Tag: Frank McHugh

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935)

Handsomely staged and quietly influential production, full of invention and good ideas

Director: Max Reinhardt, William Dieterle

Cast: James Cagney (Bottom), Joe E. Brown (Francis Flute), Dick Powell (Lysander), Jean Muir (Helena), Victor Jory (Oberon), Verree Teasdale (Hippolyta), Hugh Herbert (Snout), Anita Louise (Titania), Frank McHugh (Quince), Ross Alexander (Demetrius), Ian Hunter (Theseus), Mickey Rooney (Puck), Olivia de Havilland (Hermia), Dewey Robinson (Snug), Grant Mitchell (Egeus), Arthur Treacher (Epilogue)

It says something about Hollywood’s back-and-forth relationship with Shakespeare, that Reinhardt and Dieterle’s film can still make a case for being one of its finest Hollywood Shakespeare films. What’s fascinating about it is how much attitudes towards it have changed over time. Opening to a chorus of sniffs from the critics (“It should never have been filmed!”), horrified about the blasphemy of the Bard on celluloid, the things praised at the time now feel the stuffiest while the elements criticised feel fresh and dynamic. Personally, it’s crazy mix of genres, eras, comedic styles and dramatic tone feels like the sort of thing Shakespeare (a consummate showman who spoke in poetry) might have enjoyed.

It came about because Jack Warner wanted a bit of class. Max Reinhardt, internationally famous avant-garde theatre director, as part of Warner’s power thruple: direction by Reinhardt, music by Mendelssohn, words by Shakespeare! Reinhardt had directed a lavish production at the Hollywood Bowl (which also featured Rooney as Puck and de Havilland as Hermia), that would form the basis of his film, incorporating ballet and impressive visual effects. William Dieterle, was bought in to translate Reinhardt’s vision to film (since it quickly became clear Reinhardt didn’t know how to make a movie).

We get an MND that mixes farcical comedy with a dark, sensuous energy. Athen’s forest was transformed by Hal Mohr’s Oscar-winning photography into a glittering fantasy land, created with a mixture of superimposition and miles of cellophane wrapped around the perfectly-recreated trees to reflect the studio lights in a shimmering dance. But in this, is a fairy world of danger and chaos: Reinhardt’s pioneered the interpretation of Puck (played with malicious gusto by Mickey Rooney) as a fire-lighting child, revelling in the chaos his actions cause. Rooney (or rather his double, as Rooney broke a leg early in production) skips and sways, laughing maniacally, tormenting the lovers (possibly even controlling their words and actions), unleashing dark forces of the night.

The film is full of such dark forces – a surprise to critics who saw Dream as a gentle comedy. The ballet sequences, used by Reinhardt to visually demonstrate Oberon’s and Titania’s power to manipulate the environment around them, feature demonic dancers who wouldn’t look out of place in Faust, creepy music-playing goblins and a constant sense of unknowable power. Victor Jory – highly praised at the time, although his precise, poetic reading feels austere and lacking in feeling today – is a darkly imperious Oberon, with barely a trace of warmth to him. (Anita Louise’s Titania also takes a traditional line, speaking with a slightly irritating sing-song that should serve the poetry but instead drains it of life.)

You suspect, if he could have got away with it, Reinhardt might have allowed a trace of bestiality to enter into Titania’s romance with the transformed Bottom. As it is, he settles for Titania snatching a coronet from the Indian boy (nicely introduced early, to cement the split between the two fairy monarchs) who bursts into tears, increasing the feeling that the fairies are inconsistent, temporary creatures, perfectly willing to drop previously treasured people for whoever else captures their attention.

Lavish spectacle runs throughout a play that feels highly indebted to Raphael and the other Renaissance masters. Reinhardt has no problem switching styles: Theseus’ arrival is staged like an Ancient Roman pageant, before settling into a Renaissance style court while the Mechanicals could have stepped straight out of Brueghel. Again, it’s a playing around with style and location that looks very modern today but short-circuited reverentially literal critics at the time. Reinhardt even plays with the idea of Hippolyta being a less-than-willing partner for Theseus (she appears defiantly restrained in the opening scene), although this is largely benched for later scenes.

