The Films of Lloyd Bacon - by Michael E. Grost

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Lloyd Bacon

Lloyd Bacon is a Hollywood film director.

Subjects in Lloyd Bacon films:

Secret lives (big spender in club, heroine deceiving sister: Marked Woman. rich man turned mystery writer: Footsteps in the Dark, crooks and store: Larceny, Inc., professor turned ballplayer: It Happens Every Spring)
Relations between intellectuals or the educated, and working class people ( DA and heroine: Marked Woman, hero and Allen Jenkins: Footsteps in the Dark, professor and baseball player: It Happens Every Spring)
Science (one-way window at DA's: Marked Woman, scientific police work: Footsteps in the Dark, formula: It Happens Every Spring)
Baseball (opening game: Larceny, Inc., It Happens Every Spring)
Injured characters (leading lady and leg: 42nd Street, beating: Marked Woman, splint: It Happens Every Spring)
Gay men (director: 42nd Street, dancers: Wonder Bar)

Settings:

Staircases (kitchen: Miss Pinkerton, stage door alley at end: 42nd Street, gangster apartment, sidewalk leading down to club, courthouse steps: Marked Woman, foyer: Footsteps in the Dark)

Miss Pinkerton

Miss Pinkerton (1932) is a not-very-good version of Mary Roberts Rinehart's much better novel, one of her series about a nurse-detective. Joan Blondell as the nurse and George Brent as her policeman friend shine at their romantic banter, but the rest of the film has too much Old Dark House-ism. Blondell lets out several screams that would have done Evelyn Ankers proud confronting the Wolf Man - a come-down from the sensible (and feminist) sleuth of the novel.

42nd Street

42nd Street (1933) is the first of the remarkable Warner Brothers musicals with choreography by Busby Berkeley.

The director of the stage show (played by Warner Baxter), is unusual in being a gay man. He is not explicitly labeled as such, but his characterization is distinct. The next year, in the otherwise not very good Wonder Bar (1934), Bacon will include a brief scene of two gay men dancing. These are some of the most gay portraits of the 1930's.

42nd Street ends with Baxter, melancholy and alone, with crowds streaming out celebrating his stage show. It is a haunting image.

The touring group of entertainers in 42nd Street anticipate the travelling baseball team in It Happens Every Spring.

Characters in Bacon tend to get mild, non-serious temporary injuries, which affect their work on the job. In It Happens Every Spring, there is the wooden splint. In 42nd Street, star Bebe Daniels has to walk around on crutches for a little while, just long enough to make her miss opening night.

Marked Woman

Marked Woman (1937) is a crime melodrama.

Secret Lives

Marked Woman has a number of people embodying that Lloyd Bacon subject secret lives:

The man from out-of-town is pretending to be a rich Big Spender. Like the professor in It Happens Every Spring, he goes to another city to realize a new fantasy existence.
The heroine is pretending to be a respectable woman, to conceal her sordid lifestyle from her kid sister. As in other Bacon films, a family is being deceived.

Relations across Classes

Marked Woman also develops another Bacon theme, relations across class lines. Working woman Bette Davis eventually develops a rapport with upper crust DA Humphrey Bogart. The film suggests that this is not going to be easy. It might not go anywhere. In some other Bacon films, such relations are often between two men.

Bogart is clearly well-educated and is very articulate in the courtroom, so he is at the borderline of the intellectual that often forms one half of the educated intellectual - working man Bacon pair.

Science

Unlike some other Bacon films, there is not much about science in Marked Woman. Bogart's one-way window for viewing suspects in perhaps a technological aspect of his character.

Staircases

The staircases in Marked Woman are not as large as some in Bacon films. But they are key settings:

The staircase at the gangster's apartment is where the killing occurs.
The outdoor staircase leading down to the club, also plays a role: it makes the club look cheap and sordid.
The finale is staged on the courthouse steps.

Footsteps in the Dark

Footsteps in the Dark (1941) has nothing to do with Georgette Heyer's 1932 novel of the same name. Rather, it is a comedy mystery starring Errol Flynn. He plays a wealthy businessman who has a secret life as a mystery writer. Eventually he gets involved in a real murder case himself, turning amateur sleuth to solve the mystery.

