Wryley Birch Movies

It took British author James Hilton six weeks to write his visionary novel Lost Horizon. It took director Frank Capra two years-and half of his home studio Columbia's annual budget-to bring it to the screen. After a lengthy preamble, inviting audiences to imagine their own ideas of Utopia, the film opens on a chaotic scene at a Chinese airfield. As hordes of bandits approach, hundreds of refugees scramble to board the last plane out. Only five people make it: Mildly disenchanted Far Eastern diplomat Robert Conway (Ronald Colman), his hotheaded younger brother George (John Howard), embezzler Barnard (Thomas Mitchell), dithery fossil expert Lovett (Edward Everett Horton) and consumptive prostitute Gloria Stone (Isabel Jewell). As the plane flies off towards the Himalayas, Robert realizes that he and his fellow passengers are heading in the wrong direction. They are, in fact, being kidnapped-but why? And where to? The plane crash-lands in the snowy Tibetan interior. The pilot is killed, but the passengers are safe. By and by, a strange caravan approaches, led by an enigmatic Chinese named Chang (H. B. Warner). Joining the caravan, Conway and his party are led through a treacherous mountain pass and into a land of temperate weather and dazzling beauty. This is Shangri-La, the idyllic lamasery presided over by the aged, wizened High Lama (Sam Jaffe). In this fertile valley, people are not encumbered by such exigencies as crime, dictators and hatred; instead, everyone is devoted to the pursuit of wisdom and self-improvement-and best of all, the aging process has been slowed to a walk, allowing people to live well past the two-century mark. Though he still does not know why he was brought here, Conway is quicker to adapt to Shangri-La than his wary fellow passengers. He even falls in love with Sondra (Jane Wyatt), an attractive, intelligent young woman. Finally granted an audience with the High Lama, Conway discovers that the old man is actually Father Perrault, the Belgian missionary who founded Shangri-La-over two hundred years earlier. Dying, the High Lama has selected Conway, whose idealism and even-handedness is world famous, to succeed him-and hopefully spread the "love thy neighbor" edict of Shangri-La to the rest of the war-torn world. Conway is willing to assume leadership, but younger brother George, his mind poisoned by spiteful Shangri-La resident Maria (Margo), insists upon escaping to the outside world. The older Conway warns that, despite her youthful appearance, Maria is well past sixty and will surely perish once she leaves Shangri-La; but Maria retorts that the high lama is insane, and that everything he has told Conway is a lie. Disillusioned, Conway agrees to leave with Jack and Maria. The trek back to civilization is a grueling one, especially for Maria, who-true to Conway's prediction-shrivels from age and dies. Appalled that he has been misled, George kills himself. Weeks later, and amnesiac Conway stumbles into a Tibetan mission, where he is rescued and brought back to England. When his memory is restored, however, Conway runs back to Shangri-La, and into the arms of Sondra. When Lost Horizon was shown to preview audiences, it ran nearly three hours-and it was a disaster. In his autobiography, Capra claims to have rescued his pet project by merely burning the first two reels and opening the film with the evacuation scene; In fact, while Capra did remove the film's "flashback" framework, he made most of his cuts in the body of the picture. The release length of Lost Horizon was 132 minutes, pared down to 119 when it when into general distribution. When it was reissued in the 1940s and 1950s, it was rather clumsily pared down to anywhere from 95 to 100 minutes. Only in the mid-1980s was Lost Horizon restored to its original length, with stills used to illustrate certain scenes for which only the soundtrack existed. While not the enormous hit Capra and Columbia had hoped it would be, Lost Horizon was popular enough to allow the name "Shangri-La" enter the household-word category. In 1973, producer Ross Hunter felt the urge to inflict a wretched musical remake onto an unsuspecting public. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When a car crash ends the life of a fabulously wealthy patron of the arts, the decedent's $20,000,000 fortune is inherited by one Longfellow Deeds (Gary Cooper) of Mandrake Falls, Vermont. Already a reasonably successful local businessman, Deeds doesn't really feel the need for anything extra in his life: he just wants enough time to practice his tuba and compose greeting-card doggerel. When Deeds is convinced to move to New York, hard-boiled newspaper reporter Babe Bennett (Jean Arthur) is dispatched to get the inside scoop on "The Cinderella Man." Babe's stories of Deeds' eccentricities and no-nonsense dealings with phonies and poseurs provide excellent headline fodder; but she begins to regret her actions, having fallen in love with the big lug. Deeds ultimately sets up a foundation to dispense his fortune to the country's neediest souls, on the proviso that the recipients do their best to get back on their feet, a turn of events that leads his lawyer John Cedar (Douglas Dumbrille) to try to have him declared insane. By the end of the sanity hearing, the judge (H. B. Walker) declares: "Not only are you sane, but you're the sanest man who ever walked in this courtroom!" A joyously unadulterated hunk of Frank Capra-corn, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town was adapted by Robert Riskin from Clarence Buddington Kelland's short story "Opera Hat." In addition to the pleasure of watching the country bumpkin outwit city slickers, the movie is a film buff's dream, boasting one of the best character-actor casts ever assembled for a single film. Nominated for four Academy Awards, the film won Frank Capra his second Oscar (out of three) as Best Director. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Sometimes referred to as a "baseball picture," Columbia's Panic in the Air is only peripherally involved in the sport. Lew Ayres stars as fast-talking sports radio announcer Jerry, while Florence Rice co-stars as a gorgeous socialite named Mary. Rather full of himself, Jerry delights in one-upping the police while tracking down a gang of crooks who've been fixing sports events. Our hero ultimately outsmarts himself when he offers to act as go-between to ransom Mary's kidnapped father, which serves only to get Mary arrested on a murder charge. The film's tight 54 minutes manages to accommodate a murder during a World Series game and similar skullduggery during a climactic steeplechase. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Harry Richman was a major stage and radio star of the 1930s, but his overbearing personality never clicked in films. After bombing out in 1930's Puttin' on the Ritz, he tried again six years later in The Music Goes 'Round, with marginally better results. Richman plays Harry Wallace, headliner of a Broadway revue which is just about to open. Tired of the rehearsal grind, he runs off to the South, where he happens upon a third-rate showboat troupe. Susanna Courtney (Rochelle Hudson), daughter of showboat manager Hector Courtney (Walter Connolly), mistakes Harry for an unemployed actor and hires him as a dollar-a-day bit player. Amused by the troupe's ineptitude in presenting a "serious" Civil War drama, Harry arranges for Susanna and her fellow thespians to appear in his Broadway revue as a comedy act. But when Susanna finds out she and her father are being made to look like fools in front of the sophisticated New York audience, she upbraids the roaring crowd, punches Harry in the mouth, and storms offstage. All works out okay in the end when Harry contritely begs Susanna's forgiveness. A remake of the 1928 Frank Capra film The Matinee Idol, The Music Goes 'Round is memorable today only for its catchy title song. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

RKO Radio's spectacular production The Last Days of Pompeii utilizes the title but precious little else of the famous Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton historical novel (at least the film admits as much in the opening credits). Preston S. Foster stars as Marcus, a happy-go-lucky Ancient Roman blacksmith who is plunged into the depths of despair when his wife and child are killed by a hit-and-run chariot. Undergoing a radical personality change, Marcus becomes obsessed with money and prestige, and to achieve these he becomes a mighty gladiator. While on a visit to Judea, Marcus takes orphaned boy Flavius (David Holt) under his wing and also spends some time with governor Pontius Pilate (Basil Rathbone), who is presently preoccupied with the execution of a subversive young rabbi named Jesus Christ. Witnessing Christ's march to Calvary, Marcus is moved by His plight, but does nothing to help the man and indeed dismisses the whole notion of Christianity as superstitious nonsense. Years later, an ageing Marcus takes up residence in a lavish villa in the resort town of Pompeii, while his grown-up foster son, Flavius (now played by John Wood), gets involved in the burgeoning Christian movement. Arrested by the authorities, Flavius and his fellow Christians are sentenced to death in the arena, much to the dismay of Marcus. Still, it takes the eruption of Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii for Marcus to undergo his long-overdue religious awakening, and in the moments before he himself is engulfed by lava he arranges the escape of Flavius and the young man's sweetheart, Clodia (Dorothy Wilson). The climactic volcanic holocaust is a triumph of special effects, but that was to be expected from the production team of Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, the same folks responsible for King Kong. Though Preston S. Foster delivers one of his finest performances in The Last Days of Pompeii, the film's acting honors go to Basil Rathbone as Pilate, who transforms from a swaggering young skeptic to a conscience-stricken old man. On its original release, the film lost 237,000 dollars, but in the long run made a profit via periodic reissues. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Insurance investigator Tom Fletcher (Edmund Lowe) is hot on the trail of an arsonist (please excuse the pun). He is helped along by his dedicated assistant John Grayson (Onslow Stevens), and to a lesser extent by Fire Chief Mulligan (Robert Middlemass). Because Fletcher always demands a huge fee for his services, he finds himself one of the suspects in this latest rash of deliberate fires. A surprise plot-twist puts Fletcher and heroine Adrienne Martin (Ann Sothern) on the scent of the real firebug. This modest Columbia production was distinguished by several spectacular conflagrations, all of which quickly found their way into the studio's stock-footage files. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Generous stock footage from such previous Columbia aviation epics as Flight and Dirigible helped to make Air Hawks (working title: Air Fury) seem more costly than it really was. Real-life pilot Wiley Post, who'd recently grabbed the headlines with his daring around-the-world flight, plays himself, while the acting relief is provided by Ralph Bellamy (hero), Tala Birrell (heroine) and Douglass Dumbrille (villain). The plot has something to do with an infra-red "death ray" which figures prominently in the rivalry between two competing air services. Singled out for critical praise was the sound-effects work by Edward Bernds, who later became a prolific Columbia "B"-picture and 2-reeler director. Air Hawks was released in late May of 1935; in less than two months, Wiley Post and his close friend Will Rogers would perish in a plane crash of the coast of Alaska. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

"That Girl" isn't Marlo Thomas, but instead heiress Jeanne Hudson (Barbara Kent). Someone has tried to murder Jeanne with a bow and arrow, obliging the Hudson family to hire detective Larry (Robert Allen) as a bodyguard. As was typical in films of this nature, Larry is saddled with a "helpful" secretary named Helen (Florence Rice), who fancies herself an ace gumshoe. But it's the family dog Lobo who sniffs out the villain, leaving Larry to explain the miscreant's motives. Barbara Kent, a second-echelon heroine of the silent era (she co-starred twice with Harold Lloyd), made one of her last screen appearances in Guard That Girl. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide