Extra!
I like writing about obscure films. I'm drawn to them because I think it's instructive to bring attention to unknown work by forgotten filmmakers, crews, and performers. Extensive regard of the famous films of yesteryear by critics looking at the "Golden Age of Hollywood" with, in my opinion, too narrow a focus, as if the only significant movies starring Humphrey Bogart are The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, suck air away from considering lesser known but interesting motion pictures like, carrying through with Bogart, The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse, Dead Reckoning, or The Left Hand of God.
This essay doesn't concern Bogart, but I watched a little film from 1932 called The Famous Ferguson Case, starring Joan Blondell, Tom Brown, Kenneth Thomson, Vivienne Osborne, Grant Mitchell, Adrienne Dore, Leon Ames, and Leslie Fenton. Who were these people?
Of this cast, only Joan Blondell is still well known. Her picture appears on the DVD cover even though she's fourth in importance among the characters. This practice, typical in DVD packaging, put Marilyn Monroe prominently on the DVD cover of Hometown Story, even though she's only in three scenes. We like our stars, we tend not to remember the names of character actors. Still, Leon Ames was in so many movies and also starred as Wilbur Post's neighbor in Mister Ed that it's likely many viewers of films on TCM will at least recognize him. Grant Mitchell, too, is readily recognizable having been in The Man Who Came To Dinner and Arsenic and Old Lace, among dozens of others.
Mrs. Ferguson (Vivienne Osborne), married to a prominent New York banker who makes his main address in the small city of Cornwall, New Hampshire, is having an affair with a Cornwall bank employee (Leon Ames). Mr. Ferguson gets killed during an apparent break-in; his wife is on the marriage bed wearing silk pajamas, tied up and gagged. The New York press arrives in Cornwall, cynical and sarcastic, ready to assume that the bank employee and Mrs. Ferguson staged the burglary and murder. The New York journalists pressure the local cops and district attorney to see things their way, pester the bank employee's pregnant wife (traumatized, she dies in childbirth), and ultimately find out their wife-killing-her-husband theory is completely wrong.
The slick, hard-drinking (alcohol is still illegal) New Yorkers, who "make" news rather than investigating it honestly, get topped professionally and ethically by a Cornwall newspaper journalist played by Tom Brown, a young actor who looks like a high school boy, but in the end his character proves to be the only decent reporter.
The film, populated by know-it-all cretins, is most interesting to watch for the bad behavior on display. Kenneth Thomson, the male lead, plays the lead New York journalist, a self-admitted manic depressive who seduces and screws young women, including Tom Brown's love interest. He's corrupt, lazy about doing his job as he misses covering the court trial so that he can mess around with Tom Brown's girlfriend. His work partner, played by Leslie Fenton, is a contemptible snake. Fenton's performance, the best in the film, achieves an impressive level of sliminess and arrogance mirrored by self-assured professional men who've been rewarded with success to the point where they believe themselves unassailable. It's partly performances like this, by actors not well known, that make obscure films worth watching. To learn from an unfamiliar face and voice the art of acting.
Vic Neptune
I like writing about obscure films. I'm drawn to them because I think it's instructive to bring attention to unknown work by forgotten filmmakers, crews, and performers. Extensive regard of the famous films of yesteryear by critics looking at the "Golden Age of Hollywood" with, in my opinion, too narrow a focus, as if the only significant movies starring Humphrey Bogart are The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, suck air away from considering lesser known but interesting motion pictures like, carrying through with Bogart, The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse, Dead Reckoning, or The Left Hand of God.
This essay doesn't concern Bogart, but I watched a little film from 1932 called The Famous Ferguson Case, starring Joan Blondell, Tom Brown, Kenneth Thomson, Vivienne Osborne, Grant Mitchell, Adrienne Dore, Leon Ames, and Leslie Fenton. Who were these people?
Of this cast, only Joan Blondell is still well known. Her picture appears on the DVD cover even though she's fourth in importance among the characters. This practice, typical in DVD packaging, put Marilyn Monroe prominently on the DVD cover of Hometown Story, even though she's only in three scenes. We like our stars, we tend not to remember the names of character actors. Still, Leon Ames was in so many movies and also starred as Wilbur Post's neighbor in Mister Ed that it's likely many viewers of films on TCM will at least recognize him. Grant Mitchell, too, is readily recognizable having been in The Man Who Came To Dinner and Arsenic and Old Lace, among dozens of others.
Mrs. Ferguson (Vivienne Osborne), married to a prominent New York banker who makes his main address in the small city of Cornwall, New Hampshire, is having an affair with a Cornwall bank employee (Leon Ames). Mr. Ferguson gets killed during an apparent break-in; his wife is on the marriage bed wearing silk pajamas, tied up and gagged. The New York press arrives in Cornwall, cynical and sarcastic, ready to assume that the bank employee and Mrs. Ferguson staged the burglary and murder. The New York journalists pressure the local cops and district attorney to see things their way, pester the bank employee's pregnant wife (traumatized, she dies in childbirth), and ultimately find out their wife-killing-her-husband theory is completely wrong.
The slick, hard-drinking (alcohol is still illegal) New Yorkers, who "make" news rather than investigating it honestly, get topped professionally and ethically by a Cornwall newspaper journalist played by Tom Brown, a young actor who looks like a high school boy, but in the end his character proves to be the only decent reporter.
The film, populated by know-it-all cretins, is most interesting to watch for the bad behavior on display. Kenneth Thomson, the male lead, plays the lead New York journalist, a self-admitted manic depressive who seduces and screws young women, including Tom Brown's love interest. He's corrupt, lazy about doing his job as he misses covering the court trial so that he can mess around with Tom Brown's girlfriend. His work partner, played by Leslie Fenton, is a contemptible snake. Fenton's performance, the best in the film, achieves an impressive level of sliminess and arrogance mirrored by self-assured professional men who've been rewarded with success to the point where they believe themselves unassailable. It's partly performances like this, by actors not well known, that make obscure films worth watching. To learn from an unfamiliar face and voice the art of acting.
Vic Neptune
Comments
Post a Comment