#014: Children of Pleasure

 CHILDREN OF PLEASURE

Release Date

April 26, 1930

History

Penned by Richard Schrayer, who also wrote MGM musicals Hallelujah and Devil-May-Care, and directed by Harry Beaumont, director of Broadway Melody, this week's film was Children of Pleasure, a 1930 film loosely based on Irving Berlin's courting of his wife, New York heiress Ellin McKay. The film runs only 70 minutes in length but features six numbers, several elaborately staged and filmed in Technicolor. Unfortunately, when the film was put into general release months after its premiere, the numbers were reprinted in black and white. I can't say if these elements are lost or simply weren't restored for the Turner Classic Movies print, but the print used on TCM has the numbers in black and white, although one of the numbers, "Dust" did reappear in Technicolor in the short film Roast-Beef and Movies four years later.

Lawrence Gray, who previously appeared in Marianne and It's a Great Life, stars alongside actress Wynne Gibson in her second feature film (her first for MGM). This was also the second film for Judith Wood, who started in musicals at Warner Bros. in 1929's Gold Diggers of Broadway. May Boley and Benny Rubin co-star as the comedic relief in the film, as actress Fanny and her piano player Andy. Similar to other films from this time, this film was released in a 1.20:1 aspect ratio for its sound on disc version and a 1.37:1 aspect ratio for its sound on film version.

Review

The plot for Children of Pleasure follows songwriter Danny Regan (Lawrence Gray), who works with Bernie (Lee Kohlmar) and Emma (Wynne Gibson) at a song publishing company, while featured vaudeville actress Fanny (May Boley) performs the numbers he writes. Danny meets socialite Pat (Judith Wood) and falls in love with her. Not seeing the red flags of this relationship, or that his assistant/secretary Emma also loves him, he soon has a wake up call when he sees Pat's true colors at their wedding rehearsal dinner and awakens to what is truly important to him. 

While this plot is based on the play The Song Writer, which is loosely based on the love story of Irving Berlin and Ellin McKay, unfortunately their story is a hybrid of stories that have already been covered by MGM musicals at this point (and this was only the 14th one released), so it starts to feel tiresome and recycled. The songwriter falling for a dame that's bad news while his love looks on has already been covered in Chasing Rainbows, They Learned About Women, and Lord Byron of Broadway, and the way that the dialogue is carried out in Children of Pleasure hybrids the three too closely. For example, the contrast of how hard of a worker he is at the beginning of the film and how his work slips when he meets a woman is a theme in all three films. 

The clash of cultures between Danny and Pat is an exact mirror of Joan and Jeff in Montana Moon, released a month earlier. The difference is that in this film, Pat is pure evil and her evil stands out more than it did in the femme fatale characters in Chasing Rainbows and Lord Byron of Broadway. For starters, Pat has been engaged to Rod (Kenneth Thomson) a total of twelve times, and is on a date with him when she and Danny fall in love. As she and Danny dance, Rod and Emma talk about how Emma has read about her in the papers and that she has had several scandalous incidents around her love life, such as a man trying to drown himself for her, or another getting into a fight with Rod. Pat also is very greedy. In their first dance together, she is giving Danny investment tips, indicating that money is very important to her. I found this part very interesting, because of the fact that this was shot shortly after the Great Depression had just started, and yet when they're talking it's as if the stock market is in healthy shape; at one point he even exclaims "This is 1930!" like it's going to be a year of prospects for Americans. 

Back to Pat though, this woman is also possessive. She sees a framed lyric on Danny's wall, and asks "Who were you thinking about when you wrote that?" in a demanding tone. There's a saying that when you point a finger at someone else, you have three pointing back at you, and this couldn't be the case more than with Pat because her absolute worst quality is her blend of conniving manipulation and dishonesty. Danny wants to elope with Pat in Connecticut and at first agrees, but then goes back on her word when Danny finds out there is actually going to be a big wedding party because Pat's dad is going to throw a big "ballyhoo" for them. Danny goes along with it, but hits his breaking point when he sees Pat kissing Rod at their rehearsal dinner. Spying on them, he catches her telling Rod that she doesn't know if she really loves Danny and is only marrying him as an "experiment" and is keeping Rod as Danny's "understudy". She likes the idea that if she's sad when she's with Danny she can just "press a button" to get a love song out of him. Infuriated, Danny sabotages the rehearsal dinner, and when Pat calls him out on it, he comes clean that he heard the things she told Rod. 

The big clash of culture here comes between the idea of two people being at roughly the same financial level, but still being worlds apart based on how they got there. Danny, Emma, and their boss, Mr. Thayer, all work very hard for their money. Danny and Emma will work evenings; when Danny is introduced in the film he is running from one work assignment to the other, and he is also writing songs at home. The socialites of Pat's circle on the other hand, do no work, are judgmental, and also are constantly gossiping-- including their butlers and servants.

Lawrence Gray wasn't much to write home about in Marianne or Devil-May-Care, and he was given a more three-dimensional role in this film but it ends up being wasted on him. He has a beautiful tenor voice and croons songs such as "The Better Things in Life" and "Girl Trouble", but when he acts it comes off as ridiculous. His performance as the angry fiancée ready to sabotage his own wedding came off as cartoonish and angry. When he goes on a bender following this and Emma finds him, his performance as a drunk is painfully annoying and practically unwatchable as he plays the piano in a minstrel style. 

Wynne Gibson as Emma, on the other hand, is very charming. Emma loves Danny so much that even though she was hurt by his tossing her aside for Pat, she still wants to come to his rescue when he calls her in an inebriated state. She delivers a sweet monologue, filled with kindness and tough love, and there is even a bit of humor in her asking for a stiff drink, turning down a glass of water, and then gasping for air after drinking it and begging "Water! Quick!" He proposes, and she accepts, but the next morning it is clear that there wasn't any consummating of their marriage, as she complains he was too drunk to do so (a very pre-code cinema moment!). In actuality, it was a prank she pulled on him to show him how he actually wasn't ready to marry her and that he was still in love with Pat. The film ends with him realizing, however, that Emma's sacrifice was true love and he leaves Pat to chase Emma down as the end credits come up. I do wish Gibson's performance at the end of this scene had not been so over the top. While she was great at comedy, the drama was too theatrical, compared to how Bessie Love performed a similar role in They Learned About Women. 

May Boley is a powerhouse mezzo alto singer as she belts songs such as "A Couple of Birds with the Same Thing in Mind" and "Dust". The "Birds" number is performed with backup dancers in blackface, and I wasn't sure why this decision was made. At no point is it necessary. Neither the choreography nor the tune are minstrel by any means, and the tapping chorus of men was very talented but their talent gets overshadowed by the blackface. 

The highlight of the film is definitely the "Dust" number. The dancers all wear goofy unicorn costumes, with a horn off to the side, and it ends with a great finish as they dance in powder on the stage and finish on a rotating staircase. The number works well in two-strip Technicolor's limitations, because the reds come off as a pinkish-red, fitting with the unicorn theme.

Boley is also very funny in her non-singing scenes. She is in love with her piano player Andy, played by Benny Rubin, and the two are a great pair. While his fat jokes at her expense get immediately tiresome, the game of her being his boss and wanting to marry him is humorous throughout the film, as she gets jealous of him talking to Danny's secretary, and makes demands on him such as "Kiss Mama pretty!" 

For Rubin, his manner of stereotypical Jewish humor comes across as not offensive but an homage to his culture, as it does in all of his films. There's a number called "Girl Trouble" that's first sung by Danny, and then reprised by Andy and Emma. Andy sings it as a stingy Jewish man who does things like taking his date to a cafeteria for dinner. This is followed by one of the funniest jokes in the film, as the two of them dance, and Fanny gets jealous. She calls to Andy, and Andy, scared, drops Emma on her behind. He apologizes and says "Sorry, that was my Fanny" to which a frustrated Emma replies "YOU'RE Fanny?!"

One last thing that stood out to me was the number "The Whole Darn Thing's For You." After it's sung by Danny, a trio of singers join in for a reprise. They hold their instruments, but aren't playing them-- all we see is a piano being played. At first, you think that there is a non-diegetic orchestra playing along, but after the number finishes, we keep hearing them playing off screen, and they eventually are revealed to have been in the scene all along as they finally are shown in their chairs playing their instruments. I thought this was a very sophisticated and subtle moment in filmmaking.

Home Video

Children of Pleasure has unfortunately never gotten a home video release. I watched this film on ok.ru, a Russian website that streams bootlegs. I was unsure of the source, but it was revealed to be a recorded Turner Classic Movies telecast, clear from the TCM logo on the bottom right of the screen that appeared at one point of the film.

While this came from a general release print of the film, evident from the 35mm cue marks, the 1.37:1 cropped aspect ratio, and the fact that Dust was in black and white, even though color footage of this number does exist, the image quality is very good. There were a handful of printed in splices and some flickering but overall the image was quite decent. The audio, on the other hand, was very rough. There were points where the dialogue was very hard to understand because of the amount of noise on the track. It sounded more like bad audio from the acetate disc sources than from the print, however, which makes me wonder if they always had this noise issue. Original sound discs do exist at the UCLA Film and Television Archive, and hopefully one day this film will get a proper presentation with restored audio from the discs (using today's digital technology) and the color sequence re-inserted.