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Mayor of Hell & Murders in the Zoo; October, 1933
Topic Started: May 15 2011, 10:49 AM (721 Views)
Laughing Gravy
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This week, I thought I’d try something a little different… the Roxie on 9th here in Sacramento is a small “second-run” theatre”, and on a chilly, damp night in the fall of 1933 they’re showing an interesting-looking double bill of two films that no doubt played bigger, better venues in town this past summer. (I’d never heard of the Roxie until I spotted it on a trip to one of the other downtown theatres a few weeks ago in the 1940s; it stood, as near as I can tell, where the Sacramento main branch Library now stands, and personally, as much as I like to see people read, who wants to knock down a movie theatre to put up a library? Why couldn’t they have knocked down the Crocker Art Museum or something?).

Entering the lobby, I discover that (a) the theatre’s bigger than it looks on the outside; (b) the bathroom is upstairs, so I’d better not wait too long if I have to tinkle during the film; and (c) I’m reminded that I have an overdue book that I’d better bring back in 78 years when I’m back to my own time.

Well, the newsreel is first up, and some stern-looking gentlemen, one of whom is J. Edgar Hoover and two of whom aren’t, are promising us that the Federal Government will stamp out the lawlessness and crime that has invaded this fine country of ours. Uh, yeah, how’d that work out for ya? Next, it appears that the 21st Amendment will be ratified, and Prohibition will be repealed, so I’m thinkin’ that instead of a library, they should turn this place into a saloon.

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Our first feature is entitled The Mayor of Hell, and it stars Jimmy Cagney and the Dead End Kids. Uh, well, not EXACTLY… Except this movie is pretty much a precursor to every single movie the Dead End Kids ever made. I tell you, throughout the film, I kept wondering where the hell Bernard Punsly was. The kids in THIS film (which was made about four years before the first true Dead End Kids film) include two very noticeable faces, Frankie Darro and Allen Hoskins; Allen is billed simply as “Farina”, just as he was in the Our Gang pictures made a few years earlier.

Frankie’s the leader of an inner-city gang of punks who, during a pilfering raid on a local store, injure the proprietor when he tries to nab them. That’s followed by a quite lengthy sequence in which each of the boys is hauled into court and interviewed with their parents by the judge; predictably, some of the adults are, shall we say, less than good parents. The judge lets one boy go (he had no record and his dad speaks Italian) but the others are given 1-year terms in… REFORM SCHOOL. (It’s never called anything else, just…. REFORM SCHOOL, just like that, emphasis and all.) “Some day,” the judge tells one crying mother, for example, “you’ll be HAPPY we sent your son to REFORM SCHOOL.”

Okay, so, the misbegotten yout’s are all bussed upstate to REFORM SCHOOL, where they quickly learn that if they have a bad attitude, the warden (Dudley Digges, and doesn’t that sound like the name of a guy who should be teaching at Hogwarts?) will come down on you with a cat o’nine tails, and I don’t mean that metaphorically. And Frankie Darro has an attitude that should be kept in a cage, so there’s a lot of punishment going on. And now, half an hour into the film and at the point where I’m wondering if Jimmy Cagney is ever going to wander in, Jimmy Cagney wanders in! He’s been given a job as Deputy Commissioner as a reward for political favors; he just wants to drink, cajole the warden into writing his reports for him, and get his ass back down to Manhattan where, as we saw a few minutes ago, the saloons are about to reopen. Incidentally, Cagney’s sidekick is Allen Jenkins, one of my favorites; when he arrives at the REFORM SCHOOL, the first thing he says is, “Where’s the Fagin that runs this dump?” I’m gonna make a long story shortly less long, although not by much, by cutting to the crux of the film: Cagney is so appalled by how Dudley is runnin’ the joint, so taken in by Madge Evans, the cutie-pie nurse who heals the boys whippin’ scars, and so touched by Frankie (see, Cagney was also raised in the slums, and he’s seen a lot of good guys go bad in his time) that he decides to take his job very seriously. Alas, that puts him at odds with the warden, most of the guards, and his cronies back in Manhattan. When he’s out of town tryin’ to fix things, the evil warden REALLY fixes things, leading to a brutally fiery climax that’s quite disturbing.

The Mayor of Hell’s a really good movie, directed by Archie Mayo, and the fact that I’ve seen it about half a dozen times with various casts didn’t bother me too much, because this is the only pre-Code version, meaning there’s a lot of violence, a near-swear word, and a really, really grizzly death for somebody. Good stuff, Warner Bros.

Next up is a cartoon called “I Like Mountain Music”, and I’m thinkin’ swingin’ hillbillies, but no, although the song is used throughout, it’s actually about a magazine stand where various characters hop out of various periodicals and dance. I had this same cartoon in my head the last time I smoked pot. Anyway, there are some film stars (including Will Rogers, Ed Wynn, Edward G. Robinson, and King Kong) but mostly it’s just, ah, magazine pictures dancing. Yeah.

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Our second feature starts as soon as I get back from upstairs (I forgot my own warning and pretty much had to tap-dance up the steps; I was feeling like Bill “Bojangles” Robinson should’ve been holding my hand). It’s a little something called Murders at the Zoo, and I’m really looking forward to this, a Paramount film that’s been called a “lurid pre-Code shocker”. Turns out it’s a lurid pre-Code shocker, so whoever wrote that knew what th’ hell HE (or SHE) was talkin’ about. Lionel Atwill captures wild animals for the zoo; Kathleen Burke is his beautiful wife, who can’t keep her panties on when other men are around. As our film opens, Atwill is dropping one of Mrs. Atwill’s paramours off in the middle of the jungle… with his hands and feet tied and his mouth sewn shut with big, bloody stitches so he can’t scream for help. There’s something you don’t see every day in a movie. The plot is confusing, with too many characters, including top-billed Charles Ruggles as a drunken publicity man who keeps leaning on cages and terrariums filled with deadly snakes and pumas and stuff like that. Lionel kills some other guy whom his wife is dallying with, much to her chagrin, and Randolph Scott and a pretty nurse are carrying on, too, and I never quite figured out what they have to do with anything, but it’s okay, because every five or six minutes there’s a horribly grisly murder; most movies play by certain rules of expectation, with love triumphing in the end, the handsome hero saving the lovely lady from a fate worse than death (or just death), the woman in peril rescued at the last minute, you know, that sort of thing. NONE of that happens in this movie. By the time you can say to yourself, “How is so-and-so going to escape from that terrible death trap?” so-and-so has already been eaten by alligators. Love it, and what happens to Mr. Atwill is what we probably should’ve done to Osama bin Laden, if you want my opinion.

Okay, time to exit the theatre; they’re clearing us out by showing trailers for Duck Soup (which, amusingly, asks for “absolute silence!” from the audience for the loudest Coming Attractions I’ve ever heard) and for The Invisible Man, and THERE’S a double-feature worth more than a library ANY day.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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Cartoonguy
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Two of my all time faves!
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riddlerider
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I dunno, maybe it's a cosmic coincidence (probably related to the impending destruction of Earth), but I've now seen images of John Lodge three times in the last 48 hours, most recently in the MURDERS IN THE ZOO lobby card reprinted above. It's reminded me of the day in 1985 when my friend Sam Sherman arranged a surprise meeting with Lodge at a swanky New York club not far from where I was then working.

Of course, Lodge's acting career was the least of his accomplishments. He'd served in the Navy (receiving the Croix de Guerre from de Gaulle himself), in Congress, as governor of Connecticut, as U. S. ambassador to Spain (and then to Argentina, and after that to Switzerland). And he came from one of New England's legendary blue-blood families ("The Lodges talk only to the Cabots, and the Cabots talk only to God"). So I was pretty impressed. Gobsmacked might be a better word.

Sam had met Lodge some time before and had even screened his 16mm print of BULLDOG DRUMMOND AT BAY for the ambassador. Since I had opined that Lodge was the only actor who ever played Drummond as the character was conceived, Sam knew I'd be interested in meeting him.

Well, the guy simply could not have been more engaging. He was, after all, a diplomat. But even so, as our conversation got more specific, and Lodge realized we knew a good deal about filmmaking of the era, he loosened up and spoke more casually about his experiences in Hollywood. It was clear he would rather have been remembered for his work in THE SCARLET EMPRESS, LITTLE WOMEN, and THE LITTLE COLONEL, but he had no problem at all discussing MURDERS IN THE ZOO, MENACE, UNDER THE TONTO RIM and BULLDOG DRUMMOND AT BAY. He had scheduled us for a half-hour visit but kept us there for nearly 90 minutes. As we said goodbye, I asked him -- geeky fanboy that I am -- if he would mind autographing a portrait of himself as Bulldog if I could find one. He beamed, clapped me on the shoulder and said, "Oh, I'd be delighted!" Unfortunately, he died just a few months later...before I could find a copy of that still.

I'm not big on blue-bloods, but John Lodge was a helluva nice guy. And down deep, underneath his New England, rock-ribbed Republican crust, I got the impression he was still movie-struck. Despite the fact that he never really achieved stardom, he had fond memories of Hollywood and relayed them with considerable warmth.
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Sgt King
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So Riddle Rider, can you share some Hollywood stories from Mr. Lodge?
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riddlerider
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Sarge, I don't remember the entire conversation, but we spoke about SCARLET EMPRESS at length. Lodge was in awe of Dietrich and initially thrilled to be working with her, and director Josef von Sternberg as well. As production dragged on, however, he became restive. It seemed to him that the process of lighting Dietrich and rehearsing complicated camera moves was interminable, and he claimed that certain shots took as long as an entire morning to arrange; some days the first foot of film wasn't exposed until after lunch. Having won a six-month contract to Paramount on the strength of a screen test -- a scene specially written for him by M-G-M scripter John Lee Mahin, a prep-school buddy -- Lodge had only appeared in two programmers (THE WOMAN ACCUSED and MURDERS IN THE ZOO) and a B-plus Western (Zane Grey's UNDER THE TONTO RIM) prior to working in EMPRESS. So, as a newcomer, he was accustomed to a more rapid pace of shooting. Moreover, his two-shots with Dietrich were so carefully lit and photographed that if he moved as little as a couple inches one way or the other, he was either out of focus or no longer properly illuminated by the key light. He found this exasperating and believed the constant stress affected his performance for the worse. His memories of Dietrich herself were respectful but guarded, and both Sam and I left with the impression that he had held back where she was concerned.

He was more candid about MURDERS IN THE ZOO, which he thought a "ghastly" film but one that was lots of fun to make. He said nobody took it very seriously, and he had nothing but fond words for Lionel Atwill, whom he found enormously witty and charming. Lodge also liked Randolph Scott a great deal, although they saw each other around the Paramount lot much more than on the set of MURDERS. He remembered very little about UNDER THE TONTO RIM (which, alas, is one of the "lost" Paramount Zane Grey pictures) but thought himself poorly cast as a Westerner; he felt out of place during the entire shoot. When I mentioned that many Paramount contractees of that era apprenticed in the studio's Zane Grey Westerns, he said something along the lines of, "That was the impression I got, but it didn't make me any more comfortable on location." But he added that to him, at that time, filmmaking in general was a lark to him and he was determined to make the best of his experiences.

When we talked about BULLDOG DRUMMOND AT BAY, he seemed genuinely thrilled when I told him that he was the only actor who ever played Bulldog as H. C. "Sapper" McNeile portrayed him in the books. He said, "Well, I wish I could take all the credit, but I was only doing what Norman [Lee, the film's director] told me." He added that he'd never read a Bulldog Drummond story prior to making that 1937 film, which was released in the U.S. by Republic. Unfortunately for me, he remembered very little about MENACE, a terrific 1934 B murder mystery made before SCARLET EMPRESS but released two months after the Dietrich picture. Sam and I were hoping to get some substantive recollections about that one because our mutual friend Bob Allen also appeared in it.

I remember Lodge confessing that he was also awed by Shirley Temple, whom he claimed was far more professional and disciplined than some of the adult actors he worked with. He said her ability to remember lines and hit her marks perfectly on the first take was nothing short of amazing.
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Frank Hale
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I’ll undoubtedly get in trouble for this, but I show “Under the Tonto Rim” extant and out there waiting for your viewing pleasure, RR! (per the AFI catalogue and Jon Mirsalis’ lists.)

BTW, enjoyed that George Turner book you recommended. Just saw the recent DVD of “Hell Harbor”, to which a chapter was devoted.
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Laughing Gravy
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My chronological watching of horror films brought me back to this one. I have nothing else to add.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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