For this Paramount 1934 episode we watched Search for Beauty, which pits beauty-as-health (a wasted and almost unrecognizable Ida Lupino and frequently topless, sometimes bottomless, and always witless Olympic swimmer Buster Crabbe) against beauty-as-sex in a meta-commentary on pre-Codes released just before the crackdown, and the Hecht-MacArthur-Garmes Crime Without Passion, starring Claude Rains and Margo as a couple destined to destroy each other in a full-blown film noir six years before that "cycle" started. The latter adds to the evidence for Paramount as the studio of idiosyncratic auteur experimentation, while the former adds to the evidence that Paramount often flounders without its auteurs.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: 1934 & Paramount

0h 09m 04s: SEARCH FOR BEAUTY [dir. Erle C. Kenton]

0h 26m 53s: CRIME WITHOUT PASSION [dirs. Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur & Lee Garmes]

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Paramount Story by John Douglas Eames

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler

1934 Information from Forgotten Films to Remember by John Springer

+++

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise's latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave's new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

Our Deborah Kerr Acteurist Spotlight starts strong with two entertaining progressive WWII-era British films, John Baxter's Love on the Dole (1941), a socialist portrayal of working-class life in Manchester during the Great Depression, and Alexander Korda's Perfect Strangers (aka Vacation from Marriage), a sort of comedy of remarriage that envisions a radically new kind of marriage arising out of wartime upheavals in gender roles and middle-class routine. Elise confesses and recants her previous opinion that Deborah Kerr was a solid but slightly boring choice.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: Brief intro – Deborah Kerr

0h 06m 20s: LOVE ON THE DOLE (1941) [dir. John Baxter]

0h 34m 29s: PERFECT STRANGERS aka VACATION FROM MARRIAGE (1945) [dir. Alexander Korda]

+++

* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Capsule reviews from John Springer's Forgotten Films to Remember (Citadel Press, 1980)

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again"

* Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

For this Universal 1933 Studios Year by Year episode we commit the sacrilege of trashing a James Whale movie, The Invisible Man, which is also Claude Rains' first major screen role, albeit mainly as a voice. A ranting, irascible voice in a movie with very little evidence (in our irresponsible opinion) of Whale's voice. But then we turn to a movie bearing a strong directorial imprint, William Wyler's Counsellor at Law, which contains probably John Barrymore's best screen performance. We discuss Wyler's contested status among auteurists and the multiple layers of Elmer Rice's adaptation of his play about early 20th century American antisemitism and how to live with the knowledge of one's moral compromises. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we took in a Valentine's weekend screening of Sternberg's The Devil Is a Woman at the TIFF Lightbox cinematheque, giving us another opportunity to grapple with its ironies and opacities.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 25s: 1933 and Universal

0h 03m 51s: THE INVISIBLE MAN (1933) [dir. James Whale]

0h 19m 21s: COUNSELLOR-AT-LAW (1933) [dir. William Wyler]

0h 48m 06s: Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto: Josef von Sternberg's The Devil is a Woman (1935) at TIFF Lightbox

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Universal Story by Clive Hirschhorn

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler

1933 Information from Forgotten Films to Remember by John Springer

+++

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise's latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave's new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!