Man Mountain Dean Movies

The most successful of Joe E. Brown's post-Warner Bros. efforts, The Gladiator finds cavern-mouthed Brown winning a cash prize at a movie theatre, then using his windfall to attend college. The son of a legendary athlete, clumsy Brown is unable to live up to his dad's reputation. Genially batty scientist Lucien Littlefield injects Brown with a strength serum that turns Our Hero into a star football player. When he balks at joining the team, the coach sends pretty June Travis, the girlfriend of campus jock Robert Kent, to flatter Brown into suiting up. At first considering Brown a twerp, Travis grows to genuinely love him, especially after he is publicly humiliated by Kent. The climax finds Brown wrestling against Man Mountain Dean, with virtually everyone at the college betting their bankroll on Brown. Trouble is, the serum begins to wear off at the most inopportune moment. Despite his milquetoast characterization, Joe E. Brown was in fact a champion-level athlete; he used no doubles in the wrestling scenes, and as a result landed in the hospital with a double hernia. The Gladiator is a lighthearted adaptation of the satirical novel by Philip Wylie, which was reportedly also the inspiration for the Superman comic strip. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Big City is an improbable urban melodrama which takes place during a "taxi war" between honest independent cabdrivers and graft-ridden taxi monopolies. Looking for a scapegoat for a recent gangland bombing, crooked city officials deport the foreign wife (Luise Rainer) of rabble-rousing cabbie Spencer Tracy. Desperately seeking a reprieve for his wife, Tracy goes to the mayor, who is in the process of addressing a banquet of retired boxers. The ex-pugilists take Tracy's side, head down to the wharf to pummel the gangsters responsible for the bombing, and rescue Tracy's wife from being shipped back to her homeland. To avoid confusion with a 1948 MGM film of the same name, the 1937 Big City has been retitled Skyscraper Wilderness for television. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Reckless is a delightfully breezy screwball comedy from the same director (Victor Fleming) and star (Jean Harlow) responsible for the celebratedBombshell (itself a film à clef loosely based on Clara Bow) -- with the added appeal of William Powell. One can readily see the chemistry between the two stars at work, which would lead to their impending marriage at the time of Harlow's death a year later. The sets for the Broadway number that Harlow's Mona Leslie performs in are also extraordinary. Mona Leslie (Jean Harlow) is an up-and-coming Broadway actress, dancer, and singer, who leads a happy-go-lucky, freewheeling lifestyle; bailed out of jail by family friend Ned Riley (William Powell), a sports promoter who loves Mona but won't slow down his lifestyle long enough to give her the satisfaction of admitting it, she performs in a bizarre "benefit" show, only to discover that she has an audience of one, wealthy admirer Bob Harrison (Franchot Tone). He declares his love for her and a romance does develop, but when he proposes marriage, he discovers that his upper-crust set won't accept a showgirl as one of their blue-blood crowd.

Their romance leads to a marriage and desperate unhappiness for all concerned, most of all Harrison, whose basic neurotic nature gets worse as the marriage deteriorates. When Harrison takes his own life, Riley and Mona find themselves accused of every foul deed possible, and when Mona gives birth to a son, a legal battle ensues over custody of the child, with Harrison's family claiming that she is unfit. Finally, Mona decides to fight back -- she gets Harrison's family to stand down by giving up any claim to her late husband's money, but she must now contend with the nation's self-appointed moral guardians. No producer will take the risk of backing a show with Mona in it, but she finally gets a helping hand from Ned Riley. The movie has a few too many changes in tone, which detracts from the verisimilitude. The whole story is a film à clef based on the tragic romance between torch singer Libby Holman and tobacco heir Smith Reynolds (which also provided fodder for such à clef films as Brief Moment, Sing, Sinner, Sing, and Written on the Wind) -- and Harlow's singing is obviously dubbed, just as her dancing is doubled. Also, the songs -- except for the final two numbers -- don't quite fit with the melodrama, and the Damon Runyon-esque comic antics feel completely out of left field at times. But when she and Powell are onscreen together, the film just lofts into the air, past all of those flaws. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide