Best Little Movies from the 1930's and 40's?

[Phillyrich]

I had mentioned in a previous post that I liked discovering low-budget, 2nd tier movies from the
1930's and 40's, that really work well.

I'll nominate "Five Came Back" as one of my favorites from RKO in 1939, and now, Warner
Archives. A plane crash and jungle survival film (before the cannibals eat us) made before the formula was
so well established. A chance to see Lucille Ball in an early dramatic and sympathetic role.

It's 75 minutes and just the right length to build tension but not over-expose the low-
budget sets. Nice pay-off finale. Can't beat actors like C. Aubrey Smith and John Carradine
in supporting roles, too!

Anyone want to post some of their favorites? I'm always up for more discoveries.

[s.w.a.c.]

I enjoyed the Val Lewton RKO title that wasn't a horror movie, Mademoiselle Fifi, which turns up on occasion on TCM (not sure if there's been a Warner Archive DVD, it wasn't included in the Val Lewton box set due to its non-horror status, but should have been included as an extra at least). What can I say, I'm a sucker for Simone Simon.

[Harlowgold]

I had mentioned in a previous post that I liked discovering low-budget, 2nd tier movies from the
1930's and 40's, that really work well.

I'll nominate "Five Came Back" as one of my favorites from RKO in 1939, and now, Warner
Archives. A plane crash and jungle survival film (before the cannibals eat us) made before the formula was
so well established. A chance to see Lucille Ball in an early dramatic and sympathetic role.

It's 75 minutes and just the right length to build tension but not over-expose the low-
budget sets. Nice pay-off finale. Can't beat actors like C. Aubrey Smith and John Carradine
in supporting roles, too!

Anyone want to post some of their favorites? I'm always up for more discoveries.

I really love Lucille Ball's movies, especially her "B's" from RKO 1938-1940. FCB is one of my favorites but I also have great fondness for the melodrama Five Came Back that apparently not that many share, but it's fun to see Lucy as a very earthy (1939 style) "broad" with one of my favorite unheralded movie lines (probably not an exact quote) "Neckin' ain't safe in an airplane" when her beau starts to paw her as they begin flight in a small plane. Also love the two Anabel comedies she made with Jack Oakie, much better than many a big-budget A screwball romp from the era. These are kind of knockoffs of Harlow's Bombshell with Lucy a movie star whose publicist gets her in a lot of messes.

I love seeing wonderful old May Robson in her starring B's. I found Grand Old Girl quite moving in scenes and with an ever timely story of age discrimination as a senior citizen put out to pasture from her job as school principal.

Of courseDetour is such a legendary film noir now one almost can't call it a "little movie" but Ann Savage is unforgettable as one of the darkest souls ever for a noir diva.

[Scott Eckhardt]

DELUGE 1933 is an unusual film for it's time. This is a very ambitious B film which starts out with an elongated vision of the destruction of most of civilization. Done with minatures and matte shots, it is nowhere near as convincing as the earthquake effects in SAN FRANCISCO, but it does have a nightmarish quality which is hard to resist. After this spectacular opening, the story settles down to focus on some survivors and their attempts to cope with their plight. Peggy Shannon, whom I was not familiar with easily takes what acting honors are to be had. Looking her up, I was saddened to learn of her early death at 34 due to alcoholism. Sidney Blackmer is rather wooden and unconvincing as the hero. Still, this film is compulsively watchable with a lot of pre-code atmosphere. Shannon is seen in something close to a bikini, and an early scene of her being mauled by Ralf Harolde is quite graphic. In a later scene, an old geezer wins an auction for a Venus DeMilo statue which he states will "come in handy for the long winter months ahead." Yes, I have a dirty enough mind to figure that line out. The film is short, fun, has a wall-to-wall music score, and plays a bit like a feature version of a serial. Quite unique , and never dull.

