Happy Birthday, William Beaudine.

William Washington Beaudine
(January 15, 1892 – March 18, 1970)

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Director William Beaudine was born 132 years ago today. Here he is (in the visor) directing John Carradine and Claudia Drake in Monogram’s Face Of Marble (1946).

Beaudine’s story is fascinating (and somewhat tragic), with fate taking him from Hollywood’s A-list to Poverty Row in a flash. Of course, around here we love us some Poverty Row, so the big studios’ loss is our gain. From Bela Lugosi’s “Monogram Nine” to Charlie Chan to The Bowery Boys, Beaudine’s junk movies are usually a lot of fun. And before his professional downturn, he directed the great W.C. Fields in the hysterical The Old-Fashioned Way (1934).

DVD Review: High Society (1955).

Directed by William Beaudine
Produced by Ben Schwalb
Screenplay by Jerome S. Gottler & Bert Lawrence
Story by Edward Bernds & Ellwood Ullman
Director Of Photography: Harry Neumann
Film Editor: John C. Fuller
Music by Marlin Skiles

Cast: Leo Gorcey (Terence Aloysius “Slip” Mahoney), Huntz Hall (Horace Debussy “Sach” Jones), David Condon (Charles “Chuck” Anderson), Bennie Bartlett (Butch Williams), Bernard Gorcey (Louie Dumbrowski), Amanda Blake (Clarissa Jones), Dayton Lummis (Stuyvesant Jones), Ronald Keith (Terwilliger Debussy “Twig” Jones III), Gavin Gordon (Frisbie), Dave Barry (Palumbo)

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My friend Dan Conway and I got to talking about The Bowery Boys a while back, which made me want to do a series of posts on the Boys and their movies. This is only the second. The best laid plans… 

Hollywood loves to pit comics against the upper class — from the silents to In Society (1944) with Abbott & Costello to almost anything the Mark Brothers or The Three Stooges ever did to Caddyshack (1980). Guess there’s something just inherently funny about lowbrow boneheads tackling the highfalutin.

The Bowery Boys got their crack at the just-so world of the rich a few times, including one of their later pictures, High Society (1955). In it, the Boys run the Bowery Garage. Sach (Huntz Hall) finds out he’s the heir to the Terwilliger Debussy Jones fortune — so he and Slip (Leo Gorcey) head to the stately Jones mansion to take care of the paperwork and get Sach’s loot. 

But it turns out it’s all a scam, part of a scheme to cheat the rightful heir, the young Terwilliger Debussy “Twig” Jones III (Ronald Keith) out of his fortune. By the time the picture’s 61 minutes are up, order is restored. Kinda.

Of course, along the way we get plenty of Leo Gorcey mangling the English language and Huntz Hall acting like the world’s oldest six-year-old. And it’s all framed in the usual, ragged made-in-a-week production values we expect from Monogram (Allied Artists by this time) and director William Beaudine.

Added to this one is Amanda Blake as part of the wealthy Jones family. This was her last film before becoming Miss Kitty on Gunsmoke for the next 20 years.

Dave Barry is quite funny as a Liberace-ish piano player. He’s part of a sequence that shamelessly steals from The Three Stooges short Ants In The Pantry (1938). The Stooges introduced ants, mice, cats and other critters into a swanky dinner party in their picture. In High Society, thousands of flea get loose during Barry’s performance. The story is credited to Stooge veterans Edward Bernds and Ellwood Ullman, which might explain the similarities.

The Bowery Boys are an acquired taste. I saw these things as a little kid, so I’ve carried an attraction to them through my life. If I first encountered them as an adult, I’m not sure what I would’ve thought.

High Society has a rather odd place in Hollywood history. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Story — by mistake. (The only time that happened.) The film that was supposed to be nominated was the MGM musical of the same name starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly and Frank Sinatra. Realizing the mistake, and probably getting a big laugh out of it, Edward Bernds and Elwood Ullman withdrew their nomination.

High Society (the Bowery Boys non-Oscar-worthy one) is part of Warner Archive’s The Bowery Boys, Volume Two. This terrific four-volume series packs 12 movies on four discs in each set. They look terrific — High Society is even presented widescreen. Recommended. Unless you hate these things — in that case, you’ve been warned!

Blu-Ray News #175: Retromedia Heads For Poverty Row.

Fred Olen Ray’s Retromedia Entertainment Group has been bringing some cool stuff to Blu-Ray — including a few great pictures scooped up from Poverty Row.

The Corpse Vanishes/Bowery At Midnight (both 1942)
A couple of Lugosi’s Monogram Nine — these were both produced by Sam Katzman and directed by Wallace Ford. In The Corpse Vanishes, he’s a mad scientist working to preserve his wife’s beauty. In Bowery At Midnight, Lugosi uses a soup kitchen to find guys for his gang of crooks. In the climax, all the guys who’ve been killed along the way come back to life. Great stuff.

The Mysterious Mr. Wong (1934)/The Living Ghost (1942)
Another of Lugosi’s nine, The Mysterious Mr. Wong has him playing a Fu Manchu type. The great Wallace Ford plays a wisecracking newspaper man. James Dunn plays a detective in The Living Ghost, directed by the infamous William “One Shot” Beaudine.

The Ape (1940)/The Black Raven (1943)
Boris Karloff had his own Monogram Nine, and The Ape was the last of them. He’s another mad scientist, this time trying to cure polio. At the same time, an ape escapes from the circus. The Black Raven is from PRC, directed by Sam Newfield and starring George Zucco, Robert Livingston and Glenn Strange.

You know, when cheap little movies like this become available in high definition, maybe the world ain’t so bad after all.