Winter of Fairbanks Jr.

Winter of Fairbanks Jr.: The Sun Never Sets (1939)

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 5 Comments

This winter I watched Douglas Fairbanks Jr. movies for fun.

This week for the last movie of the series,  I watched The Sun Never Sets (1939) starring Douglas, Basil Rathbone, Barbara O’Neil and Virginia Fields.

It was directed by Rowland Lee.

Before I launch into my feelings about the movie, here is the plot, without spoilers, copied from Google:

Two British brothers (Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Basil Rathbone) squelch a radio-made dictator on the Gold Coast of Africa.

Oh. Well, that wasn’t much of a description.

A little more for you: This movie is about a brother (Douglas) who doesn’t want to go into the miliary like the rest of his family but is shamed into it by his grandfather who says what an honor it is to fight for the empire and by his brother who says there is no greater love than to leave ones family to fight for the empire.

Even his fiancé (Virginia Fields) begins to feel like her future brother and sister-in-law’s love is enviable because their relationship was strengthened during their time together on the Gold Coast.

So poor John Randolph (Douglas) is broken down and signs up for the military to take his brother, Clive Randolph’s (Basil Rathbone) place in Africa, which Clive’s wife hated. Once John agrees to capitulate and follow in the footsteps of all his family members, risking himself for the Empire, Clive is then called up for a secret mission and also has to return to the Golf Coast. He tells his wife she can’t come because she’s pregnant but she loves him and is determined to be with him.

Her pregnancy becomes a source of stress for poor ole Clive who must choose between being there for his wife when she gets sick from walking in the rain (because everyone knows that walking in the rain automatically means you get sick) and capturing a bad guy who wants to (I kid you not) take over the world.

For me this is a British propaganda movie similar to the American propaganda movies that actors like Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart were in around World War II.

My overall view on the movie: It is about restoring ones reputation for the sake of the Empire when you choose to help your family instead of completing your mission for the British Army and furthering their take over of African nations.

The movie does touch on the difficulties of serving one’s country while also being there for their family but by the end we are reminded how important it is for a British man to have a reputation as a fine soldier even more so than having a reputation as a weak man who cares about his pregnant wife.

There is forgiveness between the brothers for the failings of one brother that cost Clive being able to capture a criminal and that was nice. Not sure if the forgiveness had been there if he had failed yet again though.

 “Failing the empire twice?! My God, John! Once I can understand but twice! You’ll have to work as a dirty businessman and get rich and stand on the heads of poor people in another way now!”

One review online said this movie was more focused on family relationships than anything else and I suppose that is true. But it was also wrapped up in making sure the men were loyal to the Empire, the King, etc. while also having a family.

I was absolutely baffled by the one part where a brother chooses to bring the other brother back from a mission because his wife is dying and then the first brother is ostracized by the sister-in-law he saves. Apparently, she’d rather be dead than go back to England with a husband shamed for failing his military assignment. Just … what?!

So, this movie really wasn’t my favorite of those I have watched as part of the Fairbanks Jr. marathon, though I didn’t hate it as much as I hated Gunga Din. This movie still made sure to remind us that the British were all-knowing and that the natives of the land wouldn’t have survived without them (har. Har.) but at least refrained from calling them all savages like they did in Gunga Din.

There are a couple of movies of Douglas’s that I wish I had chosen instead of this one but I’ve seen Rathbone in Sherlock Holmes movies so figured it wouldn’t hurt to see him in something else. He is a very good actor so saying I don’t like this movie is not a slight on him or any of the actors. They did a nice job. I just didn’t enjoy the movie overall. It was somewhat like an infomercial for British military recruitment.

The author of Basilrathbone.net enjoyed the movie and was able to overlook the flaws.

“While I can point out several flaws with the film, the fine performances by the cast brought the characters to life, making them very real. I really cared about what happened to the characters and I was so caught up in the drama, that I hardly noticed or cared that the plot was rather contrived. Rathbone and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. have some great scenes together.”

This was essentially a military recruitment film, though, the writer admits.

“Universal had high hopes for this story of the British Colonial Service. In 1939, when this film was made, the British civil services administered to more than 500 million people over territory that covered 13 million square miles all over the world.”

Time Magazine did not like the film at all based on this review:

“Only slightly more agonizing than young Mr. Fairbanks’ throes in putting this subversive two & two together is the sight of middle-aged Mr. Rathbone, as a sort of Imperial Rover Boy, lashing about the jungle in bush jacket and shorts, caught barekneed between Love & Duty.” —Time magazine, June 19, 1939

Ouch.

They weren’t alone in their dislike of the film based on the reviews posted on this article on Basilrathbone.net.

By the way, I enjoyed reading the article about this movie on this site. There is a ton of information about Basil and his other movies there as well so I will be exploring it more.

This ends my Douglas Fairbanks Jr. marathon. If you want to read my impressions of the other movies I watched you can find them here:

https://lisahoweler.com/movie-reviews-impressions/

Up next in April, Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I will be watching movies set in Paris. We will be announcing our movie list at a later date. Stay tuned!

Winter of Fairbanks: Sinbad the Sailor. Not even my crush on Fairbanks Jr. could get me through this one.

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 5 Comments

This week for Winter of Fairbanks Jr. I watched Sinbad the Sailor.

Oh my, readers.

I watched this one with a face you make after you’ve taken gross tasting medicine.

Not even my crush on Fairbanks Jr. could get me through this one.

What was I even thinking? I really should have read up on it more or watched a preview first.

Cheesy? Check.

Sort of disrespectful to other cultures? Check.

Horrid, garish colors and really bad makeup jobs complete with darkened skin and dark eyeliner? Check.

A red-haired Irish woman who is supposed to be a Middle Eastern princess? Check.

There were so many yikes with this one, I just couldn’t wait for it to end. I wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be in the adventure or slapstick comedy genre. I found myself singing “It’s Sinbad the Sailor man” to the tune of Popeye’s theme song throughout much of it.

We’re supposed to believe this American man wearing blue eye shadow and dark eyeliner is a Muslim from Baghdad? Oh be still my horrified heart.

There is nothing like hearing a thick Irish accent say, “I am Shireen, Princess of Baghdad” to really emerse you into a movie about a middle-eastern folklore hero. *facepalm*

That darkened skin? They apparently got bored of using it about 15 minutes in because everyone miraculously appeared white again for a scene or two. No idea what that was about because a few scenes later they were dark again. I think there might have been only two or three actors in this movie who were actually not white. Anthony Quinn was one of them but not even he was middle-eastern since he was born in Mexico.

*I just want to add a clarification here (that wasn’t in here when I originally posted this): I do not mean to imply that the people making this movie or starring in it were racist at all. I just mean that it jarred me out of the story to have them be so clearly pale, American, and Irish, or with horrible makeup. I don’t think any ill-will was meant toward any culture. It was common in the early days of movies just to want to make something fun and not really think about how they might be slighting cultures. I am not excusing that but I also don’t think that movie makers set out to be offensive.

Another thing that always puzzles me about these old movies — couples meeting each other one day and already kissing each other that same day.

What was with that anyhow?

I’ve done my share of ranting about the movie so far so how about a little plot for you as presented by an article on TCM.com:

“Surrounded by friends, charming storyteller and adventurer Sinbad (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.) regales his audience with a tale of his derring-do in exotic lands. In this particular adventure, his ocean journey with sidekick Abbu (George Tobias) pauses in the remote Daibul where nefarious auctioneers commandeer his ship. A bidding war erupts between rightful owner Sinbad and the feisty Shireen (Maureen O’Hara), resolved only through a bit of Sinbadian sleight of hand.”

“Meanwhile the powerful Emir (Anthony Quinn) notices Sinbad’s attentions towards the headstrong Shireen, who saves the sailor’s life before being captured by the Emir. This time salvation arrives in the form of Eastern sailor Melik (Walter Slezak) who enlists the couple’s aid in tracking down the elusive treasure of Deryabar, located beneath the palace of Alexander the Great. Loyalties and vows shift as the trio races to the treasure with the furious Emir hot on their heels.”

The film was shot in Technicolor so it is way out there with crazy colors from the paint on the ship to Maureen’s gaudy dresses.

TCM says Douglas was “famously ignored by his father as a child” but still wanted to make the movie in honor of his father’s swashbuckling movies. It was the first movie that Douglas Jr. made after returning from voluntarily serving in the United States Navy during World War II.

The writer of the article on TCM, Nathaniel Thompson, did have an “obsession” (as I’m sure many did) with what he called Maureen’s “exquisitely endowed bosom.”

He wrote, “which she was wisely but discreetly at pains to exploit and which I, ever an untiring student of such anatomical addenda, discreetly admired.”

Writing in his autobiography, A Hell of A War, Fairbanks wrote that he knew no one in a lead in the movie was Arab at all.

“After all, I was not exactly a typical Arab any more than Walter Slezak was even remotely (with his taped-up blue eyes) Oriental.”

 And I guess none of them really saw a problem with that. Sigh.

Anyhow…if you want to watch this movie simply to see how much you can cringe in 1 hr and 57 min (I felt like this movie would never end and fast forwarded a couple of times to get there), I would recommend it.

Holy eyeliner, Batman!
Have you been playing with your mother’s curtains again, Douglas? Don’t lie…

I am hoping my next choice, The Rise of Catherine The Great (1934), is a bit better. It is streaming for free on YouTube. At least in the United States.

After that I am watching  The Sun Never Sets (1939). It is available for free on PBS and I also found it here: https://archive.org/details/sun.-never.-sets.-1939

You can find my impressions of previous movies in the series, as well as other classic movies here: https://lisahoweler.com/movie-reviews-impressions/

Classic Movie Impressions: Winter of Fairbanks Jr., Angels Over Broadway

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 5 Comments

This winter I am watching movies starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

I had to switch movies for this week’s Winter of Fairbanks Jr. because I couldn’t find Chase a Crooked Shadow. Instead I chose Angels Over Broadway, which I found on YouTube.

It was a simple movie with a very sweet ending. It definitely had some plot holes and some vague back stories and some not great reviews online but I found it endearing.

Douglas (remember we are on a first-name basis now) plays a down-on-his-luck con man named Bill O’Brien who thinks he has found his way to fortune when he sees a man named Charles Engle (John Qualen) blowing cash left and right at a night club.

The issue is that Engle really isn’t loaded at all. He stole $3,000 from his business partner to make his wife happy and then his wife took the money to leave with another man.

Engle’s been confronted by his business partner and is ready to kill himself. Now he is spending one last night on the town before he ends it all.

Rita Hayworth is a lounge singer named Nina Barona who spots Engle and wonders if he might be a producer or director who can help her become famous.

O’Brien sees her and wonders if she might be someone that he can pull into one of his schemes. Also, you can tell he likes the look of her, if you know what I mean. *wink* *wink*

So, yes, we have a group of scammers ready to scam each other. O’Brien sees in Engle a quick buck because he’s going to talk him into going to an illegal poker game and throwing away some of his money and then getting a cut of whatever is taken from him. O’Brien’s main source of income is leading rich men to notorious gangster Dutch Enright (Ralph Theodore). Dutch then cheats them out of a fortune and gives Bill a cut of the profits for luring them in.

Thomas Mitchell portrays playwright Gene Gibbons (Thomas Mitchell….also known as Uncle Billy in It’s A Wonderful Life) whose last play fell on its face.

He’s intoxicated and handed the wrong coat when he goes to collect his. Its Engle’s coat and in the pocket is the suicide letter Engle has written for his partner and estranged wife to find after his death.

Gibbons reads the letter and asks who it belongs to. He doesn’t like the idea of someone killing themselves and tracks Engle down to try to talk him out of it.

Gibbons reveals himself to Engle to be a womanizer, adulterer, and a failure at success. He tells Engle he doesn’t want him to miss out on all the beautiful things in life so he decides to  help Engle get the $3,000 back. His plan to do that fails so in walks O’Brien, who learns Engle doesn’t actually have any money. Nina thinks this is hilarious and blurts out the scheme O’Brien tried to pull her into.

