Skippy (1930-31)

 

Skippy is probably easily dismissed by many viewers as a children’s movie. Its hero is a young boy who leaves his prominent family’s home to play almost every day in the shantytown (called, literally, “Shantytown” here) because it’s more exciting and more fun than the boring, staid environment where he lives. However, the film subverts our expectations about the concerns of children, placing the issues that the poor young people face squarely at the center of the narrative. Yes, most of the characters are kids, but they’re living in the Great Depression and facing some very systemic obstacles to survival and happiness.

Jackie Cooper, still the youngest ever nominee for Best Actor, is marvelous as the lead character of Skippy. He’s a mischievous kid whose stern father, a doctor with the Board of Health, tries to teach him manners and the concepts of right and wrong (from the dad’s narrow perspective, of course). Skippy just wants to have fun, and Cooper is quite funny in the scenes where he’s looking for an angle to circumvent his father’s (and mother’s) expectations. Watching him trying to avoid getting ready in the morning is a master class in physical comedy. Skippy just wants to stay in bed, but that’s not permitted in his home, so he finds some shortcuts, such as wetting his hair rather than combing it and making sure that the toothbrush is wet without brushing his teeth.

He likes hanging out in Shantytown across the tracks because there are seemingly no rules there. He defies his father’s order not to cross over the tracks by crawling through a pipe under them, adhering to the so-called letter of the “law” if not the spirit of it. The kids of Shantytown are a diverse group. There’s a bully named Harley Nubbins (played by Donald Haines), a young black boy named Snowflake (which is supposed to be funny, I guess, but it certainly raises a lot of questions), and a new kid named Sooky (Robert Coogan) who befriends Skippy after almost fighting over some wood he’s collected from the boys’ clubhouse so that his mother can have firewood to keep them warm.

The film was based upon a comic strip and novel by Percy Crosby, and it retains a bit of the episodic flavor of a comic strip. The film takes on a very serious subject, though, with its examination of what happens when a child learns a truth about grown-ups and adult life. Sooky’s dog, Penny, doesn’t have a license because it costs $3, money he and his mother don’t have. Skippy’s father, played by Willard Robertson, is trying to raze Shantytown because of concerns about disease and crime in the area. Of course, the residents struggle to survive and have no alternatives to their run-down homes, but that’s not how Dr. Skinner and his colleagues see the place.

It’s a little complicated to explain what happens with Penny, but Harley takes Skippy’s yo-yo and accidentally breaks the windshield of his father’s car. His father just happens to be the dogcatcher, and soon Penny is missing from Sooky’s home. They don’t have the money to pay for the license and when they do obtain it from Skippy’s bank, the dogcatcher takes it to pay for his windshield instead. What follows is a series of frantic and, at times, funny escapades. The boys try to sell glass bottles, run errands for cash, sell lemonade made from a single lemon, and even put on a show to raise the funds. The show is very similar to the ones you’ve seen in the Our Gang/Little Rascals comedies, with a terrible magical act where Skippy tries to saw a box in half that has Sooky in one end and Snowflake in the other. It culminates in the reading of a truly awful poem by Eloise, Skippy’s annoying neighbor.

Penny is a mutt, to be sure, but she’s Sooky’s dog, and he describes her as an “all-around thoroughbred,” and his reasoning has to be heard to be understood. It certainly represents the way a child could rationale something like a thoroughbred designation. When the boys fall a bit short in collecting the necessary amount, they try to bargain with the dogcatcher, only to learn that Penny and all of the other dogs have already been euthanized. It’s so eerie to watch them walk past all of the silent cages, quite the contrast from all of the barking dogs seen there earlier in the film.

How do you console a child with a broken heart? Skippy tries to get Penny’s body so that they can bury her, but all of the dogs have already been disposed of. It’s when he sees his father’s name on the orders for catching dogs that Skippy realizes how complicit his father is in the death of his friend’s beloved pet. He tries to distract Sooky as they walk back to his shack, but Sooky runs to his mother’s arms and says he wants to die now that his dog is dead. It’s heartbreaking to watch this sequence, and Coogan (the younger brother of the great Jackie Coogan) is exceptional here.

Skippy has learned that adults are unconcerned about what children are dealing with, and he returns home so sad that he won’t eat dinner and goes straight to bed. He prays to God to help Sooky and keep him alive. His father overhears the prayers but doesn’t understand the context, and Skippy won’t tell him or even let his father try to comfort him. Cooper secured his Best Actor nomination with this scene, no doubt. The next morning, Skippy cannot even take any joy in the new bicycle his father purchases as a means to cheer him up.

The ending is perhaps not all that surprising. Through a series of odd events, Sooky winds up with two new dogs, including one that Skippy got by trading away his bike. Dr. Skinner changes his mind about Shantytown and decides to help them get rid of the dangers of contagious diseases in the homes there. He also manages to get into a fight with the dogcatcher after accidentally breaking the man’s car windshield himself. It’s quite a turnaround for a man so conservative and limited in his thinking earlier in the film, but I suppose when grown-ups realize that children are dealing with serious concerns too, maybe they can step up to do the right thing.

Norman Taurog won the Oscar for Best Director, no doubt for his ability to wrangle so many child actors and capture such moving performances from them. However, I think he also delicately balances the tone of the film, mixing comic moments with a very serious subject. Taurog was the youngest winner for Best Director until Damien Chazelle won for La La Land (2016). He was also Cooper’s uncle, and if the story is true about how he made the young boy cry by pretending to have Cooper’s dog shot by a security officer, then I’m not sure he should have kept his Oscar.

Oscar Win: Best Director (Norman Taurog)

Other Oscar Nominations: Outstanding Production, Best Actor (Jackie Cooper), and Best Writing, Adaptation

Trader Horn (1930-31)

  

Trader Horn is based upon the real-life adventures of Alfred Aloysius “Trader” Horn and was reportedly the first non-documentary film to be shot on location in Africa. Horn was one of those white guys who traveled the rivers and jungles and plains of Africa trading goods like salt for treasures like ivory, and he certainly must have had some fascinating encounters. The film reportedly took six months to make as the crew went to the countries of Tanganyika, Uganda, Kenya, Sudan, and the Belgian Congo with the help of “white hunters” who are thanked by name in the opening credits.

It’s best to state up front that the film represents the colonial attitude that many white explorers had towards the continent of Africa and the African people there. Horn (played here by Harry Carey) thinks all of the native tribespeople, including the bearers who do all the work on his expeditions, are savages. It’s Peru (Duncan Renaldo, years away from his performances as the Cisco Kid in the movies and on the TV series) who corrects Horn and says they’re just “happy, ignorant children.” That certainly isn’t helpful since it’s just a different form of condescension. It also isn’t helped any that this line follows Peru looking at a series of African women with bare breasts.

I suppose it would be interesting to know if the filmmakers were truly depicting the native villages with any measure of accuracy. There’s an early sequence involving daily life where we see people getting their hair braided, playing games, and talking with others. We get close-ups of their faces and hairstyles and clothing, and we can only hope that these were all correct depictions, but that does seem rather unlikely. At times, I thought that perhaps some of the rituals performed during the movie might actually be a mixture from different tribes. What could have been an intriguing ethnographic film instead becomes a template for a lot of later movies set in Africa and the continuing misrepresentation of the people of Africa.

One of the interesting aspects of the film is the footage of the various animals Horn and Peru and their company encounter. It’s quite a list, and I’m not even sure I was comprehensive in my accounting: hippos, crocodiles, various birds, monkeys, giraffes, lions, Thompson’s gazelles, waterbuck, hyenas, leopards, impala, buffalo, baboons, warthogs, eland, and many, many more. It must have been like being on safari for the audiences in 1931, and I guess the commentary as these men travel (almost a voiceover) is helpful in identifying and describing the various animals. A bit of editing might have helped, though, so we aren’t just cataloguing every creature they meet. By the way, the threat of crocodiles seem particularly constant. Perhaps it’s because the men travel by water, but you see a lot of crocodiles jumping off the shore into the water as the film progresses. The Africa in Trader Horn is just overrun with crocodiles. Again, a little more editing would have made the film more interesting.

Other than introducing audiences to a lot of African animals, the film concerns itself with the slimmest of plots. Horn and his company meet a missionary named Edith Trent, whose baby daughter was kidnapped by a tribe many years earlier. Her husband was also taken, but he was killed, so now Mrs. Kent devotes her time to searching for their daughter. She doesn’t get much time in the film, though, as she’s found dead herself in the next scene. Horn and Peru decide that they must find the now grown daughter, so they begin a trek across Africa to find the tribe that took the child.

They themselves are captured after the halfway mark of the film and taken to a village controlled by Nina, the White Goddess (played by Edwina Booth with wild eyes and a lot of frantic aggression and quite a cascade of long blonde hair). She’s the daughter, of course, but now she’s in control of a tribe and seems to maintain her power by beating people. She even beats Peru at one point—right after he tells her “white people must help each other”—but he just takes it, an act that intrigues her a great deal, but more on that later. They’re forced to watch at the bearers are killed, and then they’re tied to crosses and hoisted upside down and about to be lit on fire when Nina finally stops the villagers. Even though she doesn’t speak any English, she’s decided to escape with them across a lake. How she figured out who they are and where she came from and what she has in common with them is all very mysterious.

