Mae Madison Movies

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

Though the names have been changed to protect the guilty, this romantic crime drama offers a relatively factual account of the life of Arnold Rothstein, an infamous bookie and is based upon a story by his widow. The story tells how he gambled his way to the top of his profession. Though he originally promised his wife that he would stop gambling once he made $200,000, he became addicted and decided he had to make $300,000 more before he could be happy. Soon his greed leads him to crooked gambling. Things get worse when he openly carries on an affair with a singer. The bookies dirty dealings get him into trouble and his wife is kidnapped while he is out of town. While rushing back to save her, he has a car accident and his lover is killed. By the time she is rescued, the wife has decided enough is enough and takes off to get a European divorce. The greedy gambler finds himself utterly lost without his two lovers and so after selling his wife's jewels takes out a large insurance policy upon himself. On an interesting footnote: Inez Norton, Rothstein's real-life widow, has a bit part in the film, as does then-ingenue Susan Fleming, AKA Mrs. Harpo Marx. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

A talented cast does its best with a nonsensical script in The Rich are Always With Us. Ruth Chatterton stars as a witty socialite saddled with caddish husband John Miljan. Upon learning that Miljan has been fooling around with Adrienne Dore, Chatterton divorces him, whereupon his brokerage firm goes belly-up, for which our heroine holds herself responsible. She undergoes another guilt trip when Miljan's second wife dies in a car crash. Throughout all this, Chatterton denies herself true love in the person of foreign correspondent George Brent, who became Chatterton's husband during filming. Bette Davis enjoys an early scene-chewing opportunity as a predatory young debutante who sets her sights for the handsome Brent. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A Grand Hotel derivation set in a major metropolitan train terminal, Union Depot features most of the reliable Warner Bros. stock company. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. stars as a slick thief; Joan Blondell costars as a stranded chorus girl; Alan Hale Sr. is featured as a phony baron absconding with company funds; and Frank McHugh does his drunk act. Other arrivals and departures include Guy Kibbee, David Landau, and George Rosener (as a sexual deviate stalking Ms. Blondell!) The huge depot set built for this film may seem like an unnecessary expenditure, but the set would come in handy for future, less costly Warners endeavors. The British title for Union Depot was Gentleman for a Day, reflecting the crooked Fairbanks' good-guy turnaround at the end of the film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

George S. Kaufman's sturdy stage comedy The Butter and Egg Man was the inspiration for no fewer than four Warner Bros. talkie versions. The first of these was The Tenderfoot, starring Joe E. Brown as a wealthy but naive cowboy alone in the Big Apple. The producers of a down-and-out musical revue hope to convince Brown to put his money in their show, sending out cute chorine Ginger Rogers as the "convincer." After having his heart broken a few times and tangling with gangsters, Joe comes through and the show goes on. Warners followed The Tenderfoot with a 1937 musicalization of Butter and Egg Man, Dance Charlie Dance; this in turn was remade as An Angel From Texas in 1942. The final variation on this theme (so far!) was Three Sailors and a Girl (53). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Thrifty Warner Bros. remade their old silent Ken Maynard Westerns as starring vehicles for John Wayne, dressing young Wayne up to match the stock footage of Maynard in action. The Big Stampede used plenty of footage from its 1927 predecessor, The Land Beyond the Law, and the inserts, filmed at a completely different location, are rather obvious. Wayne plays John Steele, a deputy sheriff sent by Governor Wallace (Berton Churchill) to protect settlers arriving in New Mexico Territory. Cattle baron Sam Crew (Noah Beery) and his henchman Arizona (Paul Hurst) aim to stop the settlers while Sonora Joe (Luis Alberni) and his Vaqueros arrive from Mexico to rob them. When old settler Cal Brett is murdered by Arizona, Steele deputizes Sonora and his men, and together they bring the killer to justice. The settlers, meanwhile, drive their herd to the nearby fort, and Crew decides to create a stampede. Steele saves Brett's niece Ginger (Mae Madison) from being killed by the stampeding cattle, but the nasty Crew is trampled to death, a victim of his own greed. A better-than-average B-Western, The Big Stampede benefits from colorful performances by Beery, Hurst, Alberni and Wayne's horse Duke. Freckled Sherwood Bailey, formerly Spuds in the Our Gang series, provides a few moments of comedy as Ginger's slingshot-crazy kid brother, and Madison, usually a tough dame in Warner's gangster dramas, makes an adequate love interest. Veteran Bad Guy Tom Bay, in his final film before being killed in a bar-room brawl in October of 1933, appears unbilled as an army messenger. Not the studio to let a good plot and usable stock footage go to waste, Warner Bros. filmed Marion Jackson's story a third time in 1937, as Land Beyond the Law, starring Dick Foran. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

In this musical comedy, Fred Von Wellingen (Ben Lyon), the scion of a wealthy German family, has fallen in love with Lia Toerrek (Marilyn Miller), a poor but beautiful girl who has gladly agreed to marry him. However, when Fred's father Otmar (Ford Sterling) decides to hold a banquet to celebrate his son's imminent marriage, he's thoroughly appalled by Bela Toerrek (W.C. Fields), Lia's father and a man with a severe lack of good breeding. When Bela announces that he earns a living as a barber and that Lia is a barmaid, the assembled bluebloods are less than amused, and their ire turns to disgust when Bela grabs some of the dinnerware and uses it to demonstrate his juggling techniques. Otmar wants to call the wedding off and offers his son a high-paying job in the family business if he leaves Lia for good. Fred breaks off the engagement, and Lia meets another wealthy man, Baron von Schwarzdorf (Leon Errol), who offers to marry her. However, both Lia and Fred are miserable without each other, and when he learns that she is to wed, he leaps into action to win her back. Field's juggling routine provides the high point of this film, which marked his first appearance in a sound feature. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In this drama, a hard-working New York model abandons her family values for the love of a suave, handsome man who offers her the moon, but ends up leaving her with a baby and a very bitter aftertaste. She then becomes cynical, and angry at all men until a sensitive, gentle artist helps her through the hurt shows her a less self-destructive path for her life. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

More of a follow-up than a sequel to 1931's popular Svengali, this drama centers on the attempts of a club-footed and insanely bitter dance instructor to cling to his protege. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide