{"id":8817,"date":"2013-09-18T20:00:58","date_gmt":"2013-09-19T00:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=8817"},"modified":"2013-09-16T23:44:47","modified_gmt":"2013-09-17T03:44:47","slug":"stranded-1935-frank-borzage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/8817","title":{"rendered":"Stranded (1935, Frank Borzage)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Katy asked what makes a Borzage movie unique. I can answer regarding the silents I&#8217;ve seen &#8211; <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/2991\">Seventh Heaven<\/a><\/em>, <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/1527\">Street Angel<\/a><\/em>, <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/4326\">Lucky Star<\/a><\/em> and bits of <em>The River<\/em>. But after watching this, I don&#8217;t know &#8211; it seems that he was ground into the Hollywood sound-film factory, only managing a couple of cool (second-unit?) location scenes and one evocative shot involving would-be-lovers separating in front of a staircase.<\/p>\n<p>George Brent doesn&#8217;t help the movie one bit.  His character is a huge asshole, and the last-minute happy ending features him becoming very slightly less of an asshole. Fortunately the movie belongs to Kay Francis (of the great <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/600\">Trouble in Paradise<\/a><\/em>), who works at Travelers&#8217; Aid, which appears to be a general help booth at a train station.  Bridge-builder Brent (of <em>Dark Victory<\/em> and <em>The Spiral Staircase<\/em>) goes there in search of a runaway drunk employee, recognizes Kay, and is soon threatening marriage.<\/p>\n<p>On the bridge project, gangster Sharkey (Barton MacLane of <em>The Maltese Falcon<\/em>) secretly gives the workers booze, which they happily drink on the job until one falls to his death, causing a near-strike.  The workers are portrayed as easily-led, drunken children &#8211; weren&#8217;t union construction jobs hard to come by during the Great Depression?  Kay saves Brent&#8217;s ass, leading him to stop badgering her to quit her job, with help from fired drunk Janauschek (Robert Barrat, a judge in <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/2491\">The Baron of Arizona<\/a><\/em>).<\/p>\n<p>Frankie Darro, the guy inside Robbie the Robot in <em>Forbidden Planet<\/em>, plays Hollywood&#8217;s typical &#8220;Jimmy&#8221;, a young, naive annoyance.  Future director Delmer Daves wrote the screenplay, based on a story called <em>Lady with a Badge<\/em>. I don&#8217;t believe Kay had a badge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Katy asked what makes a Borzage movie unique. I can answer regarding the silents I&#8217;ve seen &#8211; Seventh Heaven, Street Angel, Lucky Star and bits of The River. But after watching this, I don&#8217;t know &#8211; it seems that he was ground into the Hollywood sound-film factory, only managing a couple of cool (second-unit?) location [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[343,1729,775,1730],"class_list":["post-8817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1930s","tag-delmer-daves","tag-frank-borzage","tag-kay-francis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8817","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=8817"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8821,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8817\/revisions\/8821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}