O’Brien is a bit ticked at her move to blather about the plan but Gibbons believes they can still pull the plan off by pretending Engle is rich.

Scam a gangster? Eek. O’Brien doesn’t like the idea but if Engle can win more than $3,000 in the game then O’Brien can take whatever is left.

The bulk of the movie is watching three people try to play each other or others to benefit themselves and then later having to decide if this is the person they really want to be.

Douglas is a bit of a jerk and a softy in this one. He does,  however, rescue Nina from a predatory man when she tries to use the man to get to an opportunity to make her famous. He also shows he’s not all about himself later in the movie.

I wasn’t sure what to make of his thick New York City accent in this one. All I know is that I kept talking like him for the rest of the night, including asking my kids, “Eh, you ready for dinner or what? You need me to wait to get dinner on the plates or do ya’ wants me to bring it to  you while it’s still warm?”

My children didn’t find any of this amusing, by the way.

Hayworth got the role after Jean Arthur turned it down and it was her first “A” list film. As we all know, she flew to fame after this by becoming a heartthrob of the 1940s and a pin-up girl during World War II.

Before this movie she was in 35 different movies starting in 1926, but in most of those movies she portrayed secondary characters.

Angels Over Broadway was directed by Ben Hecht and co-produced by Douglas, who convinced Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures, to finance the rest.

“Cohn couldn’t figure out what the picture was about but neither could we,” Fairbanks was later quoted as saying about the film.

Samantha Richards from Musings of A Classic Film Addict writes on her blog, “The plot and theme are clear to audiences today, as the screenplay, which earned iconic screenwriter Ben Hecht an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay for 1940, has since been regarded as far ahead of its time by critics. I find it difficult to understand why this film isn’t universally recognized that way that I see it: as a strong and riveting drama that blends the realism of New York City life, with a touch of fantasy and the idealism that maybe good guys can sometimes win in the end. To answer my own question, Rita Hayworth is miles apart from the calculated femme fatale image that she would later be known for, with a mousey voice and a doe-eyed look that would make even diehard fans of hers puzzled.”

Richardson continues, “Each performance in Angels Over Broadway (1940) is spot on and impeccably cast, made up of wildly underappreciated actors like Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Thomas Mitchell, both of whom rank highly in my book. Jean Arthur could never have portrayed a role like Nina Barona, but I also doubt that even Rita herself could have pulled this part off after being transformed by the Hollywood machine after this film’s release.”

I feel Douglas was very good in this, but in some ways Mitchell stole the show as the intoxicated, and later repentant and sober, Gibbons. He seems to play drunk fellows well. I hope that wasn’t because he knew a lot about it in real life.

It did hit me as I was watching the movie that Douglas always has a small mustache, no matter what movie he is in — other than one of his first movies, The Power of the Press.

There isn’t a ton of information about this movie online, so you won’t have to read through paragraphs of history, behind the scenes stories, or trivia today.

I do have a couple tidbits of trivia I read on Imdb, including:

“The tagline on the original movie poster – “A HECTIC ROMANCE TO BLOW THE FUSES OUT ALONG MAZDA LANE” – refers to the Broadway theater district in New York City as “Mazda Lane.” Mazda was a brand of light bulbs common in the first half of the 20th century, with a name referencing an ancient Persian god of light and good. Broadway was and is known for its brightly lit marquees, and had many nicknames in its heyday.”

And:

“The working title for this film was Before I Die.”

So, there is one line from Douglas in this movie that made me swoon a bit. I’ve gone to the trouble of clipping it for you to share here and it was a bit of an ordeal to do so I hope you appreciate it. *wink* Let me know if you figure out what the line is.



I would guess that many of you have not seen this movie but if you have, what did you think?

I found this for free one on YouTube, by the way.

Up next for me in my Winter of Fairbanks Jr. marathon is Sinbad The Sailor (1947) and I did make sure this one is streaming somewhere.

After that I am watching The Rise of Catherine the Great and writing about it February 27. It is also streaming.

My last pick, The Sun Never Sets, 1939, is available for free on PBS and I also found it here: https://archive.org/details/sun.-never.-sets.-1939

You can find my impressions of previous movies in the series, as well as other classic movies here: https://lisahoweler.com/movie-reviews-impressions/

Winter of Fairbanks Jr.: The Exile (1947)

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 7 Comments

This winter I am watching movies starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

I had planned to watch Having Wonderful Time, this week but I couldn’t find it streaming anywhere. Instead, I watched The Exile from 1947 after I found it streaming on YouTube. It wasn’t great quality, but it was good enough that I could make out what was going on.

The movie tells the story of King Charles of England who was exiled to Holland in 1690 by Oliver Cromwell and The Roundheads. Douglas plays King Charle who stayed in Holland for years with a small band of supporters. Cromwell and The Roundheads find out where he is and his advisor, chief advisor, Sir Edward Hyde (Nigel Bruce), suggests he hide out somewhere where he can get information but where Cromwell’s assassins can’t get to him.

Charles decides to hide out on the small farm of a flower girl he met in the market square.

The flower girl, Katie, is played by Rita Corday, who was billed as Paule Croset in later films (I have no idea why but I suppose I will have to look that up one day. There wasn’t a lot of information about her online.)

Charles begins to help on the farm and the two fall in love. While working there a man arrives who says he is King Charles, which of course Douglas’s character knows is untrue, but he lets him continue the ruse as he stays at the inn on the farm.

The next visitor to arrive at the farm is Countess Anabella de Courteuil (María Montez), an old lover of Charles’s and an emissary from King Louis of France. This totally threw me off because I can not figure out how she found the king. Like did everyone know where this dude was hiding out?

Anyhoooo…Anabella gives Charles a music box from the king of France, talks to him while sitting naked in a enclosed bathtub  or sauna that looked like a spaceship to me, and sort of suggests they renew their past relationship.

The promo photos for this film were a bit crazy.

Charles, however, is focused on the music box because he wants to sell it and give the money to Katie to pay off her abusive cousin so she can own the farm and inn free and clear. Annabelle overhears his plan, which will come in handy later when Katie thinks Charles loves Annabell instead. Charles is also discovered by one of Cromwell’s men and ….

And……well, I will leave you to find out the rest if you watch the movie.  

I will tell you that there is at least one intense sword fight scene, which I think was always required in these type of adventure films. I do have to say, though, that it always cracks me up how these movies and books portray these kings as swashbuckling heroes who can wield swords and charm the pants (literally) off any woman.

In reality, they were probably overweight, out of shape, pampered and had no idea how to fight their way out of a paper bag, let alone fight against attackers or would-be-kidnappers.

Maria Montez is a secondary character in the movie and only appears in it about 15 minutes but she received top  billing because she had in her contracts with Universal that she would receive top billing no matter what movie she was in.

The film is based on the 1926 novel His Majesty, the King: A Romantic Love Chase of the Seventeenth Century by Cosmo Hamilton, which Douglas bought the rights to so he could make a movie similar to the movies his father, Douglas Fairbanks, used to make. His father’s movies were classic swashbuckler films and Douglas Jr. said he wanted this film to honor his father’s memory. He also planned to produce two other similar films but those other movies were never made.

“When people ask me if I’m following in my father’s footsteps, I tell them his footsteps were so light they didn’t leave a trace”, Douglas said when he announced in 1946 he would be producing and starring in the film. “The proof of it is that his pictures were so carefully tailored to him that no remakes by others have ever been entirely successful. Still I find myself drifting back to the kind of roles he played – by public demand, as it were… However my stunting is more of a piece de resistance than the thing itself, if you get what I mean. Now that I have my own company I’ll probably go in for the swashbuckling type of thing. I’m not necessarily wedded to it; our stories will be of varied dramatic content, but I find that I can whip up more enthusiasm for those of a romantic and slightly fantastic nature, like The Exile.”

Douglas purchased the rights to the book in 1941 but then went off to fight in World War II, where he became a very decorated soldier. This, of course, delayed the movie being made.

This movie was made under Douglas’s own production company, the Fairbanks Company.

It was directed by Max Ophuls and was his first Hollywood film. He was set to direct Vendetta with Howard Hughes but the two didn’t get along.

The original plan was to make the movie in technicolor, which would have been beautiful, but Douglas ran out of money for the production, and it was shot in black and white instead.

Overall, I enjoyed the film but it wasn’t as captivating as The Prisoner of Zenda or as engaging as The Young In Heart.

Have you ever seen this one? If so, what did you think?

Up next for me in my marathon of Douglas Fairbanks Jr. movies is Chase a Crooked Shadow.

After that I will be watching (in parentheses are the dates I’ll write about them):

Sinbad The Sailor (February 20)

The Rise of Catherine the Great (February 27)

The Sun Never Sets (March 6)

You can find my impressions of previous movies in the series, as well as other classic movies here: https://lisahoweler.com/movie-reviews-impressions/

Winter of Douglas Fairbanks Jr.: The Young In Heart

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 9 Comments

This winter I am watching Douglas Fairbanks Jr. movies for fun and this week I watched The Young in Heart. It was such a refreshing change after the disaster I felt Gunga Din was last week.



This movie was full of hilarious moments, charming characters, sweet transformations, and hopeful overtones.

I absolutely loved Douglas in this one. He played a more prominent role that in Gunga Din and was simply … shall I sound completely cheesy? Yes, I shall. He was completely delightful.

At one point I texted my friend Erin that a drunk Douglas is adorable.

You’ll have to watch the movie to know what I mean. I found this one for free on YouTube.

The Carlton family, of which Douglas is a part of in this movie, are not people you would want to know in real life. They are swindlers and grifters. They mooch off and manipulate people to scrape by in life.

We open the movie in the French Riveria with Douglas’s character (Rick) ready to marry a young woman whose father is rich.

The rest of Rick’s family — father Col. Anthony “Sahib” Carleton (Roland Young), mother Marmey Carlton (Billie Burke), and daughter George-Anne (Janet Gaynor) — are thrilled with this plan because they know it will also set them all up for a rich life. George Anne might be even more thrilled because then she can marry a poor Scottish man who she’s fallen in love with, and the rest of her family will support her financially.

Everything falls apart, though, when the police find out about the family and reveal their conniving ways to the family of Rick’s future wife. The family is told to get out of France and end up on a train where they meet a ridiculously sweet woman (Minnie Dupree) who has only recently come into a great sum of money.

Ironically, her last name is Fortune. George-Anne sets out to swindle the woman out of paying for their lunch but the plan expands as the woman explains she lives alone in a big mansion left to her by a former suitor. She is saying how lovely it would be if all of them came to stay with her when there is a train derailment. Their car tips and at first Rick and George-Anne believe the old woman has died. She’s still breathing so the siblings carry her from the car and George-Anne covers her with her own coat.

We begin to wonder if the family is rotten through and through and are still playing things up as the woman later recovers and invites the family to come live with her.

They take her up on the offer and an odd friendship begins to form between them all. Soon George-Anne begins to feel guilty about what they are doing so she suggests to the family that if Miss Fortune believes they are a respectable family she will be more willing to let them live there and maybe even leave them money when she leaves. To play up this ruse she suggests the men get actual jobs and she and her mother act like caretakers and women who don’t swindle people out of money.

This is all very baffling to the family, which has always cheated and stolen for a living. When the men decide George-Anne’s plan might work and go to look for jobs, the scenes that follow are some of the most hilarious tongue-in-cheek moments I’ve seen in a movie.

Spinning around in the background of the family’s drama is the romance between George-Anne and Duncan Macrae (Richard Carlson), who she originally considered marrying when she thought he was rich. Duncan learned she was a con-artist along with everyone else and was shattered but still ends up chasing her down on the train back to London to tell her he still loves her.

She tells him to get lost, believing he’s much too good for her and . . . well, you’ll have to see where all that ends up.

Rick is also having his own romance with Leslie Saunders (Paulette Goddard), a secretary and the engineering business  he applies at for a job.

This is the second – or shall I say third – movie I’ve watched in recent months with Billie Burke and there is no mistaking that voice if  you have seen The Wizard of Oz.

Yes, she is Glenda the Good Witch.

The screenplay for this movie was written by Paul Osborn and adapted by Charles Bennett from the serialized novel, The Gay Banditti by I. A. R. Wylie. That title certainly would have had a different connotation in the modern day, eh?

Anyhow, the novel appeared in parts in The Saturday Evening Post from February 26 to March 26, 1938.

The movie released in November of the same year. They certainly worked fast back then.

I found it interesting when I read that Broadway actresses Maude Adams and Laurette Taylor screen-tested for the role of Miss Fortune and that the footage is the only audio-visual samples that existed of both of them.

The movie was produced by – can you guess? Because it feels like every movie I write about lately is produced by him.

Yes. David Selznick. The man who produced what is considered one of the biggest movie triumps in the world — Gone with the Wind.

This movie was one of many he produced leading up to Gone With The Wind. The Prisoner of Zenda, which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, was another. Goddard was actually rumored to be being considered to play Scarlet O’Hara in Gone With The Wind, which later, of course, went to Vivien Leigh.

While I was watching the part of the movie where Mr. Carleton goes to apply for a job, I was fascinated by the fancy car they showed. It was spinning like a pig on a spit at the front of the building and it was a very modern looking car and a very modern looking set up altogether.

According to Ultimate Car Page and Wikipedia,

The six-passenger 2-door sedan Flying Wombat featured in that scene was actually the one-of-a-kind prototype Phantom Corsair. The Phantom Corsair concept car was built in 1938 and designed by Rust Heinz of the H. J. Heinz family and Maurice Schwartz of the Bohman & Schwartz coachbuilding company in Pasadena, California.”

I also found it interesting that this was Gaynor’s last movie before retiring while she was at the top of her career. She made one last movie in 1957 called Bernardine.

Like I said above, I loved this movie. It was just what I needed to watch this week with so much sadness going on in the world. There was a lot of humor from all the cast but Douglas really had me smiling throughout. Not only because he is my latest old Hollywood star crush (watch out Paul Newman!).

Have you seen this one? What did you think of it?

Up next for my Winter of Fairbanks Jr. is: Having Wonderful Time (February 6)

The rest of the movies I will be watching include:

Chase a Crooked Shadow (February 13)

Sinbad The Sailor (February 20)

The Rise of Catherine the Great (February 27)

The Sun Never Sets (March 6)

You can also find my impressions of previous movies in the series, as well as other classic movies here: https://lisahoweler.com/movie-reviews-impressions/

Thanks to Cat from Cat’s Wire watching along with me this week. She wrote about her impressions of the movie here: https://catswire.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-young-in-heart.html

Classic Movie Impressions (Winter of Douglas Fairbanks Jr.): Gunga Din

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 5 Comments

Up this week for the Winter of Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is Gunga Din (1939), said to be one of his most famous movies.

I am going to let you know right up front that I rarely hate classic movies that I watch, but I pretty much hated this movie. This movie was a train wreck for me from beginning to end. Possibly a bit of a racist train wreck at that. It had a severe identity crisis — it wasn’t sure if it was a comedy or a drama.

For me this movie was Gunga Do..n’t.

When I first started it I thought, “Two of my favorite actors. Cary Grant and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr! Be still my heart!!!”

As I continued it, I thought things like:

 “Are these guys supposed to be British?”

“What accent is that? Is he trying to do an accent? Why is he trying to do an accent?”

“Why didn’t they let the Irish actor just have an Irish accent? His British accent is horrible.”

“Douglas looks bored out of his mind and like he wishes he could get out of his contract.”

“Is that a white man painted brown to look Indian? And that one too? And that one? And…

First a snippet of the synopsis of the movie from TCM.com:

In an encampment of Her Majesty’s Lancers in Colonial India, the commanding officer (Montagu Love) is distressed by the cutoff of communications from an outpost ten miles distant. He wants three of his most dependable sergeants to embark on an investigative mission; however, the trio must first be pulled away from a bar brawl to receive their orders. The comrades in arms include the calculating Cutter (Cary Grant), ever dreaming of finding a cache of riches; the grizzled veteran MacChesney (Victor McLaglen); and the gentlemanly Ballantine (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.), whose sole focus is his imminent discharge and marriage to his fiancée (Joan Fontaine), much to the chagrin of his comrades.

Among the troops taken on the mission is the humble bhisti Gunga Din (Sam Jaffe), for whom life would hold no greater honor than to serve as regular Army. They arrive at the outpost to find the streets empty; the soldiers’ rousting of the homes turns up one small cluster of ostensible survivors.

Cutter’s drunken fixation with a legendary golden temple leads to a one-sided slugfest with MacChesney, a stint in the brig, and an audacious escape courtesy of Din and MacChesney’s beloved pet elephant. In their flight, Cutter and Din discover the mythical temple which, as they unfortunately learn too late, is also the gathering place of a criminal sect devoted to the Hindustani goddess of destruction Kali. Cutter offers himself to the cult to buy Din time to escape, and the quest for his rescue drives Gunga Din to its rousing conclusion.”

I don’t know what to say about this movie. I really don’t. It was a mix between a comedy and drama with a lot of racist undertones against the Indian people who Great Britain took over for no reason other than greed and power.

Then at the end they acted like these three idiots were heroes, when half of the people who died wouldn’t have if Cary’s character hadn’t been looking for gold.

To me it was a great big statement on imperialism and while the movie was trying o portray British patriotism I found it fairy sickening to watch them gun down Indians whose land it was in the first place.

And the music playing throughout this movie tried to make it seem like it was a goofy romp, even while the footage before our eyes tried to play it off as a serious epic. I was so thoroughly confused.

Also, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. looked so bored in much of this movie. It was like he was trying to figure out what was going on with the rest of us.

The movie was overbudget and took longer to film than promised, according to an article on TCM.com.

“Filming began in June of 1938 and was set to last for 64 days. Due to the working methods of director Stevens and to a studio anxious to produce its most prestigious picture to date, Gunga Din would ultimately go over budget, miss its release date of Christmas, 1938, and the shooting schedule would stretch well beyond the allotted 64 days to a total of 104 days.”

The movie was shot in the deserts of Lone Pine, California, and temperatures of up to 115 degrees took a toll on the cast and crew.

A number of scenes that involved journalist and poet Rudyard Kipling — who wrote the poem and short stories that the movie was based on — were cut at the request of his widow who knew that at that time audiences would have been shocked and laughed at the idea of a journalist being embedded with the army. This is something modern audiences wouldn’t even blink an eye at today.

I found it interesting that author William Faulkner worked on the original screenplay for $750 a week. I guess I always thought of him as more highbrow than writing screenplays for movies. In the end it wasn’t his screenplay that was used, but instead one by  Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht.

The expenses paid out for the movie was one reason the movie ended up costing the most of any movie that the RKO Studio had made so far at $1.9 million. Of course it wasn’t the most expensive movie released that year. That went to Gone With The Wind produced by David Selznick’s Selznick International Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer with $3.8 million.

Gunga Din only brought in $2.8 million but was re-released in 1941 and again in the 50s and gained back even more of it’s production costs over the years.

While I thought Douglas looked bored in this movie, he looked back on it with fondness, even though a biography on Cary reports that the veteran actor stole a scene from Douglas so Cary would look better.

From TCM.com: “In his biography Cary Grant: A Touch of Elegance, Warren G. Harris relates a story from the set in which “…Grant deliberately cheated Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., out of one of the most memorable moments in the picture. In a rooftop scene, Fairbanks had to wrestle with a native, pick him up and hurl him into the street below. Grant coveted the bit himself, so he told his co-star, ‘Doug, you really shouldn’t do this. It looks like you’ve killed the guy. It wouldn’t help your image. And you know your father would never have done such a thing on the screen.'” The ruse worked, and when Stevens asked for a volunteer for the shot, Grant jumped at the chance.”

This didn’t stop Douglas from still admiring Cary though because he later told another biographer writing about Cary: “ . . . .the most generous player I’ve ever worked with. He wasn’t just taking his salary. He was concerned that the picture be a good picture. He thought that what was good for the picture was good for him, and he was right. He was very shrewd that way. He was a master technician, which many people don’t realize, meticulous and conscious of every move. It might have looked impetuous or impulsive, but it wasn’t. It was all carefully planned. Cary was a very sharp and intelligent actor who worked out everything ahead. I called him Sarge or Sergeant Cutter, and he called me Ballantine right to the end of his life.”

There are other reviews online bothered by the racist undertones of the movie and just the confusing antics of the three main characters.

“I can see how the film would be epic at the time,” writes the author of Opus.ing.com. “But in this day and age, where epics are tossed off every six months or so, it’s hard to look past the film’s dated-ness and timely flaws. Not an unenjoyable film, but if you’re looking for a “classic” epic, you may wish to look elsewhere — and if you’re looking for an honest, unromantic view of British imperialism, you’ll definitely want to look elsewhere.”

This author also noticed Cary’s accent issues: “Far too much time is spent on the hijinks of the three officers, played by Victor McLaglen, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and Cary Grant (whose accent seems to change with every scene), such that the titular character, an Indian bugler who wants more than anything to prove himself a soldier, easily becomes overshadowed.”

When I describe Cary’s accent issue, think Kevin Costner in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

Yeah.

That bad.

TCM admits that there have always been issues with the movie regarding it’s political correctness (for lack of a better term). The film was even banned in India.

“But as a pure adventurous lark,” writes TCM’s Jay Steinberg. “Gunga Din holds up as well now as then, and retains its place amongst the top films of 1939, Hollywood’s greatest year.”

If he thinks so….I will just agree to disagree.

Have you ever seen this one? What did you think of it?

Up next for my Winter of Fairbanks Jr. is: The Young At Heart 

The rest of the movies I will be watching include:

Having Wonderful Time (February 6)

Chase a Crooked Shadow (February 13)

Sinbad The Sailor (February 20)

The Rise of Catherine the Great (February 27)

The Sun Never Sets (March 6)

You can also find my impressions of previous movies in the series, as well as other classic movies here: https://lisahoweler.com/movie-reviews-impressions/

I loved this history-filled post about the movie by Cat’s Wire.

Classic Movie Impressions: The Prisoner of Zenda

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 5 Comments

The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) is a cinematic spectacle. Grand halls, sweeping ballrooms, wildly decorated courtyards, and captivating costumes.

I absolutely loved it and am so glad I stumbled on to Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and decided to do a marathon of his movies to learn more about him so that I could discover this movie.

Douglas Fairbanks Jr.  is not the leading man in this one but he steals the show in every scene he is in. He is deliciously evil.

The leading man, Ronald Colman, is absolutely amazing as well, especially since he is playing two parts in this one. He is so amazing I feel another marathon coming on but of his movies.

An article on TCM.com agrees with me about this version (Okay, I agree with the article).

“ . . . of all the dramatized versions of Anthony Hope’s 1894 tale of adventure, love and honor, the 1937 black-and-white movie version, produced by David O. Selznick for his Selznick International Pictures stands as the definitive adaptation.”

It is easy to see why this movie is called by critics one of the best “Swashbuckler” movies of all time. I say that since this is one of the original Swashbuckler movies without it we wouldn’t have Pirates of the Caribbean, The Princess Bride, and other more modern adventure movies.

 And without the 1894 novel — The Prisoner of Zenda: Being the History of Three Months in the Life of an English Gentleman by Anthony Hope — we wouldn’t have had the movie at all.  Anthony Hope Hawkins was a part-time lawyer who wrote the book in one month from what I read.  

The novel sold more than 30,000 copies in Britain and the U.S. and helped to establish the adventure genre that would later be explored even more by authors such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H. Rider Haggard. The book, according to an article to TCM, has never gone out of print and has continued to sell thousands of copies each year.

The movie is the most referenced Swashbuckler film, TCM further states, which is probably why it was remade at least seven (!!) more times over the years, including one only about 15 years after the 1937 version, which was not the first. There were actually two silent movies of the book made before this version.

The 1952 version was shot frame for frame, according to articles I read online. I think I might watch the one released in 1952 later on and then compare the two, but I highly doubt that the 1952 movie or any of the others (including two made-for-TV movies and three television shows) will top the 1937 one, especially when it comes to Douglas’s performance. Yes, Doug and I are on a first-name basis now. I feel that we are getting to know each other enough now that we can dispatch with the formalities.

When I first saw Douglas in The Rage of Paris, I immediately thought how much he reminded me of Cary Elwes in The Princess Bride – his smile, his delivery, his expressions.

In this movie that similarity came even more into focus and especially during an amazingly well-choreographed and filmed fencing scene between him and Colman.

The two enjoyed a sparring of words while sparring with their swords, reminding me of the scene between Elwes and Mandy Patinkin on the Cliffs of Insanity in The Princess Bride. Perhaps Golding was influenced by the movie? I don’t know but if I research any more for this post, I’ll never publish it.

Let’s finally get to the plot of the movie. Finally…I know!

We have an Englishman named Rudolf Rassendyll (Colman) who has gone to a small country located somewhere between Vienna and Bucharest (not named in the film, but in the book it was called Ruritania). He has gone there for a fishing expedition at the same time the king of the country is being coronated. Zenda is a small area in this unnamed country where there is good fishing and boar hunting and where the king, Rudolph V (also portrayed by Colman), has a hunting preserve and cabin. RudolfV and his advisors Col. Zapt (C. Aubrey Smith) and Captain Fritz von Tarlenheim (David Niven, who I recognized immediately from other movies I’ve seen him in) run into Rassendyll in the woods and realize how much the two look alike.

I’m a little confused by the scene where Rassendyll tells the king they look alike because of their ancestors  — the king’s great-great-great grandfather and Rassendyll’s great-great-great grandmother — most likely had an illicit affair. In the beginning of the film, he acts like he’s coming to the country to hunt and knows nothing about the king or how much he looks like him but five minutes later in the film he’s telling the king he knows he looks like him and why. This is probably something that is explained better in the book.

All I can say is thankfully they both have the same British accent even though the King is from a kingdom in Eastern Europe, or they wouldn’t be able to understand each other.  Har. Har.

Minor complaint. Let us move on.

This news from Rassendyll about their probable relationship cracks the king up and he invites Rassendyll back to his hunting cabin where they get completely roaring drunk and Rudolftalks about his coronation scheduled for the next day and his half-brother Duke Michael, who hates him. He also speaks of his cousin Princess Flavia (Madeleine Carroll) who he will wed shortly after the coronation. After everyone else is unconscious from drinking too much, Rudolfdecides to drink a bottle of wine gifted to him by Michael.

 Uh-oh. Bad idea.

When Rassendyll wakes up the King is unconscious on the floor, drugged. The king’s advisor says the king isn’t dead, but he won’t be in any shape to be coronated that which means that Michael could be crowned instead. A plan is hatched to have Rassendyll pose as the king only for the coronation and then to be smuggled out of the country and sent back home.

Of course, we have foreshadowing here that tells us that all will not go as planned and, indeed, it does not.

Douglas portrays Robert of Hentzau, the henchman (for lack of a better word) of Duke Michael, the king’s brother who wants to take over the throne.

He shows up for the first time with a crooked, mischievous smile, like in many of his movies, and lets us know immediately he is the comic relief and a completely swarmy cad. A very attractive cad, though, I must say.

Let’s put it this way —Hentzau is all frat boy, and I could not stop watching him when he was on screen.

There was a lot about this movie I could not stop watching — the acting, the scenery, and the exquisitely detailed and breathtaking costumes designed by Ernest Dryden.

The Prisoner of Zenda was originally going to be released by MGM, but was bought by Selznick for his own studio, right around the same time he was working on Gone With The Wind (1939).

If MGM had produced it, they were going to use it as a vessel for more money makers from power team William Powel and Myrna Loy of the Thin Man movies. A musical was also a possibility. That all went out the window when Selznick bought it.

“Zenda was already a proven commodity in print, on the stage and in previous film versions,” writes Roger Fristoe for TCM.com. “And the recent abdication of England’s Edward VIII led Selznick to think that a story of kings and coronations would be timely.”

John Cromwell, a former actor who had previously only directed romantic dramas, was chosen to direct, which some questioned.

Selznick explained the decision had to do with Cromwell’s experience with European audiences.

“In doing a picture like The Prisoner of Zenda, which is aimed at least fifty percent toward a foreign market,” he wrote in a memo. “It becomes important to get a director who at least has the judgment and taste to respect the sensibilities of audiences which are sensitive, particularly in England, about the behavior of royalty.”

Cromwell had a lot of complaints about the cast, though, including Niven and Douglas, who he called lazy and overindulged. He even dismissed Niven at one point because he didn’t find his humor humorous. Ha. But Selznick overruled him and brought Niven back, saying he was bringing life to an otherwise dull role.

 James Wong Howe was the cinematographer for the movie and his work was amazing, in my humble opinion. The various angles, the lighting, all of it.

Look at this fencing scene..the shadows on the walls..

The cinematography, great acting, and astounding costume and set design made this movie overwhelmingly enchanting.

There are a couple of scenes where Colman is filmed talking to himself and I was really interested to know how that was done before the days of digital special effects. Luckily the TCM article explained that for me.

“The special effects created by Howe included a subtle and convincing scene where Colman appears to shake hands with himself. A 3 X 4′ optical glass was placed in front of the camera, and Colman exchanged the handshake with a double, whose head and shoulders were subsequently matted out with masking tape on the glass. The scene was re-photographed with Colman in a different costume and everything matted out except his head and shoulders. When the images were combined, the effect was complete and quite realistic.”

Because I loved Douglas as Hentzau so much, I thought I’d close this post by sharing some quotes that show how delightfully jerky he is in the movie:

“I don’t like women who lie to me. They don’t usually do it, as a matter of fact. I usually do them to them.”

“Someone once called fidelity a fading woman’s greatest defense and a charming woman’s greatest hypocrisy. And you’re very charming. And Michael’s very busy and likely to be more so.”

[during his sword fight with Rupert, Rudolf Rassendyll “retreats” towards the drawbridge’s controls]: “You’d be a sensation in a circus. I can’t understand it. Where did you learn such roller skating?”

To Rassendyll: “Why don’t you let me kill you quietly?”

Rassendyll: Oh, a little noise adds a touch of cheer. You notice I’m getting closer to the drawbridge rope?

Henztau: You’re so fond of rope, it’s a pity to finish you off with steel. What did they teach you on the playing fields of Eton? Puss in the corner?

Rassendyll: Oh, chiefly not throwing knives at other people’s backs. (A reference to a previous scene).

Have you ever seen this version or any version of The Prisoner of Zenda?

What was your impression of it?

Up next in my series will be Gunga Din, one of his more famous movies, from what I’ve read.

The rest of the movies I will be watching include:

The Young At Heart (January 30)

Having Wonderful Time (February 6)

Chase a Crooked Shadow (February 13)

Sinbad The Sailor (February 20)

The Rise of Catherine the Great (February 27)

The Sun Never Sets (March 6)

You can also find my impressions of previous movies in the series, as well as other classic movies here: https://lisahoweler.com/movie-reviews-impressions/

Winter of Fairbanks Jr.: The Power of the Press

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 7 Comments

For the last couple of years, I’ve been taking a season or time period and watching movies with one actor or actress. I kicked it off in 2022 with a Summer of Paul by watching the movies of one of my favorite actors, Paul Newman.

Last spring it was Spring With Cary (Grant that is) and in 2023 it was the Summer of Marilyn.

This winter I’ve chosen Winter with Fairbanks Jr. (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) because I just watched my first movie with him  — The Rage of Paris — a couple of months ago and thought it would be fun to explore his other movies, which I know I’ve never seen before because before The Rage of Paris I had never even heard of the guy.

I’ve already written about The Rage of Paris, so I kicked off my marathon with the first movie Douglas Fairbanks Jr. had a lead in The Power of The Press (1928). It is a silent movie directed by Frank Capra. This movie is one of the shortest I’ve watched in my life at about 59 minutes long.

I can’t say I’ve ever watched a silent movie all the way through before this one, so this was a new experience for me. I ended up getting very caught up in the story, especially the crazy car chase scene, which had me captivated.

Right before the scene there was an odd clip where one minute Clem is being held at gunpoint and the film glitches and then the man with the gun is tied up, but I was willing to overlook that because of the age of the movie and how challenging editing could be.

I was surprised how much of the story I could follow even without having constant dialogue. The acting by the actors really was well done and I can imagine they would have been very good in a talkie too. Their expressions told me all I needed to know in each scene.

The movie is about a rookie reporter named Clem Rogers (Fairbanks Jr.) who is frustrated with being relegated to the weather desk. He wants a chance to cover a big story but the editor deflects his requests.

This rejection amuses some of the more seasoned reporters who like to mock Clem, trip him, and, quite frankly, bully him. Having been in newspapers for about 15 years, I can confirm that cub or rookie reporters do go through a bit of initiation session from the more experienced reporters. Usually, it is very affectionate and non-violent, luckily.

Clem finally gets his chance to cover a big story when everyone else is out of the office and he’s the only one available to run to the sight of a murder. The murder victim turns out to be the city’s district attorney.

Once on the scene, Clem shows what a rookie he is by losing his press pass and being denied entrance to the scene. Instead, one of the other reporters from the paper shows up and tells Clem to get back to the office because he’ll take it from there.

Clem is depressed and leaves the scene around the back of the building where he sees a woman climbing out of a window from the crime scene.

He tries to chase her down but she’s able to get away. Luckily a man sees Clem chasing her and asks what’s going on. Clem tells him she’s running from the scene of a murder and the man says he’d be shocked if the woman was involved because she’s the daughter of the city mayor.

This leads Clem to run back to the newspaper and tell his editor he has a breaking story — the daughter of the mayor killed the district attorney.

Clearly Clem was never taught to check his sources or even find sources for a story and neither did the editor because the editor runs with it and splashes it all over the front page that the woman is a murderer.

She’s crushed by this and confronts Clem after the paper comes out. For his part, Clem is strutting around the office like a proud peacock because of his big scoop.

The mayor’s daughter — Jane Atwill (Jobyna Ralston) — comes to Clem, though, and is like (summary ahead), “Excuse me?! Why would you tell the world I killed a man! You don’t know anything about me.”

I’ll give Clem some credit because he’s like (more summation), “Oh. Wow. I screwed up. I’m so sorry. I’ll ask my editor to print a retraction.”

Ha. Good luck, buddy. If there is anything an editor hates more than missing a big scoop it is printing retractions. You have to have a very, very good reason to retract a story that big and Clem is going to need to prove somehow that Jane is not guilty.

This launches the pair of them on an investigation to find out who the true killer is.

A total aside here, but I loved how Fairbanks Jr.’s hair looked like Leonardo DiCaprio’s, or many other young men, from the 1990s. In some ways the movie looked modern for that reason – or it looked like they’d cut a modern actor into an old silent film.

I watched this one on Amazon but while researching for this post, I found it for free on YouTube. As far as I know it is the full movie, but you might want to double check.

The information online is a bit conflicting, but a couple different sources say that The Power of the Press was Fairbanks Jr.’s first outright leading role. While he played bigger roles in other movies (including his first movie at the age of 13 in 1923) he had not yet had a lead.

His career really picked up in 1929 after he married actress Joan Crawford. That marriage ended in 1933 and he later married Mary Lee Epling, who he remained married to until she passed away in 1988.

I’ve been enjoying reading about Fairbanks Jr. on Prince of Hollywood (link here), a blog dedicated to him, in case you are interested in learning more about him as well: https://douglasfairbanksjr.wordpress.com/filmography/

Up next in my Winter of Fairbanks Jr. Movie Marathon is:

Morning Glory – staring Fairbanks Jr. and Katherine Hepburn (1933)

Here is my complete list of planned watches if you want to join in:

The Power The Press (January 2)

Morning Glory (January 9)

The Prisoner of Zenda (January 16)

Gunga Din (January 23)

The Young At Heart (January 30)

Having Wonderful Time (February 6)

Chase a Crooked Shadow (February 13)

Sinbad The Sailor (February 20)

The Rise of Catherine the Great (February 27)

The Sun Never Sets (March 6)