Captain Caution - 1940

“Captain Caution” (1940) gives us a chance, if nothing else, to mark that this year is the 200^th anniversary of the War of 1812.  It was a puzzling, disjointed little war and this is a puzzling, disjointed little movie.  Victor Mature would rather not fight the war, and he seems to be the only one in this movie with any sense.

The year this movie was made, Great Britain was struggling for survival against Nazi bombing raids, and the US, still officially neutral in the early years of World War II, had not even started slipping aid through the Lend-Lease program, signed into the law the following year.  We just stood by and watched.  The War of 1812 was the last time Great Britain was our enemy, and though movies should be allowed to stand apart from current events as purely art, they often do not, intentionally.  A scene at the end of the film where a British sea captain agrees to a personal truce with Victor Mature’s crew so that they may join together to fight a common enemy might have been a convenient, palatable ending, or it might have been in the original novel.  I don’t know, but it is convenient.  Our real-life sympathies for Great Britain in their predicament were beginning to gnaw at us.

Victor Mature is First Mate on “The Olive Branch”, a symbolic enough name for a merchant ship sailing back to its home port of Arundel, Maine.  Robert Barrat is captain and owner of the ship.  His daughter, played by Louise Platt, is on board to keep the ship’s log on her beautiful lady’s finishing school handwriting, and to plague Victor Mature.  They were childhood friends, and now they are battling sweethearts.  One wonders what he sees in her, because she’s as petulant a shrew as ever sailed the seven seas.

A crew of lovable miscreants huddles below decks and swings in hammocks.  El Brendel is one of them, who plays a lute and sings very sweetly of the seaman’s sweetheart “Hilda”.

It is August, 1812, and they have been sailing from China for over 100 days.  They do not know that President James Madison declared war against Great Britain in June.  So, it comes as quite a shock when a British war frigate comes along sides, shoots cannonballs at them, and takes them all prisoner, except for the captain, who is killed.

Captain Caution is a bitter nickname Louise Platt tags on Victor Mature because he advises surrender and negotiation to get the men back home.  Especially since they are not armed to fight sea battles. 

Now that her father is dead, Miss Platt vows vengeance on the British and she’s willing to take up with anybody who will help her, including Bruce Cabot, who has an unsavory reputation as a slave ship captain.  He will do anything for money.

When they are rescued from the British by an American war frigate, Bruce Cabot joins the crew as Miss Platt’s First Mate.  She declares herself captain, and her brief scenes striding about the deck giving orders are the most interesting aspects of her role, however far-fetched they might be.  There were pirate queens back in the day who mastered their own ships, but Louise doesn’t seem to be the type who can suddenly adopt authority and a thorough knowledge of seamanship when she has spent her time before that pouting and shrieking.

Other newcomers on deck include Leo Carrillo, who we last saw in “History is Made at Night” (1937).  He plays his trademark bumbling, bombastic sidekick with the funny, over-the-top accent. 

Vivienne Osborne is his jealous coquette of a wife.

A young J. Pat O’Malley has his first movie role as a fishmonger; blink and you miss him.

Clifford Severn is the British drummer boy who is taken captive by Victor Mature’s band and has become such a mascot that by the end of the movie, he joins his new American friends.  Clifford and several of his siblings were child actors in many films, and you may recall his brother Christopher as Toby in “Mrs. Miniver” (1942).

Alan Ladd has a small role as an American sailor held captive on another British warship.  He helps Carillo and Mature to orchestrate an escape.  It wouldn’t be too long before he had starring roles and you can see why in this movie.  Ladd has a magnetic screen presence and he delivers his lines in a passionate manner.  Interestingly, he shows more emotion here than he would in his more famous roles when his characters were usually more buttoned up.

It is an occasionally odd movie, but there are two powerful elements going for it.  First, there are some good hand-to-hand combat scenes on fog-shrouded decks, with cannonball-splintered spars falling around them, tearing into square sails, and frigates on fire. 

Second, the trio of Victor Mature, Bruce Cabot, and Alan Ladd have got to be the most handsome set of fellows ever to eat hardtack.  You can’t keep your eyes off them.

Mr. Cabot is quite mesmerizing.  We know he’s the villain, his record speaks for itself, but usually villains are presented as ugly, creepy, mustache-twirling types.  Cabot is manly, rugged, intelligent, and has guts.  If he weren’t so evil he’d be a great guy to have on your side.  Mr. Ladd, despite a small role, comes off as a romantic hero with his abundant wavy hair and flashing eyes.  And Victor Mature is charming in a role unlike his usual sneering, haunted noir outings.  He’s funny and thoughtful.  He is careful and judicious, Captain Caution, as it were, but saves the day at the end when he makes a bold move. 

The only fault I can see in him is his love for Louise Platt.  He’s too good for her.  There’s a lot that's clunky in this movie, but as Leo Carillo hopefully says, “Nothing is impossible if it’s possible.”

Arundel, by the way, though an old place name for this area of Maine, was part of Kennebunkport when novelist, and Kennebunk boy Kenneth Roberts wrote “Captain Caution”.  He specialized in historical novels, (he also wrote Northwest Passage) often with New England slants.  A popular novelist of his day, after the last of his series Chronicles of Arundel was finished, the community was officially re-named Arundel in 1957.

Have a look at my New England Travels post this week for more on the War of 1812, and the USS Constitution.

Murder on the Blackboard - 1934

“Murder on the Blackboard” (1934) keeps the teachers after school to find the killer when one of the staff is murdered. This is the second appearance of the superb Edna May Oliver as amateur sleuth and full-time teacher Hildegarde Withers. James Gleason is back as her foil and friend, Inspector Oscar Piper. They first teamed up for “Penguin Pool Murder” (1932), and would be back again for “Murder on a Honeymoon” (1935). Later entries in the series would feature Helen Broderick and Zasu Pitts in the role.

Caricatured by Hollywood cartoons for her weak chin and long face, but never as expertly as when she caricatured herself in every patented facial flinch and body English, Miss Oliver was perfectly cast in this role, bringing humor and depth, as she always did whatever part she played. One gets the sense she never considered any line a throw-away. Everything, like a good vaudevillian, was milked, every opportunity in script, in props, in gestures, was used to her advantage.

In this story, a young woman who was a fellow teacher is murdered in her New York school, and the cast of suspects includes two other teachers played by the ruggedly handsome Bruce Cabot, and by Gertrude Michael. They are in love, and secretly planning to marry. When Miss Michael is questioned, Mr. Cabot heroically comes to her defense. Miss Oliver responds,

“I like you for that, young man, but the police, though they may be fools, are not sentimental fools.”

She gets the best lines, and as usual in these stories, the cops are not as good at detective work as she is. A young Regis Toomey is James Gleason’s assistant. Gleason, though sometimes two steps behind Edna May, is no fool, and the repartee between them is funny, argumentative, and even awkwardly flirtatious. They are meant for each other.

One comic bit between them: He is about to help her through a trap door, and standing behind her, he grasps her underarms. She whoops and wiggles like a girl being fondled under the bleachers and remarks, “Oscar, this is no time for fooling.”

Annoyed at her misinterpretation, he drops her through the trap door like a sack of cement.

Gleason’s detective style is a bit more direct than Miss Oliver’s. He tells the principal, “Do you talk, or do I let the boys go to work on you?”

The smarmy principal, played by Tully Marshall, who chased the murder victim behind his wife’s back, is also under suspicion; as is the sloppy drunk janitor.

The title comes from a set of musical notes written on the blackboard by the murder victim, who taught music. One of the funny elements to the movie is that Edna May whistles the short series of notes to everyone she meets to try to judge their reaction and determine their guilt. They all look at her as if she is loony.

