Flesh 1932 - A lesson in love

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IMDB rating: 6,5

Director: John Ford
Main Cast: Wallace Beery, Ricardo Cortez, Karen Morley, Jean Hersholt

"Flesh was one of the few big-studio films to deal with the subject of professional wrestling - at least until Hulk Hogan came along in the 1980s. Wallace Beery stars as a thickheaded waiter in a German beer garden who uses his muscles to clear out rowdy patrons. Beery channels his strength into a wrestling career, grappling his way up to the championship. His wife Karen Morley enjoys the creature comforts of Beery's success, but her heart belongs to her ex-lover Ricardo Cortez, and soon Karen is stepping out on her husband. Beery finds out and exacts a terrible revenge on Cortez - just minutes after Karen wises up and realizes she loves Beery after all. John Ford directed Flesh in a heavy Germanic fashion reminiscent of the Emil Jannings 'cuckolded husband' melodramas of the 1920s." - www.allmovie.com

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The champ 1931 - A heartwarming film about parents and children

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IMDB rating: 7,3

Director: King Vidor
Main Cast: Wallace Beery, Jackie Cooper, Irene Rich, Roscoe Ates

"Wallace Beery won an Academy Award for his tour de force performance as a washed-up boxer. The bibulous Beery travels from one tank-town bout to another in the company of his faithful son Jackie Cooper and his stuttering manager Roscoe Ates. Hoping for a comeback in Tijuana, Beery is approached by his ex-wife Irene Rich, now married to wealthy Hale Hamilton. Rich convinces Beery that Cooper would be better off with her. Feigning brusqueness, Beery orders his son to get lost, hoping that the kid will be disillusioned enough to remain with his mother. But Cooper runs away from his new home and shows up back in Tijuana, just as Beery is in the middle of his comeback bout. Cheered on by his son, Beery knocks his opponent cold - and then collapses himself. Dying, Beery tells the tearful Cooper that everything will be all right if the boy returns to his mom. While Wallace Beery was capable of laying on pathos with a trowel, his final scene in The Champ can still move an audience to tears - far more so than the similar scene between Jon Voight and Rick Schroeder in the wearisome 1979 remake. In 1953, writer Frances Marion updated and revised her Champ script, changed the washed-up pug to a washed-up comedian, and came up with The Clown, one of Red Skelton's few dramatic vehicles." - www.allmovie.com

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The big house 1930 - Putting the prison pictures genre on the map

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IMDB rating: 7,2

Director: George W. Hill
Main Cast: Chester Morris, Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone, Robert Montgomery, Leila Hyams

"The Big House established the prison drama as a motion picture genre, as it set new standards in realistic sound recording. Even by MGM's lofty standards, the film had high production values: the Cedric Gibbons-designed sets vividly recreated the harsh, sometimes brutal life inside U.S. prisons in the 1930s, and Douglas Shearer's Oscar-winning sound effects accentuated the stark visual tone. The sensation of bullets whizzing, rattling, and clanking off metal bars was a thrill to audiences who were embracing the transition away from silent films. Big House proved to be a star-making vehicle for Wallace Beery, who had been cast in the film only after the death of the studio's first choice, Lon Chaney. Frances Marion garnered a Best Writing Oscar for her screenplay, making her the first woman to receive an Academy Award outside of the Best Actress category." - www.allmovie.com

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The secret six 1931 - A terrific cast makes this early gangster flick

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IMDB rating: 6,4

Director: George W. Hill
Main Cast: Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone, Johnny Mack Brown, Jean Harlow, Marjorie Rambeau, Clark Gable, Ralph Bellamy, John Miljan

"George W. Hill's The Secret Six was an unlikely subject for an MGM feature - its story of bootleggers battling the law and each other is closer to what Warner Bros. was doing at the start of the 1930s. (One can also see some unique MGM touches in the production - the apartment in which Jean Harlow's character is set up by her mobster/lover Wallace Beery is more elegant, in the best Art Deco design, than anything that would have turned up in a Warner Bros. drama of this sort). And the presence of Clark Gable in a leading role here, and the modest similarities in the plot to Warner Bros.' Little Caesar (released three months earlier) have a certain irony - Gable had been up for the role of Edward G. Robinson's best friend (who eventually helps bring him down) when that earlier film was in pre-production in 1930. He gave such a strong performance in this movie, however, and showed he could dominate the screen so successfully, that he landed a long-term contract with MGM on the strength of his performance here. And Gable is the sparkplug that drives the movie - Wallace Beery is okay, doing what he did best as a sometimes comically uncouth but vicious villain; Jean Harlow is good to look at and acquits herself well as an actress; and Lewis Stone is surprisingly effective as a lawyer whose contact with his criminal clients goes far beyond representing them in court. There are also some tense and well-staged scenes, such as an execution in a subway car, but the movie also creaks in spots where it should roll along smoothly, as was a risk with any talkie in 1931; and the director wasn't quite up to carrying it over those patches - except when Gable is on the screen. There is also some fairly snappy dialogue, courtesy of Hill's wife Frances Marion, and it helps; but the whole notion of a group of masked citizens organizing a secret war against the mob will seem even sillier today than it probably did to anyone who stopped to think about it in 1931. Oddly enough, despite the plot holes and a certain unreality to the briskness of some of the events depicted, this movie was very topical for its time - the exploits of Chicago mobster Al Capone were the obvious basis for some of the misdeeds attributed to Beery's Louis Scorpio, and Capone was indicted for tax evasion (one of the charges leveled at Scorpio) in 1931. As a multi-layered curio, in the career of Clark Gable, as an MGM crime film, and a piece of topical filmmaking, The Secret Six is worth a look - and at its best, it's also an old-style thrill ride." - www.allmovie.com

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Min and Bill 1930 - Dressler and Beery shining in the leads

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021148/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 7,5

Director: George W. Hill
Main Cast: Marie Dressler, Wallace Beery, Dorothy Jordan, Marjorie Rambeau

"Min and Bill was incredibly popular upon its release, turning Marie Dressler overnight into the hottest (and most unlikely) star in Hollywood. Modern audiences may not understand the uproar over the film itself, but Dressler's Academy Award-winning performance is still every bit as lustrous as it was in 1930. Dressler, not a great beauty even in her younger days, nevertheless manages to light up the screen with her oversized, warm-hearted turn. She's a force of nature, a tidal wave that sweeps along everything in her path - or would, if she wasn't paired with the equally imposing Wallace Beery. Beery keeps Dressler from dominating the film, especially surprising since her character - and not his - is really the focus. Together, this unlikely duo form one of the most loveable and endearing comic-romantic teams the screen has ever seen. Their chemistry is nothing short of remarkable, and they help to bring out the very best in each other's work. The rest of the cast doesn't stand a chance, although Marjorie Rambeau does manage to get in a couple of licks of her own. As stated, as a film Min doesn't stand the test of time so well. The mixture of the comic and the tragic is a bit jarring, and the blatant manipulation is often too bald-faced. In addition, some viewers will be made uncomfortable by the matter-of-fact manner in which some of the violence is played for comedy. But as long as Dressler and Beery are around, it doesn't really matter." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/min-and-bill-v32734

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Dinner at eight 1933 - A movie with romance, glamour, wit, charm and intrigue

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023948/
IMDB rating: 7,9

Director: George Cukor
Main Cast: Marie Dressler, John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Jean Harlow, Lionel Barrymore, Billie Burke, Madge Evans

"Based on the Broadway hit by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, Dinner at Eight is a near-flawless comedy/drama with an all-star cast at the peak of their talents. Social butterfly Mrs. Oliver Jordan (Billie Burke) arranges a dinner party that will benefit the busines of her husband (Lionel Barrymore). Among the invited are a crooked executive (Wallace Beery), who is in the process of ruining Jordan; his wife (Jean Harlow), who is carrying on an affair with a doctor (Edmund Lowe); a fading matinee idol (John Barrymore), who has squandered his fortune on liquor and is romantically involved with the Jordan daughter (Madge Evans); and a venerable stage actress (Marie Dressler), who since losing all her money has become a 'professional guest'. Nothing goes as planned, due to various suicides, double-crosses, compromises, fatal illness, and servant problems. But dinner is served precisely at eight.
Dinner at Eight is, above all else, about changes: changes in society where graceful old money is about to be supplanted by the new and crass; changes in the motion picture business where talkies turn silent stars into alcoholic has-beens; and changes in industry, where, according to Jean Harlow's brassy Kitty Packard, 'machines are taking the place of every profession'. After which observation, of course, Marie Dressler, as the grand Mrs. Patrick Campbell-like stage diva, delivers one of the screen's most memorable closing lines, 'That my dear', she intones, giving the bleach blonde the once-over, 'is something you never need to worry about!' It is a delicious moment in a film positively giddy with such bon mots and brimming with performances as fresh today as they were in 1933. Were Dressler, Harlow, Billie Burke, or the Barrymore brothers ever better? Although director George Cukor and producer David O. Selznick deserved much of the credit, they were, of course, heavily indebted to a sparkling screenplay penned by Frances Marion, Herman J. Mankiewicz, and Donald Ogden Stewart. It is to the credit of all these talented professionals that Dinner at Eight manages to amuse and delight even the jaded audiences of today, in contrast, perhaps, to its equally famous predecessor, the rather overstuffed and decidedly dated Grand Hotel (1932)." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/dinner-at-eight-v13816

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