OVP: Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938)

Film: Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938)

Stars: Tyrone Power, Alice Faye, Don Ameche, Ethel Merman, Jack Haley, Jean Hersholt, John Carradine

Director: Henry King

Oscar History: 6 nominations/1 win (Best Picture, Motion Picture Story, Original Song-"Now It Can Be Told," Scoring*, Art Direction, Film Editing)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

When we think of classical Hollywood musicals of the 1930's through the early 1950's, what we initially name-check are almost always the MGM musicals of the era.  Films like The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St. Louis, An American in Paris, and Singin' in the Rain were all from the same studio.  Other studios, of course, were making musicals, most importantly 20th Century Fox, but Fox's best-remembered musicals would come in the 50's & 60's, when they would adapt the Rodgers & Hammerstein productions The King & I, South Pacific, and The Sound of Music, the latter of which basically saved the studio from bankruptcy.  Their musicals from the 1930's and 40's were hits, some pretty big hits, but none have the same kind of cache now that they did in their era.  Today we're going to revisit one of those films (a blockbuster hit), Alexander's Ragtime Band, which was cited for six Oscars, including Best Picture.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Alexander (Power), a young classical composer who joins a band (to his family & professor's chagrin) of ragtime musicians, and who luck into a gig at a nightclub partially because they are joined by singer Stella Kirby (Faye), another performer on the rise.  Stella & Alexander fight it out, but are clearly falling for each other in an "opposites attract" situation, and both are on their way up, though when a producer decides he only wants to give Stella a big break (not the band), Alexander gets jealous & they break it off.  World War I looms, with Alexander and some members of the band getting drafted, and while he's away, Stella marries the band's piano player Charlie (Ameche), and they have success but it's clearly not enough to keep their marriage afloat, and they divorce.  Meanwhile, Alexander is back & having great success with his band, including new lead singer Jerry Allen (Merman), who is in love with him but knows that he still pines for Stella.  The film has a "will they or won't they finale" with Alexander performing "Alexander's Ragtime Band" at Carnegie Hall, and as you would suspect for a movie from 1938, they do, in fact, end up together.

The 20th Century Fox musicals of this time frame follow not only the same plot formulas, they nearly always repeat the same stars.  You may remember we featured Alice Faye in a Saturdays with the Stars a few years ago, and we profiled films she made with both Power & Ameche (the former would make three films together, the latter would make six).  As a result, the films feel interchangeable, and as I've seen a lot of Alice Faye movies from this time frame, I know the formula well, and also to know based on billing whether or not she's going to end up with Don Ameche in the end (here, of course, she doesn't as Power is the headliner).

This basic story work makes the film feel more like a jukebox musical than the more complete productions happening at MGM at the time, which had more centralization on story and grand production numbers.  Most of the songs in the musical are not original to it (we'll get to one of the ones that was in a second), and very few of them are full production numbers with lots of dancers & choreography.  While we do have a few costume changes (most notably "Pack Up Your Sins and Go to the Devil" with Ethel Merman sashaying in a horned headband amid a group of sparkling demons), this is a movie that's really just about the music.  It helps that they hired two actresses who can genuinely sing.  Alice Faye is one of my favorite underrated performers of this era, and she's luminous as ever as Stella, giving her just enough depth and longing to make the paper-thin plot feel fuller, and her voice is a melodic lullaby. Merman, of course, brasses up some of the band's biggest numbers, and while a little bit of Merman can go a long way, it's weird (in a good way) to see her playing such a young figure as most of her most iconic roles (like Mama Rose) come from figures out of their youth.

As a result, your patience for this film is going to be tried by how much you can handle a musical with very little plot or grand choreography, and mostly just focused on some good-time songs.  Mine resides right in the middle, mostly because of my love of Ameche & Faye (I always cheer for them to end up together even though it's more a 50/50 split in their pictures).  The Irving Berlin songs sound great, and are brimming from every corner so you get your money's worth on the Oscar-winning scoring from Alfred Newman.  The original song "Now It Can Be Told" honestly falters amidst so many outright classics, in many ways echoing songs like "I Move On" and "Learn to Be Lonely" in later years where an addition that scores an Oscar nomination can't compete with the classics.  It's pretty, but it's just not special with so many iconic ditties.  The nomination for editing is a weird one, perhaps getting it for so many production numbers in one movie (though, again, it's less the production and more just the singing that stands out there), though the art direction feels more at-home; all of the stages feel like true, distinct  venues rather than just different window dressing, and as a result it genuinely feels like you get a sense of where the band is headed in terms of their theater's stature as the film progresses.

Two last things before we go, both because they struck me as unusual.  We talked yesterday in regard to a different 1938 Best Picture nominee, Four Daughters, how John Garfield's acting style felt weirdly out-of-place compared to the bright-and-bubbly portrayals from the Lane sisters.  Alexander's Ragtime Band has that too from omnipresent character actor John Carradine, here playing an unnamed taxi cab driver.  Carradine is in literally hundreds of movies during this era, so him showing up is not a surprise, but his performance-style is so at-odds with the rest of the movie, particularly dove-eyed Alice Faye, that it feels unusual.  He drives Faye around, and you almost feel like he's about to kidnap her & bring her into a completely different movie.  It's not a bad performance (I quite liked it), but it's so atonal to the film that it feels like this strange interlude in the picture where you think it might turn sinister (it doesn't help matters that one of Carradine's most iconic roles is playing Count Dracula in this regard).  I couldn't leave without at least mentioning this bizarre late-act swing in an otherwise conventional movie.

The last thing was a dumbstruck moment for me personally.  One of the songs that is sung in the song is "Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning," which is a Berlin number performed by Jack Haley in the movie.  I know this song very well, but had no idea until watching it this past weekend that it had been written by Irving Berlin...I honestly thought it had been written by my dad.  My dad, when I was a kid, would make up little songs to sing to my brother & I, and one of the songs that I remember most was him singing a (slightly different lyrics, but the same exact tune) version of this number to us when he was waking us up in the morning in lieu of an alarm clock.  I had no idea until I was literally watching this movie that this was not, in fact, one of his made up songs, which I found hysterical as a man in his mid-30's, apparently somehow believing his father is Irving Berlin.

OVP: Down Argentine Way (1940)

Film: Down Argentine Way (1940)
Stars: Don Ameche, Betty Grable, Carmen Miranda, Charlotte Greenwood, J. Carrol Naish
Director: Irving Cummings
Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Cinematography, Art Direction, Original Song-"Down Argentine Way")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Betty Grable-click here to learn more about Ms. Grable (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Betty Grable was no one's idea of an overnight success in Hollywood if you were willing to do the research.  During the earliest parts of her career, she hopped from studio to studio in hopes of establishing herself as a dancer and an actress.  However, she couldn't make it at Paramount or RKO, and by 1939 (at the age of only 23-her mother lied about her age to get her more mature parts early in her career), Grable would have been forgiven for assuming that mainstream success wasn't coming her way.  However, a well-reviewed supporting part in the Broadway production of DuBarry was a Lady led her to get a contract with Fox, and fate took a hand when Alice Faye, then Fox's most important leading woman, had to drop out of her next picture Down Argentine Way, with Grable coming in to substitute for Faye.  The film was a smash hit, becoming one of Fox's biggest pictures of the year, and not only cemented Grable as the new star on the Fox lot, but also sealed the fate of Alice Faye's career (you can read more about this here, as Faye was one of our stars last year) and launched the unusual career of Grable's costar Carmen Miranda as well.

(Spoilers Ahead) Like so many of the Fox musicals of this era, the plot here is a bit of a hodgepodge.  We have Ricardo Quintano (Ameche), a handsome horse salesman, who goes to Argentina to sell some of his father's prize steeds, but only if he promises not to sell to any member of his arch-nemesis's family the Crawfords.  Naturally when he gets there, not only does Ricardo accidentally sell one of the horses to a Crawford, he falls in love with his father's rival's daughter Glenda (Grable), before choosing his father over Glenda.  However, their love can't be denied and so the two start to see each other secretly, and then eventually prove to Ricardo's father that their love is more important than an old feud, and that he should stop just selling horses and get back into racing them as well.

And also, Carmen Miranda is randomly there.

