Bobby Connolly | A Trip Thru a Hollywood Studio | Ready, Willing and Able | Expensive Husbands
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Bobby Connolly was both a choreographer and a director. This article will examine films to which he contributed in either role.
A Trip Thru a Hollywood Studio (1934) is a short, roughly twenty minute film that takes us backstage at the Warner Brothers lot. It was written by Joe Traub, photographed by Arthur L. Todd, and directed by Ralph Staub. Both Busby Berkeley and Bobby Connolly make brief, separate cameo appearances, shown rehearsing their troops of chorines. Bobby Connolly's appearance is especially nice. He is in the background, while the piano player is in the foreground. Along the left side of the screen are the dancing chorus girls, all lined up in a row. Eventually the chorines one by one move to the foreground, make a sharp right turn, and parade directly across the screen. Each gets a close-up in the camera as they pass by. It is a very nice bit of business. Connolly loved to move his characters along elaborate paths. His most famous musical number today is "Follow the Yellow Brick Road" from The Wizard of Oz (1939). The right turn also recalls the many rectilinear paths in the set for his mystery film, The Patient in Room 18 (1938). The number shows a commendable modesty. Connolly stays in the background, while each chorus girl gets the publicity of the close-up, something that would thrill her friends, as well as possibly boost her career with any casting directors who might be in the audience. Connolly typically treated his choruses as groups of individuals. Many get brief close-ups during his numbers, singing a line or two of a song, or having a little bit of business. He did not think of his chorus as just an abstract unit.
Ready, Willing and Able (1937) is a musical directed by Ray Enright, with choreography by Connolly.
The opening number is sung and danced by his two heroes, played by Lee Dixon and Ross Alexander. They are clad in suits and ties above the waist, but just in their underwear below - their pants are in hock at the tailor's! This recalls the opening of The Patient in Room 18 (1938), with Patrick Knowles sleep walking through the city streets in his robe and pajamas, while everyone around him is fully dressed. Both scenes serve as introductions to Connolly's heroes.
The big finale is set to the film's best, and best remembered song, "Too Marvelous for Words". It is sung and danced in part on a giant typewriter, a figure of style that has never been forgotten. Federico Fellini, no less, recreated this scene in his Intervista (1987). It shows Connolly's feel for the fantastic, something that will return in The Wizard of Oz. Before the typewriter, we see a scene set in a musical comedy version of a business office. Such musical transforms of the business world will also show up in "The Merry Old Land of Oz".
Expensive Husbands (1937) is another movie about wealthy American heiresses who buy European royalty as husbands. Bobby Connolly here gets a chance to direct what is mainly a non-musical film, although it does have a few numbers. It was done by the same director-star-cinematographer-costume designer team as The Patient in Room 18 (1938), both being Warner Brother's programmers. Despite this, it is hard to see a lot of stylistic similarities between the two pictures. Admittedly they are in completely different genres, with Expensive Husbands being a mixture of soap opera with mildly screwball comedy, while The Patient in Room 18 is a mystery thriller. Another difference: The Patient in Room 18 was co-directed by Connolly with mystery film specialist Crane Wilbur. It is discussed in detail in the article on Crane Wilbur.
Both films contain women who are either in a position of money, or power or both. In both works, the women are pursued by a lot of attractive young men. Two or more rival males are sometimes pursuing the same woman. The men in the films tend to be very well dressed, in good suits or uniforms. The men are quite flirtatious, often with a comic, let's have fun attitude towards romance. They are often trying to jolly along a much more serious woman. It is hard to tell if these characters represent a personal vision of the director, or whether they are escapist fare for woman members of the audience to fantasize about being rich, powerful and pursued by many suitors. Perhaps a little of both.
This is one of the earliest screen appearances of Allyn Joslyn, who entered movies from the stage in that year. Here he is playing a regular guy character, a "typical" rough and ready American with whom most people could identify in the 1930's. He is the only male in the picture who works at a regular job for a living, being a Hollywood press agent. His character forms a contrast with the heroine's other suitors, a European Prince and a Society polo player. Joslyn's character is given the regular guy name of Joe Craig, and he has the average guy mannerism of munching peanuts wherever he goes, a popular Depression era treat - Wayne Morris did the same thing in George Amy's Gambling on the High Seas (1940), another low budget Warners movie. Joslyn is also the only character in the movie who regularly wears suits, indicative of his working for a living. He can be in a room full of Hollywood types wearing sports clothes, and he will be in his suit. After all, he is working hard at such gatherings, trying to generate publicity for his client, while the other people are relaxing and partying. Howard Shoup's suits here are terrific. They would still look good today. It is odd to see Joslyn in such a role. He later often played upper class snot-boxes, as in Ernst Lubitsch's Heaven Can Wait (1943). He even looks completely different here. He does a good job with his regular Joe role, and one wonders what he might have done playing a lead in a film noir. His performance here is the most interesting one in the film.
This was also the debut year for Gordon Oliver, who plays the polo player. Oliver made an astonishing 13 films during 1937, illustrating how the old studio system kept its players working. Both this film and The Patient in Room 18 are loaded with young male, movie star wannabes. Oddly enough, "established star" Patric Knowles here is younger than either of these newcomers, being only 26. He had only been in movies four years himself at this time, mainly in Britain.
Howard Shoup also has a Balkan style military dress uniform for the Prince played by Patric Knowles. He wears it to his wedding. This uniform is utterly cool, and shows how good looking the traditional Lancer type officer's uniforms were. Knowles had had his biggest hit in The Charge of the Light Brigade (1935), in which he played Errol Flynn's kid brother, and in which both men had worn such elaborate uniforms. So this film is a good excuse to get him back in such a costume.
Shoup follows a certain iconography with the men's clothes. Joslyn's suits get darker and more authoritative as the film progresses. He starts out at the racetrack in a very light colored suit, almost white. When next seen, he is a medium color suit that is a little more official looking. Finally, he is in a dark pinstripe suit for much of his final scenes. This is extremely business like. During the scene with the reporters, he is wearing the darkest colored suit of any of the men, giving him the status of an authority figure within the scene.
Patric Knowles' clothes also show a progression. He too becomes more and more respectable throughout the film. The early scenes of the film have him dressed as a servant, in a waiter's costume. When first appearing in his military uniform, his uniform is mainly covered by an authentic but unappealing military cloak that makes him look slightly absurd. Next, on his wedding night, we see him in his spectacular officer's uniform. This makes him look duded up to the max. But it is also not a costume that represents real American manhood. Next, Shoup has him in formal wear, first a formal daytime morning coat, then white tie and tails. The morning clothes too look absurd, but the white tie and tails are excellent. For the first time, Knowles is wearing clothes that are worn in real life by American men. White tie and tails are not common, mainly being used by the well to do, but they are still authentic garb of real men. Finally, at the end of the picture, Knowles is in good suits, like Joslyn's. He is dressed like an American businessman. These clothes suggest that he is suitable marriage material.
The order of Knowles' clothes is slightly different from that employed by countless Hollywood musicals. Usually musical characters start out in awful clothes that suggest dire poverty. By the mid-point of the picture, they are in good business suits. Then, as their success and prosperity increases, they are in tuxedos. Finally, at the end of the picture and the height of their success, they are in white tie and tails. This order suggests that the characters are more and more prosperous. It also suggests that they are more and more involved with romance, the evening wear at the end suggesting romantic passion. In Expensive Husbands, Shoup has reversed the progression slightly to have the hero move into suits at the end. This is because it emphasizes the hero's conversion from a gigolo to a proper hard working, successful American male.