I’m a little under half of the way through Warner’s wonderful Forbidden Hollywood Collection: Volume Three, which assembles six films by the great, but underrated-by-Andrew-Sarris-in-The American Cinema director William “Wild Bill” Wellman. Of the first four of the six films—I haven’t listened to any of the commentaries yet, and have yet to check out the two films on the third disc, or the documentaries on Wellman on the fourth disc—the only one I’d call a stone masterpiece is 1931’s Other Men’s Women, a jarring study of what one might call entirely innocent infidelity, made with a sensitivity to space, and place, and movement that is still staggering to witness today. It was released the same year as Wellman’s The Public Enemy, and is in several respects (James Cagney’s performance and Enemy’s shattering finale notwithstanding) the better film. 1932’s The Purchase Price is not so good as Other Men’s Women, its set-up being a rather uneasy cross between Murnau’s City Girl and any generic pic of the day featuring a gangster’s discontented moll; and Midnight Mary and Frisco Jenny, both from 1933, are crackling, juicy, a bit overly-serious melodramas that might have disappeared had they not benefitted from the particularities of Wellman’s touch. Which, in each of the films, goes beyond his snap-crackle-pop narrative sense. What’s more striking than that is how he gives the female leads in each film their own heads. He doesn’t judge, never lords it over them. Even the most morally breezy of pre-Code pictures had a hard time resisting the misogyny that was part and parcel of the culture back in the day. Wellman didn’t just like women, he respected them. Mary Astor’s torn wife in Other Men’s Women would have been condemned by almost any other director of the time. Barbara Stanwyck’s scheming chantoozie, on the run from her gangster boyfriend in The Purchase Price, is allowed her reasons. Wellman makes Ruth Chatterton’s Frisco Jenny, a brothel manager who gives up the son who will grow up to become a D.A. and send her up the river, a less treacly, but still heartbreaking, ur-Stella Dallas.
It’s his portrayal of putative bad girl and murderess Mary Miller in Midnight Mary that raises the most eyebrows. Partially because it’s Loretta Young, who not only had mostly played exploited virgins, but in real life kept a “swear” penaltyjar on her movie sets, who is here portraying, well, a full-blooded expert in the erotic arts.
Well, maybe. The most jaw-dropping scene is late in the picture, wherein she’s attempting to distract her no-goodnik gangster boyfriend Leo Darcy (Ricardo Cortez). First, she strikes a pose potent enough to make him grip the outer edge of his dresser drawer, as seen above. Next, she falls into his arms, and starts whispering sweet nothings in his ear, the better to make him impersonate Gaston Modot in Bunuel’s L’Age d’Or.
…during which we hear no dialogue, we, or, perhaps I should say, the more dirty-minded in the audience (which, let’s face it, Wellman is trying to get us all to be), can only infer the absolutely filthy things she’s telling him she’s gonna do for/to him if only he doesn’t rush out of there…
…and she tries to seal the deal with a kiss.
It doesn’t quite work the way she planned, which leaves the more dirty-minded among us to contemplate just what a sap Cortez’s character was for not staying put. Ah, well. Still—the portrait here goes beyond its substantial sexual heat, and even beyond a study of a woman’s wiles. It’s complex, non-moralistic, and fully cognizant of its erotics, as it were. Tough-minded, unsentimental…appreciative.
HAT TIP: The great Doug Pratt, who suggested the ear-nibbling shot as an Image For The Day.
And yet, Wellman generally described himself as a hard-ass whom actresses didn’t get on with. Except maybe Stanwyck. But he also seems to imply he was tough with them because he hated actressy pretense and excessive make-up, and was concerned to get at something human and real. Some actresses certainly appreciated that.
I am so glad that Wellman, along with other unjustly neglected directors like Leisen and Negulesco, is starting to get his due. I just watched Heroes for Sale and I hope to hear your views on that one as well – I already wrote up Wild Boys of the Road, which impressed the hell out of me last year. Sarris dissed a lot of good directors in his book…
It seems increasingly apparent that I was unjust in including Loretta Young in my list of 20 Actors Who Give Me a Pain in the Neck (or whatever I called it). She really was a different proposition in the early 1930s. By the by, as far I know, the Wellman films came long before she had enough power to install the swear box. Back then she was a pretty young thing who could no more tell Wild Bill not to swear than she could tell Gable to shave his moustache. Accounts vary, but I believe the swear box was a feature during her run of “The Loretta Young Show.”
One of Ronald Reagan’s wives, I forget which, says in the 1st doc that he introduced himself to her with something like “I hate working with actresses.” He also fondly recalls coldcocking Raoul Walsh’s wife during one of his early acting roles. He was clearly better with the tough pre-code broads than the delicate flowers thereafter.
Damn you, Glen, I have a full queue! Slow down on recommending movies that really interest me! 🙂
Young gives an interesting performance in Zoo in Budapest, alas not on DVD.
Herman, Zoo in Budapest is way up there on my “WHERE’S THE DVD” list. Several of my regular commenters swear it’s great, and that Young is wonderful in it.
Snap decision Glenn – my budget only allows me to get this or the swank new edition of Murnau’s Faust. Which am I buying?
Mark VH: It may help your budget to know that Turner Classic Movies is showing all six of these Wellman films consecutively on March 23rd, the evening before the box set is released. The run will be interspersed with a couple of showings of the Wellman segment of Richard Schickel’s The Men Who Made the Movies. Check your local listings.
Looking forward to seeing them again (and The Purchase Price for the first time). Midnight Mary is probably Young’s best role. I much prefer her in this period.
In Sragow’s Vic Fleming bio, he recounts how Wellman, Andy Devine, and their wives took a motorcycle trip from LA to Las Vegas, stopping for a catered lunch behind a billboard in the Mojave Desert, rough, manly behavior at its best.
I remember that Gilbert Adair wrote about Other Men’s Women in his book Flickers: An Illustrated Celebration of 100 Years of Cinema. He also considered it an unsung masterpiece. I’m definitely going to hunt down that DVD set.