[R Michael Pyle]

I think I could put a list on here that's nearly unending, depending on the genre. For example, I recently watched the Tom Mix Western, "Riders of the Desert" (aka "Rider of Death Valley") (1932), and found it extraordinary. But someone has mentioned May Robson, and I think "The She-Wolf" (aka "Mother's Millions") (1931) is incredibly good. 1931 is my own favorite year for films. Just off the top of my head, some films most may never have seen that are wonderful are:

1) "The Public Defender" with Richard Dix
2) "The Conquering Horde" with Richard Arlen
3) "Gun Smoke" with Richard Arlen
4) "Bad Girl" with James Dunn
5) "Cape Forlorn" with Ian Hunter and Fay Compton (UK film: spectacular!)
6) "The Criminal Code" with Walter Huston
7) "Safe in Hell" with Dorothy Mackaill

This is just 1931, and I could have named a dozen more, but they may not be as minor as you're looking for.

Going by actor, I might add "Blind Adventure" (1933) with Roland Young. How about "Woman to Woman" (1929) with Betty Compson? Yes, it's '29, but was shown mostly in '30. I'll rest here unless you want more.

1930) "Alias French Gertie" with Ben Lyon and Bebe Daniels
1940) "Saloon Bar" with Gordon Harker (UK film: again, spectacular!)
1934) "Double Door" with Evelyn Venable
1933) "Pleasure Cruise" with Genevieve Tobin and Roland Young (Great Pre-Code!)
1932) "The Roadhouse Murder" with Eric Linden
1939) "The Invisible Killer" with Grace Bradley (absolutely implausible, yet great fun nevertheless!)

[Bert Greene]

Off the top of my head, I tried to put together a little list of a few B-films (along with some lower-profile A's) that have always hit a spot with me. It's not that I'm saying they are all great, although many are. But rather, they might have struck a chord with me partially due to a favorite actor/actress, or maybe some other kind of nostalgic connection. A quick list, so I've probably left out many, many others...

1. "The Sea God" (1930-Par) Richard Arlen, Fay Wray
2. "Desert Vengeance" (1931-Col) Buck Jones, Barbara Bedford
3. "Rider of Death Valley" (1932-Univ) Tom Mix, Lois Wilson
4. "Midnight Club" (1933-Par) Clive Brook, Helen Vinson
5. "Before Dawn" (1933-RKO) Warner Oland, Stu Erwin
6. "King of the Jungle" (1933-Par) Buster Crabbe, Frances Dee
7. "Streamline Express" (1935-Mascot) Victor Jory, Evelyn Venable
8. "When a Man's a Man" (1935-Fox/Lesser) George O'Brien
9. "Hollywood Boulevard" (1936-Par) John Halliday, Marsha Hunt
10. "Show Them No Mercy" (1936-Fox) Rochelle Hudson, Cesar Romero
11. "Without Orders" (1936-RKO) Robert Armstrong, Sally Eilers
12. "Daughter of Shanghai" (1937-Par) Anna May Wong
13. "Dangerously Yours" (1937-Fox) Cesar Romero, Phyllis Brooks
14. "Girls School" (1938-Col) Anne Shirley, Nan Grey
15. "Persons in Hiding" (1939-Par) Patricia Morison, J. Carroll Naish
16. "Ambush" (1939-Par) Gladys Swarthout, Lloyd Nolan
17. "I Was an Adventuress" (1940-Fox) Vera Zorina, Richard Greene
18. "The Night of Jan. 16th" (1941-Par) Robert Preston, Ellen Drew
19. "Strange Impersonation" (1945-Rep) Brenda Marshall
20. "She Gets Her Man" (1945-Univ) Joan Davis, Leon Errol

[Dean Thompson]

I'm wondering if it's downright heretical to nominate an MGM film as a favorite "little" movie. Somehow I can just hear Leo licking his chops, and balefully at that.

But at Cinevent last year, I saw Richard Boleslawski's Beauty for Sale (1933). Though the cast had a few top talents, collectively it seemed rather a B list: Madge Evans, Alice Brady, Otto Kruger, Una Merkel, May Robson, Phillips Holmes, Eddie Nugent, and Hedda Hopper. Based on a Faith Baldwin novel, it didn't have much of a literary pedigree. I went because I'll watch anything lensed by the legendary James Wong Howe. When the lights went up afterwards, I saw a number of approving nods.

It's a tight pre-code about the desperation underlying the lives of three beauticians, touching on some hard issues still all too relevant today. Good performances all around, especially from Evans, Kruger, and Robson; but the glory is Howe's cinematography, constantly shifting focus and shadows, with set-ups that make one long for a Pause button. How often it plays on TCM, I don't know, but it's now available from Warner Archive. On its own small-scaled terms, it's a gem.

