Plot: MGM’s big showcase of musical talent is the main appeal of this film. It’s clunky, but it was filmed literally at the dawn of the sound age. So where else could you see Joan Crawford, Marion Davies, Marie Dressler, Laurel, & Hardy, Buster Keaton, John Gilbert, Norma Shearer, Cliff Edwards, Rose Tyler, Conrad Nagel, Charles King, Polly Moran, Bessie Love, William Haines, Anita Page, Gus Edwards and your master of ceremonies, Jack Benny.

1.37GB | 1h 57m | 640×480 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/4AE475A1F0F47CE/The_Hollywood_Revue_of_1929_(1929)_DVDRip_BBM.avi

Language:English
Subtitles:None

The post Charles Reisner – The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Richard Clarke (Benny), a small town lawyer, is not making enough money to marry Janie Brown (Lane), his fiancée. To improve himself, Richard moves to New York City. Although he does not have any clients, Richard tells Janie that he is doing well. She expects to move to New York and marry him.

His assistant Shufro (Anderson) suggests that he could make some money if he became hard and ruthless. The ultimate test of his meanness is ‘stealing candy from a baby’. He is photographed as he pulls a sucker away from a small boy. The picture is printed in the paper under the caption, “Meanest Man in the World.” He is hired to evict an old woman, Mrs. Frances H. Leggitt (Margaret Seddon), from her apartment and more pictures appear in the paper.

Actually, he has taken Leggitt into his own apartment. Janie visits and, believing what she has read about how “mean” Richard has become, leaves angrily. A misunderstanding about the lady living in his apartment leads to a headline about Richard’s “love nest.” Janie’s father Arthur (Briggs), thinking that his daughter is living with Richard, arrives to protect his daughter. A shotgun marriage follows. Arthur declares that his new son-in-law will return to their small town and become the respectable attorney for the local bank.

The Meanest Man in the World is, for the most part, a pleasant vehicle for Jack Benny which conforms to his established persona. The plot and the comedy develop slowly. The film becomes laugh-out-loud funny about halfway through when “hard-hearted” Benny struggles with a boy over a lollipop and evicts the old lady. The comedy declines after these hilarious scenes, particularly during an unfortunate scene with Benny in blackface, and the film ends abruptly with the forced marriage. (For a high-budget production, intended for a well-advertised and important release, the film is quite short at 57 minutes. The paucity of story content is probably the result of several major script revisions and scene deletions that occurred during filming.) The droll exchanges between Benny and Eddie ‘Rochester’ Anderson would have been familiar to audiences due to the popular The Jack Benny Program radio show, which aired from 1932-55. Priscilla Lane, pretty and appealing, pairs easily with Benny, although the twenty-year age difference is obvious.

Benny had a three film deal with 20th Century Fox, appearing in one film per year. A film based on a 1920 play The Meanest Man in the World was suggested for Benny in early 1942, who approved of the concept. Morrie Ryskind, comedy writer for theater and film, was hired to write the screenplay. Filming was scheduled to start in July 1942, but Benny had objections to the script, which he thought was not funny enough and did not fit his brand of comedy. Production was suspended for fifteen hours because Benny refused to go ahead. Producer William Perlberg and Darryl Zanuck, head of 20th Century Fox, discussed the situation with Benny and agreed to make changes. George Seaton was brought in to revise the script. Several sequences were cut out. Filming resumed under the direction of Lanfield and was completed by early September 1942. In November retakes and more script revisions, including added scenes, were directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Morrie Ryskind wrote some of the new material. On screen, only George Seaton and Allan House are credited with the screenplay; Ryskind does not receive a credit.

Reviews for The Meanest Man in the World were tepid. Variety dismissed the film as “short, careless, and hashed-up with a sudden ending on a shotgun wedding.” The New York Times described the film “as a featherweight comedy” and notes that “Jack Benny and the trusty Rochester…put the piece across by sheer dint of personality.”

1.00GB | 57m 09s | 720×540 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/FA67D52F3ECC813/The_Meanest_Man_in_the_World_-_1943_-_Sidney_Lanfield.mkv
or
https://nitroflare.com/view/88B59B42E86E3DB/The_Meanest_Man_in_the_World_-_1943_-_Sidney_Lanfield.part1.rar
https://nitroflare.com/view/004F4CE6EC97375/The_Meanest_Man_in_the_World_-_1943_-_Sidney_Lanfield.part2.rar

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Sidney Lanfield – The Meanest Man in the World (1943) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis:
The road-show troupe of a top Broadway show go cross-country while taking the audience along on the on-stage scenes as well as what happens and is happening back stage of the production. The spectacular dancing ensembles and colorful costumes and pulchritude on-stage offers a contrasting background to the drabness of the backstage, where joy, sorrow, tragedies, deception, and romance are intertwined.
— Les Adams.

977MB | 1h 25m | 652×489 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/34FC2F8A59F1845/Chasing_Rainbows_(1930).mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Charles Reisner – Chasing Rainbows (1930) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis by Hal Erickson
Though Jack Benny made a cottage industry out of joking about the purported rottenness of his 1945 vehicle Horn Blows at Midnght, the film is in fact a delightful comedy-fantasy-certainly not Benny’s best film, but far from his worst. While dozing off during a radio broadcast, studio musician Athaniel (Benny) dreams he’s a trumpet player in Heaven’s celestial orchestra. At the behest of glamorous angel Elizabeth (Alexis Smith), Athaniel is brought into the lavish chambers of The Chief (Guy Kibbee), who has a job for our hapless hero. It seems that The Front Office, dissatisfied with the state of things on planet Earth (“just a six-day job”), has decided to destroy the tiny globe. Athaniel is to go down to New York City and blow his trumpet at midnight, thereby heralding the end of the world. Unfortunately he botches the job and remains stuck on earth as a “fallen angel” along with previous Heavenly dropouts Osidro (Allyn Joslyn) and and Doremus (John Alexander). Having persuaded The Chief to give Athaniel a second chance, Elizabeth herself comes to Earth to make sure that her sweetheart successfully completes his mission. Alas, the impoverished Athaniel has used his precious trumpet to pay for a meal, thereby setting off a chain reaction of comic complications, culminating with a Harold Lloyd-like climax wherein Athaniel is but one of six people precariously dangling from a skyscraper ledge. Evidence exists that the “dream” framework and slapstick finale of Horn Blows at Midnight were last-minute additions: A 1949 radio version of the Sam Hellman-James V. Kern screenplay is quite different, with a more sentimental and “meaningful” finale. Whatever the case, the screen version of Horn Blows at Midnight delivers plenty of laughs for Benny fans and casual viewers alike. Alas, the film proved a box-office disappointment, which was injurious for Benny’s film career but a boon to his radio and TV shows, which thrived on derisive Horn Blows at Midnight jokes for the next two decades!

1.15GB | 1 h 17 min | 720×540 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/25F603A2EDAF125/The_Horn_Blows_at_Midnight_%281945%29.part1.rar
https://nitroflare.com/view/75DBDFCA51DDF99/The_Horn_Blows_at_Midnight_%281945%29.part2.rar

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Raoul Walsh – The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945) first appeared on Cinema of the World.