The Eagle and the Hawk, and The Woman Accused

The Stanford Theatre has been running the complete films of Cary Grant starting earlier this month. This includes his numerous 1930s films, almost none of which I've seen (and I'd be willing to bet that almost none what you heard of, up to 1937's Topper). Many of these films are not readily available; the Theatre has gotten nitrate prints from the UCLA film archive to show them.

I've already missed several of the early ones (in which Grant wasn't a major character, largely), but tonight Debbi and Bill and I checked in for two. First was The Eagle and the Hawk (1933). Taking place during the latter days of World War I (though with a few lines of propaganda about "saving civilization" that today sound more appropriate to World War II), Fredric March plays Jerry Young, a young American aviator serving in France to take observers around to photograph sights behind enemy lines. He's an excellent pilot, but happens to have lost five observers/gunners in a mere two months since he arrived.

His next gunner is Henry Crocker (Grant), who resents Young for having recommended against Crocker becoming a pilot, though he's an excellent gunner. The two don't like each other, but they're a stellar team. But Young is tortured by the men (and boys) he's forced to shoot down, and sinks farther and farther into depression, despite being lauded as a hero by all around him.

A short film - only 68 minutes - Eagle is really just a slight short story. None of the actors unusually distinguishes himself (Grant's performance seems rather wooden), and at this late date the effects sometimes seem impressive for the era, and other times seem comically woeful. The film has a touching - if downbeat - end, but it's by no means a great work.

It does, however, beat the heck out of The Woman Accused (1933), another short film based on a story written for a magazine by ten of "the world's greatest authors" of the time, only one of whom - Zane Grey - I've even heard of. Glenda O'Brien (Nancy Carroll) is about to leave on a three-day cruise with her beau, Jeffrey Baxter (Grant), when her ex-lover, Leo Young (Louis Calhern) shows up wanting to win her back. Trapping her in his apartment, he threatens to call a thug he knows, Maxie (Jack La Rue), to kill Baxter, and Glenda hits Leo over the head with a statue, killing him.

With the help of her maid, Martha (Norma Mitchell), Glenda's deed is covered up and she leaves for her cruise. But Leo's business partner, Stephen Bessemer (John Halliday) suspects that she's behind it, and persuades the police to deliver him to the cruise ship to try to trick her. Baxter, of course, suspects none of this.

The film features numerous implausible sequences, such as Bessemer asking the ship's crew to fake a received telegram to him (which they comply with), and staging a mock trial of Glenda during a party. It also has several touches that place it firmly during the Depression era: When the ship leaves US waters, the bar opens and everyone is jubilant about this. And Bessemer at one point makes a joke about bankers not having any money.

The acting is pretty good, though. Grant hams it up with the best of them, playing the affable but ignorant fiance perfectly. La Rue is completely over the top as Maxie, and Mitchell is suitably concerned, dour and humorless as Martha. O'Brien is merely adequate; her exaggerated movements suggest to me that she trained for silent films. Halliday as Bessemer is sometimes fine, other times ridiculous, though that might have been the direction.

The Woman Accused is a complete fluff piece. Not really worth going out of your way to see, but kind of amusing, in its way.