[MaryGH]

All of Tom Tyler's 1930's movies he made for Reliable and Victory Pictures. "Powdersmoke Range", RKO The Three Mequiteers movies from Republic in the 1930's to 1940's.

[boblipton]

I’m rather fond of Gone With The Wind.

Bob

[Mike Gebert]

Five Came Back was actually a rare example of a sleeper hit-- a B that the word got around on, and it became a minor hit. (The other best example I can think of is The Narrow Margin.) In both cases I think a really well constructed story and a cast of solid non-star character actors sold audiences on the idea that they were hip to a discovery.

For me, it's less about looking for fun little one-ofs than in digging through the credits of certain directors because they tended to deliver above the level of the industry they were working in; many went on to bigger budgets and often lesser films, so their early work is best, even when it's only fair-- kind of like the difference between a perfectly fine $100 bottle of wine, which honestly is disappointing that it's not better, and a $12 bottle that's surprisingly good.

So I look for (especially early works):

Anthony Mann
Jacques Tourneur
Robert Siodmak
Edward Dmytryk
Richard Fleischer
Cy Endfield
Joseph Losey
Jules Dassin
Budd Boetticher
Andre deToth
Joseph H. Lewis
Roy Del Ruth
Edgar Selwyn

[boblipton]

If you're talking about directors who could deliver a better movie with a small budget, but couldn't do much extra with more money, my choice is Richard Thorpe, who did some marvelous Poverty Row B movies, that got him to Metro, where he wound up saddled with actors like Robert Taylor. Taylor was handsome, committed to giving the best performance he could, but alas, not a great actor. Another under-rated Metro director was Harry Beaumont.

When you came down to much of the talent you refer to, Mike, during the studio era, because they were not A-list directors, they got the poor assignments and had to work at a furious pace. They never really got a chance for the creative well to refill.

Bob

[silentfilm]

Dangerous Blondes (1943) with Allyn Joslyn and Evelyn Keyes as a crime fiction writer and his much-smarter wife who have to solve a murder.


In Wanted: Jane Turner! (1936), Lee Tracy and Gloria Stuart have to protect a woman after the “mob” delivers a payoff to her by mistake, and she decides to keep the money.

[Mike Gebert]

When you came down to much of the talent you refer to, Mike, during the studio era, because they were not A-list directors, they got the poor assignments and had to work at a furious pace. They never really got a chance for the creative well to refill.

And yet some of them clearly benefited from working constantly and learning on the fly, more certainly than today's one-movie-every-three-years pace. After all, was there any better school than Biograph in Griffith's time making a movie a week? Same for Columbia and Boetticher or Lewis.

As for the guys who didn't get any better with more time and money, Mann seems to me the quintessential example—El Cid is good, for instance, but having Samuel Bronston's frozen millions to play with wasn't better than the more modest sums he had on The Naked Spur, or even on T-Men.

[Dave Pitts]

Last night I watched Pride of the West (1938), which is the last of the 66 Hopalong Cassidy films I needed, to have seen them all. I nominate the Hoppys for good, trim features. Nothing special in the basic plots -- there's almost always a supposedly upright bigwig in town who is secretly running a gang -- but the films are as informal and genial as William Boyd himself, and the location photography is a point of pride for the film makers, more so than in most any other B western series.
Leaving westerns, I jones for almost any early 30s Warner Brothers feature -- especially the ones that run 60 to 65 minutes and have the Warners stock players turning up to do their fast-talking schtick. The Mind Reader ('33) or Bedside ('34) or a good 200 others -- what's not to love? A good Warners programmer rips along like a Model T cranked up to max speed.

[Phillyrich]

Thank you everyone, for the thoughtful responses. Many intriguing films to consider. I'll have to add to my
Christmas want list!

Happy holidays to everyone.

[Battra92]

DELUGE 1933

It's interesting how Forest J. Ackerman was seeking this film for so long and it only showed up after his death. It was a legendary film and it's good but it didn't live up to the hype that Ackerman's childhood memories made it out to be.