West of Broadway (1931)

Don't get me wrong. John Gilbert did a great job of acting in this one, because by the time it was over I was completely convinced he was the biggest heel in the history of the world. But then that seldom raises one's star, especially after you have been playing rather complex heroes for years, which is what Gilbert had been doing.Gilbert plays Jerry Stevens, returning from WWI, and all he wants to do is find and marry his girl, Anne (Madge Evans), the thought of which has been keeping him alive and going through his wartime experiences and his injury. But at first meeting she firmly tells him it is over and there is somebody else. Jerry drowns his sorrows in alcohol and escort services. One night while out on the town with one of these escorts, Jerry runs into Anne and her fiancé. Jerry, drunk and angry, introduces the escort (Lois Moran as Dot) as his fiancée. They find a JP who marries them that very night, and the next morning Jerry apologizes for getting Dot caught up in his personal problems and offers to make a big settlement on her in their divorce. The problem is, Dot is in love and refuses any money or any divorce. This is the point where Gilbert's character begins acting like an unredeemable heel. He insults her, calls her an outright prostitute, and just leaves his NYC apartment for his ranch out west to not only ditch Dot but stop drinking.Dot outsmarts him and follows him. The scenes out west are hard to watch with Gilbert being absolutely horrid to Dot, and Dot just letting him walk all over her like some bearskin rug. That may be why they brought the always likable and harmless El Brendel into all of this as Jerry's friend, so there is at least one character you cannot dislike. There are a couple of funny scenes - probably unintentional - where Brendel and Gilbert walk around dressed in the same western outfit, reminding me of a Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy short.In a very early film appearance there is a ranch foreman, Mac, played by Ralph Bellamy who takes a true liking to Dot and shows some contrast to Jerry by treating the girl like a lady. When Mac intervenes when Jerry (Gilbert) gets rough with Dot, Jerry fires him.Gilbert's character sinks to a new low though when shortly thereafter he seduces Dot, acts like he cares, and yet the next morning is STILL talking about divorce. But he has a consolation prize! He'll give her more money than he originally promised for the previous night's use of her private parts. Nothing makes a gal feel like a prostitute more than being treated like one. Well this is the final insult. Dot signs the divorce papers, and takes the next vehicle that comes by off the ranch and back to New York. But what's this? She tore up Jerry's check and gave it back to him? Why, she's a regular girl after all and Jerry goes back to New York begging her forgiveness. What happens? Watch and find out. If I'd been writing the script she would have put a shotgun shell right through his chest at next meeting, but that would ordinarily be murder IF the victim was human.There are several things that just seem odd in this picture. At one point Jerry's society friends all show up at the ranch to tell him that Anne has broken her engagement. They might as well be talking about the weather because Jerry - who is on this self destructive course in the first place because Anne left him - never reacts to this news at all.The other odd thing is that Jerry is supposed to be a severe alcoholic by the time he arrives at the ranch. Yet you will see Gilbert shaking sometimes as though he has the DTs when he is perfectly composed at other times. It makes you wonder how much of this is acting and how much of this shaking is Gilbert succumbing to his own alcoholism.I'd recommend it just as a head scratcher for the film history buff. Why would Gilbert do THIS film after playing a part that was just perfect for him in "The Phantom of Paris"?

West of Broadway (1931) ** 1/2 (out of 4) A rather strange drama from MGM about Jerry Seevers (John Gilbert), a man returning from WWI where he was injured and the doctors give him just six months to live. He spends most of his nights in a bottle but things start to change when he "orders" a woman (Lois Moran) and the two are married while he's drunk. At first Jerry wants a divorce but the woman has fallen in love with him and plans to break him from alcohol. If you know anything about this era of Hollywood then you know the legendary stories of Gilbert who was given bottom of the barrel roles at MGM and you've probably heard about his horrible talking voice. If you've actually seen any of the pictures from this era you're going to realize that they really aren't as bad as their reputation and there's really nothing wrong with Gilbert's voice. Is WEST OF Broadway a forgotten masterpiece? Not even close but it's certainly a lot better than its reputation would have you believe. I think the biggest thing going against the film is that the Gilbert character never really gets fully developed. When he meets the young woman he's kind as can be but of course he's drunk. He sobers up the next morning and turns into a complete jerk and I must admit that I never really bought this difference in him and it's really never explained. The entire bit about him dying is only occasionally brought up and at times you wonder if the screenwriter simply forgot about it as it comes in and out of the story without too much logic. The film works better than it probably should due to the two leads and their chemistry together. Whether it's the early cute stuff, the more dramatic moments or the predictable "turn" in the story, the two stars are completely believable in their parts and especially when they're working together as this troubled couple. I thought Gilbert was pretty strong playing the alcoholic and especially in the scenes where he's battling the addiction. The supporting cast includes a wasted Ralph Bellamy playing a cowboy, El Brendel, Madge Evans and Hedda Hopper. The story really doesn't contain anything too original or ground-breaking but it's worth viewing due to the performances and that it does actually look at alcoholism in a serious manor, which wasn't always the case with Hollywood. It's funny that this dramatic look at Hollywood would help finish off the career of Gilbert while another silent legend in D.W. Griffith would have his career end the same year with THE STRUGGLE, another film taking a serious look at alcoholism.