The film then proceeds to put everyone in the cast in danger. Horn, Peru, Nina and Horn’s most loyal bearer, Rencharo (Mutia Oomulu, giving the part more dignity than it truly deserves) take a wooden canoe across a lake filled with hippos, some of the most aggressive and dangerous animals in the water. They later try to take some meat away from a pack of lions and almost get Nina killed. Horn had already pointed out about the wilds of Africa: “When you're not eating somebody, you're trying to keep somebody else from eating you.” That certainly seems to be the case for most of the film.

The cinematography for the film is quite lovely, but it is rather dark at times so that can make it tough to see all of what’s on the screen. The scenic vista shots are beautiful, and the sequence by a waterfall is quite breathtaking. But the film cannot seem to pick a rhythm to go with the action. At times, it cranks up the movement via fast motion, but why? We’ve had a long, languid walk across the veldt, but now that something exciting is happening, we need to speed it up? I realize it’s not a key plot point, but I was also fascinated by the enormous pith helmet Peru wears throughout the film, and it’s looking pretty rough by the end. Is it meant to be symbolic? Of what exactly?

Nina’s old tribe shows up to scare everyone into running, splitting up into pairs to be more efficient. Ranchero dies by Horn’s side, allowing the film to superimpose his image over the African skyline at the film’s end in one of the most maudlin moments I’ve seen in a while. Nina and Peru get rescued (if that’s the word for it) by a group of pygmies, who take then safely to a village and then to a trading post to be reunited with Horn just before he puts them both on a ship to leave. You see, Nina has to be educated so that she can be her true self; that means she’ll be white again according to the racialized thinking of the movie. Horn will stay behind in Africa and see Ranchero’s face in the sky.

The novelty of the film’s subject matter and the images of Africa must have been the key aspects that got it nominated for Best Picture. Carey plays a crusty old adventurer with a lot of gusto, certainly, and Renaldo makes for a handsome “love interest.” Seeing the two men side-by-side does make a viewer wonder how they both thought that Nina might pick them. Isn’t it clear that she’d choose the good-looking younger man with the impressive sideburns (not to mention the size of his pith helmet)? Then again, watching this movie nowadays raises so many questions. How staged were the animal attacks? Why are there drums in the background for so much of the film? Were there not other, better movies in this year that were eligible for awards consideration?

Oscar Nomination: Outstanding Production

East Lynne (1930-31)

 

The melodramatic leanings of East Lynne become increasingly wild as the film progresses. I’ve watched a lot of pre-Code films, especially in recent years, but I’ve never seen one that has such an unhinged ending as this one. It’s based upon a Victorian novel by Ellen Wood (as Mrs. Henry Wood, of course), but it’s taken considerable liberties with that book’s plot. I don’t think this is truly an Oscar-caliber film, but I cannot deny that it becomes increasing more watchable if for no other reason that you’re curious as to what crazy plot twist lies ahead. Since you’re unlikely to be able to find this film easily, I may spend too much time providing plot summary, but I think that will give you a clear sense of just how bonkers it is.

A beautiful young woman, Isabella (Ann Harding, who was having a good year at the movies), marries a rich man named Roger Carlyle (the great Conrad Nagel) and moves into his estate, East Lynne. On her first day at his austere, gloomy house, she meets Cornelia, Roger’s sister, a control freak of the first order. Cornelia (played with great malice by Cecilia Loftus) even refused to attend Isabella and Roger’s wedding because she thinks Isabella is too young and frivolous. Cornelia wanted Roger to marry a neighbor girl, Barbara, who she thinks is more “suitable” for her brother. Needless to say, that attitude doesn’t bode well for the marriage if Cornelia is going to live in the same house with them and continue overseeing every aspect of life at East Lynne, and that’s just what happens.

Three years pass quickly, and Isabella’s life has changed a great deal. She’s wearing drab clothing now instead of the beautiful, fashionable gowns she brought to the estate. The house is just as dark and dreary as ever; Cornelia doesn’t like open windows and sunshine — it’s bad for the carpet, I guess, or perhaps the light would cause her to burst into flames. Isabella and Roger have a son, but Cornelia doesn’t like him to play because he sometimes tears his clothes. You know, like a child sometimes does when they’re having fun. Cornelia has also cancelled Isabella’s orders for new clothes for herself and her son. Money for fashionable clothing is a waste in her mind.

