{"id":18799,"date":"2026-07-19T21:00:34","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T01:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=18799"},"modified":"2026-07-17T22:32:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T02:32:13","slug":"mans-castle-1933-frank-borzage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/18799","title":{"rendered":"Man&#8217;s Castle (1933, Frank Borzage)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Great writing and premise, as poor hungry gal Loretta Young (who I just saw in <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/18578\">The Stranger<\/a><\/em>) is pitied by rich guy Spencer Tracy and taken out for a nice meal.  Only he&#8217;s not rich, just pretending, and they get kicked out and retreat to his shanty town.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/castle2.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p>She loves the place and wants to settle down there, but Tracy likes to move from town to town, plus they&#8217;ve gotta eat to stay alive, so already a few conflicts before throwing in the predatory criminal next door (a banker in <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/16053\">The Devil Doll<\/a><\/em>, a burglar here) who wants to rob the factory guarded by their preacher friend Walter Connolly (a millionaire in <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/8851\">5th Ave Girl<\/a><\/em>).  Throw in a pitiful\/sympathetic drunk (<em>Tobacco Road<\/em> star Marjorie Rambeau) and a showgirl who unaccountably falls for Tracy (Glenda Farrell of <em>Little Caesar<\/em>) and a not-so-surprise pregnancy, and you get a lot of plot for 75 minutes.  Lovely ending as hard-headed Tracy realizes the girl doesn&#8217;t have to prevent him from leaving town if he takes her along.  Loretta very wonderful if this had been silent, but miscast in a talkie, delivering homey lines like &#8220;he don&#8217;t know his own strength, he don&#8217;t&#8221; with perfect posh diction.<\/p>\n<p><em>Loretta with Marjorie, whose redemption comes from shooting the thief:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/castle3.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p>Dave Kehr was a fan: &#8220;Few love stories have achieved the emotional intensity of <em>Man&#8217;s Castle<\/em>, and most of the others belonged to Borzage as well. He possessed the most delicate romantic sensibility in the movies, and his films are pervaded by a sublime spiritual quality that no one else has been able to capture.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>Did street pigeons look like this in 1933?<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/castle1.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/castle4.jpeg\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Great writing and premise, as poor hungry gal Loretta Young (who I just saw in The Stranger) is pitied by rich guy Spencer Tracy and taken out for a nice meal. Only he&#8217;s not rich, just pretending, and they get kicked out and retreat to his shanty town. She loves the place and wants to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[343,775,1914,2820,3076,82],"class_list":["post-18799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1930s","tag-frank-borzage","tag-great-depression","tag-heist","tag-loretta-young","tag-spencer-tracy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18799"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18828,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18799\/revisions\/18828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}