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| Night After Night & Hot Saturday; October, 1932 | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: May 14 2012, 09:50 AM (904 Views) | |
| Laughing Gravy | May 14 2012, 09:50 AM Post #1 |
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![]() Well, having immersed myself in Paramount films of the early 1930s via DVD for the past several weeks, I finally hit on the obvious idea of taking the Balcony Wayback® machine to October, 1932 for a double-feature of pre-Code fun. First up was George Raft in Night after Night, a rather tame gangster picture compared to other examples of the genre of that era, but enjoyable nonetheless. Raft runs a Speakeasy and wants to stop bein’ a mug and start bein’ a gentleman, ya see, so he’s engaged the services of Alison Skipworth to teach him not to murder the King’s English, ya git me? Georgie is trying to leave all of his past behind, including spitfire Wynne Gibson, who doesn’t WANT to be left behind, and a provocative, big-boobed floozy with class named Maudie Tripplett, who likes Georgie just the way he is. Oh, and some rival gangsters want the Speakeasy, and will get it with bullets if they can’t get it with dough. Into all this walks society dame Constance Cummings, who fights depression with booze (there’s a novel concept) and whom Raft falls for, necessitating he make the leap from mobster to upper-crust guy that nobody seems to want him to make. A nice if minor picture, but oh, that Maudie: it’s Mae West in her screen debut, and arriving full-blown onto the screen and stealing the picture, the screen, the theatre concession stand, everything in sight. She flashes her knockers and her wit in equal explosions, and it’s very much her picture, despite not showing up until it’s more than half over. Famous line: hat-check girl sees her rings and bracelets and says, “Goodness! Wherever did you get such diamonds?” You all know Mae’s comeback. Also enjoyable: the Speakeasy’s band plays a variety of popular tunes from other Paramount films of the era, including “Everyone Says I Love You” and “Isn’t it Romantic?” ![]() The second feature was even more fun (to me, anyway), something called Hot Saturday. A gang of 20-somethings work at the bank and party at the lake, while the town’s adults grouse about rich playboy Cary Grant, who has a showy house on the other side of the lake. Shithead “town nice guy” Edward Woods escorts Miss Carroll to a party, but tries to get overly familiar with her, so she has to hike through the woods and to Cary’s house; he gets her home safe, but at 2 am, where she’s spotted by a catty rival (who’s making out with Grady Sutton in a car, ewwwwww) who spreads the news that nice li’l Nancy is actually Cary’s slut. Ouch. Nancy loses her job, and when old boyfriend Randolph Scott comes to town to propose, she loses him too. What’s a nice girl to do? Well, Nancy does in 1932 what she wouldn’t have been able to do a couple of years later when the Code got tough on such things. A highly enjoyable little movie, and a lovely double-feature. Both are available on DVD; Night After Night (directed by Archie Mayo) in the Mae West Glamor Collection, and Hot Saturday (directed by William Seiter) in the Universal Pre-Code Collection. Edited by Laughing Gravy, May 14 2012, 12:42 PM.
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| "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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| Frank Hale | May 14 2012, 11:43 AM Post #2 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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Cary Grant has a particularly neat car in Hot Saturday. (Great autos are another fun feature of early Paramounts.) |
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| Laughing Gravy | May 14 2012, 12:37 PM Post #3 |
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Ah, yes. Cary's rumbleseat is nicer than my bedroom. Seriously. |
| "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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| outerlimit | Jun 9 2012, 03:14 AM Post #4 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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I really enjoyed Mae West's debut in Night After Night. She wrote her lines herself.It is such a shame that the Code effectively ended her screen career so prematurely and that the censored material from her movies appears to have been lost. Were it not for her, Paramount Pictures would probably have gone bankrupt in the early Thirties |
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| panzer the great & terrible | Jun 9 2012, 07:12 AM Post #5 |
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Mouth Breather
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You think? |
| Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious... | |
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| outerlimit | Jun 9 2012, 10:08 AM Post #6 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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She Done Him Wrong (1933) was completed at a cost of $200,000 and returned over $3 million for the studio which at the time was in grave difficulties;I'm No Angel, (Mae West's other movie of that year) was a similar smash.According to John Tusker in The Films of Mae West the studio until then was contemplating the conversion of most of its theatres into office buildings and selling the studio. If Mr. P's question was simply directed at my feelings about the lost material....Mr Tuska expressed the same view in the same book long ago. |
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| Frank Hale | Jun 9 2012, 11:14 AM Post #7 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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Mae was a big star, but she didn’t save Paramount from bankruptcy. Paramount-Publix went into receivership in 1933 (continuing operations as Paramount Productions, Inc.) and bankruptcy in 1935 (re-organizing as Paramount Pictures, Inc.) |
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| outerlimit | Jun 9 2012, 12:41 PM Post #8 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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John Douglas Eames in his work The Paramount Pictures Story also has it that Mae West saved the studio.Perhaps the money her films made enabled the studio to reconstitute and survive. |
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| Laughing Gravy | Feb 26 2017, 12:33 PM Post #9 |
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Rewatched Hot Saturday for the Pre-Code festival; liked it even better this time, although the ending seemed forced and rather implausible (she would've been happier with Randy, I think). |
| "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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