Mae West: The Glamour Collection [The Franchise Collection] – DVD

NIGHT AFTER NIGHT (1932)
*½/**** Image A- Sound A-
starring George Raft, Constance Cummings, Wynne Gibson, Mae West
screenplay by Vincent Lawrence and Kathryn Scola, based on the novel Single Night by Louis Bromfield
directed by Archie Mayo

I'M NO ANGEL (1933)
***½/**** Image A Sound A-
starring Mae West, Cary Grant, Gregory Ratoff, Edward Arnold
screenplay by Mae West
directed by Wesley Ruggles

GOIN' TO TOWN (1935)
***/**** Image B+ Sound A-
starring Mae West, Paul Cavanagh, Gilbert Emery, Marjorie Gateson
screenplay by Mae West
directed by Alexander Hall

GO WEST YOUNG MAN (1936)
*½/**** Image A- Sound B+
starring Mae West, Warren William, Randolph Scott, Alice Brady
screenplay by Mae West, based on the play Personal Appearance by Lawrence Riley
directed by Henry Hathaway

MY LITTLE CHICKADEE (1940)
**½/**** Image B+ Sound B
starring Mae West, W.C. Fields, Joseph Calleia, Dick Foran
screenplay by Mae West & W.C. Fields
directed by Edward F. Cline

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Flower Belle Lee reads some words off a school blackboard: "'I am a good boy. I am a good man. I am a good girl.' What is this, propaganda?" Thusly does My Little Chickadee sum up the appeal of its female star, Mae West, who invited all of us (but mostly women) to reject the nice behaviour we learned in school and chart a course based on glory and gratification. You can keep your Bette Davises and your Katharine Hepburns, so often punished for their lively behaviour or pushed into the arms of some man; rest assured that men found their way into West's arms and not the other way around. Certain proto-feminist elements are inescapable: long before Laura Mulvey was a gleam in her mother's eye, West would dare to return the male gaze and demand a sexual appetite equal to, if not exceeding, the men bound to use it against her in a double standard. There was only one standard in West's world, and she set it.

Looking over the five films in Universal's new "Mae West: The Glamour Collection", one can also say it was not merely a matter of her spectacular femininity. Though West was brazen in her deployment of absurdly-designed Travis Banton gowns, she did more than paint a vulgar picture: her words were sharp and pointed and used with an intelligence that mirrored the craftiness of her characters. She may have been low-bred and uncouth, but she was far from stupid, and her wit and cunning are what made her such an extraordinary female figure–at least before the Production Code started to hem her in and water her down. A classic West heroine goes about her business without limits: she has room to be creative, spinning the fantasy life she's always wanted from a bad situation. If a few hearts get broken or some diamond jewellery changes hands in bad faith, those are the rules of the game–the price of West's charms.

West made the most sense in the early-sound days, when things were somewhat stagy. At that point, she could drape herself in some outrageous bit of satin and fur, stand centre stage, and announce her desires with the expectation that they would be satisfied. She was a commanding presence, needing everything else to fall in place around her, yet once aesthetics changed to fill the frame with bric-a-brac, she was too crowded to have an impact. But in the early Thirties, she was big enough to command and receive the total attention her oversized persona craved. And those of us who can only live through her silently cheer the vicarious thrill to be had from a deliciously self-consumed woman having it all on her own terms.

Needless to say, she caught the disapproving attention of bluestockings the world over. Andrew Sarris pointed out that even pre-Code West movies couldn't allow the kind of smutty double-entendres that were part of her stage act, though that didn't stop them from raising eyebrows. No less an American icon than Kate Smith refused to be in the same room with "that immoral woman," which should give a relative sense of her esteem in the eyes of the pillars of the community for which she admittedly had no respect. And, indeed, they got the last laugh, with Joseph Breen basically engineering the downfall of a radical individual who would never have said die if she weren't being fed her lines from hypocrites with craven instincts. When so many other films of the early-sound period require adjustment to appreciate, Mae West's dialogue still stacks up to anything written today and could teach current scribes a thing or three about how to sling a one-liner.

As with many of Universal's "franchise" collections devoted to a star or stars' legacy, the odd film shows up that doesn't canonically belong. For example, Night after Night is more accurately a George Raft movie–and not a very good one at that. One of those creaky "classics" where you can't tell if it's a comedy or a drama, it features Raft as an upwardly-mobile gangster named Joe Anton who's got the cash but craves that elusive "X" factor: class. Between futile lessons, he falls for Miss Jerry Healy (Constance Cummings), the proverbial sophisticated dame who comes to his speakeasy for the reason that it used to be her childhood home. Tedious intrigue ignites when financially-fallen Jerry seems to want to marry someone else for money, despite being excited by Joe's dangerous life. It's all about accepting who you are, freeing the gangster within, that sort of thing; and it's about writing by rote and nearly completely failing to convince with your own shop-worn moral.

While the rest of the stiffs are spitting out wooden dialogue and going through the motions of a soap opera, West, in her screen debut, shows up in a swirl of mink and sequins to pummel the rest of the cast. She alone encapsulates what the script is slowly trudging towards: "I'm genuine Kentucky blue-blood," she says, "we'll change the colour if you don't like it." Exactly. I'm tempted to think that West had a hand in her own dialogue, because it strikes such a sharp contrast to the thin, witless soup foisted on everyone else: while Raft and co. chew on tired expressions of their world-weariness, West is punchy, upbeat and ready for anything–even rehabilitating Joe's tutor as a hostess in one of her chain of beauty parlours. She's mistaken for a prostitute at least once and has the bawdy sensibility to justify the attention.

A handful of scenes mean nothing, however, when you can catch West in all her pre-Code glory at feature-length. I'm No Angel sees her graduate from fairly saucy to downright predatory: her circus-performing goddess Tira soaks every man in her path for everything he's worth. Spurred by a swami's fortune that she will marry a rich man with brown eyes, she climbs the ladder from carny dancer to death-defying lion-tamer in order to raise her capital and help land millionaire Jack Clayton (Cary Grant). Tira stops at nothing to achieve her goal, naturally collecting a few diamonds and furs along the way, and her total devotion to a) herself and b) her personal gratification add up to a jaw-dropping film. When was the last time you saw a woman in a movie this sure of herself, this self-aware, and this rewarded by the final frames? In I'm No Angel, West lays waste to the double standards that have plagued representation of women–then and now.

One could always ask for more: there's her disturbing use of a fleet of black maids to giggle and gag at her every remark, as well as the unpleasant incursion of a lovably shifty Jewish stereotype named Pinkowitz (Gregory Ratoff) to act as her lawyer. That West's desire to be the centre of attention needs such racial subordinates casts her will-to-power in a much darker light, throwing a pall over most of their scenes. Yet her singular refusal to doubt, feel guilt, or act deferentially keeps her from falling out of favour: she's a powerhouse blasé, someone capable of bulldozing through men and other obstacles with a wink and a nudge. This is a movie loaded with signature lines, including the famous "When I'm good, I'm very good. But when I'm bad, I'm better." It's a testament to her skills as a writer that less famous remarks blaze with a similar arrogance and commitment to personal pleasure.

Alas, the Production Code would seriously curtail what West could do along these brazenly sexual lines. 1935's Goin' to Town is therefore less obsessed with her sexual shenanigans and more interested in crossing social boundaries, asking that she raise hell in the seat of the rich and powerful. First she amasses a vast cattle-and-oil estate from her rustler fiancé Buck Gonzales, then she falls for the manager of her oil millions, Edward Carrington (Paul Cavanagh). But Carrington is slightly out of her reach due to his old money and good breeding–meaning she'll have to prove that her lack of couth is worth as much another woman's refinement. She angles to win a ritzy horse race, humiliates a few stuffed shirts, and, once her chances for Carrington look hopeless, marries into position with a bankrupt blue-blood so that she might flout society's rules. At no time does she think she's not good enough–her mission is to raise high society to her lofty level of funk.

This isn't to say that her man-eating ways are over: Gonzalez is clearly wrapped around her finger when he signs his property over to her, and his untimely death registers about as much as a stubbed toe would. Further, she has no compunction about using a helpless, gambling-addict rube as a stepping-stone to her project of humiliating the undeserving rich. It must be a first for a movie to off two husbands in the pursuit of a third, but Mae West is just the sort of pioneer to make it work. The film sports fewer verbal fireworks than I'm No Angel, but this is compensated for by West's brazenness in demanding her place at the table of the rich and pretentious. Just as Angel refused to apologize for her unladylike sexual appetites, Goin' to Town supports her insistence that an ex-showgirl has as much right to glory as someone from "the better families."

The more entrenched the Hays Office became, the more they had to mess with her act. Go West Young Man destroys the winning formula of her previous three pictures by surrounding her with stuff. West plays Mavis Arden, a famed movie queen loved unrequitedly by her press agent Morgan (Warren William) and therefore protected from men well beyond what her 5-year no-romance contract states. In an attempt to keep her from her politician paramour, Francis X. Harrigan (Lyle Talbot), Morgan contrives her car to break down on the road–stranding both of them in a small-town rooming house where the locals are a little too thrilled to have a movie star in attendance. She's annoyed but can't show it–and goes a little over the line by stealing hunky mechanic Bud Norton (Randolph Scott) from a local girl. Of course, it's a learning experience for all involved.

This is too much: who wants to see Mae West laid low and humbled? The whole point of her persona is that she's implacable, an unstoppable crosser of boundaries–seeing her placated and forced to colour inside the lines is too much to bear. Beyond this is a larger aesthetic problem: the nattering nabobs of the town in which West finds herself upstage her. Where the star at her best was the centre of attention (and granted a wide berth by the rest of the cast), this wet noodle has her competing with the intrigues of the family-owned rooming house, along with the tricks Morgan inflicts as he tries to kibosh her interludes with press and public attention. The distractions from the main event are frustrating–and frustration is something we should never have to associate with Mae West.

West's legend recovers with My Little Chickadee. For one thing, our lady isn't asked to bow and scrape to the little people: this western parody has her once again romancing for its own sake and committing innuendos like they're going out of style. Her Flower Belle Lee is caught spooning with the notorious Masked Bandit and sent away until she's married and decent; she achieves at least one of these goals on the train out of town by wedding Cuthbert J. Twillie (W.C. Fields), then returns home in glory. Bad things begin to happen as soon as a) Cuthbert is named Sheriff by Jeff Badger (Joseph Calleia), who needs an ineffectual lawman to make the town pliable for vice; b) Flower Belle falls for both Badger and Wayne Carter (Dick Foran), the local newspaperman and crusader for civility; and c) Cuthbert repeatedly attempts to consummate his marriage after Flower Belle has figured out that he's penniless.

My Little Chickadee is a bit better than its reputation would suggest: calls of "past their prime" to the contrary, West and Fields seem fine to me, and their dialogue crackles despite the plot's failure to nourish it. And the film doesn't ask us to do anything except enjoy these faded stars being licentious and lascivious, although the male lead has more interest in alcohol than in being part of the story. If anything, the film is a Fields vehicle in the guise of a West one. Fields is the man at the centre of the hurricane, someone who has things done unto him (and does things to himself) that are disastrous and humiliating; West is powerless to do anything besides look indulgently as the man destroys himself and his dignity. My Little Chickadee is half over before she gets anything close to a decent scene, though she makes up for lost time by leaving a goat in her marriage bed and having a risqué session with some teenage boys when she's asked to take over for an exasperated teacher. It's not a great movie, but a few moments shine.

THE DVD
All five films in this "Glamour Collection" are presented in their original 1.33:1 fullscreen aspect ratios with Dolby 2.0 mono audio. Night After Night has a remarkably crisp image–fleeting bits of print damage are rare enough that you won't notice or care. Though the sound is a bit tinny, it, too, is remarkably free of defect. I'm No Angel fares better: the transfer is just as sharp as its mate on the first side of this two-disc set, again with only the barest hints of print damage shunted aside by an extremely clear transfer. The soundtrack is never tinny.

Goin' to Town does less well in the damage department: some scenes have more pronounced scratches and flecking that aren't as easy to shake off. Still, the transfer is adequately bright and detailed. The sound is marginally superior to the image. Go West Young Man looks as nice as but sounds worse than any of the others; background hiss bedevils the accompanying audio. The undisputed champion of the collection, My Little Chickadee sports a crystalline presentation with superb fine detail and subtle register of the infinitude of greys. Sound is equally good, a balanced rendering that's potent without sacrificing sharpness. Trailers for Night After Night, I'm No Angel, and My Little Chickadee round out the set.

• Night After Night
  84 minutes; NR; 1.33:1; English DD 2.0 (Mono); English SDH, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-18; Region One; Universal
• I'm No Angel
  88 minutes; NR; 1.33:1; English DD 2.0 (Mono); English SDH, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-18; Region One; Universal
• Goin' to Town
  81 minutes; NR; 1.33:1; English DD 2.0 (Mono); English SDH, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-18; Region One; Universal
• Go West Young Man
  82 minutes; NR; 1.33:1; English DD 2.0 (Mono); English SDH, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-18; Region One; Universal
• My Little Chickadee
  83 minutes; NR; 1.33:1; English DD 2.0 (Mono); English SDH, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Universal