Tag: Wallace Beery

The Big House (1930)

Foundational Hollywood prison film, not only establishes many genre tropes but does it with genuine style

Director: George W Hill

Cast: Chester Morris (Morgan), Wallace Beery (Butch), Lewis Stone (Warden), Robert Montgomery (Kent), Leila Hyams (Anne), George F Marion (Pop), JC Nugent (Marlowe), Karl Dane (Olsen), DeWitt Jennings (Wallace), Matthew Betz (Gopher)

We’re all familiar with the prison movie: cell yards, newly arrived prisoners, old lags, gangs, exercise yards, tough wardens, snitches, shivs, escape plans, betting on insect races, coolers, bad food, riots… many of these now age old cliches first sprang into life in The Big House, the first major prison movie released in Hollywood. And it’s a good one, a well-paced mix of character study and morality tale with a surprisingly action packed ending.

In an overcrowded prison, where conditions are as tough as the inmates, new arrival Kent (Robert Montgomery) is nervous. He’s a rich guy struggling to adjust to spending the next seven years in the slammer after he drove the car in a fatal hit-and-run. He’s chucked into a cell with two tough inmates: Morgan (Chester Morris), a strong-and-silent type who takes no nonsense, and Butch (Wallace Beery), his best friend who swings between friendly and threatening. As mutterings about escape plans and prison feuds heat up, Kent goes to increasingly selfish attempts to save his skin, against the advice of Morgan, who is dreaming of his imminent parole.

“Prison doesn’t give a man a yellow streak, but if he has one it brings it out.” Those are the wise words of Lewis Stone’s gruff, patrician warden. It’s fair to say Kent doesn’t listen. One of the neatest tricks The Big House pulls off is the decoy protagonist. As we watch Kent’s intimidating arrival and processing, the ferrying him from room-to-room as he is reduced to another overall-clad number (48642), our natural instinct is to feel sorry for him as Robert Montgomery’s eyes widen in shock and horror. But Kent isn’t our hero. In fact, if anything, he’s the villain.

The more we see of Kent, the more we realise he’s a spoilt rich kid who, uniquely among the main prisoners, takes no responsibility for his crime (even the sociopathic Butch does that). He will betray anyone or anything to try and lesson his sentence: and as a seasoned old-timer tells him, the best material for that is snitching on other prisoners. It’s not long before Kent is nervously planting a shiv in Morgan’s bed (leading to the cancellation of Morgan’s parole), and his utter lack of any sense of principle beyond protecting himself is directly responsible for the concluding prison riot blood bath.

Instead, The Big House’s real hero is Morgan. Played with stoic firmness by Chester Morris, Morgan may well be a criminal (tellingly, of the three principles, he’s a professional thief giving him the most ‘sympathetic’ crime, with no body count) but he has a code of loyalty to his fellows. That doesn’t mean he won’t step in against bullying – he orders Butch to return the cigarettes he wrestles from Kent – but it does mean he’ll turn a dutiful blind eye to their misdemeanours. He sticks firmly to the code of the prison – don’t snitch – even while he planning to go straight. In The Big House, it’s fascinating that is the stool pigeon and snitch who is morally the lowest-of-the-low.

That’s arguably even lower than Butch, even though he’s a sociopathic murderer who wistfully talks about his crimes with slight regret only because they got him caught. But, despite this – and even though, when the riot comes, Butch proves himself absolutely, ruthlessly, without morals – Butch is strangely likeable. Perhaps because Wallace Beery (Oscar-nominated) plays him with a mix of childish innocence as well as brutish bullying. Butch, with his illiteracy and delight in games like racing insects, along with his affectionate readiness to trust (and his blinding rage when he feels betrayed) is like a big kid. He bounds around the yard like the king of the playground.

The heart of The Big House is the close friendship (and, while surely unintentional, it’s hard not to see a homoerotic undercurrent) between Butch and Morgan. These two are inseparable, trust each other completely, tell each other everything and won’t hear a word against each other from someone else. They are both familiar with the slammer, a dark corridor with several tiny, dark cells. Butch gets chucked in there after leading a dinner hall protest at the terrible food – the protest that will lead to him passing his shiv to Kent who then plants it on Morgan to gain favour with the guards. This leads to Morgan’s spell there – where, in a fixed shot of the empty corridor, Hill has us overhear the shouted conversation between the two as Morgan vows revenge and Butch naively argues he can’t believe Kent would do that.

Morgan’s rejected parole leads to his own escape. It’s a slightly forced touch of melodrama that, on escape, he of course meets and falls in love with Kent’s sister Anne (Leila Hyams) who recognises him. It’s, of course, the silver bullet that sees Morgan vowing to go straight and allowing him to tick the film’s crucial moral boxes: he forswears crime (and willingly returns to prison when caught) but without sacrificing his loyalty to the prison code of no snitching. Once again, this is contrasted with the yellow Kent, who won’t admit his guilt and has no honour at all among the thieves.

The Big House culminates in Butch’s bungled escape attempt, made infinitely worse by Kent’s cowardly actions and Butch’s capacity for violence when crossed. You have to question the competence of the prison: crowded or not, Butch and his gang manage to smuggle in several guns, and the Warden’s refusal to even consider negotiating a release of captured guards Butch is hopefully not standard practice. This is probably the only prison film you’ll see where a tank rolls in to settle the matter (one possible cliché no one picked up), but the real heart of the clash is Morgan’s attempt to both stick to his new-found determination to do the right thing, without betraying his brotherly love for Butch.

It makes for a tense, high-octane, surprisingly ruthless final act in a prison film that sets out the rules but also tells a compelling, exciting and engaging story. With very good contrasting performances from Morris, Beery and Montgomery, it’s snappily directed with real verve by Hill, whose camera soaks up the impressively grand sets and then throws in to the midst of the violence. It’s interesting to see its moral judgements on its characters: loyalty prized above all other virtues – would that still be the case today?

The Champ (1931)

Seminal father-and-son drama that largely avoids excessive melodrama while essentially inventing a genre

Director: King Vidor

Cast: Wallace Beery (Andy “Champ” Purcell), Jackie Cooper (Dink Purcell), Irene Rich (Linda Purcell), Roscoe Ates (Sponge), Edward Brophy (Tim), Hale Hamilton (Tony), Jesse Scott (Jonah), Marcia Mae Jones (Mary Lou)

The Champ is the grand-daddy of an entire genre of “Dad-and-lad” films. If it sometimes feels over-familiar today, then that’s because many of now familiar cliches of slightly washed-out Dads caring for (and being cared for) precocious-but-caring pre-teen sons were born here. Even at the time, plenty of people saw The Champ as drowning in more than a little sentimentality. But The Champ is mostly effectively underplayed and directed with a spry energy that stops it becoming too cloying.

Andy Purcell (Wallace Beery) is adored by his 8-year-old son Dink (Jackie Cooper) as “Champ”. Andy was a heavyweight champion once; but is now an over-the-hill fighter more likely to be found propping up a bar or shooting dice than throwing punches in the ring. Constantly guiding Champ away from temptation, Dink doesn’t waver in his devotion, even when presented with the possibility of a new life with his long-lost now-wealthy mother (Irene Rich). Champ wants to prove to his son he can be the man Dink believes he can be, taking to the ring one more time against the Mexican champion – with heart-tugging consequences.

It’s not just dad-and-lad cliches – there’s more than a few boxing cliches whose DNA is in The Champ – Vidor even directed here one of the first-ever training montages, as Champ gets ready to duke it out with the Mexican champ. But its heart is really in the unbreakable bond between father and son, their unwavering love which survives no end of testing the father applies to it. Champ is an unreliable wash-up who makes it a regular habit to piss away money, culminating in selling their treasured race-horse “Little Champ”. But Dink knows, for all is flaws, Champ truly loves his son.

A film like this relies on the chemistry between the two actors, so it’s just as well both Beery and Cooper genuinely feel like they’ve known each other all their lives. (Hopefully it doesn’t spoil the magic to discover the famously misanthropic Beery loathed Cooper, who in turn felt Beery was a scene-stealing bully). Their interplay, their easy, natural chatter and playful physicality is heart-warmingly believable. From sharing a bed in their rundown flat, to messing around with their hats or teasing each other during country jogs, Vidor’s film finds a natural ease in their relationship. There is a genuine feeling of parental love between the two, captured in little moments that feel real, such as Champ’s superstition about Dink spitting on things ‘for luck’ (from betting slips to boxing gloves).

Beery won one of the first Best Actor Oscars – a historic tie with Fredric March in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (ruled a draw despite Beery gaining one fewer votes) – and it’s a deserving one. Beery underplays a role that could billow over the top, from his woozy drunk acting which is convincingly low-key to the streak of guilty self-loathing Beery keeps clear is running through Champ. He’s a man who despises his weaknesses, who knows he is not the legend his son still believes him to be, deeply ashamed of his actions but yet time-after-time lets down and embarrasses his son, from getting arrested in drunken scuffles (in front of the whole town) to slurring nonsense in a bar.

The warmth of Vidor’s direction keeps us on-side with Champ, even as he needs to be sobered up with cold tomato soup and ice to make a meeting with a promoter (even so, he’s still late and screws it up in any case due to still being pissed) or as he is hauled out of a police van, scruffy and swinging misguided punches. It makes us hope for the best from Champ, even if it’s left subtly open whether he strikes Dink (from between the bars of his prison cell) from anger or in an attempt to drive the boy away from his self-destructive father. (Either way, in a touch that inspired Raging Bull, Champ is so ashamed of his perhaps- half-meant blow, he pummels the cell wall with his hand, his face contorted in lashings of shame and self-loathing.)

Beery’s performance is perfectly complemented by Cooper, one of the most natural child stars ever. Cooper’s Dink pulls off the difficult trick of feeling both charmingly wise before his years, but still like a naïve child. Vidor trusted Cooper’s instincts enough to just let be on the camera, notably during a largely improvised sequence where Cooper prattles to himself while climbing up onto the roof of his wealthy mother’s new home. But Cooper can also manage the emotion: when tears come, they feel real and genuinely distraught. In other hands, the final act emotional breakdown might have felt like the worst sort of stage-school tears but Cooper makes it genuinely feel like a child so torn up he can barely process the depth of his feelings.

Cooper’s performance largely sells the film’s heavily melodramatic ending, which could well have collapsed into a soapy mess. It’s the moment where Vidor’s film most insistently tugs on the heart-strings, desperate to get those tears pouring. But he also softens Beery’s self-destructive lunk who, nice-is-he-is, we care for partly because his son is so overwhelmingly devoted to him. And we believe Champ would be desperate to do anything to live up to the sort of hero-worship he has here.

Vidor’s film also gains from his smooth, visually engaging direction. The Champ opens with an impressive tracking shot of our heroes running, and makes excellent use of space and blocking throughout to ground the father-and-son constantly at the centre of a busy world bustling around them. It’s also a generous film: the Champ’s ex is no villain, but a wealthy, decent guy, neither is there racism in the depiction of Dink’s young Black friend Jonah. The decision to use sped-up film for the fight may look vaguely comic today, but adds energy while Vidor largely avoids the trap of hammering the emotional points home too strong.

The Champ is still an effective crowd-pleaser, sailing by in 80 swift minutes, so successfully taking many of the struggling-parent-conventions of ‘women’s pictures’ and applying them to men, that it’s been effectively re-made and re-invented dozens of times, in dozens of settings. And you can’t say more for its effectiveness than that.

Grand Hotel (1932)

A hotel has an all-star check-in desk in this Best Picture winning drama

Director: Edmund Goulding

Cast: Greta Garbo (Grusinskaya), John Barrymore (Baron Felix von Gaigern), Joan Crawford (Flaemmchen), Wallace Beery (General Director Preysing), Lionel Barrymore (Otto Kringelein), Lewis Stone (Dr Otternschlag), Jean Hersholt (Head Porter Senf), Morgan Wallace (Chauffeur)

Grand Hotel: “People coming, going. Nothing ever happens”. Of course, despite those opening remarks by war-scarred veteran and permanent resident Dr Otternschlag (Lewis Stone), nothing could be further from the truth. In this, one of the first “All-Star-Extravaganzas” (every MGM mega-star in one movie!) the eponymous Berlin hotel is the host to an ocean of drama over the course of one twenty-four hour period. Scooping an Oscar for Best Picture (setting a surely-never-to-be-equalled record of being the only Best Picture winner to only be nominated in that category), Grand Hotel was a huge hit, and great-big-old-fashioned soapy fun.

Confidently directed by Edmund Goulding, the film threads together its plots very effectively, moving smoothly from star-to-star. The five stars take up nearly 90% of the dialogue just by themselves (with all those egos there wasn’t time for anyone else to have so much as a line) but what stars: three then-and-future Oscar winners and two legends in John Barrymore and Garbo.

Each of them has more than enough to sink their teeth into. Garbo is a maudlin ballerina, teetering on the edge of depression, who falls in love with Raffles-like jewellery thief Baron von Gaigern (John Barrymore). The penniless Baron – who steals to live – befriends Otto Kringelein (Lionel Barrymore), a deceptively spry old-man, suffering from a terminal disease and using his savings to see how the other half lives. Kringelein’s former employer Preysing (Wallace Beery) is desperately trying to negotiate a merger to save his job. His stenographer is would-be-actress-part-time-glamour-model Flaemmchen (Joan Crawford), who is flirting with the Baron and also befriends Kringelein. Inevitalby there are life-changing consequences.

If you are a sucker for grand, soapy, old-fashioned drama like this, you’ll find much to enjoy in Grand Hotel. The plots it peddles were pretty cliched and predictable even then, but they are delivered by a series of stars at the top of the game who invest the film with every inch of their glamour. They make the hodge-podge of stories work rather well, and the film even manages to pull out a late shock death that’s genuinely a surprise, both in its suddenness and brutality.

But then Grand Hotel is a pre-code film, so it’s not afraid to acknowledge sex exists and violence has nasty consequences. Crawford’s Flaemmchen is a confirmed flirt, not ashamed to accept an invitation to an ‘adjoining’ room with Preysing to secure her job. Neither is the supremely sexy Crawford (light, winning and possibly the best thing in the film) afraid to all but proposition the Baron. Not surprisingly Crawford was worried more censorious States would cut large parts of her role (she was right). But sex still runs through Grand Hotel: the Baron creeps into Grusinskaya’s room to rob her, and ends up sharing the night (and certainly not in separate beds).

As Grusinskaya, Greta Garbo gets possibly her most iconic line (“I want to be alone”) though her matinee idol pose-striking at times more than a little artificial today. However, what does come across is the power of her personality as a performer (like Marlene Dietrich at this time, there is something utterly fascinating about her). In other hands, the role (with its pity-me dialogue giving way to flashes of youthful, passionate abandon) would look a bit silly, but Garbo makes the whole thing work though force of personality alone.

She’s well matched with John Barrymore at the height of his powers as America’s greatest actor. Barrymore has a matinee idol swishness here, a relaxed romanticism that always makes us sympathise with him, even though he’s a self-confessed liar, cheat and thief. This gentlemen thief may be penniless, but he’s far from ruthless: he treats Kringelein with respect, is genuine in his feelings for Grusinskaya (although his repeated assurances that he will definitely make it the train station to meet her tomorrow is enough of a flag that something is bound to go wrong) and despises the bullying Preysing.

As Preysing, Wallace Beery plays the only unsympathetic character (naturally, despite the film’s German setting, he’s the only one with a Teutonic accent) with a bravado that dances just-this-side of OTT. By contrast, Lionel Barrymore (brother to John – and its very nice seeing these two play so many scenes together) is the film’s heart as a sweet, gentle and endearing old man who is just delighted to be living the dream, even if only for a few days.

It’s all shot in a revolutionary 360° set. The hotel foyer, where the film opens, was one of the first completely constructed sets (many films before constructed their sets like traditional proscenium theatre sets) and Goulding’s camera takes advantage of this in the opening sequence by moving fluidly in a series of long takes that introduces each character and sees them first interacting with each other. There are some other striking images, including a Jason Bourneish wall climb John Barrymore’s Baron carries out to bridge the gap between one balcony and another – although many of the scenes in hotel rooms go for traditional straight-on set-ups.

The film is focused on being a grand entertainment – and, to be honest, little more. Perhaps that’s why, despite being set in Berlin in 1932, there is no mention of any events in the country at that time. Even more surprisingly, there is no mention of the depression – despite it surely being a major factor in Preysing’s desperation, the Baron’s loss of his wealth and Flaemmchen’s need for a job. But that would add weight to a film that wants a light, fun tone. Grand Hotel has inspired a legion of Mills and Boon style stories. It might look an odd Best Picture, but it’s had plenty of influence.