Tag Archives: 1930s

Gold-diggers Kay Francis and Lilyan Tashman meet susceptible lonely businessmen at conventions in this ribald preproduction code story. The millionaires lavish the girls with expensive gifts. Francis falls for poor but virtuous Joel McCrea. Eugene Paulette is a copper king who gives Tashman jewelry. His wife reacts not with jealously but by trying to imitate her rival’s style.
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Paul Lavond was a respected banker in Paris when he was framed for robbery and murder by crooked associates and sent to Devil’s Island. Years later, he escapes with a friend, a scientist who was working on a method to reduce humans to a height of mere inches (all for the good of humanity, of course). Lavond however is consumed with hatred for the men who betrayed him, and takes the scientist’s methods back to Paris to exact painful revenge.
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A nightclub singer marries the rich owner of a rubber plantation. When she returns with him to his estate in Malaysia, she finds out that he is cruel, vicious and insanely jealous. She and the plantation’s overseer develop a mutual attraction, but are terrified at what will happen if her husband finds out.
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The remarkable location-filmed Eskimo was adapted from two books: Die Flucht Ins Wiesse Land and Der Eskimo, both written by naturalist Peter Freuchen. Director Woody Van Dyke, in the tradition of his White Shadows on the South Seas and Trader Horn, took his cast and crew on location to the Arctic, arriving by whaling schooner at the topmost settlement in Alaska with author Freuchen as his guide. Van Dyke, Freuchen, and cinematographer Ray Wise also played prominent on-screen roles in the film. Eskimo Ray Mala (billed only by his last name) essays the title role, speaking in the tongue of his ancestors (even though his English was excellent). Rather than use superimposed titles, Van Dyke resorted to old-fashioned silent-movie subtitles in several dialogue sequences. The story concentrates on the more exotic aspects of Eskimo life, notably the race’s (alleged) casual approach to sex. Though tribal leader Mala has, by his own admission, slept with 20 women without benefit of clergy, woe betide anyone who tries to steal his current sweetheart – as a rapacious trader discovers when he’s harpooned to death by the cuckolded hero. Mala is ultimately undone by the Canadian Mounties, whose efforts to civilize the Eskimo community result in a sudden and tragic shift of the balance of power. Editor Conrad A. Nervig won an Oscar for his Herculean efforts to bring cohesiveness to the story. Performing respectably at the box office, Eskimo inspired another location jaunt in 1935: Last of the Pagans, which also starred Ray Mala.
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A small country on the verge of bankruptcy is persuaded to enter the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics as a means of raising money. Either a masterpiece of absurdity or a triumph of satire, depending on your mood, but it’s quite possibly the funniest movie ever made, and becomes even funnier with subsequent viewings.
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In a spooky New York City mansion, a wealthy but mean old woman threatens to return her sister to the home’s secret torture chamber when the sister objects to the woman’s trying to ruin the lives of relatives she doesn’t like.
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An old German mine was split in two after the end of WWI because of where the new border was located. In the French part a fire breaks out; the German miners send a rescue group in, helping their French comrades. Three old German miners, who were not treated friendly at a French inn the night before, start their own private rescue through an old tunnel that separated the two mines. Will the official rescue party realize there are others left behind in time to save them?
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The delightful Winnie Lightner stars in this comedy-drama as Pat, a traveling carnival troupe member who does everything from high diving to hula dancing, with time left over to romance meek and mild Sidney (Charles Butterworth) and try to save her younger sister, Irene (Evelyn Knapp), from a lecherous carny barker. The slapstick big-top finale is a highlight.
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A well-cloistered and protected-against-reality group of college students get their diplomas in the heart of the Great Depression, and quickly learn that the piece of paper the diploma is written on is worth about eighteen-dollars-a-week in the job-market…for the lucky ones. Some of them fare even worse.
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In the very oldfashioned town of Ostend suddenly 13 suitcases are delivered to the hotel, with a note, that O.F. will be here soon and needs 6 rooms (the hotel just has five). This event, probably the biggest in 300 years, starts a small wave of modernisation, yet everybody is wondering who O.F. is. Journalist Stix and architect Stark have an idea how to use this event. They proclaim, that O.F. is a former citizen of the town, who became a millionaire abroad. They tell their fellow citizens that the town still needs modernisation, like better hotels, nightclubs, shops, etc. And soon, Ostend is a boomtown, then a capital. The architect, responsible for the new buildings is finaly allowed to marry the mayor’s daughter, while Stix marries the cabaret star and the widowed mayor his new secretary. The only problem is, O.F. hasn’t shown up, while finance experts from all over the world are trying to solve the depression problem, that is non-existant in Ostend, this soon lets the people …
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