The film is about the best encapsulation of Fox musicals of the era, in both the good and the bad.  Fox, unlike MGM's perfection machine, was more likely to just throw together a series of musical numbers and hope that they stick.  Down Argentine Way, therefore, is technically a love story but there's not much stakes in it-you don't really get to know Glenda or Ricardo, and we're just supposed to assume that since they're beautiful and young that love is the only course of action for the two.  Ameche & Grable are both fun in these parts, but it's hard to imagine how Grable became a star off of such a vehicle other than her technicolor blonde-ness and enviable gams; this series is focused on finding what's below the surface of some of Hollywood's most iconic beauties, but Grable doesn't give us much to root for in Glenda, and quite frankly she doesn't have the instant depth and charm of Alice Faye (but it's early in her film career so I'll hope for the best in coming weeks).

The musical numbers are still fun though.  While Miranda is literally playing herself (like she'd pretty much do her entire film career), man does she come in and steal this whole film with her trio of musical numbers, particularly the first onscreen use of her signature song "Mamae Eu Quero."  By the end of the decade, Miranda & Grable (both in their breakout roles here) would become two of the highest-paid entertainers in the world, so Down Argentine Way certainly had a major place in film history even if it's pretty slight (if harmless).

The film won three Oscar nominations.  The Cinematography is glorious Technicolor (Grable looks ravishing, as does Ameche for that matter), but it's not technically interesting, particularly compared to some of the color work that was happening in films like The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind just the previous year.  The same goes for the Art Direction-the interior shots all feel like vacant lots, and one wonders if this simply got the nomination based on how much money Fox spent filming in both Argentina and New York (to accommodate Miranda's Broadway engagements).  The best of the three nominations is Song, the title track which is sung in the picture by Grable & Ameche, and features Grable doing a saucy dance number (though with her legs covered-the bare legs come later in the picture).  The song recurs throughout the film, and is a bit of an unofficial theme to all of the musical numbers, but while it was cute, it doesn't really jump-off-the-screen the way that Miranda's numbers will halfway through the movie.

Overall, I left the first Grable outing a bit underwhelmed, but since she's the rare Saturday Star to get five films in one month (only in a Leap Year!), we have plenty of time to get better acquainted with the actress. Next week we'll take a rare detour for Grable (who specialized in romance and musicals) into the universe of film noir, and one of Grable's only dramatic roles.

Oscar's Rare "Sole Nomination" Lineups

One of my favorite under-reported aspects of this year's Oscar race has been around the randomness of the Best Original Song category.  The field is a bit weak this year; Disney seems to be in a position of power with probable nominations for Frozen II and The Lion King (the allure of giving Beyonce an Oscar is going to be too hard for Oscar to ignore), but overall there's no clear frontrunner for the win, and quite frankly you'd be hard-pressed to find a song that's an obvious frontrunner this year for even a nomination (pretty much everything is "on the bubble")?

One of the tunes that has been getting praise and buzz, despite coming from an under-seen movie, is "Glasgow" from Wild Rose, a British musical film that came out earlier this year with little fanfare.  The song in it, though, is written by Oscar-winning actress Mary Steenburgen.  Steenburgen, star of films like Melvin and Howard, Ragtime, and The Help, is not a noted songwriter, and isn't even in the film as an actor, but contributed the song and as a result could be looking at her second Oscar nomination nearly forty years after she won Best Supporting Actress.

Steenburgen's potential nomination also sets up something unique for Oscar trivia lovers-it could put to end one of the rarest of acting fields: a list of people who won their only nomination for that specific performance.  This is a wonky bit of trivia, so let me explain.  In 1980, the nominees were all first-timers: Steenburgen, Cathy Moriarty, Eileen Brennan, Eva La Galliene, and Diana Scarwid.  This is unusual, but not totally rare-in 1999, for example, all of the Best Supporting Actress nominees were first-timers as well.  What is strange for 1980 is that none of these women would ever be nominated for an Oscar again (in 1999, for comparison's sake, Angelina Jolie, Samantha Morton, and Catherine Keener would all be cited in the future).  This is extremely rare-in fact, it's only happened five times in the history of the Academy.

Steenburgen's nomination would end this streak, though it'd be one of the rare times this happened because of a non-acting nomination (another case of this is 1973's Best Supporting Actor race, where John Houseman is the only double nominee, not for acting but instead producing 1953's Julius Caesar).  I thought since we haven't done an Oscar trivia article in a bit that it'd be fun to look at the five times this has happened, and whether any other years will ever be broken.

