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| Natalie Kalmus and Sam Wood examine the Technicolor camera. |
If you started serious movie going in the last years of re-issue cinemas and the first years of Australian TV, director Sam Wood was inescapable - Night at the Opera, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Gone With the Wind, Our Town, Kings Row, The Devil and Miss Jones, Kitty Foyle, For Whom the Bell Tolls - he seemed to be the major source of quality film on offer. When I began dealing with movie literature, I was amazed that his name wasn’t on every other page. It was a long time till I found out why.
Wood had been Hollywood’s leading anti Communist and widely detested over it. That situation is re-visited briefly in the new Trumbo movie. Knowing this gives an emphasis to details in his films that wouldn’t register in other directors’ work - Robert Armstrong cautioning the police “This ain’t Russia” in Paid or the contrast between diner jacketed G-Men and proletarian hoodlums in False Faces.
It had two consequences. No one was game to admire Wood’s work and no one went looking for the missing films, which dated back as far as 1920. No archive restorations here or Cinematheque seasons, like the ones that honored John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock or Raoul Walsh. As collateral damage, his associate, designer William Cameron Menzies, seemed to have vanished along with Wood.
Late night TV did occasionally offer us an accidental glimpse of his 1930s MGM house style films and pretty ordinary they proved to be too - Lord Jeff, Navy Blue and Gold, the Gladys George Madam X included. Not that there was anything unprofessional about the handling but most prestige directors would have refused those lemons. Determined salaryman Wood just made lemonade.
Wood’s silents and early sound films remained a void in everyone’s knowledge. Eighty years after they first hit the screen however, early Sam Wood movies are bubbling up to the surface. National collections, bootleggers and the Warner Archive are coming to the party.
You can now find a murky copy of his second film, the 1920 Wallace Reid movie Excuse My Dust centering on the LA to Frisco road race and having possibly the first fiction movie aerial shot included in the coverage. That’s quite enjoyable as is 1921’s Peck's Bad Boy, resurfacing after its years as a rare Kodascope sixteen millimeter silent, still a polished and engaging vehicle for Jackie Coogan, following his success as Chaplin’s The Kid. More notable, in Milestone’s nicely restored copy, is Beyond the Rocks of 1922. Rudolph Valentino and regular Wood leading lady Gloria Swanson were made to share star billing as a disciplinary measure, which backfired when they got along a treat and would go off and play tennis together after the day’s shooting. The Eleanor (“Three Weeks”, “It”) Glynn original novel and some early process photography inserting the leads in post card scenics don’t help but it’s nice to see the pair at work, even if she is far more at ease doing comedy romance than Rudy.
Slim pickings for a near thirty silent movie career.
Like most of the upper echelon Hollywood directors, Wood didn’t make the transition to sound easily. Europeans had the precedents of the American talkies to learn from and didn’t plow under anything like the amount of awkward or misjudged productions when they got into the act. Delmer Daves, who worked on the scripts of several of Wood’s films, was there the day Wood became infuriated when the sound man told him he couldn’t have the performers continue speaking while starting a car and ordered them to climb in and drive off, getting a few words before the car pulled the microphone cable out of the wall. Wood’s first sound films are interesting as much for the screw ups as for the things he got right.
Hard to tell the order in which his talkies were shot, some possibly being held back to soften the impact of their failings on their stars’ careers. Most likely the dreadful Way for a Sailor came first, though it’s dated 1930. Ambitious enough, with back lot Asia and whore littered London docks, process photography, fire scenes and mechanical zooms, it is defeated by technical limitations, as where only the close ups in the sea shore dialogue between John Gilbert and Leila Hyams are in synch., the mike not being able to get close enough to them to record dialogue in the long shots which had to be added unsynchronised. Gilbert must have been a fast learner because his performance is dreadful here and assured in the sound films which followed. He has no chemistry with Hyams and Wally Beery is confined to dumb ass comedy.
So This Is College is dated 1929 probably correctly. It has curious features like opening scenes with the screen empty of action and the thumping of feet as the performers run in or rough matching on the football actuality and new shooting. One of Wood’s college movies (1932’s Huddle with Ramon Navarro is better), it features young Robert Montgomery and Elliot Nugent (director to be on remakes - the Bob Hope Cat & the Canary and the Allan Ladd Great Gatsby and the stage & screen versions of his own college story, the winning The Male Animal from the play he wrote with James Thurber). Set at a scary USC, the big game gets far more footage than any class room. Comedian Max Davidson is a Jewish tailor they delight in swindling and a young Joel McCrea gets the girl. Script is by Del Daves and Nugent.
