Before I saw this I read the title and thought this was a war movie. I never thought it would be about a light and bubbly Bette Davis with a brain tumor.
Humphrey Bogart is in this, and I was halfway through the movie before I realized he was doing an Irish accent.
Herbert Rawlinson was a lead actor in silent movies who became a character actor when sound appeared. He has a pretty small part in this as a doctor who finds a doctor who can handle brains better than himself. He’s my last missing star at 6150 Hollywood Boulevard. On to 6166!
This is another “I think this poster’s pretty funny if you know the sources (but you probably don’t)” poster.
Apparently the concept of “No one will harm me- I’m an American!” has been around for a while.
Jeanie MacPherson wrote this, and she never met a coincidence she didn’t like. Angela (Mary Pickford) has two people courting her in America, who go to fight on opposite sides in WWI Europe. The Angela gets a letter from an aunt in France asking her to come take care of her. When she gets to France, one suitor is part of an army unit taking over the aunt’s house, and the other just happens to be leading the opposing force.
Also: one guy is fighting to free France, and has been nothing but a gentleman to Angela. The other is fighting to take over the country, and when he’s reunited with Angela he doesn’t recognize her and tries to rape her. Naturally, she ends up picking the would-be rapist. So weird.
Today’s fake poster is only roughly similar in layout, but it was fun to draw all the dripping blood in the title mockup.
Breezy fun for a movie with multiple murders. Something about young James Cagney reminds me of Malcolm McDowell.
Roy Del Ruth directed a ton of films, including a lot of musicals. He was the second highest paid director of the 1930s. His second-to-last film was the classic film “The Alligator People.“
What does today’s fake poster have to do with this movie? Not much!
This is the story of three women who live to have fun. Sometimes that means they steal each others lovers, but that’s never more than a slight annoyance. The story constantly changes into whatever requires them to stand around in their underwear.
…and the word the Greeks had was apparently hetaira.
Walk of Fame: Ina Claire
Ina Claire plays Jane, the wildest of the three. In her first scene she hits on a stranger and convinces him to pay her bar tab (that’s somewhere around $900 in 2025 dollars). One of her signature subtle moves is to accidentally lose her dress.
In the 1920s she was popular enough to have a recognizable signature hairstyle.
Today’s fake poster started with me trying to find another movie with a title of similar length. I don’t know if anyone will recognize it without seeing the original, but I think it works pretty well!
This movie has an all-female cast, is over two hours long, and still somehow never manages to have a single conversation that isn’t centered around men. The message of the movie: if you love your husband, don’t mess things up by complaining about a little cheating.
Also: this movie is in black and white, except for a shift to color in the middle that probably would have seemed much cooler if The Wizard of Oz hadn’t come out two weeks before this.
Mary Boland’s acting niche was apparently “older woman who takes young lovers.” She has a pretty hefty part in this as Countess DeLave, a woman who helps the lead character find the strength to give up her pride and fight to win back her cheating husband. Girl power, I guess!
Today’s fake poster is completely based on the title of the movie being two words, with the first one being “the.”
Fun mindless nonsense. Not afraid to go full screwball. Also, apparently Tarantino loves this movie.
Pola Negri was an actor who was also an opera singer. She plays an opera singer in this, but the twist is that she’s playing a bad opera singer. Gotta love someone unafraid to poke fun at themselves.
Today’s poster is all about doubled words. Today’s poster is all about doubled words.
thought I was past the point of laughing at people making silly faces, but Marion Davies made me giggle. This is a “small town girl goes to Hollywood to make it big” movie, and it’s full of references to and cameos of stars who have faded from public memory. At one point Peggy (Davies) gets excited and yells “That’s John Gilbert!”, and I had to look him up to see if he was a real person or made up for the movie (he was real). I did recognize Charlie Chaplin, though.
This movie is a sort-silent film. There’s no recorded dialogue, but it came with a soundtrack record. Trying to keep them synchronized must have been a nightmare for the projectionist.
Walk of Fame: Karl Dane
Much like Mona Barrie and Syncopation, I picked this movie specifically to see a Karl Dane performance, and he’s barely in it. He does a thirty second bit as himself at a luncheon. I probably should have gone with The Red Mill.
Dane is one of those successful actors who had their career killed by sound pictures; He had a thick Dutch accent, and no one could understand him. He looked for other work, but ended up broke. He died from suicide, and only received a proper funeral when MGM was shamed into paying for it.
Today’s poster is all about the people. It’s also my second attempt at reasonable handwriting in a week. I need more practice.
Fun. Spooky. Sometimes gory. And no spoilers, but as a guy who just had to do his mandated reporter training for at least the fifteenth time, I feel pretty confident saying that Child Protective Services doesn’t work like that.
