The range feud 1931 - Jones and Wayne: two generations of cowboys

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IMDB rating: 5,8

Director: D. Ross Lederman
Main Cast: Buck Jones, John Wayne, Susan Fleming

"Buck Jones is supported by a very young John Wayne in this fine Western from his early years at Columbia Pictures.
They play stepbrothers involved in a feud between the Turners and the Waltons. Clint Turner (Wayne) is forbidden to visit Judy Walton (Susan Fleming) by her father, John (Edward J. LeSaint). He does so anyway and is conveniently blamed for old man Walton's murder. Forced to arrest his stepbrother, Sheriff Buck Gordon (Jones) decides to investigate the real reason for the feud. After being shot and wounded by a mysterious figure, Buck discovers that a cattle rustler, Vandall (Harry Woods), is stirring up the bad blood between the families for his own nefarious purposes. When Vandall is proven guilty of Walton's murder, the feud comes to a peaceful end and Clint and Judy are reunited.
While Wayne disliked working with Tim McCoy, another Columbia Western star, he came to admire the amiable Jones, a friendship that lasted until Jones' death. Wayne, as befitted his low status in Hollywood in 1931, is playing little more than a supporting character, but he still managed to have a quarrel with the powers at be, and, despite his friendship with Jones, vowed never to work for Columbia again, a promise he kept. Range Feud was unofficially remade by Jones as The Red Rider (1934), a 15-chapter Universal serial featuring Grant Withers as the stepbrother falsely accused of murder." - www.allmovie.com

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Broadminded 1931 - A Joe E. Brown vehicle with scenes stealing presence of Lugosi

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IMDB rating: 5,9

Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Main Cast: Joe E. Brown, Ona Munson, William Collier Jr., Marjorie White, Margaret Livingstone, Thelma Todd, Bela Lugosi

"Comic Joe E. Brown scores another hit in this very humorous little Pre-Code film which gives him free rein to engage in his madcap capers. Here he plays the supposedly responsible young man chosen to chaperone his highly libidinous cousin after the latter is forced to beat a hasty retreat from a Big City scandal. Brown, of course, proves remarkably capable of causing trouble wherever they travel, thus providing the film with much of its plot. With his large rubbery face & huge mouth a constant source of amusement, Brown enters the movie with much hilarity - costumed as a bawling infant at the baby party which opens the film. Further on, the scene where he finds himself locked out of his hotel room in his underwear is particularly jovial.
Most of the cast is on hand to provide support during Brown's antics: William Collier Jr. as his frisky cousin; Holmes Herbert as Collier's stern New York City father; Margaret Livingston as Collier's vindictive former flame; Ona Munson as Collier's new heart throb; Grayce Hampton as her frightful aunt.
Even perky little Marjorie White, as Brown's new gal pal, is not given much to do. The two major exceptions are statuesque Thelma Todd, delightful as a compliant actress eager to help the boys out of a nasty jam, and marvelous Bela Lugosi - the same year he would become an international star as Count Dracula - lending his malevolent presence as the fierce Gentleman From South America who menaces Brown throughout the film."

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Rich and strange 1931 - One of Hitchcock's best early talkies

Joan Barry in Rich and Strange (1931)

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IMDB rating: 6,0

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Main Cast: Henry Kendall, Joan Barry, Percy Marmont, Betty Amann, Elsie Randolph

"Rich and Strange is an off-beat and interesting, if not totally successful, film. Clearly, devotees of Alfred Hitchcock will take to it more than average filmgoers; the latter will probably be disappointed to discover that it is not a thriller, as they might expect from the 'Master'. But if they can get over this disappointment, they will find much to appreciate, including a story that doesn't go exactly where one expects and an odd mixture of the comic and the melodramatic. True, Hitchcock doesn't blend these two styles seamlessly, but that helps to give the film its unique impact. The film is schizophrenic in other ways, especially in its attempt to be both a silent film and a talkie, and this can be disconcerting; but it does allow the director to take advantage of the fluidity of the silent camera. (He also has a delightful time experimenting with a few new effects, such as making the words on a dinner menu fly off the page.) And the opening commuter sequence is a gem. Henry Kendall and Joan Barry are a bit wan as the leads; she in particular has a peculiar delivery, and he has several moments that grate, but they overall are adequate. Much better are Betty Amann as the gold digging princess and the wonderful Elsie Randolph, whose old lady is both annoying and strangely endearing. If the various components of Rich and Strange never really coalesce, the film is still intriguing and enjoyable.
Partly a sophisticated sex comedy, partly a grim seafaring melodrama, Rich and Strange had the negative effect of confusing the public in general and Hitchcock's fans in particular, and as a result the film, which remains one of Hitch's best early talkies, died at the box office." - www.allmovie.com

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Sporting blood 1931 - Gable in his first top billed role

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IMDB rating: 6,2

Director: Charles J. Brabin
Main Cast: Clark Gable, Madge Evans, Ernest Torrence, Lew Cody, Marie Prevost

"Clark Gable went from supporting actor to star in the space of one year with Sporting Blood, adapted from a novel by Frederick Hazlitt Brennan. Gable is top-billed as a gambling house proprietor named Rid Riddell. When the owner of a prize thoroughbred loses heavily in Riddell's establishment, he is forced to give up the horse to the gambler as security. Rid enters the horse in several honest races, then pulls the animal during a crucial race in order to collect big money on the losses; then he plans to dope up the horse to assure future wins. But when the horse loses, the gambler, deeply in debt to mobsters, transfers ownership to one of his female dealers (Madge Evans), and then drops out of the plotline.
This film is a classic example of the old studio system at work. Both Madge Evans, and Clark Gable, were brand new at MGM. The studio bosses weren't at all sure how well either star would fare with the public. In fact, there is a sense of freshness about this film. It hasn't the ordinary Hollywood veneer to it. It makes no pretensions and avoids clichés typical of so many similar films of the 1930s. Evans and Gable are absolutely marvelous in their respective roles. Gable isn't really the lead in Sporting Blood - actually he's something of a rat - but he's the one whom everybody in the audience remembers long after the final fadeout." - www.allmovie.com

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Murder at midnight 1931 - Standard 30's murder mystery

Publicity picture of Alice White circa 1931

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IMDB rating: 5,7

Director: Frank R. Strayer
Main Cast: Aileen Pringle, Alice White, Hale Hamilton, Robert Elliott

"A sophisticated, expensively-dressed group of people gather in a spooky old mansion to watch the first performance of a play. The highlight of the production is a realistic on-stage murder, wherein the victim is shot point-blank, right through the heart, as the clock strikes 12. The audience applauds enthusiastically as the 'victim' falls dead, but the applause subsides and gives way to screams of terror when it turns out that the murder is for real! With everyone in the mansion under suspicion - including, naturally, the butler - the cops are baffled, and even more so when the primary suspect ends up as victim number two. 'This isn't a murder case, it's an epidemic!' moans one of the detectives. Intricately plotted, and with a genuinely surprising solution, Murder at Midnight is far and away superior to your average low-budget mystery. Poor 'blonde dumbbell' Alice White was often given short shrift by bluenosed reviewers who found her coarse, but she is really quite amusing in this above-average whodunit from Tiffany Productions, which came with surprisingly sturdy production values and a good screenplay by W. Scott Darling and director Frank R. Strayer. So good, in fact, that Darling used it again in 1939 as Mr. Wong in Chinatown and for the 1947 Charlie Chan mystery The Chinese Ring. Neither of the remakes, however, employed White, whose starring career fizzled in the early '30s." - www.allmovie.com

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Arizona 1931 - The Blonde makes life rough for the Duke

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IMDB rating: 6,1

Director: George B. Seitz
Main Cast: John Wayne, Laura La Plante, June Clyde, Forrest Stanley

"When Lt. Bob Denton (John Wayne) tells his girlfriend Evelyn (Laura La Plante) that he has no intention of marrying her, she takes her revenge by romancing Denton's protege and father figure Colonel Bonham (Forrest Stanley). Unbeknownst to Evelyn (La Plante), Denton (Wayne) begins to court Evelyn's younger sister Bonita (June Clyde). It doesn't take long for Denton to fall in love with Bonita (Clyde), and the former ladies man decides to commit to their relationship. Though a reformed Denton secretly marries Bonita, Evelyn finds a way to convince the Colonel that Denton had made illicit advances at her. Feeling angry and betrayed, Colonal Bonham asks for Denton's resignation.
Early in his career, when the Duke worked at Columbia Pictures, Harry Cohn tried him out in this romantic vehicle, for which he received second billing to Laura LaPlante, who plays a scorned Evelyn eventually getting her chance to make Bob pay for calling it quits. As one of the first films that gave Wayne significant billing, he holds his own against his equally forgettable cast mates. As a romantic actor, he fails to impress in his clinches with either of his lovers but it's obvious he had a long way to go to become a good actor in great movies." - 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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