She sometimes comes off that way even to Gleason, who we see has great respect for her abilities. When they are in the hospital room of an injured police detective, the coroner, played by Gustav von Seyffertitz (who I have to mention just because I love his name so much) -- in the striking combination of wing collar and laboratory apron -- bows low and kisses Miss Oliver’s hand with European courtesy. They animatedly begin to discuss the details of the murder victim’s autopsy. The squeamish wounded policeman protests, and Gleason responds, “What do you care? You’re lucky they’re not both in bed with you.”

It is a movie that starts slow, but picks up with several excursions from the upper floors of classrooms to the cellar, where Edna May’s fluttering hands and occasional nervous nipping at from whatever bottle comes her way tell us that she is not yet hardened to this police work. However, when she knows the answer, she victoriously shouts “Eureka! I’ve got it!”

It’s a quick and neat little mystery, but the real charm is Edna May Oliver and James Gleason, most especially because they look like they’re having fun.

King Kong - Part 1

David O. Selznick, who produced such successful, but overladen hits like “Gone With the Wind” (1939) and “Since You Went Away” (1944) also produced a much leaner “King Kong” (1933), which has the distinction of being remarkably fast paced, imaginative, and as evocative of a place that never existed as any film of a place that did.

Reckless, driven movie director Carl Denham, played by Robert Armstrong, is the film’s catalyst. He is Ahab to Kong’s Moby Dick, but Carl Denham is less righteous and haunted than Captain Ahab. He is really more like Daffy Duck, pursuing a mound of jewels with dollar signs in his eyes. Mr. Armstrong gets to deliver the famous last lines of the film, “It wasn’t the airplanes. It was beauty killed the beast.” But he also gets other lines just as telling of his character and of the Depression era of this film. Warned that he must be careful with a movie actress in the wilds of his location shoot, Denham responds,

“I suppose there’s no danger in New York? Listen, there are dozens of girls in this town that are in more danger than they’ll ever see with me.”

Denham laments that his true-life adventure films are dismissed by the Hollywood critics. “Isn’t there any romance or adventure in the world without having a flapper in it?”

Interesting use of the word “flapper” carried over from the 1920s. Denham goes first to one jungle to find the girl for his film, New York City, and we see Times Square lit up at night. We meet the lovely Fay Wray whose haunting dark eyes explore the camera’s gaze from under the brim of a battered cloche hat.

“I’m on the level. No funny business,” Armstrong as Denham tells Miss Wray, and she, and we, immediately accept that he is being truthful. The amazing thing is, he is being truthful. He is a man obsessively wedded to his work. If he were not, he could never bring back the Eighth Wonder of the World.

For a love interest, Miss Wray is given instead the wooden Bruce Cabot, who is at first brusque and falls in love reluctantly. It’s nothing personal he tells her, it’s just that she’s a woman. We get the standard “Terry and the Pirates” stock images of a stereotyped Chinese galley cook, and Denham on board ship in a yachting cap and a white suit, to be replaced by a tropical kit, and a slouch hat that make him look a cross between Indiana Jones, Curious George’s Man in the Yellow Hat and Christiane Amanpour reporting from the field. But this is quite wonderful in a way, because this is Depression-era South Seas adventure, and if Denham didn’t look like The Great White Hunter, we’d be wondering exactly what he was doing there.

I get a kick where after their first wary encounter with the natives of the lost island, Denham flippantly whistles a chorus of “The St. Louis Blues.” And he remarks at their torches lighting up the black night in their ceremonial dance to pay homage to Kong, “Looks like the night before election.”

He has some terrific sets to get lost in, mostly left over from the previous year’s “The Most Dangerous Game” and Miss Wray, truly the best screamer in Hollywood as his bait for Kong. When she practices screaming in terror for Denham’s screen test of her on deck, we get an ominous sense of dread when Bruce Cabot’s character wonders, “What’s he think she’s really gonna see?”

See Part 2 of King Kong here.