Fog Over Frisco (1934) – Bette Davis Blogathon

In her early films at Warner Bros, Bette Davis is like a dynamo or a ball of fire, bursting across the screen: Fog Over Frisco, Petrified Forrest, It’s Love I’m After, Marked Woman. I wonder if it’s because she had so much pent up energy owing to the lack of meaty roles to sink her teeth into. Or perhaps it’s her youthful ambition and drive coming through. Whatever it is, she positively crackles in the early and mid-thirties.

One such film is Fog Over Frisco, a zippy crime drama (and I do mean zippy; it’s only 68 minutes long), where Bette Davis plays a beautiful socialite, blithely mixed up with gangsters and illicit affairs. She lasts about twenty-five minutes, but she’s the one who makes the story go.

Arlene Bradford (Bette Davis) is a notorious party girl who has just become engaged to Spencer Carlton (Lyle Talbot) and has supposedly calmed down from her wayward days. Her step-father, Mr. Bradford, (Arthur Byron), doesn’t believe it, while Arlene’s step-sister, Val (Margaret Lindsay) sticks up for her. But Arlene has not reformed and is working with the criminal Jake Bellos (Irving Pichel), who steals bank securities and passes them to Arlene to dispose of. She gives them to Spencer, who works at her step-father’s bank, and he gives her cash and then bit by bit disposes of them. He’s not happy about it, but Arlene has him wound around her finger.

But when her mysterious lover comes into the picture, she returns her engagement ring to Spencer, gives the gangsters the heave-ho and plans to run off with the man she really loves…except he doesn’t love her anymore and wants his love letters back. Meanwhile, to add to the list of future suspects, Mr. Bradford has discovered what Spencer has been doing for Arlene and blames her for the whole mess and the scandal that could envelope the bank, saying she ought to be shot. On cue, Arlene goes missing, but the only person who initially seems interested in looking for her is Val, until she gets abducted. There is also an assortment of newspapermen, policemen and one very nosy butler (suspiciously knowledgeable about things) and bank executives (including Douglass Dumbrille) who end up circling the case. All in 68 minutes! It’s a fun ride.

Everyone has an angle in this film, except loyal Val. Policemen (led Alan Hale) are interested in the missing securities and the gang responsible for stealing them. The gangsters, of course, have their own angle; the mystery lover has his. The newspapermen (led by Hugh Herbert and William Demarest) are out only for a good story. Even Val’s would-be boyfriend, Tony Sterling (Donald Woods), puts a good scoop over helping Val, which leads to Val getting abducted. The bank executives are mostly worried about the potential scandal for the bank and even Mr. Bradford, who ends up being right about Arlene, is not hugely sympathetic. As the daughter of the woman who ran out on him, it’s clear that he considers Arlene to be just like her mother (though he may have a point) and not really his own daughter. Only Val remains truly sympathetic and loyal.

Bette Davis is decidedly up to no good

Margaret Lindsay made at least four films with Bette Davis: Jezebel, Bordertown, Dangerous, and Fog Over Frisco (there might be more I’m unaware of). She clearly doesn’t have the zip and sparkle that Bette Davis brings to the screen, but it’s always a pleasure to see her in a film, especially in this one, where she is the only one with purely good motivations.

My one criticism is that the film ends too quickly. Everything is wound up at a breathless pace, which is perhaps understandable given the pace of the film, but it still could have used a few extra minutes to let us – and the characters – absorb everything.

Fog Over Frisco came just before Of Human Bondage and Bette Davis supposedly accepted the role of Arlene to show Jack Warner she was “a team player” to convince him to lend her to RKO so she could play Mildred. Fog Over Frisco is also the first film where she worked with Tony Gaudio as cinematographer and she always had happy memories of making this film, even if she does get killed off before the movie is half over. But she appears to be relishing the role of an amoral socialite who gets a thrill from fooling the police and getting her own way. When she visits Spencer and shows him the securities in her purse and his response is “Not again!” there’s a gleam in her eye and you know there’s going to be trouble.

This post is part of the “Bette Davis Blogathon,” hosted by In The Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood. For more posts covering the whole spectrum of Bette Davis’ extraordinary career, click here.

 

The Prince and the Pauper (1937)

The Prince and the Pauper feels something like a warm up for the 1938 The Adventures of Robin Hood:  both movies were made by Warner Bros., both scores were composed by Erich Wolfgang Korngold and both films share four prominent actors, with Claude Rains trying to steal with throne, while Errol Flynn tries to stop him. But The Prince and the Pauper is not really a Robin Hood-type story. It’s based on Mark Twain’s novel published in 1882 and is a reasonably accurate adaptation (though I haven’t read the book since I was a child).