The lavish opening also shows the production’s ability to balance comedy and drama. Alongside the traditionalist grandiosity, we have low comedy from both the lovers and mechanicals. In a fast-cut, skilfully assembled array of moments (surely Dieterle’s work), the relationships between the four lovers are expertly displayed and mined for comic energy (particularly Lysander’s and Demetrius’ private competition to sing loudest) as are those between the mechanicals (from Bottom’s enthusiasm to Quince’s frustration at the terminal stupidity of Flute).

The mechanicals are one of the greatest divergence in critical opinion between then and now. To critics at the time it was a jaw-dropping mistake to cast Cagney and a host of film comedians in Shakespeare – surely these were roles for the likes of Gielgud? Everything from their delivery to the posture was lambasted for being crude and too damn American for a genre considered the exclusive preserve of the well-spoken likes of Jory and Hunter. However, the energy and naturalness of these actors – and the consummate comic timing they pull out of their roles – is one of the film’s greatest touches.

Cagney was never afraid to look beat-up or ridiculous, and he revels as an explosive ball of energy as Bottom. He flings himself, with the same energy as Bottom, into over-enunciated voices and grand displays of ‘bad acting’, parodying a host of styles from classical to pantomime to stage comedy. Cagney also makes him sweetly naïve and childishly literal, while his gentle, polite mystification about being treated like a king by the fairies seems rather sweet. The other mechanicals are also genuinely excellent, doing one of the hardest things: making Shakespearean comedy work on screen. Joe E Brown is hilarious as a supernaturally dim Flute, barely able to remember what gender he is playing; Hugh Herbert’s Snout has an infectious nervous giggle he can’t control, Frank McHugh’s Quince parodies directors like DeMille. Each of them contributes to a genuinely funny Pyramus and Thisbe that closes the film.

It’s more funny than the sometimes-forced banter between the lovers, not helped by a far too broad performance by Dick Powell (who later claimed he didn’t understand a word he was saying) that makes Lysander somewhere between a buffoon and an egotist. Olivia de Havilland (perhaps not surprisingly) emerges best here as a heartfelt Hermia, although the quarrel between the lovers is perhaps the least well staged sequence in the film (Reinhardt and Dieterle resort to all four of them at points speaking their lines at the same time, as if wanting to get the scene over and done with).

But MND is awash with other touches of cinematic and interpretative invention, it’s darkish vision of the Fairy world (with superimposition and ballet interjections giving it a darkly surreal touch) as influential as it’s haphazard approach to place and setting. Its comic performances come alive with real energy, devoid of the more stately approach from others. Above all, MND feels like an actual interpretation of its source material, rather than just a respectful staging – and its influence played out over decades of productions to come. Overlooked for too long, it’s a fine and daring piece of film Shakespeare, far better than it has a right to be.

The Front Page (1931)

Original and (perhaps) best version of the pioneering cynical journalism story

Director: Lewis Milestone

Cast: Adolphe Menjou (Walter Burns), Pat O’Brien (Hildy Johnson), Mary Brian (Peggy Grant), Edward Everett Horton (Roy Bensinger), Walter Catlett (Jimmy Murphy), George E. Stone (Earl Williams), Mae Clarke (Molly Malloy), Slim Summerville (Irving Pincus), Matt Moore (Ernie Kruger), Frank McHugh (McCue), Clarence Wilson (Sheriff Pinky Hartman), Fred Howard (Schwartz)

Unscrupulous newspaper men fling fast-paced banter at each other, caring less about the truth and far more about how the copy sells. In many ways the deeply cynical The Front Page hasn’t really aged at all. Probably why it keeps coming back round again-and-again, in different forms for different eras (most famously of course, spiced up with a gender-swopped Hildy as the screwball romance His Girl Friday). I’ll make a confession – not a surprise for those who know my heretical views on His Girl Friday – it’s never been my favourite play and I’ve never found it as funny as others. But, despite my doubts, it’s hard to deny the flair and energy of Milestone’s early talkie.

