Karl John Winninger (1884-1969), the son of Austrian immigrants, was a seasoned vaudeville performer by the time he made his first short film in 1915. He made the occasional film thereafter, but launched his film career proper after the advent of sound with Soup to Nuts (1930), which was the debut of the Three Stooges.
Prior to this, Winninger had created the role of Cap’n Andy Hawks in Show Boat (1927), a role which he recreated in Universal’s 1936 film version.
Winninger was a reliable supporting player throughout his film career, notably in Nothing Sacred (1937) and Destry Rides Again (1939). He only ever played one leading role, in John Ford’s frequently-misunderstood masterpiece The Sun Shines Bright (1953), where he played Judge Billy Priest.
Charles Winninger co-starred in six MGM musicals, beginning as the doctor in Flying High in 1931. He followed this with Babes in Arms (playing Mickey Rooney’s father), Little Nellie Kelly and Ziegfeld Girl (playing Judy Garland’s father in both), Broadway Rhythm (as George Murphy’s father) and Living in a Big Way (as Gene Kelly’s father-in-law).
Kathryn Moran (1902-80) could have ruined her life when she eloped at 15 with her sister’s boyfriend. Luckily for her, that did not happen. She got her life back together and, aged 17, gave up a job as a shop assistant to pursue a career in musical theatre.
After a few years performing with stock companies, Crawford was spotted by director Wesley Ruggles, who got her a part in a Hoot Gibson western. She told a newspaper that she and Ruggles intended to marry, but that never happened.But Crawford did get a contract at Universal and made seven films in 1929.
Crawford made her only Broadway appearance in 1930, in Cole Porter’s The New Yorkers, where she controversially introduced the song ‘Love for Sale’.
In 1931, Crawford’s career took a downturn. She starred in MGM’s Flying High, then the quality of her roles declined and she stopped acting in 1933 before marrying for the second time. She made one further appearance in 1941, in an obscure ‘B’ picture about sex trafficking, but had a long and successful career as an interior designer.
William Joseph Patrick O’Brien (1899-1983) will be remembered as a key member of the Warner Bros company of the 1930s, alongside his friend James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Edward G Robinson and Bette Davis.
O’Brien trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and pursued a successful stage career, including on Broadway. New York-based, he made his first short films for Vitaphone, before travelling to Hollywood to star in The Front Page (1931), in which he had appeared on Broadway.
He went on to star in around 100 pictures, playing more than his share of wiseguys, reporters and cops. In 1932 he was loud-mouthed flyer Duke Talbot in John Ford’s Air Mail, and, in1939, as a change of pace, he was the priest who persuades Cagney to turn yellow for the sake of the Dead End Kids.
Musicals were not really Pat O’Brien’s things, but he did co-star (in a non-singing role)with Bert Lahr in Flying High. He played, of course, a fast-talking con man.
Although he appeared in around thirty films, Irving Lahrheim (1895-1967) was fundamentally a stage comedian, with a personality and technique that were too big for the screen. Nevertheless, he is an indisputably iconic figure in film history thanks to one performance, as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz.
Lahr left school to start performing in vaudeville as a teenager, working his way up to become what was called ‘top banana’. He made his Broadway debut in 1927, and was a major draw there for the rest of his career. As late as 1965, Lahr won a Tony for the musical Foxy.
Much more serious off-stage than on it, Lahr was impressed by Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1952), and played Estragon in a highly-praised 1956 Broadway production. A few years earlier he had won critical acclaim as Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Lahr’s screen debut was in a 1929 short called Faint Heart. This was followed two years later by his first Metro musical, Flying High, based on Lahr’s own hit stage musical. He recreated the role of Rusty Krause.
The Wizard of Oz followed eight years later, and Lahr made a further three musicals at MGM: Ship Ahoy, Meet the People and the 1954 version of Rose Marie.
Bert Lahr died during the production of his final film, The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968), but the filmmakers worked around it and his performance was retained.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released fifteen musicals in 1930, but by the end of the year, musicals were falling out of favour with the general public. The studio had already abandoned one major production, The March of Time, and only put out three musicals in the whole of 1931.
Stepin Fetchit doing his thing as Hokey, in conversation with the returning Jeff (Lawrence Tibbett)
All three suffered as a result of the public’s growing aversion to singing actors, but none more so than The Prodigal. MGM was still keeping faith with opera star Lawrence Tibbett, and his singing in this latest picture was outstanding, especially in ‘Without a Song’, performed to Vincent Youmans’s beautiful melody and with only slightly racist lyrics. But two other numbers–Jacques Wolfe’s ‘De Glory Road’ and ‘Life is a Dream’, written by Oscar Straus and Arthur Freed–were filmed but then deleted from the final cut. Studios thought they could make musicals more palatable to the public by having less music in them, which made little sense when your star was one of the world’s greatest singers.
Hobo Jeff is given a bath by his mother (Emma Dunn), in a scene some commentators find slightly disturbing
At the same time, The Prodigal was an attempt at presenting Tibbett in a non-operetta, and he does quite well in the more low-key dramatic scenes. Comic relief is provided by Roland Young (in the last of his three MGM musicals–he even gets to sing a few notes in this one) and Cliff Edwards.
Esther Ralston, as Toni, is a fetching female lead in the typically pre-code story, with its easy-going, non-judgemental attitude to divorce. Her mother-in-law, Cynthia, swoops in as a deus ex machina, blithely instructing one son to get a divorce and the other to come back and claim Toni when it is all over, in one of the most hastily-arranged climaxes in 30s’ cinema.
Jeff explains the nature of chitlins to Doc (Roland Young) and Snipe (Cliff Edwards)
Harry Pollard was obscure enough not even to rate a mention in Quinlan’s Film Directors, but he does not do a bad job on The Prodigal. He keeps it simple, with the only busy sequence being the barbeque with its mass of singers. Sadly, the sequence is painful in its racial stereotyping and Tibbett’s condescending serenade to the ever-smiling crowd of unnamed Black performers.
Pansy Potts is a waitress in a diner at the 10th Annual Airshow. A customer, ‘Sport’ Wardell, works for the Pilot’s Gazette, in which Pansy had advertised unsuccessfully for an aviator to marry. She tells Sport she came to the city to raise children, and is prepared to pay $500 for an aviator.
Nearby, inventor Rusty Krouse, is working on his ‘Aerocropper’, a vertical take-off plane, but has never flown it because he is afraid of flying. Sport befriends Rusty after saving him from a bully.
Meanwhile, the McLellan School of Aviation is enrolling students. [I’ll Make a Happy Landing (the Lucky Day I Land You)].
Sport thinks the Aerocropper is a good idea and goes into partnership with Rusty, but they are dogged by Rusty’s creditors.
Rusty Krause (Bert Lahr) is experiencing some problems with his Aerocropper
Sport issues a bad cheque to a creditor who threatens him with jail if it bounces, so Sport needs to get £1,000 in the bank before morning. He is about to sell stock in the company to Fred Smith when he discovers that Smith has no cash either. But when Sport meets Fred’s daughter Eileen, he makes Fred vice-president of the company. Eileen works at the aviation school.
Fred Smith (Guy Kibbee) is being persuaded to invest by Sport Wardell (Pat O’Brien), while Rusty listens and learns
Sport persuades Rusty to marry Pansy, to get hold of her $500. Sport makes the proposition to Pansy, but she wants to see Rusty before agreeing. He shows her a photograph of Clark Gable and Pansy gives Sport the money.
Pansy meets Rusty and at first thinks he has a face meant to frighten women and children, but she becomes excited when she hears he is a mechanic. She decides she will make do with Rusty [It’ll Be the First Time for Me].
Mrs Smith finds Eileen with Sport and warns her that “those windy guys always end up in jail”.
Sport persuades Rusty that the only way he can avoid marrying Pansy is to fly the Aerocopter and win the prize money. [Examination]. Trying to register as an aviator, Rusty finds himself in the office of Doctor Brown, who carries out a medical examination.
Sport and Eileen are at a ball [We’ll Dance Until the Dawn]. Rusty is there and Pansy finds him. She says if he will marry her tonight, she will never ask him again.
Sport asks Eileen to marry him, but then Sport and Fred are arrested for selling fake stock. Sport tells Rusty everything will be all right if he wins the meet tomorrow.
Rusty marries Pansy, so they can use her money to bail Sport and Fred.
The next day, the Aerocropper is ready for the altitude flight. Rusty is late because he has to wrestle with Pansy to get out of the bridal suite. After causing havoc on the ground, the Aerocropper finally flies upwards, with Pansy as a passenger. The landing gear breaks and the plane continues to rise. Rusty makes Pansy use the only parachute, and the high altitude sends him to sleep.
Pansy Potts (Charlotte Greenwood), taking a flight in the Aerocopter with Rusty
On the ground, Fred celebrates the Aerocropper’s victory. At over 50,000 feet, sleet wakes up Rusty. He syphons off the Aerocopter’s fuel, so that it begins to fall, passing Pansy on the way down. The Aerocropper crashes, but Rusty emerges unscathed and is joined by Pansy [I’ll Make a Happy Landing (the Lucky Day I Land You)]. They are carried off in triumph and Sport and Eileen kiss.
During a forty-year career, Rene Hubert (1895-1976) designed costumes for films made in France, the UK and Hollywood.
Born in Switzerland, Hubert is less well-remembered than contemporaries such as Orry-Kelly and Edith Head. But he worked on dozens of prestige pictures and dressed many of Hollywood’s biggest stars. His pictures included The Wind (1928), Under the Roofs of Paris (1930), Shanghai Express (1931), À Nous la Liberté (1931), Liliom (1934), Rembrandt (1936), Things to Come (1936), Lady Hamilton (1941), The Song of Bernadette (1943), My Darling Clementine (1946) and Anastasia (1956).
In 1931, Hubert designed costumes for tramps and gowns for Esther Ralston in The Prodigal.