Honorable Mention: This has never happened in Best Actress (all other categories have had it happen at least once).  1928-29 and 1932-33 are the only years where only one woman was nominated more than once (Ruth Chatterton and Katharine Hepburn, respectively), and considering how much they like to repeat in this category with actors such as Ingrid Bergman, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, and of course Hepburn herself, it's probable that this may never have an all-new lineup again, much less one that stays "only one nomination for the full field" indefinitely.

1927-28 Best Actor

The Nominees: This is the only Best Actor contest this has happened in, and part of that is that there were only two nominees: Emil Jannings (winning for The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh) and Richard Barthelmess (The Patent Leather Kid and The Noose).
Who Got the Closest: Arguably this one doesn't count, since while the nomination was together, both men were cited for two different films, so you could argue Barthelmess, at the very least, got two nominations in the same year (some people count him as a double-nominee).  If it does count, though, the closest to another nomination was Jannings.  He would star the following year in the Best Picture nominee The Patriot, which has the unfortunate distinction of being the only "lost film" to ever be nominated for Best Picture; his costar Lewis Stone got the Best Actor nomination instead.
Could We See This Broken?: No-Jannings died in 1950, after a horrible career turn starring in Nazi propaganda films during World War II, and Barthelmess died in 1963, after also fighting in the war (for the Allies).

1962 Best Supporting Actor

The Nominees: Ed Begley (the father of actor and activist Ed Begley Jr.) won for Sweet Bird of Youth over Victor Buono (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?), Telly Savalas (Birdman of Alcatraz), Omar Sharif (Lawrence of Arabia), and Terence Stamp (Billy Budd)
Who Got the Closest: Considering the legendary status of a few of these actors, I'm stunned it wasn't broken at some point.  Sharif certainly came the closest, as he is one of only four people (the others being Spencer Tracy, Anthony Franciosa, & Jim Carrey) to win the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama (for Doctor Zhivago) and not go on to get an Oscar nomination.  Savalas would also get a Globe nod for film acting (for 1965's Battle of the Bulge) and was surely in the conversation for 1967's The Dirty Dozen.  And of course there's Terence Stamp, who won the Cannes Film Festival Best Actor Prize in 1965 (The Collector-a film that Oscar would cite for Best Actress, Director, & Screenplay but not Best Actor) and was cited by the Globes & BAFTA in 1994 (for The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) but was never nominated again.
Could We See This Broken?: Yes, it could.  The only living person from this lineup is Stamp, who is now 81-years-old and regularly works in high-profile projects (just this past year he starred opposite Adam Sandler & Jennifer Aniston in Murder Mystery).  His recent filmography is notable for a man in his 80's, but doesn't necessarily lend itself credence to "on track for another Oscar nod."  Next year he'll be seen in Edgar Wright's Last Night in Soho with Thomasin McKenzie & Diana Rigg.

1980 Best Supporting Actress

The Nominees: As I mentioned above, the nominees were Eileen Brennan (Private Benjamin), Eva Le Gallienne (Resurrection), Cathy Moriarty (Raging Bull), Diana Scarwid (Inside Moves), and the victorious Mary Steenburgen (Melvin and Howard)
Who Got the Closest: Surely Steenburgen.  The year after her win for Melvin and Howard, Steenburgen would get a Golden Globe nomination for her work in Ragtime, though Oscar would pick one of her costars Elizabeth McGovern when they were giving out citations.  If not Steenburgen, one could make the argument that Brennan had a shot at a nomination years before Private Benjamin had she been included for The Last Picture Show, which also favored her costars (in this case Cloris Leachman and Ellen Burstyn), despite Brennan getting a BAFTA nod for the film (I have seen the film, and Brennan is significantly better than Burstyn, and the two have such similar names I'm still suspicious that Oscar voters just mixed up the names).
Could We See This Broken?: Obviously, as I mentioned above, Steenburgen is in play and could end this category's streak this year if she's nominated for Wild Rose.  Otherwise, this remains the most promising list regardless; Steenburgen works regularly (she was on big screens last year in Book Club), as does Moriarty (she had a notable role in Patti Cake$ a few years back).  Scarwid is still alive, but hasn't made anything in either years, while Brennan passed away in 2013 and Le Gallienne (who was always more of a stage actress anyway) died in 1991.