Probably Sam Wood’s second sound film, It's A Great Life, billed as "all talking", opens misleadingly with a lively comic chase in the silent manner, the film's only exteriors. It stars the winningly awful sister act The Duncans, then peaking on the success of their teeth grating Topsy and Eva act. They dream of Playing the Palace but are working in Mandlebaum’s giant emporium, where show business is represented by a store show put on by Laurence Gray, head of sheet music. The show is a two strip colour inset shambles.
The girls do get to their pleasant enough hit “I’m Following You” which is plugged through the film relentlessly and resolve to go on Big Time Vaudeville, getting as far as Brooklyn. “It’s just across the bridge from Broadway.” When Vivian marries Gray who the strident Rosetta detests. The sisters split and the act that Vivienne does with her now husband is paid off before the end of the run. (“I never heard so much silence in my life”) Here the film goes maudlin. Vivian gets pneumonia motivating the second two colour section big stage climax “the Hoosier Hop” before a slightly weird finale with dancers sliding on slippery dips past the girls on a cloud.
Numbers like “Rainbow Round My Shoulder” play in the background track without getting a performance. Benny Rubin shows up late and doesn’t have much to do, not even a song. Un-billed Ben Blue as a stage hand has nearly as much prominence. Wood gets his camera onto the stage among Sammy Lee’s dancers and seems to be shooting the dramatic material the same way as the numbers, from a stalls position and cutting in closer angles instead of close up - medium shot. The pacing is quite fair until the soggy end. It’s a drab looking film. Designer Gibbons hasn’t entered his all white phase.
Things pick up with They Learned About Women (1930) the first version of the Gene Kelly Take Me Out to the Ball Game which used mainly the conflicting baseball and vaudeville careers element of the plot. Top billed variety duo Schenk & Van are quite presentable as the buddy Blue Socks team members. Van is engaged to bubbly Bessie Love at her ukulele playing zenith but he is fooling around with eighteen carat gold digger Ann Doran, so Schenk steps in at the cost of his own career. The story is passable and there is some interesting uses of sound (jazz under the Metro lion, the sports commentator on the silent movie style title etc.) The piece is uneven, having been begun by Jack Conway. They Learned About Women was never shown to the press and bombed at the box office. The lead duo made only this one film.
Wood had been Hollywood’s leading anti Communist and widely detested over it. That situation is re-visited briefly in the new Trumbo movie. Knowing this gives an emphasis to details in his films that wouldn’t register in other directors’ work - Robert Armstrong cautioning the police “This ain’t Russia” in Paid or the contrast between diner jacketed G-Men and proletarian hoodlums in False Faces.
It had two consequences. No one was game to admire Wood’s work and no one went looking for the missing films, which dated back as far as 1920. No archive restorations here or Cinematheque seasons, like the ones that honored John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock or Raoul Walsh. As collateral damage, his associate, designer William Cameron Menzies, seemed to have vanished along with Wood.
Late night TV did occasionally offer us an accidental glimpse of his 1930s MGM house style films and pretty ordinary they proved to be too - Lord Jeff, Navy Blue and Gold, the Gladys George Madam X included. Not that there was anything unprofessional about the handling but most prestige directors would have refused those lemons. Determined salaryman Wood just made lemonade.
Wood’s silents and early sound films remained a void in everyone’s knowledge. Eighty years after they first hit the screen however, early Sam Wood movies are bubbling up to the surface. National collections, bootleggers and the Warner Archive are coming to the party.
You can now find a murky copy of his second film, the 1920 Wallace Reid movie Excuse My Dust centering on the LA to Frisco road race and having possibly the first fiction movie aerial shot included in the coverage. That’s quite enjoyable as is 1921’s Peck's Bad Boy, resurfacing after its years as a rare Kodascope sixteen millimeter silent, still a polished and engaging vehicle for Jackie Coogan, following his success as Chaplin’s The Kid. More notable, in Milestone’s nicely restored copy, is Beyond the Rocks of 1922. Rudolph Valentino and regular Wood leading lady Gloria Swanson were made to share star billing as a disciplinary measure, which backfired when they got along a treat and would go off and play tennis together after the day’s shooting. The Eleanor (“Three Weeks”, “It”) Glynn original novel and some early process photography inserting the leads in post card scenics don’t help but it’s nice to see the pair at work, even if she is far more at ease doing comedy romance than Rudy.
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| Beyond the Rocks: performer, set musician, Wood, Swanson, Valentino & Glynn. |
Like most of the upper echelon Hollywood directors, Wood didn’t make the transition to sound easily. Europeans had the precedents of the American talkies to learn from and didn’t plow under anything like the amount of awkward or misjudged productions when they got into the act. Delmer Daves, who worked on the scripts of several of Wood’s films, was there the day Wood became infuriated when the sound man told him he couldn’t have the performers continue speaking while starting a car and ordered them to climb in and drive off, getting a few words before the car pulled the microphone cable out of the wall. Wood’s first sound films are interesting as much for the screw ups as for the things he got right.
