Football 'n' Films

Today was the Super Bowl, as most of you are probably aware. (Those of you who didn't know this will probably really hate the baseball entry I'm planning for later this week!) The match-up featured the St. Louis Rams against the New England Patriots, and the Rams had been all but coronated before the game even started, even though the Pats had handled the powerhouse Pittsburgh Steelers the week before.

I'm not a big football fan, but I was basically rooting for the Patriots, having grown up in New England. I admit I'm a fair-weather fan, though; I'd happily root for the Saints, Packers, Raiders or 49ers. Basically, I'll root against the Cowboys or either of the New York Jersey teams. I found it amusing that the Patriots had been to two other Super Bowls and each time faced a team for the ages and gotten beat, and it looked like it would happen again today.

Well, it didn't, of course. The Patriots' defense planned and executed perfectly, pounding the Rams offense hard every chance they got, and forcing just enough punts and turnovers to result in a 17-3 Patriots lead in the fourth quarter. The Rams scored two late touchdowns to tie it, but the Patriots pushed through the Rams' exhausted defense to get in field goal range and score the winning 3 points as the clock ran out. Amazing.

The Patriots also seemed to handle the press perfectly, as well, coming out on the field as a team rather than being individually announced, and everyone seeming to claim that it was only as a team that they got as far as they did. It was rather heartwarming, and quite appropriate: It took an array of spare parts and luck to get to the finish line, and I guess they appreciated that no one carried them there; they had to work for it.

Not a lot to say about the peripheral entertainment. The commercials were sometimes amusing, but mostly not particularly notable. The pre-game and half time shows were keyed by extremely patriotic performances by noted non-Americans Paul McCartney and U2. (Boy, McCartney's song "Freedom" is an undistinguished piece of work, isn't it?) As pure entertainment, though, U2 beat the heck out of last year's Aerosmith/N'Sync tandem, though!

Anyway, it was a fun game. However, to show what a non-football fan I am, when the Rams tied it up in the 4th quarter, I took off, figuring that overtime was a certainty, and I was heading off to see movies in half an hour. If I'd known, I'd have stuck out those last few minutes, but I don't really regret it that much. It's not like it was the World Series or something important like that.

The movies in question were two more Cary Grant flicks. First was Gambling Ship (1933). Grant plays Ace Corbin, a mob boss in Chicago who, after beating a rap for something (murder, presumably), decides to go straight and heads to California for a vacation. On the train trip out he meets and falls in love with Eleanor La Velle (Benita Hume), the lover of Joe Burke (Arthur Vinton), who runs the gambling ship Casino off the coast. Ace and Eleanor hide their true selves from each other, each wanting to find a way out of their life of crime. However, Ace's acquaintance Blooey (Roscoe Karns) meets up with Ace and persuades him to join with Joe, since Joe's biggest competitor, Pete Manning (Jack La Rue, who had been so over-the-top in The Woman Accused), is the guy who set Ace up for a fall in Chicago.

It's not a deep film, but it's pretty good. Grant shows more acting skill here than in Friday's films, and the story holds up a bit better. Ace and Joe are each eventually perceived as fairly good guys, albeit mostly by contrast with Manning. By today's standards, the film seems at once a little nasty, yet in a ludicrously clean way.

Karns as Blooey mostly steals the show as the wisecracking side man, competent in his own way but not really taken seriously by the principals. Certainly he provides - or helps to provide - most of the laughs in the film.

The back half of the double bill was I'm No Angel (1933), which is a Mae West vehicle, written by West herself. West plays Tira (no last name), an exotic dancer in a small-time circus, who's had many men in her life, and hopes to have many more. Big Bill Barton (Edward Arnold), owner of the circus (or maybe just a promoter) persuades her to use her lion-taming skills to put together a big act ending with her putting her head in a lion's mouth, and this sends her to the big time, where she strikes it rich, and meets a better class of man in the bargain. She hits it off with Kirk Taylor (Kirk Lawrence) - despite his engagement - but is persuaded to drop him by Taylor's business partner Jack Clayton (Grant). Clayton and Tira fall in love, but her former lover Slick Wiley (Ralf Harolde) throws a monkey wrench in the works.

The film borders on being plotless, and certainly there are no morals here. It's almost entirely a vehicle for West's sauntering, smiling, and wisecracking. But, if that's what you're looking for, then you need look no further, as the film is full of laughs. I can't say that West is a great actress (she exhibits only a few hints of range), and certainly she's no dancer from the evidence here. But she is darned attractive, and has a look that could stun a (male) rhino at 50 yards.

The rest of the cast is largely disposable; only Slick Wiley really has much potential to be more than a caricature, but Harolde doesn't have what it takes to turn him into anything more. Pity. Grant is in "suave" mode here, and doesn't really deviate from that.

One thing about West, though: Now I know where Bette Midler got her schtick. The two could almost be twins - born 50 years apart.

Watching films this early is also interesting because they're assembled slightly differently than later films. The lengthy credits we have in today's films didn't start appearing until, what, the 60s? But all four of this weekend's films had opening credits where the main actors were listed with their roles over short video clips of the characters. That's a style pretty much restricted to television, today.

All of these films were black-and-white, of course, and only I'm No Angel clocked in at over 80 minutes (though it didn't crack 90).

Films from before about 1937 are, in my experience, a little dodgy. Their pacing is often kind of weird, their plots not very tight, and sometimes they lack resolution or even a climax (42nd Street is a good example of this, although it has other things to recommend it). The Thin Man is perhaps the best film from this early period that I've seen.

Lots more Cary Grant to come in the next few months...