident. Bouts of mental illness led to cruel treatment in snake pit institutions where she was doped up, restrained and subjected to electric shock therapy.

King Vidor, the great American director, when musing on the mystery of great actors stated:

[Spencer] Tracy as a man had many personal and emotional problems but that is not what came through on the screen. This is a paradox I won’t attempt to explain here. Perhaps the answer is one of successful compensation. I do know that actors who have some sort of emotional problem going on underneath seem to give a more interesting performance on top.

Sadly, Vidor’s theory seems borne out in the life and career of Mae Clarke. For most of her young adulthood, Clarke was financially responsible for her father, mother and younger brother. It was a heavy burden for such a fragile creature.

By 1937, after appearing in over forty movies, Clarke was exhausted in body and mind. She retired from the screen and married Capt. Stevens Bancroft, settling in Rio de Janeiro with her handsome, aviator husband. Clarke looked forward to having children and living a solid middle-class life. Tragically, emotional instability, alcohol, and her husband’s serial infidelity conspired to destroy the marriage and the dream.

Mae Clarke returned to Hollywood after just three years. She had no agent, little money, and was all but forgotten. But like the old vaudeville trooper she was, Clarke picked herself up and made the rounds taking whatever parts were offered.

Today, Mae Clarke is remembered—most don’t even know her name for she was uncredited—for having half a grapefruit shoved in her face in the 1931 classic The Public Enemy.

This is probably one of the most famous scenes in movie history and when clips of great Hollywood films are compiled, the grapefruit scene is almost always included.

Having just played the role of the doomed streetwalker, Molly Malloy, in The Front Page 1931, Clarke was making a name for herself in Hollywood. Her Molly Malloy is unforgettable, a tortured soul who desperately wants to mend, in Clarke’s words, “another bleeding soul.”

Soon after shooting wrapped on The Front Page, Clarke’s agent called and told her he had another Molly Malloy role for her, “another whore.” Clarke, a faithful Catholic, was wary, but when told that she would be playing opposite the rising young star Jimmy Cagney, and William Wellman was directing, Mae wisely accepted the offer to play the role of Kitty in The Public Enemy.

In the film, vicious but charismatic gangster Tom Powers, an electric Jimmy Cagney, and his sidekick Matt Doyle, the dreary Edward Woods, pick up good time girls Mae Clarke and Joan Blondell in a swanky night club.

When next we see Cagney and Clarke they are shacking up in a hotel room. Cagney has already built up huge reservoirs of contempt for Clarke’s Kitty and is picking a fight, looking for any excuse to sabotage the relationship. It is in this hotel room, during breakfast, that Cagney smashes the grapefruit in Clarke’s face.

Cagney then moves on to the brassy, sharp tongued tootsie, Jean Harlow, and Mae Clarke, after just two sequences—two days of work—disappears from the storyline.

How did the grapefruit scene come about?

It was not in the original novel or screenplay.

Mae Clarke spent two years being interviewed by James Curtis. The transcript was published as Featured Player, An Oral Autobiography of Mae Clarke, an invaluable and endlessly fascinating glimpse into the actresses life and career, and the Darwinian politics of the studio system.

Here’s Mae Clarke on the grapefruit scene:

We shot the scene! That’s all there was to it. He [director William Wellman] said, “All right, that’s a wrap.” It ended just short of the grapefruit where he [Cagney] says, “Oh, I wish you was a wishing well.” That was enough. That showed his hatred of me. That was all there was to do, so I went to my dressing room on the set and got ready to tie things up, when Jimmy [Cagney] appeared at the door.

“Can I come in a minute?”

“Yes, come on.”

He came in and he said, “Bill [Wellman] and I have been talking this thing over and we thought of a heck of an idea. We’d like you to do it again to give the guys a kick. This is really something you won’t forget.”

And he told me.

I couldn’t believe my ears. I said, “You’re kidding!”

He said, “No, come on back, we’ll do the scene again, just like we forgot something and we want to improve on it. The guys’ll come back. They haven’t broken the set yet. The lights are still there. And then I’ll pick up this grapefruit and push it in your face and the guys will go crazy.”

I didn’t want to do that, but all I had done to meet the new man and be at the new studio and work with Wellman was all out the window if I said no. I’d be a lemon. So I knew I had to do it. The only thing I could have done is get my agent on the phone and let him be the one to say no. But I couldn’t get to a phone. Jimmy was sitting right there being very persuasive.

I said, “Well, I’ll tell you what. I’ll do it—once. I’ll trust you not to hurt me, and that’s all. Just for the guys, okay?” So that’s what we did, and we did it just once. Didn’t hurt me.”

So: Cagney presented the addition of the grapefruit as a gag to amuse the movie crew.

I have my doubts. “Wild Bill Wellman” was a demanding director, a man who walked heavily and carried a big stick. In fact, James Woods was originally cast in the Tom Powers role, but after watching dailies Wellman realized that Cagney was lightning in a bottle and handed Cagney the leading role, relegating Edward Woods to the lesser side kick.

Thus, Cagney carried the weight of the starring role and he must have been acutely anxious to do everything possible to ensure the film’s success.

After twenty years writing and producing film and TV in Hollywood, I have seen every sly, sneaky and underhanded manipulation by directors, and, ahem, writers, in order to elicit superior performances from, often, frightened, temperamental and brittle performers.

To me, it’s obvious that Wellman and Cagney always intended to use the grapefruit scene in the finished film. But sensing that Mae Clarke, a vulnerable day-player, might not cooperate, they cooked up the gag story in order to gain Clarke’s cooperation. Obviously, once the film was exposed, there was no recourse for Clarke, a powerless bit player.

Cagney was the messenger because, as Clarke explains, Wellman paid her no attention whatsoever. He never gave her a word of direction, just blocked the young actress, leaving her to her own instincts. Though never close, Clarke and Cagney, did have, at least, a cordial and respectful professional relationship.

Clarke concludes:

I thought that was the end of it, except they said, “We’re going to show it in the projection room tomorrow.” That was supposed to be the end of it. They had no right to put it in the picture without my permission. I gave no permission. I signed no release. I could have sued and won.

It’s highly doubtful if Clarke could have sued and won. After all, when you’re an actor in a movie it is understood that whatever is shot can be used in the film. This was especially true under the old studio system where actors were, in essence, highly paid indentured servants. Here, I think Mae is being a bit fanciful. And in truth, Cagney and Wellman’s dramatic instincts were on target. Ending the scene with Cagney’s dialog would have been soft. The cut to the next scene, flabby. The unexpected grinding of the grapefruit in Clarke’s face is shocking and cruel, yet it provides the perfect, if horrifying, exclamation point to the scene.

Clarke’s stunned reaction to Cagney’s display of violence is as authentic a display of humiliation as any committed to celluloid. Certainly, Clarke knew the grapefruit was coming, but the impact—physical and psychic—is simply overwhelming. Clarke, dissolving in tears, burying her face in her hands, appears naked, terribly vulnerable. Every time I view the scene I feel a wave of sadness, revulsion and shame.

The entire scene is just 41 seconds long. But it lingers in the memory for all time.

It’s a testament to the unearthly power of the movies.

The Public Enemy was a huge hit and when it was first released ran twenty-four hours a day at a theater in Times Square. Clarke’s ex husband, Lewis Brice, entered the theater just to watch the grapefruit scene. Brice delighted in his ex-wife’s public mortification.

Like all good actors, Mae Clarke constructed an elaborate and thoughtful inner life for the character of Kitty. All good actors become proprietary about the roles they play, falling, to some extent, in love with their fictional selves. It’s the only way an actor can successfully inhabit another skin. Mae Clarke, in a deeply moving passage, ponders the inner life of the young woman who had a grapefruit shoved into her face:

…That girl was pretty shocked and hurt. She hadn’t done anything that bad to him. She’d stayed to keep him warm. She gave. What did she get? She didn’t show any money. She didn’t show a new dress or anything—nothing, just bad treatment. And she stayed. But, of course, there again, why did she take that? It didn’t show her with an extreme love for him, either. She was just a I-hope-this-turns-out-all right-dumbell. And yet I didn’t play her quite like a dumbell. She was weak-willed—there wasn’t much justification for what she did. But it wasn’t so malicious that she needed to be treated like that.

Clarke should have had a brilliant movie career. Alas, talent alone is no ticket to success in the movie business. Toughness, resilience—the ability to accept endless rejections and not take them personally—and personal relationships are crucial to survival in Hollywood.

A generous interpretation of her characters and an instinctive understanding of the craft of movie acting characterize Clarke’s performances. Sadly, at a time when her career should have been flourishing, Mae Clarke was pretty much finished as a leading lady. Through the mid-sixties, she was reduced to bit parts in movies and television, almost always uncredited.

Mae Clarke died at age 81 in the Motion Picture Home, Woodland Hills, Ca.

Mae Clarke and Kent Douglass in Waterloo Bridge, 1931.