Hard to tell the order in which his talkies were shot, some possibly being held back to soften the impact of their failings on their stars’ careers. Most likely the dreadful Way for a Sailor came first, though it’s dated 1930. Ambitious enough, with back lot Asia and whore littered London docks, process photography, fire scenes and mechanical zooms, it is defeated by technical limitations, as where only the close ups in the sea shore dialogue between John Gilbert and Leila Hyams are in synch., the mike not being able to get close enough to them to record dialogue in the long shots which had to be added unsynchronised. Gilbert must have been a fast learner because his performance is dreadful here and assured in the sound films which followed. He has no chemistry with Hyams and Wally Beery is confined to dumb ass comedy.
So This Is College is dated 1929 probably correctly. It has curious features like opening scenes with the screen empty of action and the thumping of feet as the performers run in or rough matching on the football actuality and new shooting. One of Wood’s college movies (1932’s Huddle with Ramon Navarro is better), it features young Robert Montgomery and Elliot Nugent (director to be on remakes - the Bob Hope Cat & the Canary and the Allan Ladd Great Gatsby and the stage & screen versions of his own college story, the winning The Male Animal from the play he wrote with James Thurber). Set at a scary USC, the big game gets far more footage than any class room. Comedian Max Davidson is a Jewish tailor they delight in swindling and a young Joel McCrea gets the girl. Script is by Del Daves and Nugent.
Probably Sam Wood’s second sound film, It's A Great Life, billed as "all talking", opens misleadingly with a lively comic chase in the silent manner, the film's only exteriors. It stars the winningly awful sister act The Duncans, then peaking on the success of their teeth grating Topsy and Eva act. They dream of Playing the Palace but are working in Mandlebaum’s giant emporium, where show business is represented by a store show put on by Laurence Gray, head of sheet music. The show is a two strip colour inset shambles.
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| The Duncan Sisters - It's a Great Life |
Numbers like “Rainbow Round My Shoulder” play in the background track without getting a performance. Benny Rubin shows up late and doesn’t have much to do, not even a song. Un-billed Ben Blue as a stage hand has nearly as much prominence. Wood gets his camera onto the stage among Sammy Lee’s dancers and seems to be shooting the dramatic material the same way as the numbers, from a stalls position and cutting in closer angles instead of close up - medium shot. The pacing is quite fair until the soggy end. It’s a drab looking film. Designer Gibbons hasn’t entered his all white phase.
Things pick up with They Learned About Women (1930) the first version of the Gene Kelly Take Me Out to the Ball Game which used mainly the conflicting baseball and vaudeville careers element of the plot. Top billed variety duo Schenk & Van are quite presentable as the buddy Blue Socks team members. Van is engaged to bubbly Bessie Love at her ukulele playing zenith but he is fooling around with eighteen carat gold digger Ann Doran, so Schenk steps in at the cost of his own career. The story is passable and there is some interesting uses of sound (jazz under the Metro lion, the sports commentator on the silent movie style title etc.) The piece is uneven, having been begun by Jack Conway. They Learned About Women was never shown to the press and bombed at the box office. The lead duo made only this one film.
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| William Haines & Leila Hyams |
At this stage William Haines’ brassy leading man was the biggest earner in movies - incredibly. Acceptable as a fresh faced juvenile, he was plausible in silents by King Vidor, James Cruze, Victor Seastrom and Wood himself but when you add his voice doing “Sez you!” dialogue the character was grating. Wood’s film The Girl Said No turns Haines, the small town’s cut up, into George Amberson Minifer as, at the calamity of his father’s death, he is reduced to clocking on with his packed lunch at the local factory to support his family and trim blonde Leila Hyams is drawn to his new humility.
Given false hope of a new career in a stock broker’s office, Haines is sabotaged by rival Ralph Bushman (son of Francis X) with an assignment to flog the Denver City Bonds she has already rejected to mean plutocrat Marie Dressler. Her one scene, coming late in the picture, anchors the piece, with Wood impressively making human and appealing the two grotesquely unsympathetic star personalities. That leaves a slapstick ending anticipating It Happened One Night. Hyams warming to Haines is surprisingly plausible and when he snaps back into his bullying persona it comes as a shock, followed by the winning revelation that this was a trick.
Seeing Wood handling the ham fisted Haines in physical comedy here (the pursuing dog, auto and improvised kilt scenes) leaves you wondering what would have happened if Metro had paired the director with Buster Keaton, a comic who was genuinely funny and inventive. That was not to be, with Keaton having his own people manage his then flagging sound career. Wood worked with Haines in another two films.