1985 Best Supporting Actor

The Nominees: Legendary actor Don Ameche (Cocoon) won, beating Klaus Maria Brandauer (Out of Africa), William Hickey (Prizzi's Honor), Robert Loggia (Jagged Edge), and Eric Roberts (Runaway Train)
Who Got the Closest: Roberts was a Golden Globe nominee for 1983's Star 80 before he made it to the Oscars (four years before his sister) with Runaway Train.  Otherwise none of these actors really (before or after) had a shot at the Oscar.  Don Ameche had been working in films for decades before his career revival in the 1980's with Trading Places and Cocoon, but none of those films stand out as near misses or even "I should get a Ralph Bellamy in The Awful Truth" style contenders.
Could We See This Broken?: Probably not.  Of the nominees, the only two that are still living are Brandauer and Roberts, but Brandauer very rarely works in America (usually preferring German television), and Roberts works constantly (though it's hard to quantify such things, it's claimed he has more film and TV credits than any other actor), his work in more mainstream Hollywood films that people might actually see is more in films like The Expendables and Lovelace than in prestige fare such as Inherent Vice (his most noted film of the decade)...and mostly he just appears in pictures that aren't even worth creating a Wikipedia page they're so small.

1987 Best Supporting Actress

The Nominees: Oscar went with Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis's cousin Olympia (for Moonstruck) with the other nominees being an eclectic bunch of character actors & screen legends: Norma Aleandro (Gaby: A True Story), Anne Archer (Fatal Attraction), Anne Ramsey (Throw Momma from the Train), and Ann Sothern (The Whales of August)
Who Got the Closest: Aleandro, maybe?  Her work in The Official Story definitely had buzz in 1985 (it would win the Oscar Best Foreign Language Film as well as be nominated for Original Screenplay, and Aleandro would take the top prizes from the NYFCC and Cannes), so I think she would have been in contention that year before eventually being cited for Gaby.  Otherwise Sothern had a significant role for A Letter to Three Wives (perhaps skipped due to internal competition from costars Jeanne Crain and Linda Darnell?), and Anne Archer was a part of the gigantic cast of Short Cuts.
Could We See This Broken?: I doubt it, as most of these women were far more known for their work in television (Sothern, Ramsey, Dukakis) than for movies.  Dukakis, Aleandro, and Archer are all still alive, but they don't star in movies that would get this kind of recognition, and mostly relegate themselves to infrequent work in TV and the stage.

OVP: Lillian Russell (1940)

Film: Lillian Russell (1940)
Stars: Alice Faye, Don Ameche, Henry Fonda, Edward Arnold, Warren William, Leo Carrillo, Helen Westley
Director: Irving Cummings
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Art Direction)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Alice Faye-click here to learn more about Ms. Faye (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We continue our look at the career of Alice Faye this week with a film that's a bit of a conundrum.  Lensed in 1940, it was arguably at the height of the actress's fame and time at Fox, and was considered a favorite by the actress.  Faye, as we've profiled so far, was insanely popular during her time under Darryl Zanuck, but didn't have a lot of what we'd name-check as classics today (unlike some of her contemporaries at the time like Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyck), and so this makes the list in part because Faye herself loved the role so much (it's the reason we won't get to Alexander's Ragtime Band, as I was curious about Faye's assessment of her own talents).  However, it is also one of Henry Fonda's least favorite roles he ever did in his career (though in his memoirs he had nothing but nice things to say about working with Faye herself), a role he only took so that Fox would let him do The Grapes of Wrath.  So with this film (also an Oscar nominee, so OVP gets one step closer to being done), I'm curious-will I end up siding with Alice or Hank?

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows Faye as Lillian Russell, the biggest stage actress in the world at the end of the 19th Century, frequently inspiring women across the country to copy her fashions and hairstyles.  Russell is legendary for her relationship with Diamond Jim Brady (played here by Arnold), as both had indulgent tastes and voracious appetites.  The movie spends some time on their relationship together, but more focuses on Russell's romances with composer Edward Solomon (Ameche, yet another film that paired the two) and Alexander Moore (Fonda), a young man smitten not with Russell the Superstar, but with Helen Leonard, the girl he met before she became the most famous woman in the country.  The movie is interspersed with different musical numbers and multiple dance halls for Faye to feature her dulcet voice across the relatively long (for a pretty slight plot, it's over 2 hours) motion picture.

The movie has some things going for it even though I'm not a big fan of it as a whole.  Faye is, once again, sublime-I'm in love with her so far this month, and really hoping one of the final two movies of the month manage to equal the talent we're seeing onscreen.  She knows how to play lovestruck well, and has a plum chemistry with Arnold, better than with any of her intended love interests in the picture.  The movie helped Arnold, who had recently been labeled "Box Office Poison" by an exhibitor publication (this was a hit, proving that article wrong), and was trying to transfer into character parts that weren't reliant upon him losing weight like his brief time as a leading man.  Weirdly, Arnold had played Diamond Jim five years earlier in a film for Universal, though in that film he was top-billed and Binnie Barnes a supporting part as Lillian Russell.

Other than Faye & Arnold, though, it's hard to call this a particularly strong picture.  Fonda was right to dislike the film-it's rare that I've seen Henry Fonda given so little to do in a movie, particularly one with his name above the title.  He plays Alexander as a lost puppy, someone who both wants to put Lillian Russell in her place and put Helen Leonard on a pedestal.  This could be an interesting conundrum (the world is trying to do the exact opposite), but the screenwriters don't give us enough to make this interesting, and Fonda seems to be phoning in this performance.  Don Ameche's work is better, though his character is a mess-he's somehow both an absolute cad and someone that Russell mourns horribly, perhaps because the studio didn't want Alice Faye to be anything other than a saint.  Both men are so critical to the plot that you kind of roll your eyes when Lillian Russell ends up with Fonda's Alexander, rather than Diamond Jim, or perhaps more believably, her adoring fans.  You may object, but considering this was VERY loosely based on Russell's life (almost everything is a fabrication), they might as well have given the audiences a sensical ending.

The movie was nominated for a sole Oscar, for Art Direction, and here it's a winner.  The movie has some really fun designs when it comes to the dance halls that Russell adorns, and the houses are ornate & fascinating.  I loved the increasing gaudiness of Lillian's dressing rooms as she becomes more famous and more used to Diamond Jim's extravagances.  These are nice touches, but really it's just a big, giant production that somehow fits the script of a big, lavish, bloated musical.  And while that's an insult to the film, I kind of think it works with this nomination.

OVP: In Old Chicago (1937)

Film: In Old Chicago (1937)
Stars: Tyrone Power, Alice Faye, Don Ameche, Alice Brady, Andy Devine
Director: Henry King
Oscar History: 6 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture, Supporting Actress-Alice Brady*, Score, Sound, Original Story, Assistant Director*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Alice Faye-click here to learn more about Ms. Faye (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Alice Faye's career trajectory is odd because rather than having a nice curve, it just sort of stops in 1944, when Faye walked off the FOX lot and never returned despite being a proper star still.  However, the beginning is much more traditional, and after making a splash in George White's 1935 Scandals (which is not available on any streaming platforms #iwilldieonthissoapbox), she cemented her stardom with In Old Chicago, which purportedly was being considered for Jean Harlow before her untimely death at the age of 26.  This film, which teamed her with Don Ameche and Tyrone Power (by far her two most frequent costars), was considered one of the most expensive films of the era, thanks to its gargantuan recreation of the Great Chicago Fire, and was nominated for six Academy Awards, winning two including Best Supporting Actress for Alice Brady.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film takes place in three parts.  There is the opening scene, an odd one where the O'Leary family is idiotically racing a train, and then suddenly Mr. O'Leary dies leaving Mrs. O'Leary (Brady) to raise her three sons as a washerwoman, the eldest of two are Dion (as an adult played by Power) and Jack (as an adult played by Ameche).  As adults, these two men have pursued completely different life courses, with Jack a respectable (if frequently unsuccessful lawyer) and Dion a sneaky saloon owner & gambler, who is in love with a singer named Belle (Faye), whom his mother forbids him from marrying.  Eventually, in hopes of eliminating his competition who once humiliated him, Dion tricks his brother into running for mayor, and thanks to some dirty blackmailing of the police commissioner on Dion's behalf, he wins.  The film then routinely pits Dion and Jack against each other, with Dion going to extraordinary lengths to hurt the bond with his brother, even at one point tricking Belle into marrying him so that she can't testify against him.  All of this comes to a head in the final twenty minutes of the movie, where Mrs. O'Leary's cow (a legend in real life, but not here apparently) kicks a lantern and burns the city to the ground.  In the fire, Jack dies and Dion finds redemption, with Mrs. O'Leary forgiving Belle for, well, being a singer & approves of their union.

