'Thundering Tenors' sees a party ruined

Thundering Tenors (1931)
Starring: Charley Chase, Lena Malena, Lillian Elliot, Dorothy Granger, Elizabeth Forrester, and Edward Dillon
Director: James W. Horne
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A socially inept radio star (Chase) causes chaos while trying to fit in at a high society dinner party hosted by his girlfriend's parents (Dillon and Elliot)

"Thundering Tenors" gets off to a slow start, but when it kicks into gear about five minutes in, it speeds ever-quicker down a path of growing craziness. The film is at its funniest and wildest when Chase gets into a running fight and wrestling match with a doctor played by Lena Malena in one of the biggest roles of her short career. She is called after Chase gets a fishbone stuck in his throat and the party's host calls for a doctor who lives nearby to come to his aid. The doctor, though, is a chiropractor who tries to use spinal and neck adjustments to get the bone loose, Chase doesn't appreciate her application of "medicine" and the hilarious fight mentioned above breaks out. (Interestingly, another Hal Roach-produced short released later the same year featured a similarly comic chiropractor--the inaugural teaming of Thelma Todd and ZaSu Pitts, "Let's Do Things". Either the screenwriter involved with both, H.M. Walker, found chiropractors and their "adjustments" funny, or chiropractic quackery was a common target of pop cultural mockery.)

The actors are all perfect in their parts, with Charley Chase being particularly charming and funny, with Lena Malena being hilariously physical in her fight with him. Unfortunately, those performances are undermined by inexplicable and unnecessary sound effects that someone must have thought were funny (like musical notes underscoring pratfalls, or the sound of tearing cloth as Chase undresses for "treatment" by the doctor); they don't ruin the movie, but they do make it less enjoyable. Another curious element of the film is that, despite the title, the presence of a band, and the fact that Chase is playing a supposedly famous singer, there isn't really a musical number in the film.


"Thundering Tenors" is one of 17 short films included in the two DVD set Charley Chase at Hal Roach: 1930 - 1931. It promises to be the first installment in a comprehensive collection of Chase's talkies.

Christmas is Coming...

... and rather than hang the wreath here at Shades of Gray, Dorothy Granger decided to hang *with* the wreath.

Hopefully, you're having an easier time decorating your place than we're having around here!

'Hit the Ice' has Bud & Lou at their finest

Hit the Ice (1943)
Starring: Lou Costello, Bud Abbott, Ginny Sims, Patric Knowles, Sheldon Leonard, Elyse Knox, Mark Lawrence, Joe Sawyer, and Johnny Long
Director: Charles Lamont and Erle C. Kenton
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A pair of photographers (Abbott & Costello) accidentally become entangled in a bank heist and are mistaken for the robbers. As they try to clear their names, the actual thieves want to tie up loose ends by eliminating them when they cross paths again at a ski resort in Sun Valley.

"Hit the Ice" is a solid Abbott & Costello film. Almost every routine is perfect from set-up through execution, the plot that carries us from gag to gag is just enough to keep things moving, with the schemes of the villains providing suspense and connecting the various characters to each other as the paper thin story unfolds. The film is further lifted by the fact that, unlike in several other films that Abbott & Costello made together, their characters are written in such a way that viewers can believe that they're friends, because Abbott isn't as cruel and vicious toward Costello as his characters sometimes are. In fact, this may be one of the most cheerful A&C movies, because sympathetic character truly is smpathetic, Abbott and Costello are both portraying characters who are genuinely nice, and everyone comes out ahead in the end (except the bad guys of course); they get theirs in an extended and very funny and cartoonish skiing sequence.

As with many (most?) of Abbott & Costello's films, there's an attractive couple or two in the supporting cast that are acting out a romantic subplot. While the attractive couples are here, the romantic subplot is so light so as to be non-existent... while Costello becoming smitten with songstress Ginny Sims more or less erases her romance with band leader Johnny Long until the very end of the movie. It's a nice change of pace, and it's even nicer to see Abbott try to help his buddy impress and obtain the unobtainable girl instead of just dismissing him.

Unfortunately, for all its strengths, the weak parts of this movie are really weak... and they are all related to the film's musical numbers. Singer Ginny Sims, together with Johnny Long and His Orchestra, perform five different songs, each less interesting than the one before. The movie even more-or-less ends with them performing a song, ensuring that the final impression the movie will leave you with is boredom instead of cheerfulness--despite the great performances from Abbott & Costello. The boring musical numbers make the one sequence in the film that drags on seem even longer. About halfway though the movie, the ice-skating hijinx implied in the title arrive, but they quickly become unwelcome as Costello's pratfalls grow repetitive, the ice dancing goes on for too long, and it's all set too the seemingly never-ending and absolutely terrible song "The Double-Slap Polka" performed by Sims and Long's orchestra. The boring musical numbers cost this film a Star, and if it hadn't been for the superior material that Abbott & Costello had to work with here, they could have ruined the whole movie.

"Hit the Ice" is a really fun movie that I think lovers of classic comedies will enjoy... so long as they keep in mind that the reward for sitting through the boring songs is getting to see Abbott & Costello at their best.

Picture Perfect Wednesday: Christmas Carole

Carole Lombard is trying to guess what's in the Christmas gifts. What's your favorite approach to figuring out what's in the packages under the tree?

Tuneful Tuesday with Big Bad Voodoo Daddy

Big Bad Voodoo Daddy is a modern band that plays music like that featured in many of the films reviewed on this blog. Today's song so authentic-sounding that it should have been set to a video featuring cartoon characters that are constantly bouncing to the beat.

'Horse Feathers' is high-quality nonsense

With the college football season coming to an end for 2018, it seemed like the perfect time to rewatch one of my favorite Marx Brothers films with an eye toward reviewing it for Shades of Gray. And it was.

Horse Feathers (1932)
Starring: The Marx Brothers, Thelma Todd, Nat Pendleton, and James Pierce
Director: Norman McLeod
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

A crazy university president (Groucho Marx) tries to rig the Big Football Game against a rival school... with disastrous results.

"Horse Feathers" is one of the greatest movies the Marx Brothers ever made. It is an almost non-stop barrage of wild comedy--both visual, physical, and spoken--that is book-ended by my most favorite Marx Brothers song and dance routine--"Whatever It Is, I'm Against It"--and the craziest football spoof ever committed to film. Every joke and gag comes off perfectly, and the Marx Brothers are all top form, even the straight-man of the group, Zeppo, shines as a college football star and son of the university's president.

The stellar performances from the Marx Brothers are ably supported by equally great showings from Nat Pendleton (who appears as a football player) and Thelma Todd (who proves here that she will forever be one of the sexiest commedienes in history; films like this really show what a great loss to the world her tragic and premature death  was). Todds comedic timing is absolutely perfect throughout this film, as she vamps it up as a campus man-eater and femme fatale with the scenes she shares with Chico and Groucho being among the film's brightest highlights.

There is really only one part of the film that doesn't click is the musical number performed by Harpo in an attemtp to woo Thelma Todd's character. It goes on for too long and it brings the movie to a screeching halt for over three minutes. Yes, "Everyone Says I Love You" is a nice tune and Harpo plays beautifully, but the segment is out of place... and Zeppo and Groucho's respective uses of the verses of the same song in serenading Todd don't interrupt the flow of this zany movie. (In fact, Groucho's performance and its aftermath cranks it up a notch.)

There are few films I have watched more than once--there are simply too many movies in the world--but I am glad that I now number "Horse Feathers" among them. This second viewing was time well spent.

The Milla Jovovich Quarterly

Who is that masked Milla?!

Torchy is Returned to Her Roots

Torchy Gets Her Man (1938)
Starring: Glenda Farrell, Barton MacLane, Tom Kennedy, and Willard Robertson
Director: William Beaudine
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

A counterfeiting ring, led by the elusive "100 Dollar Bill" Bailey (Robertson) engages in an elaborate deception to trick police detective Steve McBride (MacLane) and his superiors in the police department into thinking they are Secret Service agents conducting a sting operation and to inadvertently give them cover to operate. Meanwhile, his fiance, crime reporter Torchy Blane (Farrell), hopes those Secret Service agents will provide her with leads for her investigative article about Bailey and his career in crime, and she badgers a vacationing police officer (Kennedy) into helping her tail them.

"Torchy Blane Gets Her Man", the sixth film in this series, sees Glenda Farrell return as the character she originated... and it's great to have her back. It's also great to have the character back in full hard-nosed, dedicated crusading reporter mode, something that had faded in the two previous installments where Torchy was more a trickster and action heroine respectively.

While Farrell and the return of Classic Torchy is enough to boost this film, it is further enriched by a brazen and coldhearted villain with a clever scheme that, although I doubt it would ever work in the real world, makes for great movie entertainment. It also provides some nice old-school melodrama action during the third act with all the main characters assembled in house where a time bomb is counting down to their demise. We also get lots of Tom Kennedy's dimwitted Gahagan... and the dynamic between Torchy being the "straight-man" to his goofiness is a joy to behold. The only returning performer who doesn't shine is Barton MacLane, partly because Steve McBride is sidelined for most of the story, but also because some of the life seems to have gone out of MacLane's performance. He also appears puffier than he did in the previous three movies; perhaps he was ill, or maybe he just wasn't interested in even being on the set?

There are, however, two crucial aspects that prevent this film from being as great as it could have been. First, the film feels cheaper than previous installments, with a cramped feeling about most of the sets as well as a very sloppy use of stock footage badly matched to the sequence it's inserted into; the Torchy Blane films have always been low-budget B-pictures, but this is the first one that looks like it. Second, the story suffers from the same flaw that undermined "Torchy Blane in Panama"--Torchy ultimately ends up as a "damsel in distress" that must be rescued by her boyfriend. It's more deftly done here, but it would still have been nice if Torchy had played a more active role in the film's resolution.

"Torchy Gets Her Man" is included on DVD with the rest of the films in this classic 1930s series in the Torchy Blane Collection from the Warner Archives.

Sondra Locke passes away at 74

Actress, director, and film producer Sondra Locke passed away on November 3, 2018. She is best known for appearing in a string of films with Clint Eastwood during the 1970s and 1980s, as well as her later court battles with Eastwood and Warner Bros.

Locke was romantically involved with Eastwood for 14 years, and after he abruptly ended their relationship by literally moving her and her belongings out of his house, he covertly sabotaged her career by using his influence at Warner Bros. Locke sued both Eastwood and the studio for breach of contract and fraud in cases that were ultimately settled out of court. But the damage had been done.

Due to the after-effects of Eastwood's interference, and Locke's on-again, off-again battles with cancer, between the years of 1983 (her last film with Eastwood) and 2017, the once-busy actress only appeared in six more projects (two of those being television series episodes), and her directing career never truly got off the ground.

Sondra Locke was born in May 28, 1944 in Alabama. She made her first film appearance in the 1968 film "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter", in which she played a 14-year-old and landed the part by lying about her age. Aside from her screen appearances with Eastwood in "The Gauntlet" and "Sudden Impact," this first film is what she was most famous for.

Christmas is Coming...

... and Ann Miller wants to remind Santa what might happen if he doesn't bring her what she wants this year. (She did not, apparently, learn anything form the example of Kathy Griffin's photo-shoot with the severed head of a much-respected figure.)