Harrison's Reports (1931)

HARRISON’S REPORTS 75 May 9, 1931 “The Tarnished Lady" with Tallulah Bankhead ( Paramount , May 2; running time, 82 min.) The story is mediocre. It has Miss Bankhead mope all the way through for her family’s loss of their riches, until the author has her do what thousands of heroines have done in other pictures of this kind — marry a wealthy man, although she loved a poor man. But just as in other pictures, so in this one — the heroine is not happy, because she still loved her sweetheart. Miss Bankhead is shown unable to bear it, and goes to her husband in his Wall Street office to inform him that she was going to leave him to follow the young man she loved. But it is a sad day for Mr. Brook, the wealthy husband, also for one other reason — he had lost every dollar he had in the world on that day, when his stock was pounded down to a point where he had been wiped out. This turns the spectator against her, even though she did not know that her husband had met with a misfortune on that day. But her punishment comes when she, upon calling on the man she loved to tell him that she had deserted her husband to go to him, finds another woman in his apartment. She is naturally shocked, and feels despondent, for she found that the happines she had fought and hoped for had vanished. A true friend advises her to go back to her husband, but pride holds her back. She takes to drink, and eventually sinks pretty low. She gives birth to a baby and determines to find a job to support him. This, however, she finds difficult to da Even though she had discovered that love grew in her breast for her husband, she still did not want to go to him ; she wanted him to take her back, not out of pity, but love. Circumstances so shape themselves that each is convinced that the other loved him sincerely. It is then when the heroine informs her husband that he was a father. There is nothing uplifting. It is true that there is real love; but this is so clouded behind unpleasant and often demoralizing acts that its effect is altogether lost. The story is by Donald Odgen Stewart ; the direction, by George Cukor. The talk is pretty clear but the sound is “terrible,” not only because of apparent poor recording but also of reproducing — the talking devices of the Rivoli and of the Rialto seem to be the worst in New York; they are exceeded only by that of the Roxy. (Note: The production number of this picture is 3079. There is no such number either in the Work Sheet or in the contract for the 1930-31 season. But since Paramount has sold most of its pictures without any “specifications,” you will have to accept it.) Not for the family circle. “THE HARRISON FORECASTER” The review that follows has been borrowed from "The Harrison Forecaster.’’ The picture has not yet been made ; the information given in it will enable the exhibitor to offset the salesman’s possible assertions that it will turn out to be a knockout. Though the arguments of the exhibitor will not be founded on knowledge of the finished product, neither will those of the salesman. P. S. Harrison. “QUEER PEOPLE” {To be reed cased by United Artists ) Copyright, 1931. The Story in Brief Theodore White, young reporter, better known to his contemporaries as “Whitey,” lands in Hollywood, broke. He bluffs the Examiner’s city editor into giving him a job, is assigned to interview movie star Gilbert Vance, finds a party in progress at Vance’s residence, becomes drunk, awakens after a hectic night of wine, women, song and scrapping to discover that he has been hired as scenario writer by Colossal Pictures. Later it transpires he had been engaged through being mistaken for another man — a columnist on a big New York paper, but his gall fascinates executive McGinnis and he is appointed press agent. Whitey fits easily into Hollywood’s fast life, and acquires two mistresses, both of whom had had various lovers. He is a great mixer and picks up a fresh girl whenever he can. If one job pans out, he gets another, or one of his mistresses pays his expenses. In the decadent Hollywood atmosphere, fouled with sexual slime, strange passions and infatuations, loves normal and perverse, cocaine and booze, Whitey leads a jazzy, carefree existence. When the discarded unhappy husband of a female picture star, notorious for her infidelities, commits suicide, Whitey sends the deceased home to his brother in Minneapolis and thwarts a scheme Iramed by the vampire wife to obtain publicity through the funeral. Pinding a film magnate wearing only a shirt in the room of a girl he (Whitey) is intimate with, he coerces the magnate into giving a job and a contract to Dorothy Irving, who failed in pictures because she refused to trade her virtue for a film role. Whitey works a while as a pianoplayer and singer in a house of prostitution. Talkies supplant silent films and Whitey lands as a vocal double for a male star who cannot sing a note. Dorothy Irving surrenders to a worthless director who teaches her the dope habit. She shoots and kills him in a bedroom. Whitey assumes the blame, claiming to have shot the director accidentally. Dorothy is saved and Whitey acquitted, but the scandal finishes him in Hollywood. Eventually he goes East on the same boat as Jane, one of his girls. Jane’s folk had sent her a thousand dollars to bring her home and she stakes Whitey to half her bankroll. Analysis “Queer People,” published last summer, went quickly into the best-seller class and made a sensational success. It was generally supposed that the characters were easily identified with prominent Hollywood personages. This the authors, Carroll and Garrett Graham, denied in a foreword to the volume, but the opinion persisted and probably had much to do with the high-pressure sale of the book. It is difficult to comprehend why any producer should wish to film the book, unless he intends to substitute an entirely different yarn for that between its covers, profiting by the use and exploitation of the widely advertised title. Whether the authors have depicted Hollywood correctly or not, doubtless most of their readers accepted conditions there as described. If the original were made into a feature, film players would also list it as a collection of ugly but morbidly fascinating truths. Now, pictures were made in the past that poked fun at Hollywood, but none dared to visualize the place as a vertitable sin paradise, populated chiefly by prostitutes, procurers, “sugar daddies” and perverts of both sexes, forever wallowing swinishly in cess-pools of dope and booze. The hero himself, the irrespressible Whitey, has no scruples whatever about playing a “go-between” should he chance to lack funds. There isn’t a single character in the tale fettered by the feeblest moral restraint or having the slightest claim to decency in word or action. Whitey, as the pet of prostitutes and of a Madam in a house of ill fame, as helping a “dame” out of work by blackmailing a film magnate, as shouldering the blame when a director guest is killed by his mistress at a wild party — all these events radiate thrills. But would censors or public approve such a witches’ brew of colorful lechery and emotional craziness, supposing it offered material for a screen entertainment? Where the book is not devoted to outlining lustful details and orgies, it ridicules the twisted business methods and inside crookedness prevalent in picture-making circles. Admitting, for argument’s sake, that these revelations are founded on fact, one can hardly imagine any producer, with the industry’s interests at heart, imitating the proverbial “obscene bird that fouls its own nest” by exposing that industry’s errors to public scorn. Remarks: According to production news from Hollywood, “Queer People” is being prepared for production at the United Artists studios. It is assumed that Howard Hughes, producer of “Hell’s Angels,” is producing it, to release it through United Artists. At one time it was said that Will H. Hays prevailed upon Mr. Hughes to abandon production of it; but evidently Mr. Hughes did not heed his advice. The book has been banned by Mr. Hays. It is one of those that will eventually exhaust the patience of the American people. It is too obscene for words, let alone for picturization. It is difficult to see how it can be “purified” ; and if it could be, the stench with which it is surrounded will bring the wrath of the people upon those who will show it, with the exception, perhaps, of those who have theatres in the big cities. It is a disgrace to the entire motion picture industry to have such a book made into a picture.