Libeled Lady (1936)

Libeled Lady
Directed by Jack Conway
Starring: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy, Jean Harlow
Grade: A –

A viewing of “Libeled Lady” at least illuminates something that had been puzzling me for a while: that Best Picture Oscar snub for “My Man Godfrey.” Why vote for ‘Godfrey’ – its collection of actors far more deserving than a sparkling but philosophically conflicted script – when you can throw a bone to Jack Conway’s “Libeled Lady,” a spicier, more capable comedy about duping daffy socialites? Of course, the question should be why Conway’s film didn’t land nominations for its cast, led by a supreme William Powell (nominated for ‘Godfrey’) and loaded with great supporting turns from Loy, Tracy, and Harlow. The film showcases the strengths of screwball comedy – particularly its canny measure of deceit, which appears to set characters up for a fall before harmlessly snatching them from the jaws of self-destruction. Rallying us to the corner of the newspaper industry works because the film portrays it as a hopeless instigator of its own downfall, while the genre’s trademark gender politics has rarely felt as incisive as within the central relationship between old favourites Powell and Loy.

If There's Anything He's a Sucker For, It's Licorice

Sixty years since Adam's Rib, wouldn't you know? Sixty years since Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn went to battle in the ultimate battle-of-the sexes. I slate Tracy a fair bit on this blog but I'll give him his due here, he's wonderful, and I've yet to see a better performance from 1949.

Men of the Thirties: 1938

The Nominees Were:

Charles Boyer in Algiers
James Cagney in Angels With Dirty Faces
Robert Donat in The Citadel
Leslie Howard in Pygmalion
Spencer Tracy in Boys Town

And the Winner Was:

Spencer Tracy in Boys Town

(Spoiler Alert!)
I find this the most baffling decision of the decade. James Cagney's NYFCC-winning performance is far more interesting than any of his competitors, and he does everything asked of a Hollywood leading man i.e. have tough, masculine presence, a soft(ish) interior, and die a hero. The only missing link was the lack of a Best Picture nomination for Angels with Dirty Faces, which has its faults but is far more competent than some of the nominees (I'm looking at you, Capra and Taurog). I imagine this is the kind of decision that saw Katharine Hepburn win in 1967 and '81 and could have seen Jack Nicholson's touching but hardly worthy Warren Schmidt tie Kate's four-win record seven years ago. Cagney and Donat may have been close but both end up cigarless.

My Ratings (in order of preference):-

**** James Cagney in Angels with Dirty Faces

Akin to a bout of German expressionism James Cagney's Caligari eyes are fierce, and the strutting, plucky way that Cagney conducts himself indicates a man who means business. Angels with Dirty Faces is a deceptively light title for what becomes a rather heavy film, but it's an apt way to depict Rocky Sullivan and his band of criminal kids. Charming, cocky tearaways in a similar sense to Fagin's pickpockets in Oliver! Cagney plays his role as a semi-willing mentor (willing in the sense that it elevates his own prestige) with extravagant, streetwise fervour, beying everyone in sight to challenge his gangland superiority. Rocky doesn't have that much actual power, but you wouldn't know it.

*** Leslie Howard in Pygmalion

It's nigh-on impossible to match the overt chauvinism of Rex Harrison in pretty much everything, and Howard as Professor Henry Higgins comes across as a much less relevant part of the film. He knows that Eliza Dolittle is the showpiece of the production and gives way to her in a similar vein as he did Bette Davis in Of Human Bondage. He bounces off her well and their mini-battles are as uproariously funny here as they are in the Best Picture-winning musical adaptation.

*** Robert Donat in The Citadel

I feel sorry for Donat, who proves -- as he did in '35 -- that he is such a likeable and charming screen presence. The Citadel has promise but ends up marooning him when the ideas dissipate, and in the final act of this film Donat is utterly helpless and ineffective. Prior to that he illustrates his character's ethical dilemna readily, somewhat disguising the insipid attempts to generate drama. He carefully develops the changing perspective of Dr. Andrew towards his profession and I had actually grown attached to the character by the time the wheels started falling off.

*** Charles Boyer in Algiers

I like Algiers much more than any of the films nominated in this category, but certainly not for its acting. The tone of the film lunges violently but Boyer stays pretty much the same, and the role requires similar things of him as the previous year's Conquest. A gangster in a much different sense to Cagney he's an elusive, no-nonsense figurehead that crumbles into a songster at the sight of Hedy Lamarr (who can blame him, huh?). But Boyer captures the tragedy of a man trapped in a district, top dog in a prison, bound by limitations, much more successfully than he ever captured Napoleon's ambition.

* Spencer Tracy in Boys Town

Tracy sidles around as a mentor figure who, unlike Cagney's Rocky, has no flaws to speak of. Father Flanagan is at the head of Boys Town's admirable but lightweight advertisement for juvenile reform, and has to sort out the restlessness of Mickey Rooney et al. He does this through the occasional lecture, which Tracy can dole out in his sleep, and he is thoroughly incapable of contributing any grit or bite to the character. A bitter disappointment.

The Snubbed

***** Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby (& Holiday)

Not one but two classic star turns they spurned. Grant's best comes when he reacts to the ever-increasing mania going on all around him, (i.e. in Arsenic and Old Lace, possibly the finest comedic performance there's ever been). In BUB his behaviour and rationality fades in sync with this ever-maddening environment, his character eventually reduced from skepticism to acceptance in what is a rousing reversal. After all, would a man really fall in love with a girl who ransacked his wedding, lumbered him with a leopard, and single-handedly dismantled his relationship?

*** Henry Fonda in Jezebel

Another man Bette Davis swallows and spits out, but this time she doesn't have the guy quite where she wants him. Henry Fonda wouldn't say boo to a goose in many of his films and his cowardice reaches a height when he reacts to Davis's famous brazen red-dress humiliation with the trepidation of a square society Duke. Fonda is totally right for the part -- cute, investable, self-important -- but when the going gets tough the tough get going (thank you, Billy Ocean) and even though you could maybe fall in love with this guy his predictability is ultimately sad. Davis is stellar and the film ain't so much about him, but he does everything you'd ask of the character.

** Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood

This is silly fun: Flynn is such a poser, and uses his bravado to craft Robin Hood into a dastardly commodity. The film is really all a technicolour confection, strewn with velvet and laden with pretty faces. Flynn is the prettiest though, and his snarls, smirks, and come-to-bed eyes are the intoxicating essence of a hero. It works perfectly for the film, but it's limited, and that's all he has to offer.

Men of the Thirties: 1937

The Nominees Were...


Charles Boyer - Conquest
Fredric March - A Star is Born
Robert Montgomery - Night Must Fall
Paul Muni - The Life of Emile Zola
Spencer Tracy - Captains Courageous

And the Winner Was...

Spencer Tracy - Captains Courageous

Had Paul Muni not got his Oscar for playing Louis Pasteur in 1936, he probably would have got it for playing Emile Zola in '37. As it stands, the Oscar went to the only other character of the five without any real flaws, the Portugese fisherman played by Spencer Tracy in Captains Courageous. Boyer and Montgomery had juicy roles as Napoleon and a potential killer respectively, but didn't have BP nominees to back it up. March's role is sympathetic so he may have been in with a chance, but it isn't difficult to surmise why Tracy managed to get this win, given his nomination the year before.


My Ratings (in order of preference):-

*** Charles Boyer in Conquest

Conquest sounds like an epic tale of conflict but so isn't, and seems only concerned with the silly soap opera of the French emperor's complicated love life. Boyer more than anyone else is aware of the film's silliness, and plays Napoleon like a big kid in a man's body, sure of what he wants (at least in the short-term) but clueless about how to go about things. Unsurprisingly then he flourishes when the tone of the film is lighter, super fun when wooing and flirting with Garbo and successful at conveying Napoleon's lack of emotional intelligence. A particular scene in which Garbo teaches him to dance is a highlight. It's a shame that Boyer can't really follow this through into the bouts of melodrama, and doesn't give any variation to his superior "Why don't you see things the way I do?" glare that became a staple into the peak of his career.

*** Fredric March in A Star is Born

March set the ball rolling for pretenders James Mason and Kris Kristofferson as the overshadowed husband of Janet Gaynor's movie sensation Vicki Lester. I actually don't like the role of Norman Maine: it's underwritten, fairly simple, rather dull in truth. Disappointment creeps into March's reactions to every phone call and correspondence being for his wife and not him, and as his career dies a death March charts Norman's decreasing self-worth fairly competently. But A Star is Born has always been about the leading lady.

** Spencer Tracy in Captains Courageous

Spencer's trained modesty gets another outing in this little fable, and it's a lovely change to see Tracy play somebody like fisherman Manuel, more exotic and less culturally cardboard. While Tracy himself gives an occasionally moving account of a grouch who has his emotions deepened (using his eyes to great effect) he doesn't convey enough of the core industriousness of Manuel. It's lucky he has an incredibly talented co-lead to work with, and the rapport between the two is convincing enough to carry off the earthy versus pompous sparring.

** Paul Muni in The Life of Emile Zola

And here we are again - Paul Muni's fourth nomination in five years. Sadly this is incredibly similar to his winning turn the year before, and the film too is equally as unconcerned with tapping into its principal figure. One could have crafted the film from scouring the archives for all of half an hour. Muni does a semi-reprisal, but looks less like a goat and more like a shaggy dog, shaking his head in a "What is the world coming to?" kind of fashion. He fares better (if only because he gets some tasty monologues to sink his teeth into) and is able to impart the struggle of an academic within a 'practical' society.

Unseen Nominees:-

Robert Montgomery in Night Must Fall

The Snubbed

***** Cary Grant in The Awful Truth

The wonderful thing about Grant as a comedy actor is that he can play both the unstable hapless victim (Bringing Up Baby, Arsenic and Old Lace) and the sly, scheming charmer, seen in His Girl Friday and most wonderfully Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth. He knows what's expected of him in giving the relationship backstory and ensuring that the audience know that this pairing has a future. Grant revels in his love/hate relationship with Dunne, and sells every wisecrack with brisk, perfect timing and unrivalled charisma.

**** Freddie Bartholomew in Captains Courageous

As a pompous, uppity schoolkid Bartholomew seems like he's just been plucked out of a private school. God knows where they plucked him from but whoever made that call did well, since his performance is the perfect buffer for the film's ideas about class structure and self-sufficiency. Bartholomew gives Freddie exactly the right level of arrogance, and even at his most testing you can see that the boy is not massively fazed by having to do things for himself as much as inconvenienced by not being completely aware of his setup. He has several line deliveries that are laugh-out-loud funny, and is very patient with his simple arc, becoming emotionally effective in the final act.

Men of the Thirties: 1936

And the Nominees Were:

Gary Cooper - Mr. Deeds Goes To Town
Walter Huston - Dodsworth
Paul Muni - The Story of Louis Pasteur
William Powell - My Man Godfrey
Spencer Tracy - San Francisco

And the Winner Was:

Paul Muni - The Story of Louis Pasteur

In this case the result reflects two tried-and-tested ways of winning an Oscar: a) play a famous, real-life person, and b) be nominated enough times to gain "overdue" status. Paul Muni had done both by the time the 1936 awards rolled around and was up against three first-time nominees and a comedic, Best Picture nominee-less William Powell. Plain sailing.

My Ratings (in order of preference):-

**** Gary Cooper in Mr. Deeds Goes To Town

The first of a string of nominations for Cooper, Mr. Deeds is a true display of his penchant for extracting empathy from an audience. His humanism reaches heights in High Noon, where his aging lawman has considerably more wisdom than Deeds, but by my reckoning the younger Cooper is just as valuable. Though the character is a bit too well-rounded and aware of the vicious circle he's dragged into, Cooper never lets you under the skin of Longfellow. He doesn't pin him down as a lucky simpleton, and doesn't really change a great deal from start to finish. It's clever then that he makes Deeds representative of anybody with political power, guilty of taking it for granted and duly pounced upon by the inevitable group that simply don't believe in you. It's a brilliant performance because it counters the spin that Capra's satirising by showing us that there is no saviour, and that the working class everyman is likely to suffer the same fate of the politician with the privileged pedigree.

**** Walter Huston in Dodsworth

Loud, brash, honest, dependable -- they're admittedly not the most exciting adjectives, and so it might not be difficult to surmise why Ruth Chatterton's Fran leaves these characteristics behind for a cosmopolitan life in Europe. Her husband Sam is played with admittedly little variety by Huston, but he manages to capture the perplexity of this retired, business-minded, commonsensical veteran at his wife's actions. Why has she done this? Why has she done this now? Why doesn't she want to be a mother anymore? Why doesn't she want to be a grandmother? Where has this come from? The revelation that he doesn't know his wife half as much as he thought he did comes as a bit of a body blow, and Huston gives the wounded husband a frantic yet assured, grumbly, uncompromising demeanor. The hurt is there but it's beyond this guy to go to pieces, just clean up the damage and move on.

**** William Powell in My Man Godfrey

William Powell is a sly dog. The topsy-turvy politics of My Man Godfrey complicate his performance greatly, introducing Godfrey as a poor man and revealing him as a rich man masquerading as a poor man. To Powell's credit he succeeds at being both, although a repeat viewing might be called for to detect if this plot device is evident in his actions in the film's early stages. He sure seems regal throughout the screwball comedy, maddeningly unwavering when observing the chaos around him, and quietly resentful of the wealthy way of life.

** Paul Muni in The Story of Louis Pasteur

The Story of Louis Pasteur is just that, a story, well thought-out with regard to historical overview and plot points, and completely non-threatening as a vehicle. And if the five nominees are judged by how well they know their own film and character's limitations Muni would be up there. But 'reliable' does not excel in my eyes, and Paul Muni's animated, head-scratching robotic dog impersonation grows tiresome quickly. Madness is notoriously synonomous with genius but the madcrack mannerisms of Muni's Pasteur (nodding interminably, itchy-chin syndrome, raised eyebrows) only serve as an admission that this film has nothing to offer but EVENTS and ACTIONS, and doesn't even attempt to delve into Pasteur the man.

* Spencer Tracy in San Francisco

I was hoping to enjoy this film and performance, particularly as in the next couple of profiles I'll be pretty much ripping Spencer Tracy to pieces, but this nomination is one of the most bizarre I have ever come across. Tracy features in about six scenes (probably about fifteen minutes screen-time in all) and in only one of these scenes does he raise his voice. My only guess as to why this happened is that there must have been some kind of media/studio talk of Tracy as the next big thing, because nothing in the film demonstrates any kind of chops, sadly.

The Snubbed

**** Leslie Howard in The Petrified Forest

Howard was snubbed again in 1936, for his screen reprisal of a broadway play. His character in the film, Alan Squier, is the most pseudo-intellectual depressing person. But if you ever wanted to hear someone be intellectual Leslie's your man, and he absoloutely nails the conflicts of a man desperate to matter.

*** Clark Gable in San Francisco

We're back to devilish Clark, and believe me he's fiendish in this one. I read on IMDB trivia that in the more emotional scenes he wouldn't let W.S. Van Dyke film his face. It's probably a wise move for his performance, and the film was already a goner by that point anyway. Much better than Tracy.

The Men of June

Since I frequently go on about Actresses on this blog, and truthfully tend to lean towards them when choosing my "high priority" rentals, I've been trying to redeem my neglect of the men of cinema. I made a conscious decision a few weeks ago to catch up on the Leading Actor nominees of the 1930's, which range from tyrannical monarchs to alcoholic lawyers to double-persona scientists.

This testerone-heavy experiment has therefore led me to proclaim June as the "Men of the Thirties" month on this blog, in which I'll throw some stats out and analyse the nominated performances that I did manage to catch. As per usual, the eventual winners of the prize are often bewildering but I'll save the bitching until later on.

Murder, He Thinks

Bad Day At Black Rock

Directed by John Sturges

Starring: Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, Dean Jagger, Anne Francis, Ernest Borgnine, Lee Marvin, Walter Brennan

Grade: C

Bad Day At Black Rock is one of those films with a stiff upper lip. Its stolid structure is of the assured ilk that often meant success for the old, simple, effective melodrama, beginning and ending with a train passing through a town; a town embelished in apparent dark secrets and entombed mystery. The film surely pimps this mystery: a tale of a Japanese farmer in an isolated Western American town, who disappeared shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbour. The maths are rational, and for all of the proposed enigma Black Rock rashly and bravely lays pretty much everything on the line. Spencer Tracy's investigative, disabled stranger (he is only capable of using one of his arms) saunters into the town of Black Rock like only Spencer Tracy can, stubbornly aware and remarkably resilient, and the reaction of the townsfolk to his entrance solidifies the vague presumption: Black Rock is a guilty place.

Tracy's attempts to coax the less narrow-minded members of the town to his way of thinking is rather like the task of Henry Fonda in 12 Angry Men, with justice the ultimate goal. But while the courthouse drama dealt with appearance, logic, and politics, Black Rock feels more like a bad episode of Murder, She Wrote, with Spencer as the infallible Jessica Fletcher (or should that be the other way around?), sleuthing and smoothing his way through a murder investigation as if he'd lost a pair of slippers. All the more surprising then when he is roped into a fistfight with Ernest Borgnine, one-handed, and proceeds to make Uma Thurman in Kill Bill look wimpish.

Once Black Rock eradicates the mystery by making it plainly obvious what has happened, it turns into the kind of factional warfare that really requires more emotional penetration. Small-town politics are addressed through the bullying and intimidation of horribly standard villains; racism present but rarely explored beyond fleeting references to World War II. You can see how the town dynamic may have become so volatile, and you can even see the eery backstory of its demise, but the polarisation of morality that dominates Black Rock's final act is disappointing. The emphasis of brains-over-brawn and good-over-evil makes a routine operation out of what should be raw and powerful, fatefully absent of the scathing clash of beliefs that thickened 12 Angry Men. It could do with a bit of the sweat, too.