#Clarence Kolb

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Clarence Kolb-Billie Burke-Constance Bennett "Un mendigo original" (Merrily we live) 1938, de Norman Z. McLeod.

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His Girl Friday (1940) Howard Hawks

January 24th 2023

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Round 1, Match 35

Nat Pendleton vs Clarence Kolb

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His Girl Friday

In His Gal Friday, an unscrupulous newspaper editor (Cary Grant) uses every dirty trick in the book to stop his ace reporter/ex-wife (Rosalind Russell) from remarrying and moving to Albany. Directed by Howard Hawks. Continue reading His Girl Friday

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Here are 10 things you should know about Clarence Kolb, born 150 years ago today. After a lengthy career in vaudeville and on the stage, he became an in-demand character actor in pictures.

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Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant in His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940)

Cast: Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Lockhart, Porter Hall, Ernest Truex, Cliff Edwards, Clarence Kolb, Roscoe Karns, John Qualen, Helen Mack, Billy Gilbert. Screenplay: Charles Lederer, based on a play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. Cinematography: Joseph Walker. Art direction: Lionel Banks. Film editing: Gene Havlick. Music: Sidney Cutner, Felix Mills.

I can never make a list of my ten favorite movies because once I get started I keep remembering the ones that absolutely have to be on the list. But His Girl Friday always claims a place somewhere, higher or lower. It's a movie without which life would be just a little poorer. The play on which it's based, The Front Page, was no slouch to start with. Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur crafted the single best portrait of what it might have been like -- according to the accounts of others -- to be a newspaper reporter in the first half of the twentieth century, when there was neither television nor the internet to make one's profession obsolescent. We don't have to believe that it was always like that, but just that occasionally reporters in the big cities had moments like the ones shown in the movie. And then Charles Lederer, with uncredited help from Hecht, Howard Hawks, Morrie Ryskind, and a cast skilled at ad libbing, turned it into a romantic screwball comedy by changing the sex of one of the leads, Hildy Johnson, from male to female. And after lots of actresses who would have been just fine in the part (Katharine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, Irene Dunne, Jean Arthur) turned it down, Hawks cast Rosalind Russell in probably her greatest role. Is there a better matched team than Russell's Hildy and Cary Grant's Walter Burns? We can see both why they got divorced and why they could never be separated. And adding Ralph Bellamy as the patsy was a masterstroke, even though it's essentially the same role he had played three years earlier in The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey, 1937): the stuffy guy who loses out to Grant, perhaps because, as Burns observes, "He looks like that guy in the movies, you know ... Ralph Bellamy." The whole thing moves so brilliantly fast that you don't have time to reflect on the film's flaws, which include a racist gag about "pickaninnies" and a deep confusion about whether it's satirizing or valorizing its characters' callous indifference to other human beings -- notably the moment when Hildy sardonically refers to her fellow reporters as "Gentlemen of the press" after their harassment of Mollie Malloy (Helen Mack), but then immediately reverts to get-the-story-at-any-price behavior. What keeps it all skimming swiftly above reality is the astonishing skill of the leads (notice how long some of the takes are to realize how great their timing and command of dialogue was) and a gallery of great character players: Gene Lockhart, Roscoe Karns, John Qualen, and especially the hilarious Billy Gilbert as Joe Pettibone: If you can tear your eyes away from him long enough, watch how hard Grant and Russell are working to keep from cracking up at his performance. Oh, hell, stop whatever you're doing and just go watch it.  

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Impact

“Charming” isn’t a word normally associated with film noir, yet it fits Arthur Lubin’s IMPACT (1949, TCM, Tubi, Plex, Prime, YouTube). From the intricate plot in which everything falls neatly into place to the location photography in San Francisco and Larkspur, CA, to, most importantly, the not quite love scenes between Brian Donlevy and Ella Raines, it’s an ongoing delight. Wealthy industrialist Donlevy is driving to Denver for a plant opening when his wife (Helen Walker) contrives to have her lover go along for the ride and kill him. The lover is neither very good with a tire iron nor with a steering wheel and ends up dead in a fiery car crash while Donlevy, stunned to discover what the Mrs. had been doing, wanders the countryside until he winds up at war widow Raines’ filling station. Romance is as inevitable as Hollywood usually makes it. Meanwhile, police detective Charles Coburn, in one of his least fussy performances, tries to make sense out of the plot.

With lots of scenes shot on location (including the same San Francisco hotel where Kim Novak’s character stayed in VERTIGO), IMPACT is a lot sunnier than most film noirs, but the plot is so twisted and Walker such a great femme fatale it doesn’t matter. The script, by Dorothy Davenport (that’s Mrs. Wallace Reid to you) is a masterpiece of efficiency, with key facts and events planted effortlessly and events communicated through telegrams, newspaper headlines and even a radio broadcast by gossip columnist Sheilah Grahame. Raines was never distinctive enough to be a star, but she’s a darned good actress and lots better than you’d expect from a film noir good woman. Donlevy, whose leading man days were largely over by 1949, has beautiful moments as he realizes what’s going on in his life. Anna May Wong deserved a lot better than her brief role as Walker’s maid, but she delivers a solid performance in her next-to-last film. Her friend (and merkin?) Philip Ahn is on-hand in old-age makeup as her uncle. You may also spot Robert Warwick as a police captain, Clarence Kolb as chairman of Donlevy’s board, silent great Mae Marsh as Raines’ mother, Jason Robards, Sr. as a judge, Erskine Sanford as a doctor and horror film standby Morris Ankrum as Donlevy’s assistant.

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Melvyn Douglas | Joan Blondell | The Amazing Mr. Williams (1939) |Screwb...

The Amazing Mr. Williams is a 1939  classic screwball comedy movie.  This is a full-length film. The movie was produced by Everett Riskin for Columbia Pictures and directed by Alexander Hall. The film stars Melvyn Douglas, Joan Blondell, and Clarence Kolb. Never miss a video. Join the channel so that Mr. P can notify you when new videos are uploaded: https://www.youtube.com/@nrpsmovieclassics

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Bad movie I have His Girl Friday 1940

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Franchot Tone-Frances Rafferty-Clarence Kolb "Lost honeymoon" 1947, de Leigh Jason.

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White Tie and Tails (1946) Charles Barton

November 29th 2020

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Round 1 Results

Jesse White vs Joe Besser

Ed Wynn vs Broderick Crawford

Halliwell Hobbes vs Lionel Barrymore

Charlie Ruggles vs Ernest Thesiger

Frank Morgan vs Frank Jenks - tie

Betty Garrett vs Rags Ragland

Josephine Hull vs Mischa Auer

S.Z. Sakall vs Tom Dugan

Patsy Kelly vs Al St. John

Margaret Hamilton vs Edward Everett Horton

Nella Walker vs Hans Conried

Hattie McDaniel vs Billy Gilbert

Thurston Hall vs Leonid Kinskey

Marjorie White vs Eve Arden

Edward van Sloan vs Jack Oakie - tie

Charles Winninger vs Butterfly McQueen

Alan Mowbray vs Zasu Pitts

Charlotte Greenwood vs Henry Armetta

Marjorie Main vs Pat Buttram

William Demarest vs Bert Lahr

Marie Dressler vs Beulah Bondi

Una O'Connor vs Martha Raye

Dwight Frye vs Charles Coburn

Ned Sparks vs Esther Muir

Thelma Todd vs Elisha Cook Jr.

Christian Rub vs Samuel S. Hinds

Doodles Weaver vs Gail Patrick

Sydney Greenstreet vs Alice Brady

Roland Young vs John Carradine

James Gleason vs Verna Felton

Una Merkel vs Eugene Pallette

Willie Best vs Conrad Veidt

Maude Eburn vs Scatman Crothers

Guy Kibbee vs Walter Brennan - tie

Nat Pendleton vs Clarence Kolb

Jane Darwell vs Raymond Massey

Erich von Stroheim vs Barry Fitzgerald

Eddie "Rochester" Anderson vs Jack Carson

El Brendel vs Reginald Gardiner

Joseph Calleia vs Warren Hymer

Walter Slezak vs Sam Levene

Edna May Oliver vs Richard Lane

C. Aubrey Smith vs Charles Laughton

Gabby Hayes vs Red Buttons

Franklin Pangborn vs Elsa Lanchester

Lionel Atwill vs Martha Mattox

Bill Robinson vs Jessie Ralph

Andy Devine vs Harry Davenport

Richard Carle vs Ernest Truex

Edward Arnold vs Herman Bing

Cliff Edwards vs Sterling Holloway

George Zucco vs Nancy Kulp

Warner Oland vs Jean Adair

Gregory Ratoff vs Grady Sutton

Helen Broderick vs Glenda Farrell

Lillian Yarbo vs Arthur Edmund Carewe

Marjorie Gateson vs Hugh Herbert

Phil Silvers vs Joy Hodges

Ray Bolger vs George E. Stone

George Davis vs Donald Meek

Warner Baxter vs Jerry Colonna - tie

Spring Byington vs Stuart Erwin

Felix Bressart vs Angelo Rossitto

Eric Blore vs Billy Barty

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The Amazing Mr. Williams

The Amazing Mr. Williams is a very different, very good detective film, with ongoing romantic complications. Which does he love more – his fiancé or his work as a homicide detective? Continue reading The Amazing Mr. Williams

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His Girl Friday (1940)

Fun Fact: It is estimated that the normal rate of verbal dialogue in most films is around 90 words a minute. In His Girl Friday (1940), the delivery has been clocked at 240 words a minute.

Walter Burns: You've got an old fashioned idea divorce is something that lasts forever, 'til death do us part.' Why divorce doesn't mean anything nowadays, Hildy, just a few words mumbled over you by a judge.

Hildy Johnson: A big fat lummox like you hiring an airplane to write: "Hildy, don't be hasty. Remember my dimple. Walter." Delayed our divorce 20 minutes while the judge went out to watch it.

Hildy: What are you playing - osteopath?

Walter Burns: Traitor! Hildy Johnson: A traitor? A traitor to what? Walter Burns: A traitor to journalism! You're a journalist, Hildy! Hildy Johnson: A journalist? Now, what does that mean? Peeking through keyholes, chasing after fire engines, waking people up in the middle of the night and ask them if Hitler's gonna start another war, stealing pictures off old ladies? I know all about reporters, Walter. A lot of daffy butt-in-skies runnin' around without a nickel in their pocket, and for what? So a million hired girls and motorman's wives will know what's going on?

Hildy: He treats me like a woman. Walter: Oh he does, does he? Mm-hmm... how did I treat you? Like a water buffalo?

Hildy Johnson: If you want to save Earl William’s life, you write the interview yourself. You're still a good reporter. Walter Burns: Oh, Hildy, you know I can't write that kind of thing. It takes a woman's touch. It needs that heart, that... Hildy Johnson: Now, don't get poetic, Walter. Get Sweeney. He's the best man you've got on the paper for that sob-sister stuff. Walter Burns: Poor Sweeney. Duffy just told me his wife finally had twins. Isn't that terrible? Well, Sweeney went out to celebrate and now we can't find him any more. So, Sweeney has twins and Earl Williams gets hanged tomorrow.

Hildy Johnson: What an act! I just remembered. Sweeney was only married four months ago. Walter Burns: All right, Hildy, you win. I'm licked. Bruce Baldwin: Then, Mr. Sweeney didn't have twins? Hildy Johnson: No, indeed. The twins were Walter's. All his. Walter Burns: Oh, it was nothing.

Molly Malloy: If you was worth breaking my nails on I'd tear your face wide open.

Molly Malloy: [to the male reporters in the prison's press room] You crumbs have been making a fool out of me long enough. I never said I loved Earl Williams and was willing to marry him on the gallows. You made that up! And about my being his soulmate and having a love nest with him!

Hildy Johnson: [speaking to Walter on the phone] Now, get this, you double-crossing chimpanzee: There ain't going to be any interview and there ain't going to be any story. And that certified check of yours is leaving with me in twenty minutes. I wouldn't cover the burning of Rome for you if they were just lighting it up.

Hildy Johnson: The next time you see me, I shall be riding in a Rolls Royce giving interviews on success. Murphy, McCue, reporter, Wilson, reporter, Bensinger, Endicott: Goodbye. Hildy Johnson: So long, you wage slaves. Murphy, McCue, reporter, Wilson, reporter, Bensinger, Endicott: Bye. Hildy Johnson: Or when you're climbing up fire escapes and getting kicked out of front doors and eating Christmas dinners at one-arm joints - don't forget your pal, Hildy Johnson. Murphy, McCue, reporter, Wilson, reporter, Bensinger, Endicott: We won’t, dear. Hildy Johnson: And when the road beyond unfolds and the -- [Heavy gunfire]

This woman is in heels... she is BOLTING after this dude... and she tackles him to the ground for a story. THAT is a journalist.

Hildy Johnson: [on the phone]  Walter, listen, I got a whole story on how Williams got that gun and escaped and I've got it exclusive. Yeah. Yeah, that's right and it's a pip!

[describing Bruce, who is played by Ralph Bellamy] Walter Burns: He looks like that fellow in the movies - Ralph Bellamy.

Another Bit of Trivia: The famous in-joke about Ralph Bellamy's character ("There's a guy in a taxi down at the court building looks just like that movie star, what's his name? Ralph Bellamy!") was almost left on the cutting room floor: Harry Cohn, the studio head, saw the dailies and responded in fury at the impertinence, but he let Howard Hawks leave it in, and it has always been one of the biggest laughs in the film.

Pettibone, oh my god. This movie is so hysterical. Genius.

Walter Burns: Diabetes! I ought to know better than to hire anybody with a disease.

Sheriff Hartwell: Johnson, you're under arrest. Hildy Johnson: Why? Sheriff Hartwell: And you too, Burns! Walter Burns: Who's under arrest? Listen you insignificant, square-toed, pimple-headed spy! You realize what you're doing? Sheriff Hartwell: I'll show you what I'm doing. Burns you're obstructing justice and so is The Morning Post and I'm going to see that you're fined $10,000!

ESE: 94/100

50 +5 for Rosalind Russell +10 for the first exchange between Walter and Hildy +7 for Pete Davis +5 for Bruce being cool about Hildy’s ex-husband -5 for trying to deceive Bruce and Hildy +7 for Hildy’s brilliance in seeing through it -5 for Walter setting up Bruce +10 for Hildy ripping him a new one +5 for tackling a man after chasing him in heels +5 for picking Bruce’s mother up and removing her -10 for making work more important than your relationship +10 for Joe Pettibone +5 for goodbye kisses -5 for manipulative nonsense