Sam Wood Movies

Although some purists hold out for Duck Soup (1933), many Marx Brothers fans consider A Night at the Opera the team's best film. Immediately after the credits roll, we are introduced to Groucho Marx as penny-ante promoter Otis B. Driftwood. After a sumptuous dinner with a beautiful blonde at a fancy Milan restaurant, Driftwood tries to cadge another free meal from his wealthy patroness, Mrs. Claypool (Margaret Dumont). The dignified dowager complains that Driftwood had promised to get her into high society, but has done nothing so far. Otis B. counters by introducing Mrs. C to pompous opera entrepreneur Gottleib (Sig Rumann); all Mrs. Claypool has to do is invest several hundred thousand dollars in Gottleib's opera company, and her entree into society is in the bag. Contingent upon this plan is Driftwood's signing of Rodolfo Lassparri (Walter Woolf King), a self-important tenor. Backstage at the opera, Driftwood meets Fiorello (Chico Marx), who poses as a manager and offers to sell Driftwood the "world's greatest tenor"-not Lassparri, as Driftwood assumes, but Fiorello's pal Ricardo Baroni (Allan Jones). Instantly the two sharpsters try to draw up a contract ("The party of the first part shall hereafter be known as the party of the first part..."), which they proceed to tear up piece by piece whenever coming across a clause that displeases them (Driftwood: "That's a sanity clause"; Fiorello: "You no foola me. There ain't no Sanity Claus"). Having lost Lassparri to Gottleib, Driftwood sails back to America with Mrs. Claypool and the opera company. Gottleib arranges for Driftwood to get the tiniest, least accessible stateroom on the ship. Unpacking his trunk, Driftwood discovers that he's got to share his postage-stamp quarters with Ricardo Baroni, who has stowed away because he's in love with the opera troupe's leading lady Rosa (Kitty Carlisle). Also hiding out in Driftwood's trunk is Fiorello, who's come along because he's still Ricardo's manager, and the wacky Tomasso (Harpo Marx), Lassparri's former dresser, who has come along for the hell of it. Anxious to arrange a tete-a-tete with Mrs. Claypool in his stateroom, Otis finds out that his unwelcome guests won't leave until they're fed ("Do you have any stewed prunes? Well, give them some black coffee, that'll sober 'em up"). After ordering a huge dinner, Otis and his new friends are crowded even farther by a steady stream of intruders, including an engineer and his assistant, a cleaning lady, a manicurist, a girl looking for her Aunt Minnie, and a dozen waiters. The celebrated "stateroom scene" comes to a rollicking conclusion when Mrs. Claypool has the misfortune of opening the door. On the last night of the voyage, Fiorello, Tomasso and Ricardo sneak out of their stateroom to enjoy an impromptu ethnic festival in steerage. Ricardo sings, Fiorello "shoots the keys" on the piano, and Tomasso plays the film's theme song Alone on the harp. The stowaways are caught and thrown in the brig, but with Driftwood's help they escape. To avoid recapture, the stowaways don heavy beards and pose as three famed Russian aviators. After making a shambles of a public reception, the three reprobates hide out in Driftwood's New York apartment, where everyone conspires to drive an investigating detective (Robert Emmet O'Connor) crazy. Driftwood is fired from the opera company for associating with the stowaways, while Rosa is dismissed for refusing Lassparri's affections. In order to restore Rosa's job and put the deserving Ricardo in Lassparri's place during the opening performance of La Traviata, Driftwood, Fiorello and Tomasso concoct a scheme that will reduce the opera to comic chaos. The actual night at the opera in A Night at the Opera must be seen to be believed, but the spirit of the scene can be summed up by Gottleib's anguished cry "A battleship in Il Trovatore!" Opera was the Marx Brothers' first film for MGM, and they dearly coveted a hit after the disappointing box-office showing of their final Paramount films. With the blessing of MGM production chief Irving Thalberg, the Marxes went on the road with their brilliant writing staff (including George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind and Al Boasberg) to test their comedy material before live audiences. As a result of this careful preplanning, Night at the Opera was a smash-hit gigglefest, grossing over $3 million and putting the Marxes back on top in the hearts and minds of filmgoers everywhere. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The real-life career of the notorious female spy known as "Fraulein Doktor" inspired several films of the 1930s. Stamboul Quest stars Myrna Loy as a seductive espionage agent, working on behalf of the Kaiser in 1915 Istanbul. American medical student George Brent crosses Loy's path, and the two fall in love. Divided between romance and duty, Loy opts for the latter, and apparently causes Brent's death. She goes mad with grief, and is packed away to a mental institution, where her fevered reminiscences provide the lengthy flashback sequences in this film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on the play by Sidney Howard (of Gone with the Wind and Dead End fame), Christopher Bean is a showcase for the magnificent Marie Dressler. She plays Abby, the poor but proud housekeeper of a small-town doctor (Lionel Barrymore), his wife (Beulah Bondi), and their children. Years before the story proper begins, Abby had been a close friend of Christopher Bean, a local painter who was treated as a pariah by the community because of his drunken misbehavior. After his death, however, Bean was acknowledged as a genius, and his paintings became extremely valuable. One of Bean's best works is a portrait that he painted of Abby -- and she refuses to part with it at any price, despite the entreaties of her avaricious employers. Sadly, Christopher Bean was Marie Dressler's final film; she died of cancer not long after its completion. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this drama, Diana (Myrna Loy) is a beautiful tourist from the United States who is visiting Cairo, accompanied by her Uncle Cecil (C. Aubrey Smith) and Aunt Powers (Louise Closser Hale). Diana is to meet her fiance Gerald (Reginald Denny) in Cairo, but she soon makes the aquaintance of Jamil (Ramon Novarro), a handsome local who works for the hotel as a tourist guide. Jamil returns Diana's lost dog, earning her gratitude, though she's unaware that Jamil took the dog himself so that he could return it to her. After several days of showing Diana Cairo's most magificnet sights (and scheming to keep Gerald at a distance), Jamil reveals his secret to Diana -- that he's actually an Arab prince who wants Diana's hand in marriage. However, Diana isn't especially taken with this idea at first, and and before long the darker side of Jamil's infatuation makes itself known. The Barbarian was based in part on one of Ramon Novarro's silent hits, The Arab, and the film inspired more than a few raised eyebrows in 1933 thanks to a scene where Myrna Loy swims in the nude at an oasis, though Loy later wrote that she was wearing a flesh-colored body stocking in deference to her modesty (and the censors). ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Maggie Warren (Marie Dressler) is the matriarch of a banking family who has run the Warren Bank for years, until she turns it over to her son John (Norman Foster) to run, following his marriage to Helen (Anita Page). Maggie and Helen's mother Lizzie (Polly Moran) don't really get along that well, but they tolerate each other -- barely -- for the sake of the children and grandchildren. Then comes the stock market crash, and the Great Depression, and the wave of bank failures -- and a rumor that starts a run on Maggie's bank, just as her son has lost all of the personal bonds, with which she had always secured the depositors' holdings against such an emergency, in a get-rich-quick scheme that collapsed. It takes every bit of personal persuasiveness that Maggie can muster, along with a lot of luck, to keep the bank afloat, and Lizzie -- whose own holdings may have gone up in smoke with the rest of the bank's assets -- won't stop needling her. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Officially released as The New Adventures of Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford, this William Haines vehicle was snappily adapted by Charles MacArthur from the "Wallingford" short stories by George Randolph Chester. Haines of course plays the title character, a breezy con artist in league with personable pickpocket Schnozzle (who else but Jimmy Durante?) After fleecing a tourist for $25,000, Wallingford realizes that he's been swindled when the tourist's check turns out to be of rubber consistency. Just one step ahead of the law, Wallingford and Schnozzle settle in a small town, where they rescue the family of heroine Dorothy (Leila Hyams) from bankruptcy and foreclosure. Even William Haines must have been aware that the picture was effortlessly stolen by Jimmy Durante, whose second film this was. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Paid was the third film version of the Bayard Veiller stage play Within the Law. Joan Crawford is cast as a shopgirl falsely arrested for stealing and sent to jail for three years. She swears vengeance on the store owner (Purnell Pratt), and to that end sets up a shady but legal racket wherein she and partner Marie Prevost act as "matchmakers" for lonely old men. It's all part of a plan to fleece the store owner by placing him in a compromising position, but Joan is sidetracked when she meets the owner's son (Kent Douglass. Marrying him in order to exact revenge on his father, Crawford falls in love with the young man and abandons her scheme. But once more, Crawford is wrongly accused of a crime, this time of murder. Paid ends happily for all concerned--especially MGM, which remade this reliable property (again!) under its old title Within the Law (1939), with Ruth Hussey in the lead. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Screenland magazine summed up the William Haines vehicle The Girl Said No thusly: "The star plays another of his cut-up roles that make the critics gnash their teeth and the audience chortle." Had this review been printed in the 1990s, the character played by Haines might have been labelled a demented stalker; in 1930, however, he was merely whimsically over-enthusiastic. The star plays go-getting bond salesman Tom Ward, who can't take no for an answer when his sweetie Mary Howe (Leila Hyams) throws him over in favor of a collar-ad wimp named McAndrews (Francis X. Bushman Jr.) Tom continues to hound Mary at home and at her job, and when all other tactics fail, he kidnaps her from her own wedding, merrily driving off with the outraged heroine bound and gagged in the back seat! Almost as "funny" as this denouement is the scene in which Tom poses as a doctor and gets his "patient" roaring drunk. Only the antics of Marie Dressler (as a reclusive Hetty Green-style financier) and Polly Moran save this so-called comedy from being an utter disaster. The dialogue in The Girl Said No was written by Charles MacArthur, who hopefully didn't use Bill Haines's caveman tactics while courting his own bride, actress Helen Hayes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In his second talkie, former silent screen lover John Gilbert plays Jack, a sailor in the merchant marine who takes time out from carousing with pals Tripod (Wallace Beery) and Ginger (Jim Tully) to woo and marry Joan (Leila Hyams), the lovely pay clerk, whom he has promised to quit the sea for good. But "for good" lasts only through the wedding night and she leaves him. They meet again on an ocean liner where Jack is working as the quartermaster but a violent storm threatens to ruin the relationship for eternity when Jack is declared lost. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

In this campus musical, the 1928 big game between USC and Stanford provides the impetus for music and mayhem. The story centers upon two USC teammates, Eddie and Biff, who share just about everything, even their girl friend, Babs. The trouble is, they don't know they are both dating Babs until just before the crucial game. Fortunately, the coach is there to mediate between the two angry men. He reminds them that women are not as important as winning the game. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In the spirit of female stars both before and after her, 30-year-old Marion Davies plays a girl a decade younger than herself (actually the men are guilty of this too -- both Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd played college students while in their early 30s). Davies, fortunately, was athletic enough to pull off the part of a college basketball star -- plus she had the comedic talents to make this film both a critical and commercial success. This picture also won a long-term MGM contract for its co-star, ex-football player Johnny Mack Brown. Marion (Davies) doesn't want to go to Bingham college -- that is, until she meets Dixon (Brown), who is working his way through school by coaching the girl's basketball team. She eagerly joins the team and becomes their star player. Things seem to be going well between Marion and Dixon, but when they have a misunderstanding, she huffily misses a big game, which her team loses. As a result, she is ostracized by her fellow students. Finally, a burst of college spirit inspires her to enter the crucial game, which she wins for Bingham in the last seconds. She also wins back her popularity and Dixon. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Real-life college gridiron hero Red Grange heads the cast of the football drama One Minute to Play. Though his father wants him to attend Parmalee College, Red Wade (Grange) opts for Claxton U because the latter school has a better football team. Once he's enrolled, however, he is persuaded by his father (Charles Ogle) not to go out for football, but to concentrate on his studies instead. En route to Claxton by train, Red gets mixed up in a fight, and upon awakening he finds himself at Parmalee. Once he meets cutie coed Sally Rogers (May McAllister), Red decides to stick around -- and it isn't long before he breaks his promise to his dad and joins the football squad. Enraged, the elder Wade threatens to cancel a promised endowment to Parmalee if Red continues to play. Realizing that the college needs the money more than it needs him, Red pretends to go on a drunken binge so that the coach will kick him off the team. But when his football-hating father suddenly develops a love for the game during the annual Parmalee-Claxton confrontation, Red manages to make amends with the coach in time to score the winning touchdown. In addition to Red Grange, University of Washington football star George Wilson also appears in One Minute to Play. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide