Lyman Williams Movies

Student Tour looks like an MGM musical two-reeler that was expanded to feature length as it went along. Charles Butterworth and Jimmy Durante are teamed respectively as fey philosophy professor Lippincott and brash athletic coach Hank. The two comics shepherd a co-ed college rowing team on a world tour, with orders to keep the team's rowdy captain Bobby (Phil Regan) out of trouble. Lackluster leading lady Maxine Doyle co-stars as Ann, a plain-jane who takes off her glasses at a Monte Carlo masquerade ball and wins BMOC Bobby for her very own. Ann also brings the story to a rousing conclusion by substituting for the cockswain in the climatic rowing race, urging the team to victory with a peppy song-and-dance. Nelson Eddy also shows up to sing "The Carlo," a pulsating number obviously inspired by "Bolero." The film's giddy highlight is "Taj Mahal," in which a group of pretty students (including a young Betty Grable) go swimming in the pool of the famous Indian shrine! According to studio publicity, a crop of genuine college coeds were hired to play the students in Student Tour, but to the trained eye they sure look like standard Hollywood extras and bit players. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Although venereal disease was considered as delicate a subject then as it is now, this was nonetheless the third filmed version of Eugène Brieux' 1901 play Les Avariés, known in English-speaking lands as Damaged Lives. Don is a shallow, naïve former ship's officer trying to make the transition to an executive position in the shipping company. He breaks a dinner engagement with his longtime fiancée Joan in order to make a night on the town with one of his company's clients. The client ends up drunk, and at the end of the long night Don ends up with Elise, a woman of dubious reputation who nevertheless lives in an impressive, Art Deco-styled apartment. Although he feels guilty about the affair, Don swiftly marries his sweetheart, only to get the phone call from "the other woman" saying she must see him immediately. Elise confronts Don discreetly that she has given him the gift that keeps on giving, which he refuses to believe. Elise then promptly kills herself, but later Don gets another call from a VD clinic which is treating his wife. After a harrowing visit to a series of "too-far-gone" patients, Don sees the light and agrees to get treatment. But the psychological effect on Joan has different results, and Don must rise to the occasion to save them both. Damaged Lives was initially released in Canada and a few cities in the United States but was stopped by censors in most American towns. In 1937 it was re-released as The Shocking Truth with a 29-minute lecture on VD added onto the end of the film to satisfy censors. Most current video releases do not include this extra material. A week after it opened, a competing domestic version of Damaged Lives also appeared, and with its similar storyline it is often confused with this Canadian film. There is no comparison stylistically, as Edgar G. Ulmer put far more into Damaged Lives than the property and its 18,000-dollar budget deserved. ~ David Lewis, All Movie Guide

Silent screen legend Mary Pickford makes her final movie appearance in Secrets, adapted from the play by Rudolph Besier and Mary Edgerton. Edgerton plays a 19th century New England belle who accompanies her husband Leslie Howard to the wilds of California. Pickford's first baby is killed when her cabin is besieged by desperadoes. Howard's reaction to the tragedy is to play around with other women, but Pickford stands steadfastly by her husband for the next half-century. The film ends with an aged Pickford surrounded by her grown children in her luxurious mansion, prattling on about secret joys, secret sorrows, lovely secrets and dreadful secrets. Evidently this film was released in secret, for it failed at the box office and convinced Ms. Pickford (who produced the picture) that her starring days were over. Previously filmed as a Norma Talmadge starrer in 1924, Secrets seemed antiquated in the 1930s, but Mary Pickford's scenes with her dead baby proved that her great talent was undiminished. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide