Classic Films in Focus: WEREWOLF OF LONDON (1935)

Although The Wolf Man (1941) is by far the best known of the Universal werewolf movies, director Stuart Walker’s Werewolf of London (1935) predates it by a good six years, making it one of the earliest examples of the genre. The 1935 picture lacks an iconic horror star like Chaney, Karloff, or Lugosi; instead, it relies on Henry Hull, an actor primarily relegated to supporting roles, as the afflicted protagonist who sprouts fur and fangs whenever the full moon rouses his inner animal. Of the Universal horrors of the 1930s, Werewolf of London is certainly a minor addition, but it does have particular charms for classic movie fans and those seriously interested in the history of werewolf films. Supporting performances by Valerie Hobson, Spring Byington, and a collection of character actresses make Werewolf of London worth watching, even if the picture’s comical old ladies prove more interesting than its titular monster.

Henry Hull plays botanist Dr. Wilfred Glendon, who travels to Tibet in search of a rare moon flower. There he is bitten by a werewolf, Dr. Yogami (Warner Oland), who later appears in London to ask Glendon for some of the flowers from his plant. The blooms are the only thing that can prevent both men from turning into murderous werewolves when the moon becomes full, but the short supply creates deadly conflict between them, even as both struggle to prevent themselves from killing more innocent victims. Glendon’s troubles are compounded by his growing estrangement from his wife, Lisa (Valerie Hobson), and the unwelcome attention of her former beau, Paul (Lester Matthews).

None of the men in the film is especially compelling. In The Wolf Man, Chaney’s protagonist appeals because we see him as a good man tragically robbed of his humanity, but Hull’s Glendon is more the obsessed scientist type, a character begging for doom to knock at his door. Hull lacks the screen presence of a true horror star; though not very handsome or charismatic, he does at least have a good face for the werewolf makeup. The monster’s look was designed by Jack Pierce, who had already worked on Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), and The Mummy (1932) and would go on to provide the hairy facial treatment for The Wolf Man. Hull actually makes a more interesting werewolf than he does a human being, and we do get several transformation scenes showing off the special effects process. Warner Oland plays a sinister variant on the Charlie Chan character, but he never develops into a really satisfying villain or a tragic victim of his own circumstances. Lester Matthews plays Paul as a relentless interloper who steals the girl from his monstrous rival, which makes him hard to root for as any sort of hero.

The women fare better, especially Valerie Hobson as Glendon’s unhappy wife. Hobson’s elegant face registers the many shades of Lisa’s complicated feelings; while Paul was her first love, she is determined to be loyal to the man she married, even as he drifts away from her to grapple with his monstrous urges. Hobson was no stranger to this kind of role, having already played Dr. Frankenstein’s wife in The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) that same year. Very different from Hobson but perhaps even more memorable are the movie’s old ladies, a bevy of colorful characters led by Spring Byington as Aunt Ettie. Charlotte Granville, playing the wry Lady Forsythe, has some humorous exchanges with Byington, but the upper crust ladies are outdone by the more outrageously funny old gin swillers portrayed by Ethel Griffies and Zeffie Tilbury. They don’t really have anything to do with the werewolf plot, which might annoy some viewers, but those who appreciate Una O’Connor in The Invisible Man (1933) and The Bride of Frankenstein will adore them.

Stuart Walker also directed Henry Hull in a 1934 adaptation of Great Expectations, but Walker spent more of his career as a producer, particularly of the Bulldog Drummond series. You can see Hull in a more sympathetic light in Boys Town (1938) and Lifeboat (1944). The Swedish Warner Oland played mostly yellow face roles; in addition to Charlie Chan, he also starred in a series of Fu Manchu pictures. Look for Valerie Hobson in Great Expectations (1946), Blanche Fury (1948), and Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949). Spring Byington earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for You Can’t Take It with You (1938), while Ethel Griffies is best remembered today as the ornithologist, Mrs. Bundy, in The Birds (1963).

Classic Films in Focus: BABES IN ARMS (1939)

The Busby Berkeley musical Babes in Arms (1939) proved an important moment in Mickey Rooney’s career; his role as showbiz hopeful Mickey Moran earned him his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor, in a year when the competition included Clark Gable for Gone with the Wind, Laurence Olivier for Wuthering Heights, and Jimmy Stewart for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. They would all lose to Robert Donat for Goodbye, Mr. Chips, but the nomination put Rooney at the top of Hollywood’s list of leading men when he was still a teenager. It was also his first musical with Judy Garland as his leading lady; the two had appeared in films together before, but the new formula would be a big enough hit to inspire a whole series of Garland and Rooney musicals. Today, Babes in Arms shows its age, especially in some of its vaudeville numbers, but it still offers plenty to interest fans of its two young stars.

Rooney stars as Michael “Mickey” Moran, a child of vaudeville performers who have fallen on hard times with the rise of the talkies. Along with his girlfriend, Patsy (Judy Garland), his sister, Molly (Betty Jaynes), and their pal, Don (Douglas McPhail), Mickey hopes to turn things around for the older entertainers by staging a new show with the other kids. There’s a lot riding on their success, since meddlesome Miss Steele (Margaret Hamilton) is trying to have all of the youngsters sent away to learn trades at a state work school. The assistance of former child star Baby Rosalie (June Preisser) might save the show, but only if it doesn’t ruin Mickey and Patsy’s relationship.

Rooney is more a comedian than a singer, but he gets plenty of opportunities to exercise his usual energetic humor, and his impressions of Clark Gable and Lionel Barrymore are especially funny. Garland looks achingly young, even more so than she does in her better known film from that year, The Wizard of Oz. The two share a sweet, innocent chemistry that justifies their frequent pairings, and both of them carry their more dramatic scenes effectively. They get ample support from older actors like Charles Winninger, Guy Kibbee, Margaret Hamilton, and Henry Hull, but June Preisser proves a real scene-stealer as Baby Rosalie, a Shirley Temple type whose precious act has grown stale with adolescence. Preisser also does some jaw-dropping acrobatics that you have to see to believe; it’s worth noting that Preisser, Rooney, and Garland had all been vaudeville performers in real life before they made the jump to films.

The songs in Babes in Arms cover a lot of territory, although viewers will recognize several of them from their use in the later classic, Singin’ in the Rain (1952). Busby Berkeley directs most of the numbers with great restraint considering his penchant for dizzy spectacle, but he does provide a more traditional Berkeley treatment for the finale of “God’s Country.” The number that will give most viewers pause is the minstrel sequence, done with the entire group of youngsters, including Rooney and Garland, in full blackface. Despite its attempt to pay tribute to the vaudeville convention, the number is sure to make modern audiences profoundly uncomfortable, if not outraged, by its use of the most noxious racial stereotypes. Fortunately, the performance gets cut short by a plot point, but it goes on much too long for anyone watching it today. Be prepared to have a thoughtful discussion about the history of blackface in Hollywood if you watch this picture with the family.

Babes in Arms also earned an Oscar nomination for Best Music Scoring. For more of Rooney and Garland’s musicals, see Strike Up the Band (1940), Babes on Broadway (1941), and Girl Crazy (1943). Busby Berkeley is best remembered for gloriously surreal musical productions in 42nd Street (1933), Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), and Footlight Parade (1933). June Preisser also appears in Strike Up the Band and with Rooney in two of the Andy Hardy films. Groomed as the next Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, neither Betty Jaynes nor Douglas McPhail ever became stars, but they were actually married to one another from 1938-1941, which casts an interesting light on their performance as sweethearts in Babes in Arms.

Classic Films in Focus: LIFEBOAT (1944)

Based on a story by John Steinbeck, Alfred Hitchcock's tense wartime thriller, Lifeboat (1944), will induce claustrophobia in some viewers, as the entire film takes place within the confines of a single small boat. The ocean around might be wide, but the space on the boat is small, so small that the handful of survivors packed into it find themselves entirely too close for comfort, especially since one of them belonged to the German U boat that sank the ship on which the others were traveling. As with so many Hitchcock pictures, Lifeboat reveals the director turning the screws on his characters, constantly increasing their tension as he also increases the body count. It's a taut, gripping, psychologically complex film, one that addresses some of the most uncomfortable themes of its era, from ethnic prejudice and racism to class divisions and the brutal impulses of mob justice.  

As the picture opens, we see the detritus of shipwreck floating across the screen, with a corpse inevitably closing the procession of debris. The survivors of the ship are quickly collected, beginning with the lifeboat's first occupant, journalist Constance Porter (Tallulah Bankhead). Joining Connie are members of the ship's crew, including alpha male Kovac (John Hodiak), mild Stanley "Sparks" (Hume Cronyn), injured Gus (William Bendix), and kindly Joe (Canada Lee). A wealthy businessman named Charles Rittenhouse (Henry Hull), a shell-shocked young mother (Heather Angel), and a lovelorn nurse (Mary Anderson) round out the Allied survivors, while the German Willi (Walter Slezak) turns up to make all of them anxious and conflicted about sharing the boat with their enemy.

All of the actors give fine performances, but Tallulah has the best lines, and she dominates the screen throughout the picture. We are set up to see her as the vessel's most interesting occupant from the start, when we find her sitting alone in the lifeboat, surrounded by her possessions, busily photographing the fallout of the disaster as if she herself were not endangered. Everything about her seems incongruous with this setting, from her mink coat and camera to her sparkling diamond bracelet. The other women, plucked from the oil-strewn sea, are bedraggled from the start, but Connie clings to her glamour and sexuality, and she manages to look good even when things seem to be at their worst, hoarding her store of lipstick the way the other characters cherish their water or rations.

I don't know that I like John Hodiak as Bankhead's sparring partner and love interest; he has plenty of prickly machismo, but he seems dangerous, unstable, a powder keg rather than a hero. There's something about his teeth that makes him look like a manticore, ready to eat the rest of the survivors alive if necessary. Hume Cronyn's gentle Sparks is by far the most appealing of the young men, and he is amply repaid for that amiability through a budding romance with Mary Anderson's character, Alice. William Bendix makes a sympathetic Gus, though doom seems to be written on his brow from the beginning, as he is the most nostalgic of the crew, and we all know that characters who look backward too much cannot have a future ahead of them.

All kinds of prejudice get an airing in this film, but the most striking, given the time period, might be that of race. The lone African-American survivor, Joe, is played with grace and dignity by Canada Lee. Apparently, Steinbeck felt that Hitch toned down the original story's engagement of race too much, but Lee's subtle reactions and measured comments eloquently convey the message to those who are willing to receive it. Only Joe will have the moral fortitude to resist the power of the mob when the critical moment arrives, and he is keenly aware that he and the German are connected by their shared status as "Other," even though he finds that connection an uncomfortable qualifier to his own patriotic sensibility. The German himself seems far less conscious of the possibility that he and Joe might be tied together in this way, and his ultimate role as villain undermines much of the sympathy we might otherwise have for him. His treatment of Gus, near the end of the film, merely vindicates our suspicion of him, leaving Joe as the far more complex anchor for the film's treatment of prejudice as a whole.

On a final note, you might wonder how Hitchcock manages his trademark cameo appearance in a film set entirely aboard a small, crowded boat. Be sure and have a good look at the ad on the back of the newspaper that one character holds up to read. He was a clever fellow, that Hitch! For more of Hitchcock’s films from this era, try Suspicion (1941), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), and Notorious (1946). Tallulah Bankhead, far more successful on the stage than in Hollywood, made few memorable films, but you can see her in Tarnished Lady (1931), The Cheat (1931), and A Royal Scandal (1945). Lifeboat was nominated for three Oscars, including a nod for Hitchcock as Best Director. It was one of five times that the director would be nominated for the award and not win.

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.