Then “the incident” occurs. While Roger is out of town, Isabella and Cornelia plan to attend a party. Unfortunately, on the day of the event, Cornelia develops a convenient headache. The prospect of having a good time must have been devastating to her. Isabella decides to go anyway, accompanied by a former suitor of hers (played by handsome Clive Brook). After the party, Brooks’ Captain William Levenson escorts Isabella home, professes his love for her, and even kisses her. Nothing else happens between them, and she goes to sleep by herself. I mean, it was the 1930s, so nothing much more than that could have been shown anyway.

Cornelia waits until the return of her brother to share what she thinks happened between Isabella and William, and Roger becomes accusatory very quickly. Isabella yells at them both – a rare moment of strength for her at this point in the film – and calls them and the house “old and drab,” not the most inaccurate statement, to be fair. She leaves the house, but Roger won’t let her take her child. She’s heartbroken over this but decides to leave for France to get away from all of the gossip in England. She’s become such a scandalous figure that even in France, people from England won’t talk to her in public.

It’s the portion in France that throws the plot into melodramatic overdrive. Capt. Levinson is on the same ship going to Calais, and he suggests that they have a good time in Europe. She agrees and doesn’t even demand that they marry at some point. Levinson gets kicked out of the British Army for some vague reason having to do with the Franco-Prussian War. Was he helping the French? Was he hurting them? Who knows? Who cares? Does it matter? He gets sent to Paris, which seems an odd thing for the Army to demand of him, and she goes with him. The war has gotten worse, so they cannot leave the country and return to England despite her desire to see her son again.

During an argument between Isabella and William about returning home, they both run into the street just as a bomb hits a building near them. It falls on them, and her injuries include a loss of eyesight. In fact, she may lose her full sight. That’s when she finds out her son is ill, and she makes it back to England against the doctor’s advice. Joyce, the maid who served her many years ago, lets her into the house and lets her sit with her son overnight. Isabella loses her remaining eyesight during the night after getting to see her son one last time. Carlyle throws her out of his house, and Joyce (a delightful Beryl Mercer) finally tells him off about how he abandoned a woman who loved him unconditionally and was the victim of Cornelia’s lies. It’s just a bit late for justice, though.

The dramatic end to this nonsense? Isabella walks out of East Lynne and, no longer able to see, walks off a cliff just as Roger tries to catch up to her! The plots in those days could really provide an ending, couldn’t they?

Harding, who was nominated in the same year for her performance in Holiday (but didn’t win) is quite competent here. Her best moment is when the film gives us a closeup of her face as she’s listening to a melancholy song. It’s clear that the song is raising so many emotions, and she lets us have a momentary look inside.

I have to mention the quality of the version that I watched. The sound and picture were quite awful, and it is tough to see what was so appealing about this film in 1931. The only complete print seems to be at the University of California at Los Angeles, but it too is apparently pretty bad. The film will be in the public domain in 2027, but there are plenty of bootleg copies out there, including the one that I watched. Many of these copies, though, don’t include the last reel with Isabella’s return to England. Interestingly, the version I have does include the full ending, but it looks like someone recorded it off a television screening of the film. That somehow seems a fitting way to view this film.

Oscar Nomination: Outstanding Production

Cimarron (1930-31)

Cimarron was the first Western film to be selected for the top honor at the Academy Awards. Ironically, it wasn't until 1990 that another Western won for Best Picture, and that was Dances with Wolves. Both films are about pioneers who were willing to take a chance on new territory and a chance at a new and different life. Both are somewhat long movies as well, and sadly, both are overrated. Cimarron is not a great movie; in fact, it's a bit boring, another trait that it shares with Dances with Wolves. (Well, I still think Dances with Wolves is more than just a "bit boring.")

The movie covers several decades in the lives of the Cravat family, a newspaper editor and his wife and children, who move into the Oklahoma territory upon its opening for settlement in 1889. Actually, Yancey Cravat isn't just a newspaperman; he's also a lawyer and a politician and a minister and a little bit of everything. He's played by Richard Dix, or I should say, he's overplayed by Richard Dix. Dix seems to be acting as if he were on a stage or in a silent movie, so exaggerated are his gestures and facial expressions. His wife, Sabra, is played by Irene Dunne, and she's much more realistic in her performance than Dix. Both were nominated for acting awards, though; neither one of them won, however. It isn't difficult to see why.

