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Still gradually working my way through the set, I recently saw Brother Orchid. Between this and Black Legion, this set is shaping up like the film-equivalent to a collection of crazy b-sides. The film is so tonally bizarre, with yuk-yuk comedy making way for heartstring-pulling cheese and several stars catatonicly slumming their way through the proceedings (Ralph Bellamy seems to be doing a bored riff on his established screen personas to the same extent of Robinson) that it's something of a mess... and yet, the whole thing is surprisingly cohesive and highly entertaining, with the catchy score only adding to the fun. This was about a thousand times better than that other Robinson comedy in the Tough Guys set, though still not really any funnier.

Finally I was able to purchase this set and it is well worth the money. The documentary about Warner's house style and the gangster picture is an invaluable resource for providing information about the impact of these films on the industry at the time and since. There are clips in the film from almost all of the gangster films that Warner's made including the ones where the women are the gang boss such as Blondie Johnson.
The film Little Giant is great fun to watch because it shows the complexity of Robinson's performance as a gangster trying to go straight and live with the rich crowd. Yet, like most of the Warner's films it displays a healthy disdain for rich people and shows them to be just as conniving as a cold blooded killer and businessman like Bugs Ahearn, the protagonist in the film. I especially enjoyed the scene where Robinson is discussing the qualities of modern painting with his partner and life long friend in the film. As Robinson was an artist and a collector of fine art it is a moment that demonstrates that here is a man who is completely self-aware of how he is depicted and how the public perceive him to be in real life. A real fine example of the type of films that Warner made before the enforcement of the code.
Overall this is a good set that continues Warner's firm commitment to its illustrious and fascinating history. Here's hoping that we see more of these along with another Pre-code box set sometime next year.

RIP Warner Gangsters Boxed Sets

HTF Chat wrote: Will there be a 5th Gangster Boxset?

Warner: No further boxsets are planned, but more Bogart/Cagney/Robinson/Raft titles on Warner Archive.

In "Angels With Dirty Faces", one of the Dead End Boys says "What a boner!"

Did that have a completely different use in that time?
The connotation was closer to say, Bender in Futurama saying "We're boned!"

A "boner" was/is a mistake. Its use isn't so antiquated either-- a teenage character on the overly wholesome 80s sitcom Growing Pains was nicknamed Boner, and not for any untoward reason

On Wednesday, September 23, 1908, while playing for the New York Giants in a game against the Chicago Cubs ... Merkle committed a base running error that later became known as "Merkle's Boner" and earned Merkle the nickname of "Bonehead."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_Boner" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Boner = mistake.
Derivation from bonehead sounds quite plausible.

It's probable that boner initially became synonymous with an inopportune public erection because the latter would be an embarrassing "mistake" or "accident." But people who weren't aware of that would then make the connection between "bone" and hardness and figure the word meant exclusively an erection.

And to continue in this serious vein:

Although, I'm pretty sure Growing Pains knew the score when they named Chekov's kid "Boner." At least, I knew the score when I was nine years old and watching Growing Pains.

No one tell Kirk Cameron, we don't need another explanatory video involving a banana

Went through Dana Polan's commentary on Angels, and I've heard him before on some other titles, (Criterion's Naked City) and why is it that every other sentence from him is "On the other hand..." and "Interestingly..."

manicsounds wrote:Went through Dana Polan's commentary on Angels, and I've heard him before on some other titles, (Criterion's Naked City) and why is it that every other sentence from him is "On the other hand..." and "Interestingly..."

Give me that over the breathless histrionics of Drew Casper: Drama Queen any day.

Two super cool films you'll probably never see on DVD or hear about:

Last night I saw the WB gangster film to end all WB gangster films... and the funny thing is it was the WB gangster film that started all WB gangster films-- called Doorway To Hell directed by Archie Mayo, from 1930. It features Lew Ayres (the young lead from Milestone's Laemmle/Universal pic All Quiet on the Western Front) as a stand-in for Al Capone. When I first saw the casting of him as a gangster's gangster, a boss of bosses who gets the whole town's worth of beer-trafficking mugs together to organize their bootlegging, force them to accept his protection and kick profit percentiles up to him in return for peace on the streets, I couldn't believe it... I thought it was the worst piece of casting in the whole precode era. Particularly because his Number Two Mug is none other than James Cagney-- in his second film role and already in full Public Enemy Mode... he's completely and totally his Tom Powers character already, and I thought he would have eaten Ayres alive with his heavy charisma and (sometimes accidental, sometimes deliberate) dominance of other actors.

Not so-- if Ayres seems slightly wooden and boyish in All Quiet, it may be because he's out of his element. And this film must be his element, because he plays a vicious crime boss to the hilt, and holds his own versus Cagney in the charisma dept 100%. He's sly, cool, cunning, full of nasty schadenfreude versus his enemies and competitors, and seems completely at home in the skin of his character here Louie Ricarno. In a a nutshell, the plot:

Lou Ricarno is a smart guy. His plan is to organize the various gangs in Chicago so that the mugs will not liquidate each other. WIth the success of his leadership, Louie prospers, marries Doris and retires to Florida to write his autobiography and play golf. In his absence the gang warfare flares, but he does not return as he wants to give a respectable image of life to his wife, younger brother and his Florida neighbors. While letters and telegrams from Mileaway will not influence his decision, events will.

Also, from ALLMOVIE:

Plot Synopsis by Sandra Brennan
In this early talkie, a vicious crime lord (played by Lew Ayres in a rare villainous role) decides that he has had enough and much to the shock of his colleagues decides to give the business to his second in command (James Cagney in hi second film role) and retire to Florida after marrying his moll. Unfortunately, he has no idea

Spoiler

that she and Cagney are lovers. Part of the reason the don wants to leave is to keep his young brother, who idolizes him, from learning the awful truth about his avocation. Soon after moving down to Florida, former rivals kidnap the brother and kill him, causing the reformed gangster to come back for deadly revenge.

This was an innovative film and featured a lot of elements that would become standards in the gangster genre including tommy guns carried in violin cases, terrible shoot-outs, and lots of rum-running rivalry.

Via the simple fact that this is the great Cagney's 2nd role, and his first appearance as a gangster, a leadup to soon to be made The Public Enemy, I can;t believe this film has not been released by WB, not even into the dumpster of the Archive. On top of that throw in the fact that this is a great, great film, based on a short story called A Handful of Clouds (slang for tommy-gun fire/it's resulting bouquet of smoke puffs) by the hardboiled screenwriter Rowland Brown (he's also a great director of the wonderfully vicious precodes Hell's Highway, Quick Millions, and Blood Money, all excellent early 30's gangster films better than the vast quantity of the filler in the WB Gangster Boxes aching to be rediscovered), it's oversight is NUTS. WIth it's sly, snappy patter, authentic sense of criminal anarchy and 'fuck you' to law & order, its soulful undertow, blasts of violence, and laying down of the blueprint for the precode gangster pictures to follow in rapidfire succession, Doorway To Hell is a great film ripe for rediscovery.

While on the topic of pre-icon icons of the precode gangster pics, might as well switch from Tom from Public Enemy to Little Caesar, and Edward G Robinson. I recently caught a film called The Hole In The Wall, an early talkie from 1929, which certainly is not the all-round Great Film of Doorway To Hell... but in many ways it's the more interesting of the two.

It's an odd pedigree-- directed by Robert Florey, Hole In The Wall is full of touches that expose Florey's roots in the avant garde and love for Expressionism. Edward G Robinson plays the head of a bunch of bunk artists, a crew who work suckers with a sophisticated psychic con. The film, a Paramount property, was obviously shot-- like Applause from the same studio/year-- in the Astoria studios in NYC, as it features location shooting on the streets of the Lower East Side... particularly on the old Third Avenue elevated subway.

Robinson plays the part, his first gangster role, in a manner that looks ahead to his role in Little Caesar a year later in '30-- just like Cagney in Doorway his part is a major foreshadowing of things to come. The story nominally follows the exploits of this group of con artists who run a psychic racket... specifically "mediums", who, for a fee, communicate with the beloved dead. Trouble hits the crew early on as their "madame", the lady who acts as the actual medium with clients to receive the spirits of the dead, dies in a subway disaster (it seems that in the 20's and 30's, every major studio and director with high aspirations had to produce a film featuring a train wreck... did it start with Orlac's Hande?). Who walks in to the narrative afterwards to wind up covering for her but a very young Claudette Colbert in her first major role. The direction, camerawork, and sets are highly stylized, even more so at times than Florey's Murders In The Rue Morgue for Laemlle/Universal. Some screen caps:

Edward G getting out of his disguise:

Eddie and one of his mugs.. this guy is a complete lunatic, literally, in the film:

The backroom, where Robinson listens in to 'medium' sessions and communicates with the madame by typing electrified code of mild shocks into an electrified chair-arm. Note the wild masks on the wall:

With the motorman on the 3rd Av el:

Probably the most stylized morgue in all cinema:

A one way mirror apparatus to observe entrants to the suite:

The front door-- check out the angles, and the wall-paintings:

Claudette, as young as you'll ever see her:

A 'session'.. check out this set:

Doorway To Hell is a really strong film, that is worthy of more attention. I have some qualms about the scene where Cagney is being interrogated by the police, as it just seems so out of character for Cagney, although that may be more of an extratextual response, as Cagney is so omnipresent a tough guy that it's hard to believe he was ever anything but Tom Powers. It's not quite as bad as Chester Morris practically wetting his pants with fear in "Alibi", but it still seems so out of character with everything else he does in the film.

I also liked how downbeat the conclusion is, with Ayres holed up in a dingy room, looking like hell, and pretty much on the verge of a breakdown. It's really atmospheric and the kind of thing that Warners could pull off so well. It's gritty, ugly, and real.

I've watched my way through about half of Warner Gangsters 1- the Roaring Twenties, Little Caesar, and the Petrified Forest, so far- and far and away the one I've enjoyed most of the three was the Petrified Forest.

Little Caesar had a pretty great Robinson performance, but the rest of it ranged from odd to dull, with the exception of a few highlights. The shootout that opens the movie and the big robbery were both interestingly presented, but other than that, nothing really grabbed me. The famous ending line seemed immensely odd- I feel like there was an "Is this the end... of Milhouse?" parody of it on the Simpsons at some point, but it's such a bizarre thing to say in any case that it made the whole of the movie more difficult to take seriously in retrospect.

The Roaring Twenties didn't have any obvious flaws, and I enjoyed Bogart quite a bit, but it seemed just to skim over the plot points without any especially interesting moments either visually or of character. Cagney's character seems to fall ass-backwards into his rise, his fall seems unmotivated, and his love interest seems haphazardly worked out- I never really saw the appeal. Bogart's character, who seemed genuinely friendly but also totally unburdened by conscience, seemed much the most interesting to me, and I wish the movie had stuck more with him.

Perhaps it's just Bogart fandom that lead me to love Petrified Forest as much as I did, but I think it's also the sense of characters breaking out of a preset type and showing flashes of interesting humanity- the black gang member making fun of the chauffeur for being an Uncle Tom (which I thought remarkable for a movie of the era), the spoiled rich woman pleading with Bette Davis' character not to sell herself to some dull asshole the way she did- which came totally unexpectedly out of what seemed like a stock character- and even the ex-football player, who came off as painfully rapey when first introduced, was if not a rounded character, at least an interestingly characterized one. Leslie Howard's character seemed a less interesting type, but Howard sold him well, and made me want to see more of his work- and Bogart, of course, carried the screen like no-one outside of Welles in the Third Man.

The philosophical underpinning of the Petrified Forest and its symbolic representations seem sort of dreary, but goddamn if it wasn't more entertaining and engrossing than the quick moving actual gangster pictures. To me, anyway.

edit: Dear God, is the commentary on the Roaring Twenties awful- it's got to be at least 80% just reciting what's happening in the movie, with the occasional biographical snippet tossed in if you're lucky.