whataboutbobbed
Film Forum’s 66 film – month long salute to ‘Hollywood’s Naughtiest, Bawdiest Year’ – 1933!!! continues…
Day 19’s trio of cellmates – 20,000 Years In Sing Sing, Blood Money + Laughter in Hell
Michael Curtiz‘s 20,000 Years in Sing Sing, the stand-out of the evening, finds Spencer Tracy in the titular big house, fronting like he’s a big man, while he yearns for his little girl on the outside – Bette Davis. The film was based on the memoirs of the actual warden of Sing Sing, played here, with much care and affection by Arthur Byron
Rowland Brown’s Blood Money is 65 minutes of oddness and bail bonds!! George Bancroft is the bail-bondsman who’s always happy to lend a hand to a crooked crook. But one relationship, with sister-brother Judith Anderson (Rebecca’s Mrs Danvers, in her film debut) and Chick Chandler, may prove fatal, when a dippy dame (Frances Dee) complicates things for all involved
Edward L Cahn‘s Laughter in Hell is no laughing matter, unless you find murder, chain gangs, whippings and lynchings hilarious. Tough stuff for our main character Pat O’Brien, who kills his wife (Merna Kennedy), her lover (Arthur Vinton), and then becomes a prisoner of the lover’s brother (Douglass Dumbrille). But it’s not all a grave matter, when O’Brien goes on the run with Gloria Stuart (who apparently was never a good actress 🙂
1933 FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!!!