Classic Films in Focus: HELLO, FRISCO, HELLO (1943)

San Francisco’s Barbary Coast always makes for a colorful setting, and in Hello, Frisco, Hello (1943) Fox capitalizes on the opportunities that the backdrop presents for lavish costumes, lively stage numbers, and an anything goes ambience. This splashy Technicolor musical is primarily a showcase for the talents of Alice Faye, and it’s actually a remake of an earlier Faye picture, the 1936 musical drama, King of Burlesque. The 1943 film reunites Faye with King of Burlesque costar Jack Oakie, but it also brings in John Payne as the love interest and June Havoc as the female sidekick. Faye, however, is the main attraction throughout, and fans of the star will find her in top form, looking especially lovely in a dazzling array of period costumes. Directed by H. Bruce Humberstone, Hello, Frisco, Hello is also worth watching for the supporting performances from Oakie, Havoc, and Laird Cregar, as well as Faye’s rendition of the Oscar-winning song, “You’ll Never Know.”

Alice Faye stars as Trudy Evans, a gifted chanteuse whose voice brings success to Barbary Coast showman Johnny Cornell (John Payne) even though he takes her devotion to him for granted. When Johnny’s social ambitions lure him into the arms of Nob Hill heiress Bernice (Lynn Bari), the heartbroken Trudy departs for fame on the London stage. Johnny eventually regrets his union with the gold-digging Bernice, but his fall from the height of success leads him to drive away his old friends, including his vaudevillian comrades Dan (Jack Oakie) and Beulah (June Havoc). When Trudy returns to San Francisco, she must find a way to help Johnny without hurting his stubborn pride.

Faye has plenty of musical numbers to keep her busy, including the title song and “You’ll Never Know,” but she’s also very good at projecting Trudy’s unrequited love for the business-minded Johnny. Trudy is certainly something of a sap for mooning over a man who only uses her to get rich, but Faye has so much appeal that we’re inclined to forgive her heroine for her starry-eyed faith in someone who really doesn’t deserve her. As Johnny, John Payne mixes the smoldering intensity of Tyrone Power with the showbiz charisma of Don Ameche, although he’s not quite as memorable as either of those leading men, both of whom starred with Faye in other films. He’s best in the darker segments of Johnny’s narrative, especially with Lynn Bari as the seductive socialite who fascinates him with her high class charms.

The supporting cast provides comedy to lighten the rest of the narrative’s sentimental drama. Jack Oakie is particularly fun as Johnny’s sidekick, Dan, and he gets several great stage numbers that show off his vaudevillian style as a comic song and dance man. June Havoc keeps up with the energetic Oakie as his performing partner; although she’s usually playing second fiddle to Faye in the production numbers, she and Oakie really shine in a sailor-themed segment late in the film, and Havoc shows both the spunk and the legs that one might expect from the sister of Gypsy Rose Lee. Laird Cregar has a small but memorable role as the bearded gold prospector Sam Weaver; although he was usually cast as a villain, Cregar proves yet again that he was equally capable of tackling comedic roles, and he gives his bit character a wonderfully Falstaffian quality.

Don’t miss Ward Bond making a brief appearance as saloon owner Sharkey; his hairstyle alone is worth watching out for. For more of Alice Faye, see In Old Chicago (1937), Alexander’s Ragtime Band (1938), and That Night in Rio (1941). John Payne and Jack Oakie also star with Faye in Tin Pan Alley (1940) and The Great American Broadcast (1941), although Payne is best remembered today for Miracle on 34th Street (1947), and Oakie is known for his role in The Great Dictator (1940). Catch Lynn Bari in The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1944) and Shock (1946), and see June Havoc in Brewster’s Millions (1945) and Gentleman’s Agreement (1947). For more of Laird Cregar’s comedic roles, try Charley’s Aunt (1941) and The Black Swan (1942). H. Bruce Humberstone also directed I Wake Up Screaming (1941), Happy Go Lovely (1951), and a number of Charlie Chan pictures.

Classic Films in Focus: THE GREAT DICTATOR (1940)

We think of Charlie Chaplin as a silent comedian, but he also made a number of talkies in his later career, the best known of which is The Great Dictator (1940), which offers a direct response to the global catastrophe then brewing on the European front. In this picture, made before the United States actually entered the war against Hitler, Chaplin demonstrates the courage of his convictions as well as his ability to pull off a fully realized speaking role. Some critics, including David Thomson, find fault with the idealistic speech that Chaplin delivers at the film’s climax, but people around the world must have responded to it enthusiastically in 1940, with that feeling of being on a terrible precipice that Chaplin so passionately captures. Today, those who appreciate the bravery in Chaplin’s cinematic statement will still find The Great Dictator powerful stuff, and film fans will also enjoy the performances of Chaplin himself as well as Paulette Goddard, Jack Oakie, Henry Daniell, and Billy Gilbert.

Chaplin plays dual roles as a meek Jewish barber and the dictator Adenoid Hynkel, the ruler of a fictional country obviously meant to represent Nazi Germany. The barber, shell-shocked from his service in the previous war, emerges from a mental hospital to find his community under siege from Hynkel’s brutal stormtroopers and mounting violence. Hannah (Paulette Goddard), an orphaned Jewish girl, takes pity on the barber and even comes to love him, while a military officer (Reginald Gardiner) whose life the barber once saved draws him and his neighbors into a dangerous plan to end Hynkel’s tyranny. As the barber and his friends confront one hardship after another, Hynkel himself schemes against his fellow dictator, Napaloni (Jack Oakie), and aspires to world domination.

Of course the plot eventually involves the barber being mistaken for Hynkel, but that switch occurs very late in the picture. Until then, we move back and forth between Hynkel’s actions in his lavish palace and the barber’s sufferings in the Jewish ghetto. Both have their moments of comedy and drama, although Hynkel is played mostly as a buffoon, with Henry Daniell’s insidious Garbitsch as the evil mind behind the worst atrocities committed in Hynkel’s name. The barber, showing his affinity with Chaplin’s Little Tramp character, mostly runs from the troopers and engages in slapstick combat; he has no delusions of heroism but is pushed and buffeted by fate toward his climactic moment in the spotlight. Hynkel’s best scenes pit him against his rival, Napaloni, whose friendly manner of bullying the smaller dictator incenses Hynkel and drives him to increasingly extreme antics. The film’s most memorable moment, aside from the final speech, is Hynkel’s dance with a floating globe, a graceful and even beautiful metaphor for Hitler’s deadly pas de deux with the actual world.

Chaplin’s supporting players give him plenty to react to, especially Paulette Goddard as the feisty orphan, Hannah. Goddard and Chaplin were a real life couple at the time, but they would divorce in 1942, and the legality of their marriage has never been quite clear. Luckily their union lasted long enough for Goddard to play this role, which she performs with great energy and pluck, especially when Hannah repeatedly whacks stormtroopers on the head with a frying pan. Most of the other supporting characters are male, although Grace Hayle plays Mrs. Napaloni as a kind of Margaret Dumont character from the Marx Brothers canon, always unsure about what is going on around her and usually being tripped up by one of the more chaotic men. Maurice Moscovitch is sympathetic and wise as the Jewish community’s leader, Mr. Jaeckel, while Henry Daniell delivers a memorable villain in the sneeringly heartless Garbitsch, who constantly pours his poisonous ideas into Hynkel’s receptive ear. Schultz, the one good officer in Hynkel’s army, comes off as a sadly flat character, but Reginald Gardiner doesn’t get much opportunity to flesh him out. Jack Oakie, on the other hand, enjoys lots of screen time as the cartoonish Napaloni, whose size and bombastic talk irk little Hynkel so effectively.

The Great Dictator earned five Oscar nominations, including nods for Chaplin and Oakie, but it won nothing, thanks to a year of strong contenders that included The Philadelphia Story (1940), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), and Rebecca (1940). See Chaplin and Goddard together in the earlier film, Modern Times (1936), and look for Goddard on her own in The Women (1939), So Proudly We Hail! (1943), and The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946). For more of Chaplin’s sound films, try Monsieur Verdoux (1947), Limelight (1952), or A King in New York (1957). Don’t miss career villain Henry Daniell in The Sea Hawk (1940), The Woman in Green (1945), and The Body Snatcher (1945). For another anti-Nazi comedy made during Hitler’s reign, see To Be or Not to Be (1942), which makes an excellent double bill with The Great Dictator.