tom thumb

 (1958)
Directed by George Pal
Written by Ladislas Fodor, based on the story by the Brothers Grimm*
Starring Russ Tamblyn, June Thorburn, Peter Sellers, Alan Young, Terry-Thomas, Bernard Miles, Jessie Mathews.
IMDB Entry

Twitter and Facebook occasionally bring up the question, "What was the first movie you saw in a theater?" I would answer Sleeping Beauty, but recently I realized that was wrong. Checking the release dates, I realized I had seen tom thumb the year before.

Jonathan, a poor woodsman (Bernard Miles), is asked not to chop down a tree by the Forest Queen (June Thorburn) and is granted three wishes. That backfires, but later there's a knock on their door and Jonathan and his wife Anne (Jessie Matthews), who always wanted a son, find there's one adadditional wish granted. Tom (Russ Tamblyn) is tiny but still a full-grown man (with a child's look at the world). Meanwhile, Woody (Alan Young) is in love with the Forest Queen, but she doesn't think him a suitable match. When tom goes to the fair, two villains (Terry-Thomas and Peter Sellers) trick him into a scheme to rob the town's treasury.  He naively obliges, and his parents are accused of the crime. Tom has to work to capture the villains and prove their innocence.

George Pal directed. He was a master of stop-motion animation, and the movie is filled with sequences highlighting this, most notably when tom's toys join in with musical numbers. The effects are quite good for the time and the illusion of tom's size is kept up throughout. 

Russ Tamblyn is an acrobatic dancer and his performance as tom is very childlike and naive, which causes him all sorts of trouble in stereotyping, but he did appear in several film classics.  Terry-Thomas and Peter Sellers ham it up royally as the villains.

Nowadays, Alan Young is known for Mr. Ed,** but he was a very well-regarded radio comedian who never became a big movie star. He also did a lot of voice work after Mr. Ed, including as Scrooge McDuck and as various roles in The Smurfs.

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*The Grimms, by the way, did not actually write the fairy tales attributed to them. They collected them from existing tales. Any objections to their content have nothing to do with them. Second, Jacob Grimm is well known in language studies as the developer of Grimm's Law, which explained how words changed their sounds over time. For example, the "p" in the Proto-Indo European "pods" changes to the "f" in "foot."

**Mr. Ed never had a great timeslot. It originally aired in syndication, and then at 6:30 on Sundays, which was not considered prime time. It did go to a later spot for one season, but returned to the earlier slot, a time where TV watching is low.

Parlor, Bedroom and Bath

 (1931)
Directed by Edward Sedgwick
Written by Charles W. Bell and Mark Swan (Play), Dialogue by Richard Schayer, Robert E. Hopkins
Starring Buster Keaton, Charlotte Greenwood, Reginald Denny, Cliff Edwards, Dorothy Christy, Sally Ellers, Edward Brophy
IMDB Entry

I've decided to investigate more of the sound films of Buster Keaton. As is well documented, Keaton slowly lost control of his movies and was forced to do what the studio asked of him. Parlor, Bedroom and Bath is another example that isn't bad, but wastes Keaton's talent.

It starts out with a love complication. Jeffrey Heywood (Reginald Denny) is in love with Virginia Embrey (Sally Eilers), but she won't marry before her sister Angelica (Dorothy Cristy) so she won't be (gasp!) an old maid. Jeffery runs into Reggie Irving (Buster Keaton). Reggie is shy and know nothing about women but is convinced to pretend he's a rich playboy to attract Angelica. Jeff tries several schemes to make Reggie seem more attractive, one of which is to ask a newspaper reporter, Polly Hathaway (Charlotte Greenwood) to pretend to be a romantic party in a hotel to make Angelica jealous. Meanwhile Virginia is angry with Jeffrey and joins Reggie on the trip.

The extremely contrived plot still manages to be funny. Polly shows Reggie how to be romantic. It's ludicrous but turns out to be extremely effective. 

Since this was from a stage play, the only Keatonesque portions of his role were the pratfall, except for one sequence where he and Virginia are driving to the hotel. It is Keaton at his best, especially with one gag where his car gets stalled on the railroad tracks as a train is coming. I laughed out loud twice -- unusual for me. It goes on to a very funny sequence when they arrive sopping wet at the hotel.

Most intriguing is Charlotte Greenwood. She had a lot of second banana roles in films over the years and was a gifted physical comic, using her long legs to great effect. She and Keaton make an excellent teaming and it's too bad it didn't happen again.

Spotted in the cast is Cliff (Jiminy Cricket) Edwards and Edward Brophy, who was memorable as a thickheaded cop in The Third Man.

Sidewalks of New York

 

(1931)
Directed by Zion Myers, Jules White
Written by George Landy and Paul Gerard Smith, Dialogue by Robert E. Hopkins, Eric Hatch and Willard Mack
Starring Buster Keaton, Anita Page, Cliff Edwards, Frank Rowan, Syd Saylor, Norman Phillips, Jr
IMDB Entry

Sometimes a success leads to long-term failure, usually because the actor becomes typecast and can't move on. Sidewalks of New York is an example of this where its success was the beginning of the end of a brilliant career.

Harmon (Buster Keaton) is a slumlord who is hated by the residents of his buildings. When his assistant Poggie (Cliff Edwards) tries to collect rent, the boys of the neighborhood drive him away. Harmon goes to see and is attacked by one of the boys, Clipper (Norman Phillips, Jr). His sister Margie comes to his defense and Harmon is instantly smitten. He wants to have Clipper prosecuted, but, after seeing Margie again in the courtroom, drops all charges. A cop tells Harmon that the boys aren't really bad but need an outlet for their energy. To impress Margie, Harmon builds a gym and tries to get the boys interested, including getting into the ring with a local boxer, Mulvaney (Syd Saylor). Clipper falls in with a bad crowd, and the hoodlum Butch (Frank Rowan) uses him to take part in robberies.

Keaton was beginning to feel the pinch of the studio system.  After a couple of flops, he had signed with MGM, against the advice of Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd and practically everyone who knew him.*  Keaton was no longer in control of production; he called the decision the worst of his life.  Once sound came in, things got worse. MGM didn't let him do stunts -- the bread-and-butter of his career -- and dictated to him what movies he would do. Sidewalks of New York was his second sound film, Keaton hated the film and tried mightily to get out of the assignment. But MGM thought it was good and Keaton gave up, held his nose, and did it.

And it turned out the executives were right.  Sidewalks of New York was Keaton's biggest success. It made it impossible for him to object to scripts, since he was (in the executives' eyes) so wrong that they didn't have to listen to him.  He had to do what he was told.

So how good was the movie? It wasn't a disaster; the story moved nicely and there were some good gags. Keaton was fine handling the slapstick parts; the pratfalls are good, But it was nowhere up to the heights of his career.

The movie was directed by the team of Zion Myers and Jules White, who had previous success with comedy shorts. White, of course, later directed many of the Three Stooges shorts and the movie often seems to be more one of their films than Keaton's. One scene where Harmon is being sworn in as a witness in court was even reused by the Stooges.

The movie also features Cliff Edwards, who was paired as a team with Keaton. Edwards came up in vaudeville as a ukelele act and is best known today as the voice of Jiminy Cricket. He was a close friend of Keaton, but not good enough to stand out.

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*Except for his wife Natalie Talmadge, sister of Norma and Constance Talmadge, two of MGM's biggest stars.  Norma was married to Keaton's business partner Joseph Schenck, brother of Nicholas Schenck, head of MGM. A bit of nepotism, isn't it?

The Basketball Fix

 (1951)
Directed by Felix E. Feist
Written by Charles K. Peck, Peter R. Brooke
Starring John Ireland, Marshall Thompson, Vanessa Brown, William Bishop, Robert Hyatt, Walter Sande
IMDB Entry

Law and Order was the first to dramatize events "ripped from the headlines." The Basketball Fix was deliberately based on the college basketball point shaving scandal of 1951, rushed into production to take advantage.

A little background for those who don't follow sports (or even those who do). For many sports, you bet on how many points a team will win by. Thus, an underdog team can still win if they don't lose by too much.

Within ten years of the concept being introduced, gamblers figured out a way to game the system. They would bribe basketball players to miss shots -- not enough to lose the game, but to keep the team from beating the point spread. Point shaving didn't require a team to lose a game, making it easier to convince players that no harm was being done. The scandal erupted when City College of New York (CCNY), which had won both the NCAA and the more prestigious (at the time) National Invitational Tournament (NIT) in 1951,* had several players who were found to be shaving points.

The Basketball Fix follows dominating high school basketball player Johnny Long (Marshall Thompson). Reporter Pete Ferreday (John Ireland) becomes interested in helping Johnny get into college on a scholarship. Johnny doesn't think it possible, since he has to support his little brother Mickey (Robert Hyatt), but manages to convince a local college coach Nat** Becker (Walter Sande) to give him a scholarship. Things go well:  over the summer, he meets Vanessa Brown (Pat Judd) and they start dating. But he also meets Mike Taft (William Bishop), a gambler.

Taft is genial and friendly and very likeable. But when Johnny starts starring for the team, Taft begins to ask for more. At first Johnny resists, but his poverty is the hook to catch him.

John Ireland was a veteran of several classic westerns like My Darling Clementine and Red River and Marshall Thompson reached TV stardom in Daktari. Their roles are workmanlike, possibly due to the rush in putting out the film.*** The ending of the film is clearly rushed; you could have done an entirely new movie dealing with the aftermath.

Director Felix E. Feist directed a bunch of programmers and TV episodes from the 30s to the 60s. His adopted son Raymond E. Feist is a well-known writer of fantasy fiction.

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* The only team to do so, and the only team that will ever do so -- the NCAA switched to conflict with the NIT; expanded the field, leaving fewer teams available; and finally a rule was passed to ban teams from playing in both.

**Note that the coach of the CCNY team was Nat Holman. He was cleared of any wrongdoing; the players had kept him in the dark.

***The scandal broke in February and the film was released in September.