Born on the same night are two boys in very different circumstances, though nearly identical in appearance. Edward (Bobby Mauch) is the son of Henry VIII and destined to be king. Tom Canty (Billy Mauch – the actors are identical twins) is born in poverty with an abusive and criminal father (Barton MacLane). Perhaps twelves years later, Tom has grown up a beggar in the streets, while Edward lives in his castle, indulged, slightly bored and unaware of the world outside.

Henry VIII (Montagu Love) knows he’s dying and plans to make the Earl of Hertford (Claude Rains) regent while his son is still young, even though he knows Hertford is a scheming, ambitious and sycophantic nobleman, but he can’t stand the truly noble and good Duke of Norfolk (Henry Stephenson), who Edward likes much better. Montagu Love is quite good as the debauched, corrupt, but dying king who nevertheless has a soft spot for his son. His advice to his son about being king is to never trust anyone and never like anyone so much that he is unwilling to “betray them with a smile.”

Bobby Mauch, Errol Flynn, and Billy Mauch

But when Tom Canty wanders near the castle and is beaten by the Captain of the Guard (Alan Hale), Edward interferes and invites Tom into the castle to play with him, since he’s so bored. They exchange clothes and realize that they look like each other and when Edward goes outside, he is mistake by the Captain of the Guard for Tom and thrown out of the castle grounds.

The next day, everyone thinks both boys are mad. The only person who believes Tom’s protestations that he’s not the prince is Hertford, who pieces the truth together after interviewing the Captain of the Guard. Henry VIII is dismayed, but determined to ensure that his son will rule, mad or not, but dies before he can appoint Hertford as regent. Meanwhile, Edward runs about London proclaiming that since Henry VIII is dead, he is now the king, but people just laugh at him and he finds himself in a street fight until he is rescued by roving soldier of fortune, Miles Hendon (Errol Flynn), who at first also thinks he’s a bit nuts, but comes to believe him.

Court intrigue ensues for poor Tom, who is told by Hertford that he must appoint him regent and do whatever he says or else Hertford will expose Tom and have his head cut off. Oliver Twist-like adventures ensue for Edward, who gets an education on how his subjects really live. He runs into Tom’s father (who plays him like a Bill Sykes character) who wants to use him as a retriever of stolen goods by lifting him through windows. Meanwhile, Hertford has sent the Captain of the Guard out to look for Edward and kill him. Miles Hendon chases after Edward, rescues him several times and has a sword fight with Alan Hale. Meanwhile, Hertford plans to have Tom coronated as king while Edward tries to return in time with the aid of Hendon.

Billy Mauch, as Tom, and Claude Rains

It’s actually quite interesting to see Alan Hale in a straightforward role, where he is nobody’s sidekick and does not ham it up and is actually the tool of the villain. He doesn’t want to kill Edward, but he fears for his job and life because he unknowingly turned him out of the castle. It’s one of two films – out of 12 movies they made together – where Flynn and Hale are enemies. The other is The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. But in this one they get a sword fight.

Claude Rains is always excellent (I’d watch him in a film if all he did was sit in a chair and stare at the wall), duplicitous, shrewd and scheming. Errol Flynn is almost hyper-jaunty in this film, perhaps because he has too much energy for the role he is playing. Miles Hendon is not in the film that much and does not even show up until perhaps thirty minutes into the story. Originally, the studio executives were not going to put Flynn in the role because it would cost so much to have him in such a comparatively small role, but after testing Patric Knowles (Will Scarlet in The Adventures of Robin Hood) and George Brent, they realized that only Flynn would do, and he does bring a much appreciate zip and sparkle to the story. One just wishes, perhaps inevitably, for more of him.

The Prince and the Pauper was released in 1937, around the same time as the coronation of George VI of England and there must have been great interest in royal coronations because the one near the end of the film where Tom nearly gets crowned king goes on for a very long time. We get all the oaths, the various postures of humility the king must assume, the prayers, the costumes and the various interjections by the choir. But I suppose if you’re going to take the trouble to pay for a good choir, you might as well have them sing as much as possible.

Part costume drama, with a dash of swashbuckling spirit, a little bit of Dickensian social sensibility (Edward learns that it is okay to use the royal seal often, despite his father’s warning not to, so that he get rid of so many of the silly and oppressive laws), good humor and a fantastic cast, The Prince and the Pauper is quite fun. I try not to think too much about real history when watching the film. In reality, Edward VI was crowned at nine years of age (the Mauch twins were sixteen), but ruled for only six years and died at fifteen, after a somewhat tumultuous reign featuring war and rebellion. But Twain’s story is more fantasy than history and so leaves room for imagining a happier ending.

 

Desperate Journey (1942)

During WWII, Errol Flynn made a string of war related movies. His first one was Desperate Journey, released in 1942 and was finished filming just as America was entering the war. It’s basically a giant escape film, or perhaps a giant chase. Five crew members of a downed bomber attempt to escape Germany. Hot on their trail is Raymond Massey’s Major Baumeister. They roam about Germany, wreaking havoc, commit a little sabotage, conk Nazis on the head, steal cars, meet some German underground members and hop a ride on Göring’s private, though empty, train car. It’s all incredibly coincidental (their car runs out of gas and a gas truck drives by) and highly patriotic, but a fun, if not memorable, ride.

The movie begins by showing a member of the Polish underground give his life to blow up a bridge. Before he dies, though, he manages to send a message by pigeon to the allies in England. Using this information, they believe there will now be a bottleneck of trains waiting for the bridge to be repaired and they intend to bomb those trains. They send out one bomber with a crew of eight. Part of that crew is the second in command, Terry Forbes (Errol Flynn), Johnny Hammond (Ronald Reagan), Kirk Edwards (Alan Hale), Lloyd Hollis (Ronald Sinclair), and Jed Forrest (Arthur Kennedy). The captain is injured when a Nazi plane attacks them and Terry decides to risk going below the cover of the clouds to see if he can see the target. The result is a crash.

They are captured by the Nazis, but manage to escape, ransack Major Baumeister’s office and steal some important documents showing the location of a Messerschmitt factory. And the chase is on. Baumeister is particularly determined to find them because if anyone found out that they had stolen those documents from him, he might be sent to the Russian Front (always a terrifying threat in the movies – spoofed repeatedly and hilariously in the show Hogan’s Heroes).

Errol Flynn, Alan Hale, Arthur Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Ronald Sinclair – that is Raymond Massey’s head

The crew is somewhat hampered, however, by Hollis, who is very young and tires easily. But on the whole, the crew is pretty harmonious, without any real internal tension. Jed Forrest does try to curb Terry’s penchant for reckless daring-do, but never questions his right to lead.

The crew is puzzlingly multi-national. Aussie Terry (Flynn, unsurprisingly) is his usual high-spirited self as an officer who would really prefer flying fighter planes to bombers, while Canadian Jed ( Kennedy) used to be a bookkeeper and loves facts and figures and certainties. Kirk (Hale – one of at least twelves movies he did with Flynn) fought in the first world war and lied about his age and died his hair so that he could fight in this one after his son died at Dunkirk. But he’s no brooding Lear. He’s very Alan Hale-ish, full of broad humor, practical jokes, and a desire for good food.  And the very English Hollis (Sinclair) is still a kid, who’s father was a great WWI hero who shot down 43 Germans.

But oddly enough, the man who stands out the most is Ronald Reagan’s American Johnny. It’s not because the character is a complex one, but he brings an easy-going and street-smart presence to the film. There is a funny scene when Baumeister tries to get him to tell him the secret of how American planes can fly at higher altitudes than Nazi ones and through an incredible patter of gibberish and nonsense words, like thermathrockle, delivered at a tremendous rate, Johnny contrives knock out Baumeister.

It was acknowledged to be the best scene in the film because Flynn desperately wanted it for himself, though the director, Raoul Walsh, refused to give it to him. I was surprised to see that Reagan shared top billing with Errol Flynn. Reagan had just been poised to move into leading roles, apparently. He had received a good deal of attention for his role in Kings Row, but just as his career was about to be boosted, he was called up and spent the rest of the war in the army, though he did not fight overseas. It effectually deflated his career.

The crew with the obligatory female character, played by Nancy Coleman

Flynn did not fight during WWII. He was not well, though. His draft board physical revealed that he had tuberculosis in one lung and while filming his next movie, Gentleman Jim, he suffered a minor heart attack. He was only thirty-two and tragically had already run his health into the ground.

The score for Desperate Journey is ridiculously sweeping and patriotic. Composed by Max Steiner (not the subtlest of composers: King Kong, Gone With the Wind), he used “God Save the King” (or is it “My Country Tis of Thee”?) as a recurring theme and it is always blowing about, portentously martial, in the background, at odds with the more lighthearted ethos of the actors.

While watching, I had a random thought. Are there any enemy uniforms more readily stolen and worn in movies than Nazi uniforms? The crew spends half the film in Nazi uniforms and this is not unusual for Hollywood films. My theory is that it is because, though representative of an evil ideology and government, they are still by far the coolest uniforms ever (which is a pity). The boots, the nicely fitted jackets, the long coats – though not the helmets, but what helmet doesn’t look faintly ridiculous. Hollywood has always delighted to get their heroes into Nazi uniforms (something that also happens a lot in Hogan’s Heroes).

Below is a clip of Ronald Reagan double-talking Raymond Massey.