'Contented Calves' makes contented viewers

Contented Calves (1934)
Starring: Carol Tevis, Grady Sutton, June Brewster, Charles Dow Clarke, Sam McDaniel, and Bud Jamison
Director: Sam White
Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

While trying to scam a free lunch, June and Carol (Brewster and Tevis) become the legs and faces of a new ad campaign for Fool Proof Hosiery silk stockings. When Carol discovers the ad makes her look unattractive and refers to her as a "dumb-bell", she gets her lawyer boyfriend (Sutton) to file defamation suits against anyone and everyone involved with the manufacture, sale, and promotion of Fool Proof Hosiery.

"Contented Calves" is one of the best films in RKO's "The Blonde and the Redhead" series of short films. Although the plot is a little weak--the film consists of four comedy sketches that could stand equally well on their own, even if two of them are tightly connected--the characters are all sharply drawn through clever dialogue and there isn't a joke or gag that doesn't go off perfectly. The only scene that could have used a little more work is a slapstick routine about halfway through the film; it's funny, but i's not as good as what you might see elsewhere, including other entries in this series.

Series stars June Brewster, Grady Sutton, and Carol Tevis are back as their familiar characters--Brewster as the schemer, Tevis as the ditz, and Sutton as the dorky boyfriend, and they do their usual excellent jobs. In this outing, Sutton is a recent law school graduate who is struggling in his own private practice, and Tevis is his girlfriend. Brewster plays a supporting role in outing, sniping at the other characters from the sideline with jibes and petty insults while Tevis's dimwitted blonde takes center stage with Grady Sutton. Esquire, in the attempt to avenge Tevis' slighted honor. This is Sutton and Tevis's picture (a reversal of the previous installment in the series where Tevis played a supporting role.)

"Contented Calves" is one of four short films included on "Blondes and Redheads, Volume 2" and although it runs 21 minutes, it feels like half that because of the non-stop gags. This film is a high point of the collection, as well as the entire "The Blonde and the Redhead" series.

Burt Reynolds passes away at 82

Burt Reynolds starred in three of my favorite movies "Cannonball Run", "Smokey and the Bandit", and"Sharkey's Machine". His most famous role was in "Deliverance" but he was in some 180 other films and television series, always bringing charm (and often smiles) to whatever role he played. He has now passed away, leaving this world less bright, at the age of 82 on August 6, 2018. He worked up to the very end, playing a lead role in "Defining Moments", a comedy slated for release Christmas of 2018.

Here are a few pictures in memory.

Jacqueline Pearce has passed away at age 74

Jacqueline Pearce, who is perhaps best remembered for her role as Servalan on "Blake's 7" (a space villain who could teach Darth Vader and the Emperor a thing or two about villainy) died from lung cancer at the age of 74 on September 3, 2018.

Although most of her career was spent playing intense and villainous characters on television, she was the best part of two of Hammer's great gothic horror flicks, "The Reptile" and "The Plague of the Zombies", both directed by John Gilling who declared she had a "wonderful face for film". Pearce retired from acting in 2007 and moved to South Africa to take care of orphaned vervet monkeys, but she returned to her native England toward the end of her life.

She was a great talent who rarely got to show her full range, but she truly and thoroughly excelled at playing villains which you'd never realize just looking at photos of her. (Yes, I was a fan!)

'The Sawdust Ring' is a mostly lost silent movie... but what remains is excellent

The Sawdust Ring (1917)

Starring: Bessie Love, Harold Goodwin, Jack Richardson, and Josephine Headley

Director: Charles Miller and Paul Powell

Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

Janet and Peter (Love and Goodwin) become wandering circus performers in order to find Janet's long-lost father, a ringmaster (Richardson).

"The Sawdust Ring" was an early starring role for Bessie Love, and it's easy to see why she was a big star during the silent era. She's pretty and her acting style is emotive without being overly stylized. It's easy to see how she was able to transition to the stage some 10-15 years later, after the arrival of talkies and her film career stalled.

When it was first released in 1917, "The Sawdust Ring" ran about an hour and it featured a far more involved plot that what we are left with today... which is a 10-minute version that was made for home screening and released in 1926. That 1926 edit is what this review is of--a brief and sweet fantasy story about two kids destined to be circus performers. Notes on both IMDB and Harpodeon describe additional cast members and character background stories that aren't to be found in this abbreviated version. It made me wish to see the full-length film. That will never be possible, because like the vast majority of silent movies, the original version of "The Sawdust Ring" has been lost.

What we're left with, however, is an well-done abridgment of the original movie that shows what great screen presence Bessie Love possessed (and why D.W. Griffith knew she was going to be a star early on). The rest of the cast are also good in their parts, and the staging and filming of every scene is top-notch. Even if you're one of those people who don't usually like silent movies, I think you'll find this one appealing. (If you're an Amazon Prime subscriber, you can watch it for free.)

'Blondes at Work' has Torchy Blane at her best

Blondes at Work (1938)
Starring: Glenda Farrell, Barton MacLane, Thomas E. Jackson, Tom Kennedy, Frank Shannon, Rosella Towne, and Donald Briggs
Director: Frank McDonald
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

Crime reporter Torchy Blane (Farrell) gets extra creative (and even more ethically dubious) in her pursuit of scoops once her fiance, homicide detective fiance Steve McBride (MacLane), is ordered by his superior (Shannon) to stop favoring her over other reporters.

"Blondes at Work" is the fourth entry in the Torchy Blane series, and it's the best one so far. The script is well-crafted; the dialogue is sharp, all the characters are intelligently written with no one taking brainless actions just so the plot can move forward, and even minor characters get their moments to shine. Every performance in the film is top-notch, with series regulars Glenda Farrell, Barton MacLane, Tom Kennedy, and Frank Shannon giving particularly impressive performances. Thomas E. Jackson, who spent the 1930s and 1940s playing police detectives is a nice addition to the cast as Steve's right-hand man and the unfortunate person charged with keeping Torchy on a leash and out of investigation.

Speaking of the investigation, unlike the previous films, the murder mystery here is entirely secondary plotwise to the interaction among characters while Steve and his detectives try to navigate an increasingly ugly public relations and political situation that's being stirred up by Torchy's aggressive pursuit of a story the police department is trying to freeze her out of. Although she actually harms their ability to close their case more than once, I never felt that her behavior was out of line or unrealistic in the context of the lighthearted pulp-fiction universe the characters live in. I felt that way at several points during the previous film in this series, "Torchy Blane, the Adventurous Blonde", so that's another testament to the quality of the script. I did wonder if she would have any friends at the end of it all, given how she treated them--with poor, trusting Gahagen (Steve's less-than-brilliant driver, played by Tom Kennedy) getting the worst of it. Even that thought, however, was addressed neatly within the story... Torchy ended up paying a price for crossing the many lines she crossed in a way that gave her friends an opportunity to admit that maybe she went too far and for her friends to forgive her.

The only complaint I have about this highly entertaining film is that the murder mystery that both Steve and Torchy were investigating was ultimately resolved off-screen. It works within the context of the film, but it was still a little disappointing. (The resolution isn't a surprise, which is something else that makes the script praiseworthy; the basic solution to the "whodunnit" is out in the open the whole time.)

If you have an hour to kill, watching "Blondes at Work" is a fine way to do it.

Marie Severin passes away at 89

On August 30, 2018, artist Marie Severin passed away. She spent the bulk of her career working at Marvel Comics (from the 1950s through the 1990s) where she was a colorist, penciler, and more. She is best remembered for her work on issues of "The Incredible Hulk" and for her satirical comics in "Not Brand Eech". She also designed the original Spider-Woman costume.

Here are a few of her drawings in memory.

The Love Quarterly

Bessie Love was a hugely popular star of silent movies and early talkies who dropped out of high school to pursue a film career. She had moved from Texas to Hollywood with her father, who was a cowboy-turned-chiropractor, and mother, and she entered the film biz upon the urging of family friend and actor Tom Mix.

I'll offer more trivia about Bessie Love in future installments of The Love Quarterly, but I'm not sure I'll ever top the bit about her father being a Texas cowboy who became a California chiropractor. Meanwhile, here are a couple more photos of Love that demonstrate the unifying theme off this blog.

A chess writer becomes involved in a deadly (and goofy) game of wits with a killer

Scared Stiff (1945) (aka "Treasure of Fear")
Starring: Jack Haley, Ann Savage, Veda Ann Borg, Buddy Swan, Lucien Littlefield, Arthur Aylesworth, and Barton MacLane
Director:  Frank McDonald
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A hapless chess editor (Haley) becomes the prime suspect in a murder while getting caught up in a scheme to steal a valuable and historically significant chess set.

"Scared Stiff" is a light and fluffy comedy mystery that you're bound to forget five minutes after it's over. It's lots of fun while it's unfolding, but there isn't anything particularly remarkable about its story, its characters, or anything else really.

What makes this somewhat unremarkable film worth watching is the cast, particularly the leads of Jack Haley and Ann Savage. The characters' past relationship (as well as a mutual attraction that is stifled by shyness and social propriety respectively) is established with some deft writing and some skilled acting on Savage's part. Haley, meanwhile, plays the befuddled, goodhearted character I previously saw him do in "One Body Too Many" and its even more fun to watch him here than in the previous films as he gets to play off several cantankerous and threatening characters, as well as the charming Ann Savage and the aggressive man-eater portrayed by Veda Ann Borg.

Another character that adds to the fun is the sadistic child prodigy played by Buddy Swan. I don't usually wish for child characters to get murdered, but here I was rooting for the killer to put him out of everyone's misery. This character's absolute loathsomeness is a testiment to both the writing and the acting that went into making him.

On the downside, the film's climax is a bit of a misfire--it's almost as if the writers ran dry on the last few pages and weren't quite sure how to tie up the kookiness of the previous hour or so. Tied into this is the disappointing way the subplot that brought the chess reporter out of his usual element is resolved. He was given the field assignment because every other staff writer was out chasing leads about an escaped convict, but entirely too little comes of this in the end, especially considering the part of the escapee was played by Barton McLane (of the Torchy Blane series).

In the final analysis, the good outweighs the bad here, and a strong cast makes a completely forgettable film worth watching.

Russ Heath passes away at 91

On August 23, 2018, another one of the great comic artists passed way: Russ Heath.

Russ Heath may not be as famous as he deserves to be, because he drew very few superhero comics. The closest he came were a few Batman stories (which he himself described as "failures" in a 2007 interview) and a handful of Punisher stories. He spent most of his seven decades as a professional comics artist (and just plain old illustrator for that matter) drawing everything BUT superheroes--war, horror, satire, adventure, western, science fiction, fantasy, romance... he did it all.

Here's a gallery of illustrations in memory of an artistic giant. (For the record, I LOVED those issues of "Legends of the Dark Knight" that Heath himself thought were failures.)

'Murder on the Bridle Path' disappoints

Murder on the Bridle Path (1936)
Starring: James Gleason, Helen Broderick, Louise Latimer, John Carroll, Owen Davis Jr., Christian Rub, Leslie Fenton, John Miltern, Willy Best, and Sheila Terry
Directors: William Hamilton and Edward Killy
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

When the murder of a young woman (Terry) is disguised to look like a riding accident, Police Inspector Oscar Piper (Gleason) once again receives assistance from his friend and amateur detective Hildegarde Withers (Broderick) in sorting truth from lies and shady characters from murderers.

"Murder on the Bridle Path" is the fourth film in the Hildegarde Withers series and the first one to feature an actress other than Edna May Oliver in the role of sleuthing school marm Ms. Withers. It's also the weakest entry so far.

While the replacement of the self-described "horse-faced" Oliver with the "moon-faced" and younger Helen Broderick is an immediately noticeable change, it's not actually the problem that does the movie in; Broderick actually does a good job as the acerbic school teacher. No, what damages this movie beyond saving is its script.

The Hildegarde Withers movies are detective movies, but they are also comedies. While the detective side of things is passable, the attempts at comedy are absolute and total disasters. I don't think I have seen a movie where almost every single laugh line is a complete dud--and the only remotely funny one is responded to  by a character with "are you trying to be funny?" (To which I actually said to the screen, "Yes! And he's the only one who's succeeded so far!")

Another drawback is that Oscar Piper is portrayed as an absolute moron in this film. It's like the character, who was previously shown to be a good and intelligent police officer that sometimes goes for the first obvious suspect due to pressure from his superiors, was replaced with the stock stupid cop character that so often infests B-movie murder mysteries. This is even worse than the unfunny quips, because even if you can't write comedy to save your life, you can at least get established characters right when working on a series.

On the positive side, Helen Broderick is actually a nice replace for Oliver, since she has Hildegarde Withers' crisp and caustic attitude down pat. Broderick was also an accomplished comedic actress, so this SHOULD also have been a positive. Unfortunately, the material she has to work with in this film is so unfunny that you can't tell. Perhaps her comedic gifts saved this film from being even more miserable than it is... but I think it's more likely that it proves that even a good actor can't save bad material (no matter what the saying says).