Star-reported “Hildy” Johnson (Pat O’Brien) has decided the time is right to give up the newsprint game and find happiness with sweetheart Peggy Grant (Mary Brian). But his ruthless editor Walter Burns (Adolphe Menjou) doesn’t want to hear it from his star reporter. Burns is determined to drag Hildy back into the game, and the press-stopping story of an anarchist who escapes hours before his scheduled execution is just the thing to tempt Hildy away from those wedding bells.

And so we get the ultimate cynical press story, adapted from a play that practically invented the image of the newspaper man as a heartless adrenalin junkie more interested in the scoop than the truth. The Front Page is all about the process of collecting the news, and how easily and casually this can be spun into what an audience wants. If the truth does out eventually, it barely happens as a result of the journalists. In fact, our heroes largely end up pushing it because it will get them out of a tight spot and shift a hell of a lot of copies tomorrow morning.

Milestone’s film for years existed as only a bastardised version of the international print: made up of Milestone’s third choice takes and angles with re-edited lines. Restored into his original vision, it’s striking how dynamic and cinematic The Front Page is. While His Girl Friday has it beat on pace (giving us the same story and almost the same amount of dialogue in twelve fewer minutes), arguably Milestone’s film has the edge on cinematic technique. Milestone uses dynamic camera angles and set-ups to inject pace, from the long tracking shot of Burns prowling his newsprint rooms to the rotating camera that roves around the film’s primary location, the courthouse press-room.

It uses fast-cuts and zooms to great effect: the opening shot of a sack of flour, crash zooms out to reveal it’s being used to test a gallows; the ‘yo-yo’ effect as the camera bounces rapidly up-and-down to take us from one reporter’s face to another during a harried reporting scene. Milestone makes large chunks of otherwise single-location farce, come to life through witty angles and blocking, knowing when and when-not to include an actor in the frame to make a joke work. It’s fast-cutting gives it an early screwball style that further accelerates its sense of momentum. It’s a very astutely, very skilfully directed movie that feels several years ahead of its time, and certainly a whole other level above some of the stilted play adaptations Hollywood was churning out.

Even though the script has never been my favourite, it also picks up a lot of screwball dynamism (and healthy dose of pre-Wilder cynicism) in its bones. It’s chorus of newspapermen, all corrupted to various degrees, are finely delineated, each with their own clear characteristics. From Frank McHugh’s shallow cough to Fred Howard’s banjo, via Edward Everett Horton’s prissy germaphobia and half-hearted attempts at woeful poetry, they each have complementary personalities that helps the comedy spark even more. That’s even without their utter disinterest in the personal lives and tragedies of those they are reporting on, or their shameless gilding of the facts of every story (a lovely audio montage sees them all reporting wildly different versions of an arrest).

The Front Page has a strong performance from Adolphe Menjou as the debonair Burns, here embodied by Menjou as a heartlessly ambitious Mephistopheles-type, constantly throwing titbits of temptation in the way of Hildy. Milestone even films him with a Devilish-Murnau strength, popping up seemingly everywhere he needs to be at any moment in time. Add in Menjou’s suave delight in some ruthlessly amoral lines and you have a genuinely spot-on piece of casting. This is less of the case for Pat O’Brien, the sort of actor more familiar as the best friend to a real star, here showing he doesn’t quite have the charisma to carry a dynamic part like Hildy (in fact, O’Brien would have been perfect casting for the male-version of Peggy: dependable, sturdy, dull).

Nevertheless, he and Menjou bounce off each other well in a film that has more than a little homoerotic energy in it (surely the idea for the gender reverse spun from this!) Even Peggy points out Hildy seems as least as excited as the thought of inconveniencing Burns as he does in marrying her (“you’re going to marry me to spite Mr Burns?”). Hildy isn’t just a man fighting against his urge to report on any events happening around him (a potential fire sees him bemoaning he doesn’t have a camera to hand). There is a life and energy to him when riffing ideas with Burns, that he just doesn’t have with anyone else. The two of them burst into life like naughty kids in each other’s company, in a way they just don’t with anyone else.

Hildy may end the film heading into the sunset, but you suspect Burns’ scheme to bring him back (a witty typewriter ping covers a sensor banned piece of naughty language as Burns calls Hildy an SOB on the phone to an underling) is going to succeed with very little hinderance. Because these guys are made for each other and, just like the rest of the cast, they need the buzz of being in the room where it happens far more than the dull dependency of a job in advertising for Peggy’s Dad’s firm.