The film begins with a vibrant recreation of the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889, and it is quite the visually stunning sequence. A lot of horses and wagons and riders wind up trying to stake a claim in so-called new territory. Of course, it’s only “open” because the U.S. government has, in essence, taken it from the Native Americans living there. This is mentioned briefly, but the focus is on the white settlers. Discussions and depictions of non-white characters remain primarily stereotypical, but I’ll talk more about that a little bit later.

Sabra’s family opposes her leaving with him to go to unknown territory, but she loves him and wants to go where he goes. His sense of adventure is thrilling to her at first. When they arrive in what is now the town of Osage, he seems to know everyone already, but not all of them are necessarily his friends. The bad guys in town (and you can tell who they are from their first appearance on screen) need to be handled. There’s a shootout at his first sermon in town, an event attended by almost everyone, including the saloon girls. Yancey eventually winds up having to kill someone he’s known for a long time, a character called The Kid, but Dix isn’t really able to convey emotionally how difficult that must have been for Yancey.

There’s yet another land rush in 1893, and Yancey is eager to join it. That’s when Dunne’s Sabra realizes that he will always want to keep moving even though she prefers to settle down and improve the town they’ve already helped to found. She prefers stability; he likes constant change. He stays gone from Osage for five years, and the passage of time in the film is marked with dates on the screen or closeups of pages from the newspaper to show the date for relevant news. It’s a clever device that is, thankfully, not overused here. 

Tucked away in this movie is a performance by one of my favorite supporting players of all time. Edna May Oliver plays Mrs. Tracy Wyatt, one of the biggest gossips in town. Her distinctive facial features perhaps inevitably consigned her mostly to supporting parts; she was never considered beautiful enough to be a leading actress except in eccentric roles. However, she always brings enthusiasm and humor to her performances, as she does here. She's a joy to watch whenever one of her brief moments on the screen allows her to shine. She knows she's the comic relief, and she makes sure that you remember just how funny she is.

There’s an interesting subplot involving a character named Dixie Lee (played by Estelle Taylor). We first see her trick Yancey out of a piece of prime land in the initial land rush. Later, though, she’s fallen on tough financial times and has turned to the only profession that was available to single women in the Oklahoma Territory. Being a prostitute (although that word is never mentioned in the film) makes her the subject of a great deal of scorn from the “respectable” ladies in town, including Sabra. By the time Yancey returns from one of his adventures, Sabra has managed to have Dixie put on trial. Her husband takes Dixie’s side over his wife’s objections and serves as her attorney. The story that Dixie tells of how she wound up in the situation she’s in serves as one of the better emotional scenes in the film. It’s also quite an interesting opportunity to tell the story of some of the women who came to the West.

The film takes us all the way to Oklahoma statehood in 1907 and the discovery of oil on Osage territory (a story told again in Flowers of the August Moon). By the time we reach the present day (1930), Yancey’s been gone for years, Sabra becomes a member of Congress, their son has married a Native American girl (over his mother’s initial objections), and their spoiled daughter has married the richest – and seemingly oldest – man in town. A lot gets glossed over in the final moments, and Yancey’s sudden appearance at the film’s end seems very much a deux et machina.

Cimarron isn't necessarily good history, but it's really more about the kind of people who came to Oklahoma rather than what happened to the territory (and later state). Dix's character is one of those men who is always looking for adventure, who is never satisfied with whatever he has managed to conquer. I suppose that makes his fate in this film all the more tragic (although I honestly was not as moved as I think the filmmakers might have wanted me to be). As a portrait of a certain kind of individual, Cimarron is a modest success.

I do want to point out just how much the film is a product of its time period. The African American characters are subjected to ridicule here, particularly one young male character named Isiah (Eugene Jackson) who follows the Cravats to Oklahoma. There is much anti-Indian sentiment, most fervently expressed by Sabra Cravat at first, although she later does change her opinion to match more closely that of her sympathetic husband. There's a fair dose of anti-Semitism in the treatment of the character of Sol Levy, who nevertheless does remain a friend of the Cravats throughout the movie. The film even manages to make fun of someone with a stutter. It's tough to watch these moments and not feel sadness at the ways that Hollywood has depicted various groups of people over the years.

Some interesting awards trivia: Cimarron was nominated in every category for which it was eligible. It won three of the seven awards for which it was mentioned. Its seven nominations in the fourth year of the awards set a new record, as did its three wins.

Oscar Wins: Best Picture, Best Writing Adaptation, and Best Art Direction

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Director (Wesley Ruggles), Best Actor (Richard Dix), Best Actress (Irene Dunne), and Best Cinematography