Joan's "Lost" Film

Wealthy Letty Lynton (1932) (Joan Crawford) left the United States to live in South America. She's been in an assignation with the domineering  Emile Renaul (Nils Asther), who is insistent that she will never leave him. Letty escapes to a U.S. bound ship, where she meets Jerry Darrow (Robert Montgomery); romance follows, but the threat of Emile is a clear and present danger to Letty's happiness. 

The legend of Letty Lynton has existed since it was taken out of circulation in 1936, following a battle about the copyright of the story.  It was a film I’d always wanted to see (what WAS the Letty Lynton  dress??), and while I normally avoid pirated films, the opportunity to see it on stream from another country was just too tempting to resist.  The copy was pretty awful, which I expected, but the full film was there.  And so we got to watch this Joan Crawford movie we never expected to view.

 

This is Ms. Crawford's film - she is the focus of the story and is in nearly every scene. As good as her supporting cast is, that is what they are - support for the story of Letty's decision to try and change her life.  She's awfully good - we were especially impressed with a scene mid-film in which Letty tries to reconnect with the Mother (May Robson) who emotionally withdrew from Letty when Letty was a child.  Letty's meanderings have been an attempt to avoid her mother's coldness and find some semblance of love. With the possibility of a new life with Jerry, Letty makes one more appeal to her mother. Ms. Crawford never loses her cool but her face reflects the pain she feels as her mother yet again withdraws from her.

We always enjoy Robert Montgomery, and he is very good in what is essentially a minor role. Sure, he’s the romantic lead, but as we mentioned, this is Letty’s story, not his. Mr. Montgomery is able to bring Jerry to a higher level - he gives him an inner strength that is crucial to the film’s ending. Interestingly, he was not the first actor considered - Robert Young was also considered for the part. 

There is nothing in the least attractive about Nils Asther’s Emile. He’s a bully, abusive, and a stalker. If we were supposed to have any sympathy for his passion for Letty, it’s pretty much gone when he shows up at the dock in New York.  Nils Asther started his Hollywood career during the silent era, when his strong Swedish accent didn’t matter. While his career continued into the talkies, it was limited to playing foreigners, like the General in The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933). He would continue in films and television until 1961. Briefly married to Vivian Duncan, the couple had one daughter. Mr. Asther died in Sweden in 1981 at the age of 84.

The film makes a nice counterpoint between the relationships of Letty and her mother to Jerry's loving and affectionate parents (played by Emma Dunn and Walter Walker). We do have a brief scene with them and Letty - Ms. Crawford again nicely shows the longing Letty feels for such a family dynamic without being over-the-top.

Letty's true mother is played by her maid and confidant, Miranda (Louise Closser Hale). She sweet, if at times a bit muddled, but her affection for Letty is very clear from the start of the film, and her desire to get her charge to a better place is also obvious.  Ms. Hale is a delightful actress, with great range; this film shows another aspect of her talent.

Finally, Lewis Stone  (John J. Haney) drops in as a policy investigator towards the end of the film. He's not very bright, and is rather superfluous to the story.  The scene itself IS necessary to mend a bunch of fences, but Haney is a head-shaker of a police officer.

The New York Times review by Mordaunt Hall was negative; however, the picture was popular - Letty's white dress becoming a fashion sensation.  When the studio attempted re-release, a lawsuit followed (for more information, the AFI catalog details the particulars), and the film was eventually relegated to the archives.  Letty's story may have been influenced by the murderer Madeleine Smith. Her story made the screen in 1950 in the David Lean film Madeleine with Ann Todd as the notorious Ms. Smith

We'll leave you with this scene of Letty and Jerry falling in love. Here's hoping the film is eventually able to be re-released with a decent print.

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Kay Faces a Storm

Following the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the Duchess Sophia, a small town in Hungary begins to feel the effects of the war.  Kindly mayor Dushan Radovic (Walter Huston) and his friend, Captain Geza Petery (Nils Asther) do what they can to minimize the effects, but, they have problems.  The first is that Radovic is a Serbian, while Petery is Hungarian.  The second is that Geza and Petery's wife Irina (Kay Francis) have fallen desperately in love. 

Storm at Daybreak (1933) could have been a good movie.  The elements are there.  Unfortunately, the film is way too long, and feels as though it were padded for no very good reason.  A party scene seems to go on forever, and to no apparent purpose - it attempts to inject humor into a situation where there is precious little.  A scene in a railway yard brings Geza momentarily back into the lives of Irina and Dushan, but for no reason; he's gone in an instant, and it doesn't forward the action a jot.  One wonders what the writers were trying to accomplish.

The script makes Walter Huston's Dushan comes across as a complete moron who is unable to see that his wife and his supposed best friend are having real problems.  Despite the fact that Irina makes it clear that she would rather Geza not be around their home, Dushan keeps bringing him back, making it hard for two people who want to forget their feelings for one another to function.  And Huston, a remarkable actor in so many other roles (watch him in Dodsworth, for example) overacts horribly.    Also opting for over-the-top is C. Henry Gordon as the villainous Panto Nikitch.  He manages to twirl his mustache without even having one.   One can almost hear the director (Richard Boleslawski - this TCM article provides a bit more information about him) shouting "Give me MORE!!"  We wanted a lot less.

The New York Times review (the reviewer was Andre D. Senwald), though calling the film "dull entertainment", was far more impressed than we were with Huston (who "blusters picturesquely"), but not very complementary of Ms. Francis  (she "hardly seems suited to the enigmatic and mysterious qualities demanded in the rôle of the wife.")  Quite honestly, Kay Francis is the best thing in the movie.  She doesn't have a whole lot to work with - the part is formulaic at best.  But she carefully underplays Irina, making her far more attractive.  That being said, a scene in which she runs out into a rainstorm in a huge dress (she could barely get it through the door) to warn her lover of impending doom, was almost ridiculous.  Not her fault - she actually GOT the dress through the door - but a true waste of her talents.

We have two favorite character actors present: Eugene Pallette as Janos, Geza's aide-de-camp, and Louise Closser Hale as Militza Brookska, the housekeeper in Dushan's home.  Attempts are made to milk their performances for some humor; mostly, it doesn't work (though Pallette does get all the best lines.)   By and large they are wasted, as is everyone else in the cast.

That the film is formulaic is not really a problem, usually it's a formula we like.  But this one is not going down as our favorite Kay Francis movie. 

Barbara Doesn't Drink Tea

A young woman arrives in China to marry her childhood sweetheart, only to become swept up in a civil war.  Barbara Stanwyck stars as Megan Davis, who arrived in China with high hopes of a new and happy life, but instead is introduced to the Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933), a  grim, but very well done precode film.

The film emphasizes the extreme class differences and violence that are associated with China.  General Yen (Nils Asther) mows down a rickshaw boy with his car, and the local missionaries decry the "savages" that populate China.  We are quickly made aware that there is no understanding between the European community and the Chinese, or between the peasants and their rulers.  Yet the Europeans are busily attempting to convert the Chinese to their religion, and the rulers think nothing of killing prisoners.  Bob Strike, the missionary Megan has come to wed - he has been living in China for years, yet can't speak or read the language.  How can he be working with the Chinese people if he can't speak to them? He, of course, assumes that they will learn HIS language. That assumption proves both ignorant and dangerous, as it sets him up for ridicule (and endangers himself and his fiance), when he accepts a "pass" that he cannot read from General Yen that is nothing but an insult. 

Strike is a very unappealing character.  Though he has not seen his betrothed in three years, he cannot spare time to meet her at the station when she arrives.  When she arrives at his home for her wedding, he still has not arrived.  And when he does come, it is to tell her the wedding must be delayed, as he has to go out to a mission office to retrieve some orphans, who have been caught by the civil war.  Is Strike a good man? Perhaps, but he is one of these individuals who loves mankind, yet has no regard for the individual. He is, in many ways, as careless of the individual as General Yen.  They serve as interesting foils; one supposedly good and caring, the other cruel and selfish.  But in the long-run, they are not much different.

Megan, on the other hand, is more open to the Chinese culture. She is horrified at the death around her - she tries to get help for her injured rickshaw man, she is eager to go with Bob to save the orphans, despite the danger.  She tries to stop the executions that Yen has ordered, and she intervenes with Yen for the life of Ma-Li.  While she is ignorant of Chinese life, she seems to want to learn more.  Though she has come to China to work as a Christian missionary, Megan is willing to bring Ma-Li to the Buddhist Temple, and doesn't try to convert her.

 Megan is not only frightened of her attraction to China, but also of her growing feelings for General Yen - he is a man with an air of danger around him, and she certainly has reason to fear rape and/or murder at his hands.  However, she also becomes fascinated by him, and in a sense, why not - Yen is an attractive, intelligent man.  And he is a man who shows his attraction and interest in her.  He listens to her.  If Megan and Bob were to marry, would the marriage last?  It seems unlikely.

Of course, as with so many early Hollywood films, Yen is played by a Caucasian.  The makeup job is well done as these things go; the DVD of the film contains a short promo film which demonstrates a "before and after" of actor Asther in makeup. It's quite fascinating. 

We have two wonderful Asian actors in the cast. Toshia Mori plays Ma-Li, and is interesting and attractive as a woman who is as dangerous as Yen. Mori did not have an especially long career (her final film was in 1937), but was the only non-white actor to be honored as a WAMPAS Baby Star.  One assumes that the mores of Hollywood, which forbade Asian women from getting any good roles led to her eventual defection from Hollywood.  She died (in the Bronx) in 1995, at age 83.  The always wonderful (and shamefully underused) Richard Loo appears in a small part as Ma-Li's lover, Captain Li. Loo managed to have an especially long and rich Hollywood career, becoming the go-to villain during the second World War, and continuing with a long television career through 1981. General Yen is only his third film, so it is a genuine pleasure to see him as a young man.  He died in 1983, at age 80.

Walter Connolly, as always, is excellent as the unapologetic scoundrel, Jones.  Though we know that he is as callous and unfeeling towards the peasants as Yen, Connolly is able to create an attractive character.  Perhaps his general disregard of everyone (including the missionaries) makes him more interesting.

Though now highly regarded by fans of pre-code cinema, General Yen did not do well when it opened.  This TCM article discusses some of the problems that it faced - primarily the audience's shock at a white woman having deep feelings for an Asian man.  This is Stanwyck's fourth appearance in a Frank Capra directed film; their work together is always exceptional.  A quick nod is also due to costumers Robert Kalloch and Edward Stevenson. 

We leave you with an early scene from the film: