The MGM Project

THEY LEARNED ABOUT WOMEN Release date   January 30, 1930 History Similar to  It's a Great Life, MGM decided to once again highlight two established vaudeville stars in their own film with They Learned About Women . This time, comedy duo Gus Van and Joe Schenk were the featured actors, and the film not only featured a duo, but was directed by one-- Jack Conway, an established silent film director at the time, and Sam Wood, who was also established as a director and would go on to direct such films as Goodbye Mr. Chips, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and sections of Gone with the Wind , among other famous titles. Like other films from this time, it was issued in both silent and sound versions.  A baseball film, They Learned About Women  was the one time that Van and Schenk would work together in a feature film. Schenk would unfortunately pass away months after the film was released. While Van and Schenk were not huge box office stars, the film does feature some names that we...

 This film is a lost film so I skipped it.

DEVIL-MAY-CARE Release date   December 27, 1929 History Devil-May-Care  is noteworthy in cinema in that it, like other films from 1929, documents the transition from silent to sound for many of its production team-- notably in this film its director, Sidney Franklin, and leading man, Ramon Novarro. Sidney Franklin directed his first three sound films in 1929. One, The Last of Mrs. Cheyney , was a synchronized sound film, with music and sound effects only, while Devil-May-Care and Wild Orchids  were both his first sound films with dialogue.  Ramon Novarro was a Hollywood superstar at the time of making this film, most notably for his role in 1925's Ben-Hur . 1929 was the year that Hollywood deemed "talkie" films would take over the silent film market. Novarro had done two other films that year which were synchronized sound films, but this would be his first film with dialogue, and to top it all off, his role would be a French soldier, which meant he'd have to also spe...