Reviews

***MINOR SPOILERS***

A really fun Paramount pre-code starring Jack Oakie, William Collier Sr and Warren Hymer as the three leads (for some reason Hymer is billed 8th but he's one of the main characters and gets a good chunk of screen time).

Fight manager Doc Williams (Collier) takes his boys wrestler Brassie Randall (Hymer) and boxer Eddie Burke (Jack Oakie) to Madison Square Garden from San Francisco to train at the Garden and get them some high- profile fights. Along the way the boys get mixed up with racketeers and a crooked manager that leads to a rousing finale where the good guys defeat the bad guys and Oakie gets the girl (Marian Nixon).

This film is partly a historical record of MSG and the sports world during the early 1930s and it's a lot of fun seeing guys like Mike Donlin, Stanislaus Zbyszko, Tom Sharkey, Tommy Ryan, Tod Sloan and JACK JOHNSON as themselves. Also seen in a cameo is sports writer Damon Runyon as himself in one of his very few appearances on film.

The other fun part is watching actors like Oakie, Collier, and Hymer interacting so naturally with one another that you could believe these three characters have a solid familial bond. One of the best scenes is when Eddie and Brassie decide to break with Doc so Doc can have his dream job as matchmaker of the Garden. Warren Hymer is particularly good in this scene when he makes the difficult decision to follow Oakie's lead by walking out on their manager.

It's a real shame that this film hasn't been seen on television since the mid-1960s. Universal controls the Paramount pre-1949 film library and in this digital age should make more of their films, like this one, accessible to classic film fans.

Robert Armstrong is a recently paroled masseuse who is employed by stock market tycoon John Dudley Masterson (Frank Morgan) after he assists Masterson and his alcoholic daughter Doris (Constance Cummings) following a car accident. Fingers soon makes his own fortune from listening in on Masterson's business dealings with other stock market big wigs.

I must correct another reviewer's error in that Warren Hymer is *not* the character who falls in love with Masterson's daughter Doris. Frank Albertson as Fingers's kid brother "Babe" is the one who falls in love with Doris, creating a rift between his brother and a rift between the daughter and her father. Warren Hymer plays Fingers's ex-con pal "Kid" McGurn who fails in his return to the ring after being released from prison. Armstrong's frequent co-star and real life pal James Gleason is also along for the ride as Fingers's kleptomaniac pal Ratsy.

When Fingers's brother begins a romantic relationship with Doris, Masterson lets Fingers listen in on a fake stock tip so Fingers will invest and lose all of his money, which does happen. Newspaper reporter Albert Griswold (Irving Pichel in one of his few "good guy" roles!) attempts to get Fingers to testify before a Senate committee to bring down the corrupt businessmen. But not before Masterson hires gangster Carter Moore (Sidney Toler) to prevent Fingers from testifying.

This film used to be a staple of repeated late night movie airings from the early 1960s to the late 1970s and has unfortunately disappeared from television screens and so far hasn't been made available on any retail home media. This film's theme was very timely for the early 1930s but in today's climate of business and government corruption that often goes unpunished, this one could use a rediscovery.

***SPOILERS***

This version of "East is West" is a sound remake of a silent film starring Constance Talmadge and Warner Oland from 1922. That version was in turn adapted from the hit Broadway stage play of 1918-1920 by John B. Hymer and Samuel Shipman which starred Fay Bainter as Ming Toy.

Lupe Velez plays the spirited Ming Toy with all the energy and humor she is best known and is very entertaining. She likes to impersonate the American women she sees: chewing bubble gum and stretching it out, "jazz dancing" and innocently flirting with men who pass by and throwing them a flower from her hair which effectively offends an uptight local religious figure played by Charles Middleton.

Edward G. Robinson is comical villain Charlie Yong, shortly before EGR would become "Little Caesar" at Warner Bros. Charlie Yong is a "fifty-fifty" businessman who keeps three concubines in his home but has grown tired of them; he sees Ming Toy dancing a shimmy and wants to add her to his harem. EGR is definitely a villain but a comedic one. He continually refers to himself in the third person and always offers a cigarette.

Lew Ayres is Ming Toy's American love interest Billy Benson. He's pleasing to the eye and very good and kind but still somehow bland in his portrayal. He makes it clear that he truly loves Ming Toy, the fact that she is Chinese doesn't matter to him, even if it *really* matters to his family and friends. But wait...

Yes, there is a deus ex machina at the very end, almost tacked on as if White America could breathe a sigh of relief that miscegenation (still illegal in most states) would not occur. However, the authors of the play wanted their cake and to eat it too. It's made clear that even if Ming Toy really is white and therefore negates all the worry of miscegenation, the radically progressive message of "Love is Love" and "We're All the Same" is still there.

Also of note, E. Alyn Warren reprises his role from the 1922 version as Ming Toy's savior and guardian and Edgar Norton is very funny as the Benson family butler, who becomes a foil for Ming Toy's antics.

Modern day hyper-political correctness will most likely prevent Universal from ever releasing this on any home video format but hopefully it will be made available eventually so viewers can make up their own minds. The copy I watched was in very poor shape but I'm happy I was able to see it at all.