Paid (1930) is entirely different. Promising start with a close up of the court docket opening out to fill the screen with the sentencing of shop girl Joan Crawford falsely accused of stealing from her slave wage employer Purnell B. Pratt, with the attorneys, Crawford and her accuser arguing over one another. Compare this with the gives-up opening of Metro’s 1929 The Voice of the City where Willard Mack just shows a guard listen outside the court room we never see.
Given false hope of a new career in a stock broker’s office, Haines is sabotaged by rival Ralph Bushman (son of Francis X) with an assignment to flog the Denver City Bonds she has already rejected to mean plutocrat Marie Dressler. Her one scene, coming late in the picture, anchors the piece, with Wood impressively making human and appealing the two grotesquely unsympathetic star personalities. That leaves a slapstick ending anticipating It Happened One Night. Hyams warming to Haines is surprisingly plausible and when he snaps back into his bullying persona it comes as a shock, followed by the winning revelation that this was a trick.
Seeing Wood handling the ham fisted Haines in physical comedy here (the pursuing dog, auto and improvised kilt scenes) leaves you wondering what would have happened if Metro had paired the director with Buster Keaton, a comic who was genuinely funny and inventive. That was not to be, with Keaton having his own people manage his then flagging sound career. Wood worked with Haines in another two films.
Paid (1930) is entirely different. Promising start with a close up of the court docket opening out to fill the screen with the sentencing of shop girl Joan Crawford falsely accused of stealing from her slave wage employer Purnell B. Pratt, with the attorneys, Crawford and her accuser arguing over one another. Compare this with the gives-up opening of Metro’s 1929 The Voice of the City where Willard Mack just shows a guard listen outside the court room we never see.
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| Paid: Montgomery & Crawford. |
However hopes are rapidly dashed when the piece turns into a tedious transcription of a play by Bayard (“The Trial of Mary Dugan”) Veiller previously filmed in 1917 with Alice Joyce. Having suffered indignities in the big house, like having to share showers barefoot with Louise Beavers, Joan comes out hard bitten and uses the criminal contacts of fellow prisoner Marie Prevost (so good in Lewis Milestone’s The Racket) to wreak her revenge on Pratt by marrying his son Douglas Montgomery (the James Whale Waterloo Bridge, Way to the Stars). The support cast are carefully chosen not to overshadow Joan, who gets lots of soulful close ups. Mainly played in windowless interiors, this one is a long 81 minutes. Crawford and Wood never worked together again.
Surprisingly a sentimental, assimilationist fable proved to be the peak of the cycle. Wood’s The Sins of the Children of 1930 is both innovative and touching. Broadway actor Louis Mann made only this one sound film and Wood appears to have tailored the production to him. Instead of breaking his scenes into a variety of angles, they are played in carefully planned, unedited wide shot which gives the performers the chance to move at will and talk over one another. They do this in the dialogue Mann plays with character comedian Henry Armetta. The abrupt close up of the bowl of porridge introduced into the family breakfast scene appears to be there to cover a transition.
Mann is about to put his earnings into a Savings and Loan business with neighbor Robert McQuade but has to use them to send his young son to a Sanatorium. Years later the boy is grown to be Bushman jr. who changes his German name for his career as a doctor. The film is full of people from Wood’s other films - Armetta, Elliot Nugent as the mechanical minded son, eternal mum Clara Blandick and particularly manicurist Ann Doran whose seated, one take monologue totally overshadows Leila Hyams, the daughter character with her remarkably delicately suggested pregnancy. Robert Montgomery, as McQuade’s no good son, is responsible (compare “Hindle Wakes”) and the scene where he makes his life changing decision is played effectively with him in the background.
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| Louis Mann: Sins of the Children |
These early Sam Wood Productions do have a unity as they show the makers coming to terms with the new medium and Wood and his regulars meshing - from writer Charles MacArthur soon to form a tandem with Ben Hecht for “The Front Page” and their own films, master editor Frank Sullivan (Fury, Terror in a Texas Town) and Metro chief designer Cedric Gibbons, who is anything but unobtrusive, contributing the dark beamed Grove Cafe Night Club and Dressler’s Aztec themed study to The Girl Said No or John Miljan’s office with the blinds that lift to show the corridor action in Paid. - even walk-ons like Armetta and unbilled comedian veteran Herbert Prior, the mute General in Paid and victim diner in The Girl Said No. Soon to drop out of his films, these are not the people that would accompany Wood in the years of his mature and acclaimed work, where Menzies, Hal Wallis, Clark Gable, Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman carry the load.
It seems unlikely that we’ll ever get the full length study of Wood’s imposing thirty plus
year career and this article is only a snapshot of one section of that.
Barrie Pattison 2019
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