Cinevent Notes: WIDE OPEN (1930)

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Richard M Roberts
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Cinevent Notes: WIDE OPEN (1930)

Postby Richard M Roberts » Sun Apr 26, 2015 3:57 pm

WIDE OPEN

It really is amazing how many Edward Everett Horton starring vehicles there were, for a performer known to have brightened so many films as a supporting character. He had been a popular stage farceur since the teens, and had a successful starring career in the Silent Era in both features and shorts, and his stage training looked good to the Studios retooling for talkies and wanting actors with proven vocal track records.

WIDE OPEN is a fun early talkie Horton starrer made for Warner Brothers. He had made a hit for them starring in their second all-talkie, THE TERROR in 1928, and continued as a comic star for them for several years, Here he plays timid bachelor Simon Haldane, bookkeeper for the Faulkner Phonograph Company who keeps the place in business, but is never really appreciated by his employers. However, women seem to be falling all over themselves to try to get him to the altar, from stenographer Louise Fazenda, to the rather fetching Patsy Ruth Miller, who winds up in his home one night and refuses to leave!

Okay, movies are definitely fantasy land, and in real life, from what we know of Horton’s private life tells us any gorgeous women chasing after him, if there were any, would be wasting their time big time, but this seemed to be a favorite plot in Edward Everett Horton starring features, take a look at Pathe’s LONELY WIVES (1931) sometime, where he’s juggling not only Patsy Ruth Miller (who was sort of his regular co-star at this time, they made five features together in the 1929-31 period) , but Laura LaPlante and Esther Ralston as well! Hey, if Michael Jackson could sire children, anything is possible in Hollywood!

WIDE OPEN is indeed a lot of fun though, Horton is his usual fussy self, Patsy Ruth Miller is also a delight, for someone best remembered for bringing Quasimodo Chaney water in THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (1923), she’s rather winsome and pre-code naughty here. Louise Fazenda gets to introduce the Hot Dance standard “Nobody Cares if I’m Blue”, and T. Roy Barnes continues to act like he’s looking for Karl LaFong. And old music fans and record collectors (of which this writer is a one) will really find interesting the fact that WIDE OPEN is set in a record company, with a lot of attention paid to the technology of recording and pressing 78’s. The reason for this is most-likely the fact that in 1930, Warner Brothers had purchased the Brunswick Record Company from the Brunswick-Balke-Callender Corporation, mostly to help them manufacture Vitaphone Discs, but for a year or two, Warners found themselves in the record business, something they would find more success with in later years, but in 1930-31, it was interesting how much phonographs and record turned up in Warner Brother Pictures.

The record stuff is merely a sidelight to WIDE OPEN, it’s mainly concerned with laughs and it gets plenty of those. Director Archie Mayo was an old silent comedy hand who had started with Lloyd Hamilton in the early 1920’s, and he keeps things pretty well-paced here for an early talkie. Just suspend your disbelief and regard Edward Everett Horton as a chick magnet and it should be smooth sailing for the films seven reels.


RICHARD M ROBERTS

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