That The Front Page does very well and while I’m still not an admirer of a play I found overly cynical and glib, Milestone’s dynamically staged version of it may (ironically) be the best of many committed to the screen.

The Roaring Twenties (1939)

Superb gangster film, that sums up a whole era of film-making with a fast-paced grit

Director: Raoul Walsh

Cast: James Cagney (Eddie Bartlett), Priscilla Lane (Jean Sherman), Humphrey Bogart (George Hally), Gladys George (Panama Smith), Jeffrey Lynn (Lloyd Hart), Frank McHugh (Danny Green), George Meeker (Harold Masters), Paul Kelly (Nick Brown), Elizabeth Risdon (Mrs Sherman), Joseph Sawyer (Sgt Pete Jones)

Three guys fall in a foxhole, might sound like the beginning of an odd wartime joke but it’s the encounter that begins The Roaring Twenties. Framed as both a period piece, looking back to a time already a decade away from the contemporary audience, and a sort of memorial piece to a whole cycle of bootlegger gangster films. It’s also a film far too regularly overlooked when discussing that cycle: in my opinion it’s one of the finest and possibly Cagney’s most complex gangster role (with apologies to White Heat). It’s a fast-paced, hugely entertaining slice of crime drama, with fascinating, multi-faceted characters and an intriguing level of social depth.

Those three foxhole guys are Eddie Bennett (James Cagney), destined to run a bootlegging empire in Chicago; George Hally (Humphrey Bogart), destined to become his sociopathic ruthless partner; and Lloyd Hart (Jeffrey Lynn), destined to become a lawyer walking an awkward line. Returning from World War One, Eddie finds little welcome for returning servicemen, but his pluck and sense of personal loyalty eventually see him stumble into, and then embrace, the bootlegging business with glamourous hostess Panama Smith (Gladys George). Problem is danger abounds in the crime-ridden city and its impossible to work in this business without getting your hands dirty. Throw-in Eddie’s candle-holding love for the quietly uninterested Jean Sherman (Priscilla Lane) and you have a recipe for long-term disaster.

The Roaring Twenties is a punchy, well-cut, overlooked gem. From its opening montage that rolls back over newsreel from 1940 to the trenches of World War One to its closing tracking shot that culminates in Eddie’s fatal tumble on the steps of a church (as always in the gangster film, no-one escape death’s moral judgement no matter how psychologically complex they are) it’s a feast of fast-moving entertainment. Along the way Walsh throws in everything, from gun battles to musical numbers, by way of comedy, obsessive love and social commentary. The Roaring Twenties is arguably a nostalgic cocktail with a dim view of its decade: one of crime, hedonism and hypocrisy.

And it’s corrupted Eddie. This is Cagney firing on all cylinders: and it’s remarkable how skilfully he creates a complex, sympathetic character out of similar material to his despicable hood in Public Enemy or the flat-out psychopath he forged in White Heat. Eddie is in many ways a decent man who finds all the dreams he’s been clinging too are fantasies. He can’t land the mechanic job he dreamed of, his uniform is the subject of mockery, the woman he’s been corresponding with turns out to be a teenager (Cagney’s disappointment, discomfort and faint attraction when he first meets Jean Sherman’s skipping late-teens Priscilla is beautifully done). Eddie is left bumming around town desperate for any opportunity.

Cagney’s performance really works, because Eddie – even with an angry streak that means he can knock out two chucking goons with one punch – is fundamentally a decent bloke, corrupted by circumstances. He sees the liquor-brewing game as a short-term fast buck, which he stumbles into because he’s too chivalrous to allow Panama to take the wrap for a bootlegging delivery he’s made. He’s loyal to his friends and tries to solve problems amicably. He’s got a charming, barrow-boy entrepreneurship to him, brewing booze in his bath and selling it as a high-quality import. Cagney shows how desperately Eddie clings to his self-image that crime isn’t a lifestyle choice, but a short-term necessity he’ll jack in one day for the peace and quiet of running a taxi company.

But Cagney never stops letting us see the corruption soaking in: Eddie is learning to heartlessly take what he can get, to forget the consequences of his actions and when violence comes he’ll shrug off deaths as ‘not his fault’ or respond with an increasing ease viciousness (in a nice call back, he even shoves a cigar into a goons face, an echo of his famous grapefruit scene from Public Enemy). When he faces news, he doesn’t like, or is denied the things he wants, lashing out is his first option – and once he starts necking his own product, his downfall is only a matter of time as he falls prey to the sort of ‘World is Yours!’ attitude that doomed Scarface.

From grasping ever more business opportunities to grooming (in more ways that one) the now adult Priscilla into his ideal girl (he can’t watch her perform without grasping the pained hand of Panama, his eyes locked in monomania desire that he’s clearly convincing himself is a sort of pure, brotherly concern). Eddie clearly sees her as his ‘reward’ for his hardwork, a fantasy that doesn’t have any place for her liking him but not loving him. But there is a neat touch throughout The Roaring Twenties – a momentum packed film that races through years in minutes – that Eddie fundamentally isn’t ruthless enough for this game.

Certainly not compared to Humphrey Bogart’s study in shallow, selfish cruelty. Shown early on grinningly shooting a fifteen-year old German soldier in the dying minutes of the war (“He won’t be 16!”), George Hally is the monster Eddie can’t be. A guy who doesn’t care for anyone, who betrays and kills at the drop of a hat, who doesn’t stop for any sense of form and decency. For all Eddie tells George that time has moved on and people like them don’t have a place in the Thirties, Bogart’s cold-eyed George feels like the sort of man who would flourish in the era to come.

Compared to him, Eddie and Panama are romantics. Gladys George gives a fascinating performance as Panama, one of the most complex gangster dames of all. George brilliantly walks a narrow line, clearly loving Eddie but accepting he doesn’t feel the same way – and (reading between the censor lines) entering a relationship with him anyway. Panama is half-partner, half-mother to Eddie giving him a sort of matronly support and tenderness and, when his fortunes drop off a cliff in the thirties, looking after the slubby, drunken figure Eddie becomes (Cagney looks more bashed up, scruffy and pathetic in the final act than almost any other star would dare).

Fascinating character relationships like this underpin a film that feels like a summation of years of Warner Bros gangster films. Walsh’s direction is pin-point sharp, from his montage construction (including a surprisingly surreal Wall Street Crash sequence with melting buildings), through the shoot-outs. The Roaring Twenties script – by Robert Rossen and Jerry Wald among others – offers characters who are complex, flawed and don’t quite seem to realise at times how terrible their world is.

When the end comes, and Eddie’s body slumps on the steps – after an inspired, sustained tracking shot that follows his teetering bullet-ridden body, the sort of athleticism Cagney was a natural at – it seems fitting the famous closing words are “He used to be a big shot”. That sums up not only the character, but an entire era of film-making being confined (temporarily) to the dustbin of history. It’s a melancholic note to end an extraordinarily good film, one of the great gangster films, in which Cagney, Bogart and George bring life to fascinatingly complex characters.

Going My Way (1944)

Bing Crosby wins hearts and minds in the sentimental Best Picture winner Going My Way

Director: Leo McCarey

Cast: Bing Crosby (Father Chuck O’Malley), Barry Fitzgerald (Father Fitzgibbon), Frank McHugh (Father Timothy O’Dowd), Rise Stevens (Genevieve Linden/Jenny Tuffel), James Brown (Ted Haines Jr), Gene Lockhart (Ted Haines Snr), Jean Heather (Carol James), Porter Hall (Mr Belknap), Fortunio Bonanova (Tomaso Bozani), Eily Malyon (Mrs Carmody)

“Schmaltz isn’t selling” record producers tell Father O’Malley (Bing Crosby) when he pitches them the little ditty he’s penned to raise funds to save his church from financial ruin. Well no one told the producers of this film: and just as well, as this became one of the most successful films of the 1940s, raking in buckets of cash and armfuls of Oscars. Watching it today, you’d hardly believe it – but that’s to forget the stress and fear of a nation at war, or that Bing Crosby (in a tailor-made role) was practically the most popular human being alive. For all that, watching Going My Way today won’t challenge you at all – other than perhaps your patience.

Father O’Malley (Bing Crosby) arrives in a (allegedly) rough neighbourhood in New York. He’s to take over the parish from the ageing Father Fitzgibbon (Barry Fitzgerald) but, gosh darn it, Father Bing doesn’t have the heart to tell Father Fitzgibbon that, so pretends to be his new curate. Promptly, Father Bing sets about solving all the problems of the parish with his charming homespun wisdom, decency, empathy and ability to bond with all. Gosh darn it, before you know what’s happened he’s turned the rough-and-tumble local boys from larcenists into an all-male choir and has roped in an old friend (who just happens to be the lead singer at the MET Opera) to give him and the boys the stage to sing a few of his songs and help save the church.

Yup, Going My Way is exactly that sort of film, and your enjoyment of it is going to be inversely proportional to how quickly being dipped in pure schmaltz brings you out in hives. This film is sickly sweet in its cozy comfort, a reassuring view of a world straight out of Enid Blyton, where the priest has all the answers, the hearts of businessmen can be melted by a few wise words, and dropping a few sporting references can win over the local ‘tough’ kids.

Going My Way is so homely and quaint, it makes Capra feel positively edgy. In fact, it lacks any of the energy, wit and style Capra brings to his pictures. That lack of buzz doesn’t help it, the languid pace drawing your attention all the more to its overbearing decency and careful weeding out of anything that could even cause a scintilla of doubt.

Instead it’s a warm gentle hug – and a hug that takes a great deal of time (at just two hours, it can seem like it’s going on forever). There are fewer songs in it than you might expect – only one every 10-15 minutes max. Often very little happens – and when it does, drama is very far from the agenda. Instead every problem is solved with consummate ease (it just needs Father Bing to open people’s eyes). Everyone is at heart decent in the extreme: the local tough kids have more high spirits than hooliganism to them, the (very) Irish women have stern exteriors but soft hearts, and the ruthless businessman is a devoted family man. After a while, I felt my patience being sorely tested.

In the middle of this, we get Bing Crosby, who won an Oscar for his work here. It’s a part tailor-made for Bing. In fact, so much so, that he essentially turns O’Malley into a dog-collar wearing version of his own stage persona, with touches of wry humour, whimsy and an affectionate smile. It’s no mean thing creating an entire persona – or performing it – but it feels a little rich to win an Oscar for it. O’Malley is of course perfect, a man free of any blemish who backs humbly into the limelight. A liberal who thinks Church should be fun (though far from a radical), there is nothing to cast even a shadow of doubt on his perfection: his flirtation with a girl never went so far as a date, he has the patience of a saint and he always knows exactly what to say to everyone.

He even wears down the defensiveness of Barry Fitzgerald’s Father Fitzgibbon. Fitzgerald also won an Oscar (for Supporting Actor) and effectively created the cinematic template for what an Irish priest is like. Fitzgibbon is bumbling with a sing-song whimsy, stuck-in-his-ways but basically decent, a touch prickly but also vulnerable and caring. His Irishness (like many of the rest of the cast) is dialled up to eleven. It’s an engaging performance, even if this old-cove-with-a-heart-of-gold schtick already felt familiar. But blimey, like the rest of the film, it can be far too much.

John Ford would have loved the Irish sentimentality of this film. It’s not perhaps Going My Way’s fault that its unquestioning regard and confidence in the church – and the assumption that all would treat them with complete deference and absolute respect – has dated it. But then maybe this was the case then as well, and it just felt much more reassuring to watch a simple world where a priest has all the answers and can change everyone’s lives. In the simple world of the film, you just let the cliché and coincidence wash over you and go with the flow.

Nevertheless, it still can make for a long watch if you aren’t in the right mood for this constant spin of Sunday-afternoon-gentleness. I have to confess it was too sweet for me – way too sweet. And there isn’t much of interest in the film, McCarey directing with a professional but uninteresting staidness (you couldn’t believe he cut his teeth doing Laurel and Hardy, so visually dull and slow is this film). Every outcome is dipped in sentimentality and sweetness and eventually watching the film is like gorging on candy-floss. Light, insubstantial, not as filling as it should be, and at the end you feel like throwing up.