There's a lot to unpack with In Old Chicago, and I'm going to start with two of the biggest issues I had with the film: Tyrone Power's character is an awful human being, and Alice Brady's Mrs. O'Leary is a horrible cliche.  Dion has multiple moments of duplicity, but when he starts turning it onto his brother Jack (who is a genuinely good guy and should be our hero) and his feisty love interest Belle, it ruins my idea of him ever getting redemption.  Let's be real here-Jack ends up dying trying to save his brother, who wouldn't have needed saving if Dion hadn't sent the mob to try and kill Jack in the first place (even though Jack was just following the law).  Jack also basically tries to rape Belle in the beginning of their romance, which in the 1930's was a more common cinematic trope than you'd think (just watch literally any Errol Flynn movie), and then spends the rest of the movie emotionally abusing her, using her love for his own gain, and also assaults her again halfway through the movie.  There's a recurring "gag" where Belle's maid Hattie (played by Madame Sul-Te-Wan) runs to the police to arrest Dion, to just have the two be kissing when she returns.  Basically the joke is that Tyrone Power is so ludicrously handsome that no woman would possibly turn down sex with him.  I'm all for adjusting to the time period when you consider a movie, but this felt gross even by the standards of 1937 (technically 1938, but we use the years they were nominated for Oscars on this blog).

(Side Note-do yourself a favor right now and google Madame Sul-Te-Wan, who I knew nothing about before seeing this film, but realized afterwards that I had seen her in more pictures than I had Faye.  She was the first black person ever put under a contract in Hollywood, was the daughter of slaves, and had a career that spread from The Birth of a Nation to Carmen Jones, costarring alongside stars as famous as Jane Wyman, Barbara Stanwyck, Lucille Ball, & Veronica Lake at different points in her career.  She'd make a fascinating biopic if anyone would like to think outside of the box.)

Brady, on the other hand, doesn't necessarily have a lot of problematic aspects to her performance, but she's soooo hammy it's kind of hilarious she won an Oscar for such a character.  Her Mrs. O'Leary is pious, constantly finding the problems with her child but treating her husband as a saint, even though in our brief time with him he seems kind of like an idiot.  She feels like the sort of one-dimensional work that was popular in the era, but that style of acting is completely out-of-style today.  That she won an Oscar for such work feels odd, and considering how inconsequential she is to the plot, her story arch is a bit of a stretch.  The film received a sextet of nominations, the others slightly more earned.  The score is serviceable, interesting during the firefighting sequences, while the sound is excellent thanks to the action set-pieces.  The story itself is a bit too hammy and requires too many suspensions-of-belief for my taste, particularly when you compare it to the fantastic A Star is Born that was competing against it.

But the Best Picture nomination lands right in the middle for me, and that's because while Power & Brady are both disappointments in the film, the movie has two great assets: that final fire sequence and Alice Faye.  The fire sequence is mesmerizing, and staggering considering they had no access to CGI at the time.  I'm honestly surprised that this didn't win Best Picture at the time as a result of these scenes, which required controlled sets, and were so dangerous that women (save the three female stars) weren't allowed on set.  These scenes are really interesting, and fascinating to watch staged, and part of the reason I had to give this a 3-star even though it had so many problems.

The other is Alice Faye-I loved her in this movie.  She has a natural comedienne's gift, finding the perfect chemistry with both Power & Ameche, and still grounding her character without making her a saint or a woman scorned.  She manages to realize her love for Dion doesn't make sense, but she still leans into it, and her singing is great.  In many ways she feels like a hybrid between Jeanette MacDonald & Barbara Stanwyck, and I instantly understand how this movie made her a star.  Considering I'd never seen one of her films before, I'm really hoping that this is an indication that we're in for a fun month.