You get the feeling this might have been a bigger picture. The tacked on ending ruins the preceding hour, which showcases John Gilbert, the great romantic idol of silent films. Certainly one of the most controversial figures of the dawn of talkies. Gilbert's great career crashed fast and fatally. His voice was fine, and he was a terrific actor. But he was never able to recover from the debacle of his starring talkie debut in His Glorious Night. Despite terrific performances in Downstairs and Queen Christina (with Greta Garbo) Gilbert made no headway as the 30s moved along. Several of his talkies were downright awful, but West of Broadway isn't bad at all despite the hacked up ending. Gilbert plays a cad who gets married to a woman because his fiancée jilts him. He then spends the rest of the movie trying to unload her. Lois Moran is quite good as the unwanted wife; Madge Evans is the snooty fiancée. El Brendel (playing his usual fake Swede) and Willie Fung as the Arizona houseboy have a funny scene trying to understand each other. Hedda Hopper, Ralph Bellamy, and Frank Conroy co-star. Gilbert was married to stage actress Ina Claire, who happened to be my grandfather's cousin, so I've always felt a connection to John Gilbert. What a tragedy. He should have been as big a star in talkies as he was in silent films.

One of the great controversies in cinema history is the fall of the greatest male Hollywood star of the silent era, John Gilbert. Since the old suspicion, that it was merely his voice being too high pitched for the microphone, was definitely disproved when scrutinized several decades ago, the question since has been: Did he jump or was he pushed? It took more than one nail in his coffin to bury John Gilbert's career. WEST OF Broadway was certainly one of the nails. The question becomes: was the incompetence of WEST OF Broadway deliberate and one of a series of career sabotaging moves made by Louis B. Meyer, or was this just another run of the mill bad movie put out during the changeover to sound. It has been pointed out that one surefire way to wreck a career, or least pound one nail in the coffin, would be to have Lionel Barrymore direct your picture. He was that bad a director and he directed Gilbert's disastrous first talkie, HIS GLORIOUS NIGHT. The question is would Meyer have deliberately wrecked his own property as revenge on a man who hit him and knocked him down? And while we know the studios had the knowledge of how to build a personality into a star (witness the careful grooming at this time of Clark Gable by Irving Thalberg) were they knowledgeable enough to destroy one deliberately?The facts about WEST OF Broadway aren't very pretty. The director was veteran, top drawer hack Harry Beaumont. Though Gilbert's reputation was made as the great lover, idolized by millions of women, the main character of WEST OF Broadway, Jerry Seevers, is a bitter and disagreeable man who accidentally marries a woman who loves him and he spends the whole film insulting, rejecting and abusing the woman who comes back for more with a sweet smile on her face. He is cold, cruel and hurtful. Women seeing this, however the denouement is engineered to a happy ending, would have to be turned off. Instead of worshiping Gilbert, women could but despise him. The fact that Seevers is a war hero just sucks all of the life out of Gilbert's great triumph in THE BIG PARADE (still the best war movie ever made). While destroying one Gilbert legend WEST feeds into a new Gilbert legend, that of the self destructive drunkard. Besides being a cold bastard in this picture he is also a nasty drunk. Not a pretty picture. When we finally do get to the ending and the fade out clinch we don't actually get to see the great lover do his stuff. Instead the camera tilts down to capture a piece a business with their feet and legs. This would have been a super cute ending in a light hearted Lubitsch picture but as this picture deals in alcoholism, prostitution, divorce and infidelity it may not be such a good idea. Not showing the great lover actually planting one on sweet pretty little Lois Moran was not a good career move. Meyer couldn't have concocted a better career snuffer than WEST OF Broadway if he tried. The only nagging suspicion is that he did try. No one can prove anything one way or the other but speculation will go one until proof is found one day. On the other hand WEST OF Broadway is beautifully photographed and the bloodlines of the scriptwriters suggest a project that had been considered as a top picture but whose plot problems couldn't be solved and had been reduced in importance to a 68 minute programmer and unloaded on Gilbert. The plot is rather perfunctorily disposed of all too quickly moving from New York to Arizona and back again. No effort, not the slightest effort, is made to establish any period ambiance. Pre prohibition 1919 is virtually identical to the 1931 of the picture's release including an anachronistic reference to flying from Chicago. WEST OF Broadway was something of a showcase for newcomer Ralph Bellamy who, unlike Gable, didn't catch on as a star. The studios had a method in all this madness. MGM was certainly careful not to allow any of their more valuable properties - e.g. Harlow, Crawford, Sherer etc. near the sinking S.S. Gilbert. Gilbert may have been too oblivious from drink to notice or care at this point but more likely the ego inherent in every actor would have been stimulated to assay a role of a bitter, self destructive man with the DT's so he probably actively participated in his own eclipse as a star.WEST OF Broadway is interesting today because it's another station on John Gilbert's Via Delarosa and is a typical example of the brief pre-code period of Hollywood openness, an openness which would soon close up not to be returned to until the 1960's.