Blanche Frederici Movies

Two rough-and-ready guys; one beautiful dame; a tough job that has to be done, and "one of us may not come out alive"; the younger guy gets the girl in the end. This could have been the synopsis of virtually every one of the Jack Holt-Ralph Graves vehicles at Columbia, as witness Dangerous Affair. This time, Holt plays police lieutenant McHenry, while Graves is his friendly rival, crime reporter Wally Cook. After the two men verbally duel over a variety of details, they hunker down to business, that of solving the murder of a lawyer who was in the midst of reading a will to a motley collection of heirs. Outside of the identity of the killer, the big surprise in A Dangerous Affair is that heroine Marjory Randolph (Sally Blane) does not become the romantic bone of contention between McHenry and Cook. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Frisky princess Marie Christine, known as Mitzi (Janet Gaynor) passes herself off as a manicurist, and falls in love with Karl (Henry Garat), a delicatessen worker, though he's really a lieutenant in Mitzi's army. Back at the palace, the Prime Minister (C. Aubrey Smith) tells Mitzi her betrothal to a prince she's never met will be announced. Unaware of the truth, the Prime Minister secretly tries to convince Karl to make Mitzi forget the delicatessen man, while Mitzi, to test his love, tells Karl she's jealous of the princess. More romantic/comic complications ensue. ~ Bill Warren, All Movie Guide

A wife is on trial for murdering her husband's former spouse in this inexpensive melodrama from low-budget Mayfair Pictures Corp. In flashback, it is shown that Joan Armstrong (Helen Chandler), an unemployed stenographer, is hired to act as corespondent for architect John Thurman (Leon Waycoff, aka Leon Ames) in his divorce from Eloise Thurman (Charlotte Merriam), a callous woman who cares more for her pet Pekinese than her husband and who is granted a huge settlement. Joan goes to work for John, with whom she has fallen in love, and they eventually marry and have a son. Several unfortunate events bankrupt John and he is on his way to purchase medicine for his dying son with his last 20 dollar bill when stopped by a process server acting on behalf of Eloise. Little John Jr. dies and when Joan learns that the 20 dollars earmarked for medicine instead went to pay the first Mrs. Thurman's veterinarian bills, she becomes temporarily insane and kills the greedy woman. Back in the courtroom, a weeping jury returns a verdict of "not guilty" and Joan and John are reunited. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Action specialist B. Reeves Eason cools his jets as director of Behind Jury Doors. William Collier Jr. plays a hotshot reporter assigned to cover the murder trial of a prominent doctor. Once he meets the doc's pretty daughter Helen Chandler, Collier vows to prove the defendant's innocence. Problem is, someone on the jury has been bribed...maybe. Behind Jury Doors was one of the more polished productions to emerge from poverty-row Mayfair Studios. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Zane Grey's Thundering Herd was first filmed by Paramount in 1925, with Jack Holt in the lead. This 1933 remake utilizes a great deal of stock footage from the original, going so far as to rehire several of the supporting players from the earlier film to match the old scenes with the new; in addition, leading-man Randolph Scott sports a pencil-thin mustache, as Jack Holt did in the 1925 version. Motivated by a lengthy buffalo hunt, the story concerns the efforts by Tom Doane (Scott) to stem the activities of buffalo-hide thief Noah Beery and his minions. Beery has many of the film's best lines, especially when delivering unwarranted insults in the direction of his long-suffering wife (Blanche Frederici). Reviewers in 1933 enjoyed Thundering Herd, but took heroine Judith Allen to task for her anachronistic wardrobe. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A long-lost silent melodrama, Fleetwing stars handsome Barry Norton as a young Arab whose happiness over having captured both a handsome stallion and a beautiful slave girl (Dorothy Janis proves short lived when both horse and girl are stolen by a cruel sheik (Robert Kortman). In an attempt to recover his property, our hero finds himself imprisoned by his enemy but is ultimately saved when the sheik's lair is attacked by an enemy tribe. Directed by Lambert Hillyer, Fleetwing was an obvious attempt by Fox to turn Argentine-born Norton into another Rudolph Valentino. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

The old bromide about joining the Foreign Legion to "forget," so often parodied by such comedians as Laurel and Hardy, was played straight in 1931's Friends and Lovers. A very young Laurence Olivier plays Lt. Nichols, who has retreated to the desert to get over his affair with Alva Sangrito (Lily Damita). Nichols is befriended by another of Alva's victims, Captain Roberts (Adolphe Menjou). Once back in England, however, the two castaway lovers find themselves rivals once more, leading to a potentially deadly payoff. Erich von Stroheim is delightful in a depraved sort of way as Lily Damita's cynical husband. Based on the novel The Sphinx Has Spoken by Maurice de Kobra, Friends and Lovers represented one of Laurence Olivier's last early-talkie Hollywood films before he returned to England to hone his acting skills. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

There's nothing wrong with Hold Your Man that a little editing wouldn't cure. Clark Gable plays a raffish young petty crook who hides out in hard-boiled Jean Harlow's apartment after he pulls off a robbery. Harlow enjoys Gable's company, and soon the two are living together. Gable puts his criminal career on hold for a while, but when Harlow, jealous of her boy friend's womanizing, fabricates a romance with "wealthy" laundry owner Paul Hurst, Gable decides to knock over Hurst's establishment. Hurst is accidentally killed, whereupon Gable runs off to parts unknown, leaving Harlow to take the rap. While in prison, Harlow discovers she's pregnant with Gable's baby. The conscience-stricken Gable tries to fix things by sneaking into prison and hastily marrying Harlow. By coming out of hiding, Gable allows himself to be arrested, but Harlow promises to wait for him. Hold Your Man starts out as an acerbic "sez you" comedy-drama, then bogs down into a big pile of sentimental goo (a common problem with MGM films of the early 1930). Still, the first few reels are infinitely entertaining, thanks to the chemistry between Clark Gable and Jean Harlow. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on a story by Robert Andrews, If I Had a Million is a multipart comedy-drama employing Paramount's top directorial and acting talents. Refusing to leave his fortune to his grasping relatives, dying millionaire Richard Bennett selects several people at random from the phone book and bestows upon each of them a check for one million dollars. The first recipient is henpecked husband Charlie Ruggles, who cheerily enters his former place of employment, a china shop, and smashes every bit of crockery in the place. Prostitute Wynne Gibson uses her money to escape from her sordid lifestyle and finally sleep in a bed all by herself. Forger George Raft finds that he can't convince anyone that his check is genuine, and ends up handing the check to a flophouse manager--who promptly burns it. Husband and wife W.C. Fields and Alison Skipworth, dismayed that their new car has been destroyed by a "road hog," utilize part of their million dollars to purchase a fleet of cars and then smash up every road hog in sight! Convicted murderer Gene Raymond hopes that his million will help finance a new trial, but the execution is carried out on schedule. Newly rich clerk Charles Laughton calmly makes his way through a series of offices, reaches his boss' desk, and delivers a loud Bronx cheer. Gary Cooper, Roscoe Karns and Jack Oakie play three brawling marines who think the check's a joke and sign it over to an illiterate lunch-counter owner. The last million-dollar recipient is May Robson, an elderly woman confined to a dismal nursing home. She spends her money to turn the home into a joyful resort for old people, forcing the formerly repressive nursing-home staffers to earn their paychecks by sitting all day in rocking chairs. The millionaire who started the plot rolling is given a new lease on life by May Robson's example, and he recovers from his "fatal" illness. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this drama, an impoverished songwriter from the South travels to Tin Pan Alley with his trusty piano. He stays at a boarding house where he falls in love with a pretty young woman. When the two are discovered trysting in the same room, the landlady tosses them out on their ears. To help pay for his back rent, the vindictive landlady keeps his piano. Her husband attempts to steal it away, but accidentally drops it down the stairs and smashes it into a jillion pieces. Fortunately, his new love works for two zany music publishers who begin selling the writer's songs which become hits. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This droll, sophisticated comedy stars Constance Bennett as Venice Muir, a shy young lady with no "past" of any kind -- and very little romance in her life. Hoping to overcome her bashfulness during a trip to Europe, she invents a lurid history for herself, then engages the services of paid escort Guy Bryson (Ben Lyon) to accompany her to all the continent's hot spots. Through word of mouth, Venice gains the reputation of being a sexual adventuress (though she's still nothing of the kind), and soon she is headline fodder for all the Parisian newspapers. Her fabricated randy reputation catches the eye of wealthy Donnie Wainright (David Manners), but it is Guy Bryson who ultimately makes an "honest woman" out of her. Lady With a Past was adapted from the equally delightful novel by Harriet Henry. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

One of the most technically accomplished and sophisticated movie musicals of the 1930's, Rouben Mamoulian's Love Me Tonight (1932) had a profound effect on the shape of the musical genre (especially the films of Vincente Minnelli), and remains a candidate for best movie musical ever made, some seven decades after its release. And that distinction is based entirely on its style and structure -- it doesn't even take into account a hit-laden score by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, or a raft of delightful performances, several of them totally unexpected in their range and wit. The movie opens with an amazing double audio/visual montage sequence, in which the sleeping city of Paris awakens to a slowly rising chorus of sounds, street by street, house by house -- forming what the script describes as a "symphony" of sound -- which coalesces into a song. It is through the latter that we meet Maurice Courtelin (Maurice Chevalier), a young Parisian tailor who has just completed his first big job, an order of 15 suits for the Viscount de Varese (Charlie Ruggles), who has promised to pay him on delivery. He then discovers that the Viscount is little more than an upper-class ne'er-do-well who, among his other faults, has no money of his own -- being completely dependent on his crusty old uncle the Duke (Sir C. Aubrey Smith) -- and never pays his bills. In one of a half-dozen remarkable musical scenes, as Maurice's friend Emile (Bert Roach) ponders the matter of love in the new suit he has made for him, Maurice begins singing "Isn't It Romantic?", causing Emile to hum the tune as he strolls onto the street; the song is picked up by a taxi driver (Rolfe Sedan), and passed to his passenger (Tyler Brooke), a composer, who carries it aboard a train, humming it, where a group of soldiers hear it and end up singing it as they march across a field, where a young gypsy hears it and carries it to his camp on his violin, where the whole clan is soon singing. And the song is finally wafted across the surrounding fields to the estate of the Duke and the Viscount de Varese, where it is heard and sung by the Duke' niece, Princess Jeanette (Jeanette MacDonald). The two characters, Maurice and Jeanette, are linked for us in this way even before they meet, and the stage is set for the rest of the plot. For the Princess, living under her family's tradition-bound hand, romance is a source of unhappiness; there's no one at the chateau to interest her, and even if there were, she couldn't dare to be interested; already a widow from an arranged marriage at age 22 (her first husband was 75), she must marry someone of equal royal rank, and the only two known candidates in all of Europe are ages 85 and 12, respectively. Maurice journeys to the chateau with the clothes the Viscount ordered, hoping to confront him for payment, and is mistaken for one of the guests -- and he crosses paths with the Princess, and falls in love with her. Identified as the Count de Courtelin, he delights the rest of the guests with his joie de vivre and his way with a song, especially "Mimi" (which somehow managed to make it past the censors, despite some amazingly risque lyrics), getting the entire coterie of nobles singing it in his wake. But the Princess is resistant to his free and easy charm and flirtations, her staid upbringing and sense of station fighting her natural inclinations, while her other would-be suitor, the Count de Savignac (Charles Butterworth), is suspicious of this new-found rival. Also present at the estate is the Duke's other niece, Countess Valentine (Myrna Loy), who has a nymphomaniac interest in men under the age of 40, of whom Maurice is the only one at the chateau not related to her -- thus, he must fend off her advances while trying to woo a woman who wants nothing to do with him. Rumor soon spreads that Maurice is, in fact, a full-blooded royal prince traveling in disguise. And if he is a prince of the rank they think he is, then suddenly the Princess's marital and romantic prospects seem a lot more encouraging, especially as she begins to melt to his charm. Maurice wants to tell her the truth, but will she feel the same way about him, knowing that he is a commoner, a tradesman ... a tailor? Director Rouben Mamoulian had already jump-started the musical genre with the backstage drama Applause (1929), to great critical and financial success. In contrast to that movie's deceptively naturalistic approach to its subject, Love Me Tonight was highly stylized -- Applause had no actual musical numbers in complete form, while Love Me Tonight was filled with incredibly elaborate and subtle musical set-pieces that grow naturally out of the plot (adapted from a play by Paul Armont and Leopold Marchand) and advanced the narrative. Some of the scenes here helped set the stage for works such as An American In Paris and Gigi (one scene near the end, when Maurice's identity is revealed, seems to have been the model for "The Gossips At Maxim's" from the latter film) and Funny Face. Such is Love Me Tonight's reputation, that in the summer of 2007, 75 years after its release and more than five years after it showed up on DVD, the movie chalked up sell-out audiences when it opened the Mamoulian retrospective at New York's Film Forum. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

"So much for Carlotta" muses the head of German Espionage (Lewis Stone), shortly after secret agent Karen Morley is put to death. Morley's successor is exotic dancer Mata Hari (Greta Garbo), an enigmatic woman of Javanese-Dutch ancestry who seldom thinks twice about luring some poor swain to his doom. Assigned to intercept allied war messages, Mata Hari romances garrolous-general Lionel Barrymore. She falls in love for the first and only time in her life when she meets dazzlingly handsome lieutenant Ramon Novarro. Barrymore finds out about the affair and threatens to expose both Mata and Novarro as spies, whereupon Ms. Hari shoots Barrymore dead. She arranges for Novarro to leave the country lest he be implicated in the murder. He is subsequently blinded in an airplane crash, setting the stage for Garbo's now-famous "Let me be your eyes" scene. Mata Hari is tried and sentenced to death, but is permitted a few final precious moments with Novarro, allowing him to go on believing that he is in a military hospital rather than a prison cell, and that his beloved is dying of a mysterious ailment rather than facing a firing squad. The debate still rages among film buffs as to whether Greta Garbo does her own dancing in Mata Hari, or whether that's her double in the long shots. There is no question, however, that the condemned prisoner in the first reel who refuses to betray Mata to his captors is none other than Mischa Auer. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide