Angels Over Broadway (1940)

“Darling, you understate the case by three bottles and a thousand tears!”

            I always find it interesting when I watch a film where I really like one thing about and do not care for another thing. I will give the example of when I watched The Razor’s Edge with Gene Tierney and Tyrone Power. The story and the characters were not bad I just wished that the acting had been better. Something like that I find interesting because most of the time everything usually clicks together or it usually falls apart together in a film, well, for me anyway. This situation happened again to me when I watched the 1940 film Angels Over Broadway. The dialogue was good but the acting and the story were not the greatest.

            The story, unfortunately, did not catch my attention whatsoever so I will make this summary as short as possible from what I did kind of pay attention to.

            Bill O’Brien (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) picks up people to play poker with a gambler and he gets a cut of anything the gambler wins over three thousand dollars. On a rainy night he walks passed a man coming out of a cab. The man, Charles Engle, gives the cab driver a large bill and tells the driver to keep the change. This action captures Bill’s attention so he follows Engle into the club they are in front of. He next sees Engle give the cigarette girl a fifty dollar bill and also tells her to keep the change. Bill thinks Engle is loaded. In reality Engle is contemplating suicide after he embezzled three thousand dollars from the man he works for and is just going out for one last night. Bill gives the gambler a call saying he has a new player who seems to be from out of town and has a lot of money. Now all he has to do is convince Engle to come play.

            At the club is a young woman named Nina Barona (Rita Hayworth) who is trying to get a chance to speak to anyone who might be able to give her a job in a show and a playwright named Gene Gibbons (Thomas Mitchell) whose latest play is just one in a succession of flops and it totally intoxicated. Nina sits down at Engle’s table because she somehow thinks he has connections with a show. Gene was about to leave the club when he was accidentally given Engle’s jacket and found his suicide note. Gene sits down with Engle talks about life and even says he can try to get him the three thousand dollars by getting back some jewels from his ex-wife that are worth a lot. The crusade to get the jewels fails.

            Bill moves in to get Engle to play a round of poker. The truth comes out but Gene says that Engle can play until he makes the three thousand then he could remove himself from the game by saying he has to do something and will be right back. Bill likes the idea but as the game gets close he is not too sure about it.

            After this I completely lost interest and attention.

            The cast could have been so good together. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is one of my favorite classic actors. In the films I have seen him in so far he has been great. In this he started off alright and then just fell. He has a bit of a Noir edge to him and was good at it. Rita Hayworth was just starting out at this point so her acting was not that great. I kind of felt bad for her in some scenes because she was so bad. Thomas Mitchell’s character was drunk the whole time. I was not too crazy about his character even though he was a drunk who was trying to be decent.

            Ben Hecht, one of the greatest screenwriters to ever have graced films, wrote and partially directed it as well. His dialogue was so good. It was a very wordy screenplay. I never mind wordy I like dialogue when it is well written and well performed. The problem was the performances. The performances from the actors could not do justice to the dialogue. Rita Hayworth just bombed most of her scenes it was as if she could not keep up with her dialogue the way the character was supposed to. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. seemed like he was trying too hard and hammed up his dialogue. Thomas Mitchell I think was the only one who actually did justice to his dialogue he was very good.

            Angels Over Broadway had the potential to be very good. The screenplay was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the Oscars that year. It deserved it definitely especially because Ben Hecht wrote it. The acting just brings this film down unfortunately. As I said at the beginning the contradiction (if that is the correct way to put it) with the good writing and the bad acting is interesting to see. I will only suggest seeing Angels Over Broadway if you are a fan of either Ben Hecht or any of the actors other than that skip it.

 

I Like Your Nerve (1931)

I think I have finally seen an old Hollywood film where the title actually fits the plot. I never thought I would see the day! I Like Your Nerve is a very fitting title for this film where Douglas Fairbanks Jr. actively pursues Loretta Young in any way he can even though there are several people in their way of being together.

            Larry O’Brien (Fairbanks Jr.) is roaming around South America. He has apparently gotten into some kind of trouble and has been kicked out of that country into another. While waiting at the gate Larry sees a beautiful in the backseat of a car. He follows the car and crashes the gate into San Pedro. The guards immediately surround his car and all Larry does is laugh.

            Larry is thrown in a local jail but his lawyer friend is able to get him out. He drives to a roadside dive for a drink when he sees the car with the beautiful woman in the backseat. She pretends to hide her face in disgust behind her umbrella but smiles to herself. The car drives off down the road. Larry asks one of the workers at the dive who the young woman is. The worker tells him her name is Diana Forsythe (Young), her stepfather is the Minister of Finance and she is set to marry a much older American man in the next few days. The worker adds that with all this it will be impossible to see Diana in person she has so many people around her. With those words Larry now makes it his mission to be alone with Diane. He comes up with the idea to break classes from the dive across a stretch of road to pop the tires on Diane’s car. The plane works and somehow manages to be alone with Diane. Larry offers to drive her home. Diane sits in the back so Larry sits in the back with her until she moves to the front with him. He brings her back to her house and is introduced to her stepfather. The stepfather says he will send Larry an invitation to the wedding and Larry responds that he will not need one because he will be the one marrying Diane. Before he leaves the property Larry incessantly blows his car horn waiting for Diane to come to the window. She does and smiles at him. Diane finds that she likes his flirtatious attention.

            Diane is very unhappy. She does not want to marry Clive Lattimer who is so much older than her and barely pays attention to her. She finds that she likes Larry and thinks of him all through a party that night. At the party is Larry’s lawyer friend Archie. Diane asks Archie about his friend. Meanwhile, Larry is trying to get into the party but he is turned away at the door. He manages to fool with Diane’s chauffer and takes his place. Diane wants to leave the party she is so bored. Larry drives up and takes Diane away down to a lake. Diane tries to get away; Larry says he has the keys. She gets mad at him and he loves it.

            Dressed as the chauffer Larry goes to Diane’s stepfather to tell him he wants to marry her. The stepfather confesses the only reason he is marrying Diane off to Lattimer is because the old man will give him twenty thousand dollars which he desperately needs to balance the country’s finances. Diane sees Larry walking out of the house. She is nervous thinking her stepfather will do something to Larry. She tells her stepfather that if he does anything to Larry she not marry Lattimer no matter the consequences.

            Larry manages to get Diane out of the country and con Lattimer out of his twenty thousand dollars. As with all happy love endings in old Hollywood, Larry and Diane get married.

            I loved Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Loretta Young together. They had great chemistry and I think that comes down to the fact that they were young and fresh faced and that Fairbanks Jr. was charming and Young could be a tough chick with a soft side. I am not sure if this was their first film pairing together I know they made several other films together in the thirties. I cannot wait to watch those.

            I Like Your Nerve is not one of the greatest films. The plot of a young girl marrying an older man she does not want to marry and meets a younger man she falls in love with has been done to death but here it is sweet and cute because Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Loretta young were perfect together. It gets a little silly with the secondary characters. Watch I Like Your Nerve if you are a fan Loretta Young and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. The film is not available on YouTube I had it recorded from TCM I think from a few months ago.