[6] Janet Gaynor and Fredric March star in a love story so good, they’ve made it four times now — most recently with Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper in the roles. Gaynor plays a small-town girl with dreams of becoming a Hollywood actress. With encouragement from her grandmother, she arrives in Tinseltown bright-eyed and bushy-tailed only to discover what everyone discovers — that opportunity is …
[6] Cary Grant made his big-screen debut as a singing javelin thrower in this romantic comedy about adulterous lovers (Thelma Todd and Roland Young) who go to great lengths to hide their secret affair from the woman’s husband (Grant). The cover-up involves hiring a woman (Lili Damita) to play the other man’s wife and all of the characters taking a trip to Venice together. This Is …
[5] Pre-Code bad girl Barbara Stanwyck stars in this hybrid of a love story and a prison movie. Stanwyck plays Nan, a woman who works with a team of mobsters who rob banks. She goes in and distracts the security guards while the men rush in with guns and grab the cash. But Nan is eventually captured and sentenced to prison. But then an evangelical …
[6] This is a serendipitous romantic comedy pairing frequent costars Clark Gable and Joan Crawford. Gable plays a reporter who runs away with a press-weary heiress, hoping to snag the headline of the century. But naturally, he falls in love with the dame, which would be complicated enough without being mistaken for spies. Gable and Crawford are having fun and it shows — especially when …
[6] Groucho, Chico, and Harpo (but not Zeppo) provide classic comic relief in a series of vignettes tied together in a loose narrative involving a wayward socialite (Margaret Dumont) and a pair of opera-singing lovers (Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones). Groucho may be the king of off-handed one-liners, but my favorite is Harpo, who holds the screen without uttering a word. A Night at the …
[5] Groucho Marx plays the dean of a university in desperate need of a football win. His son (Zeppo) convinces him to recruit two football players at a local bar, but of course, Groucho recruits the wrong people (Chico and Harpo). When the rival university hires the real football players, Groucho responds by sending his new recruits to kidnap theirs, and everything ends in a …
[6] Joan Blondell (The Public Enemy, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn) stars as a bored nurse who gets recruited by a police detective to infiltrate a rich family’s mansion and help him solve a suicide case that looks suspiciously like murder. Blondell is bubbly and irreverent in the role, screaming when director Lloyd Bacon (Marked Woman, 42nd Street) brings out the expressionistic long shadows and then …
[7] Three orphans grow up together as brothers under the care of a kindly benefactor. When they’re old enough, they join the Foreign Legion, but their dreams of adventure are dashed when a sinister sergeant turns their first outpost into a last stand. There are shades of Gunga Din here, but it’s not nearly as carefree or uplifting as that movie. The final act is …
[6] Robert Montgomery is a care-free painter and Rosalind Russell is a socialite looking for a more rustic lifestyle. In the tradition of screwball comedy, the unlikely lovers get married and revel in their poverty. But after Montgomery’s talent catches the notice of a stuffy gallery owner (Monty Woolley), the two start living the high life… until Russell starts feeling a little deja vu. Live, …
[7] The world’s first animated feature film holds up pretty well, even if feminism has rendered its heroine somewhat outdated. Snow White herself is a little annoying, not only because she sits around waiting for her “prince to come”, but also because Adriana Caselotti’s voice is so darned squeaky. But I enjoy the darker aspects of the film, including Snow White’s fear-induced flight through the …
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