This Month

Tony Milburn (Robert Young) and his wife Carlotta (Constance Cummings) are about to celebrate their 6-month anniversary, so their friends decide to have a progressive drinking party in their honor. The group - young, attractive and perfect representations of the "idle rich," head out for a long night of drinking and merry-making (but mostly drinking), into the wee hours. The next day, the Milburns discover that the oldest of the party, Vic Huling (George Meeker), is dead - shot through the heart. Vic is laid out on his bed, but his wife Bette (Sally Eilers) is not even in the house. Tony calls in his friend, district attorney Danny Harrison (Edward Arnold), who can't piece much of a story together because all parties involved were drinking heavily and can't remember anything after a certain point. Complications, suspects, and red herrings mount to such a degree that a hypnotist (Gustav von Seyffertitz) is brought in, with the faint hope that perhaps he can sort things out. This witty whodunit was directed by James Whale for Universal, his first film following Bride of Frankenstein (1935). It features wonderful Art Deco sets, rapid editing, and subject matter that put an early challenge to the recently upgraded Hollywood censorship group, the Production Code Administration.

Bride of Frankenstein is remembered as director James Whale's masterpiece today, and it was far from a cult movie in its own day; it was so well received, both critically and financially, that the structure of production at Universal Studios changed as a result. Producer Carl Laemmle, Jr. (son of the studio head) replaced production chief Stanley Bergerman and instituted a "unit system" at the studio. Copying what had been set up at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, this new system gave power to separate producers to turn out a slate of pictures during a given year. For his own slate for 1935, Laemmle included a big-budget project for James Whale, an adaptation of the well-loved Broadway musical Show Boat.

Unfortunately, there were to be delays in starting production of Whale's million-dollar musical. Irene Dunne was set to star, but she was already committed to another Universal project, John M. Stahl's Magnificent Obsession (1935). To fill in the time gap, "Junior" (as the younger Laemmle was known around the studio) pressured Whale to direct a sequel to the studio's first foray into horror, Dracula (1931). Whale, however, was anxious to break away from the horror genre that he defined in the early sound era. (Before his current hit, he had directed the original Frankenstein (1931), as well as The Old Dark House (1932) and The Invisible Man (1933)).

Whale cast about for another project that he would find more engaging than Dracula's Daughter. A friend suggested a newly published book, The Hangover Murders, a comedy-mystery in the style of Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man. As James Curtis writes in his biography, James Whale: A New World of Gods and Monsters, "The story satisfied Whale's needs on several levels. As with Bride of Frankenstein, it called for stylistic fireworks. It would play almost exclusively on interior sets, meaning it could be shot quickly and inexpensively. Lastly, it would play primarily as a comedy - as had The Thin Man - and Whale had never brought off a comedy with complete success." Laemmle had Whale promise that he would still direct Dracula's Daughter, and agreed to purchase the rights to The Hangover Murders for $5,000.

From the start, there were problems with the material. When the Production Code Administration reviewed the script, they strongly warned that state and local censorship boards were bound to cut some of the scenes of drinking and resulting inebriation, and that the occasionally bawdy dialogue (Carlotta, upon hearing that the Marines have landed: "There'll be atrocities - I want to be first!") would be similarly threatened. The project's title proved problematic as well. Early on, Laemmle assured the Breen Office that he would eliminate the word "hangover," so for a time during production the film was to be called Wild Night. Following a survey of exhibitors, the title became Remember Last Night?

Laemmle gave Whale a budget of $385,000, and Robert Young was borrowed from MGM for the male lead role. Whale filmed the script pretty much as written, in effect ignoring the warnings of the Breen Office; revelers drank champagne from huge bowls with straws, pranced in blackface masks, jumped in cars while obviously drunk, freely broke glass objects both large and small, and even took potshots at passing ships with a cannon off the balcony of their Long Island mansion! Filming ended on September 14, 1935; Whale went nine days over schedule and $75,000 over budget. The finished film was shown to the PCA, and Breen still felt that the emphasis on drinking should be downplayed in cutting. Whale only made minor cuts for pacing, and the film went out basically as he intended, opening on November 4. Remember Last Night? fared poorly at the box office. Critical reaction was mixed; while many reviewers felt the film to be in bad taste, some appreciated the wild tone that Whale brought to the proceedings. The Hollywood Reporter was delighted, saying that Whale "let himself go in a riotous directorial splurge," resulting in "a murder mystery to kid all murder mysteries."

Whale followed up Remember Last Night? with his elaborate adaptation of Show Boat (1936), but he escaped directing Dracula's Daughter (1936) or any other horror film in his career. He got the last laugh in Remember Last Night?, in fact, as Curtis points out: "Whale inserted some lines mocking the horror pictures from which he was now trying to distance himself. During a flashback, he showed Carlotta bouncing boisterously on a diving board, flapping a beach towel and hollering, 'Look! I'm Dracula's Daughter!' Later, when she and Tony investigate a musty underground hideout, she grouses, 'I feel like the Bride of Frankenstein!'"

While it was mostly forgotten for decades, Remember Last Night? has seen a revival of interest in recent years, corresponding with the renewed attention paid to director Whale. In Time Out Film Guide Tom Milne called the film a "delightful screwball parody of the detective thriller," and said that "Whale's use of elisions, non-sequiturs and unexpected stresses creates what is virtually a blueprint for the style developed by Robert Altman in and after M*A*S*H (1970)."

Producer: Carl Laemmle, Jr.
Director: James Whale
Screenplay: Harry Clork, Louise Henry, Adam Hobhouse (novel), Doris Malloy, Dan Totheroh
Cinematography: Joseph Valentine
Film Editing: Ted Kent
Art Direction: Charles D. Hall
Music: Franz Waxman
Cast: Edward Arnold (Danny Harrison), Robert Young (Tony Milburn), Constance Cummings (Carlotta Milburn), Sally Eilers (Bette Huling), Reginald Denny (Jake Whitridge), Monroe Owsley (Billy Arliss), George Meeker (Vic Huling), Arthur Treacher (Clarence Phelps), Gustav von Seyffertitz (Prof. Karl Herman Eckhardt Jones).
BW-81m.

by John M. Miller