Leonard Maltin, one of the nation’s most respected film critic/historians and a valued associate and guest host at TCM, offers a look at five films that have been unfairly neglected or forgotten. Justly celebrated for the frequently updated Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide and many other film books, our friend also authored a 2010 tome called Leonard Maltin’s 151 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen. The neglected classics part of Maltin’s night includes:
Blind Adventure (1933), an obscure RKO pre-Code mystery-comedy from Ernest B. Schoedsack, the co-director and co-producer of King Kong (also 1933). Robert Armstrong (Carl Denham in King Kong) plays an American in London who becomes lost in a fog and wanders into a house where he finds a dead body. This leads to the discovery of a spy ring that he attempts to crack with the aid of a cockney burglar (Roland Young) and a fetching young woman (Helen Mack). Also in the cast are Ralph Bellamy and Laura Hope Crews. Later in 1933 Armstrong and Mack would reteam for Schoedsack’s Son of Kong.
Penthouse (1933) is another neglected pre-Code gem, this one from MGM and starring Warner Baxter as a high-powered lawyer investigating a murder case, with Myrna Loy as a call girl named Gertie who helps him with the case and gets under his skin. W.S. Van Dyke (soon to begin helming the Thin Man films) directs a cast that also includes Charles Butterworth and Mae Clarke. The New York Times wrote that the film “is by no means lacking in a certain brand of excitement. It is a picture which tells a somewhat incredible yarn but, at the same time, which does not pretend to be concerned about teaching any moral.”
The Gilded Lily (1935) is a romantic comedy from Paramount starring Claudette Colbert and released one year after her Oscar-winning triumph in It Happened One Night (1934). In this one, Colbert plays a stenographer who parlays a scandal involving a British Earl (Ray Milland) into fame as a cafe entertainer. Fred MacMurray, in the first of seven screen teamings with Colbert, plays the reporter she truly loves. Wesley Ruggles directed the film, described by The New York Times as “a fresh and engaging screen comedy” that succeeds “in recapturing the warmth and humor of average Americans without becoming average itself.”
The Mob (1951) is a film noir crime drama starring Broderick Crawford, who was also fresh from Oscar glory (Best Actor in 1949’s All the King’s Men). In a story that seems to foreshadow 1954’s On the Waterfront, Crawford plays a tough police detective who goes undercover as a longshoreman to break up a mob. Robert Parrish directs a cast that also includes Richard Kiley, Ernest Borgnine and Neville Brand. A reviewer for TimeOut.com praises “the fast, flexible direction, excellent camerawork (Joseph Walker) and a full house of vivid performances” that create “an unusually tense and enjoyable genre piece.”
Come Next Spring (1956), a heartwarming romantic drama from Republic Pictures, offers Ann Sheridan in one of the best (although most neglected) performances of her later career. She plays a housewife in 1920s Arkansas who has raised a young son and a mute daughter by herself after being abandoned by an alcoholic husband (Steve Cochran). When he returns, she faces a decision about allowing him back into her life. Cochran produced the film through his own company, and Robert G. Springsteen directs a cast that also includes Walter Brennan, Edgar Buchanan and Sonny Tufts. A review in The Hollywood Reporter called the low-budget Come Next Spring “a rural Marty” and described it as “the only film concerning Arkansas in the history of the movies that has preserved the native humor of the state” without resorting to “extravagant hillbilly caricatures.”