The film is at it best in its first half. These are the sections with the most about Flynn's double life. The second half tends to neglect this aspect, and just be a conventional whodunit, one that goes on way too long. The first half has some delightful comedy as well, including Flynn's impersonation of a Texas rancher. Flynn's character is getting to try out all sorts of roles, something that the public has always enjoyed daydreaming about. In general, the comedy in this film is much more interesting than the mystery.

Two Kinds of Detective Fiction

The film has been paying attention to the intuitionist - realist controversy in prose detective fiction:

The sleuth that mystery author Flynn has been writing about is a genius amateur detective, one who solves crimes through pure thinking. This sort of detective is at the center of the intuitionist tradition in detective fiction.
This is scoffed at by the head of the Homicide Bureau (Alan Hale), who says that detection is now a science, as practiced by the police, and that scientific crime solving would far outstrip such amateurs. Hale is arguing the basic position of the realist school.

Hale and Flynn challenge each other to the solution of a real life mystery. Unfortunately, the debate is not sustained throughout the film. Instead the police turn into the cliché dumb flat foots of the whodunit film, always having some stupid idea they are following.

Other features of the realist school also play a role in the story:

The film is into the mystique of high tech communication. We see Dictaphones, telephones and radio broadcasts in the movie.
There is also much about alibis in the film.

Allen Jenkins

The movie under-exploits Allen Jenkins as Flynn's long-suffering assistant. When Jenkins does get a chance to toss off a wisecrack, he does it with his usual expertise. Mainly, Jenkins must rely on his facial expressions to contribute to the scenes. One shot of this archetypal tough guy working as Flynn's typist is priceless. Jenkins has an "I'm agreeable and I'll do anything" kind of look. He also looks as if he is enjoying his work. Jenkins' characters always have a dog like loyalty. There is something reassuring about his presence. He also looks resourceful and practical.

This background approach to supporting players is perhaps typical of Bacon. He restricted Jenkins similarly in 42nd Street (1933) to an occasional one liner. By contrast, Roy Del Ruth tends to give Warners' contract players whole scenes to themselves, allowing them to really shine.

Staircases

There is a big staircase in the foyer of Flynn's mansion. One recalls the giant staircase in the kitchen, in Bacon's Miss Pinkerton (1932).

Larceny, Inc.

Larceny, Inc. (1942) is a crime comedy.

Larceny, Inc. opens with the characters playing baseball, anticipating It Happens Every Spring.

The characters in Larceny, Inc. have a secret life, a Bacon tradition. This secret life involves a criminal scheme, unlike the men with honest secret lives in Footsteps in the Dark and It Happens Every Spring.

It Happens Every Spring

It Happens Every Spring (1949) is a science fiction and baseball comedy.

It Happens Every Spring shows similar character types as Footsteps in the Dark:

The hero is an intellectual who develops a secret life, to pursue a career in entertainment. Both heroes are played by refined, charming actors from the British Commonwealth.
He develops a special friendship with a working class good guy, who shares his new career and life (Allen Jenkins in Footsteps in the Dark, Paul Douglas' ball player in It Happens Every Spring).
The hero has conflicts with his in-laws over his secret activities.
The hero starts out by concealing his life from his wife or girlfriend. But she's a good sport, and decides she wants in on the act - rather than trying to end his activities.

Both films pit two approaches to an activity against each other. One approach is science-based, one is not:

Footsteps in the Dark pits an amateur sleuth against the scientific detective work of the police.
It Happens Every Spring contrasts traditional baseball players, with chemistry prof Milland's formula for chemicals on the baseball.

The two movies are not an exact parallel: in It Happens Every Spring, the hero is the scientist; in Footsteps in the Dark, the hero is the non-scientist amateur.

Science

It Happens Every Spring takes place in a technological world. The portrait of the hero as a scientist is quite elaborate, with lab work, teaching, note taking, funding, jobs and scientific books he reads.

As in Footsteps in the Dark, radio broadcasts play a role in It Happens Every Spring.

The heroine uses a magnifying glass on newspaper photos, a striking image. She also uses binoculars, at the baseball game.

Uniforms

It Happens Every Spring is full of uniforms and male grooming:

The college baseball player wears a large M on his school sweater.
The hero has trouble getting the team to give him a uniform that fits.
Paul Douglas puts his catcher's mask off and on a lot.
Douglas has his wife's name Mabel tattooed on his arm.
The telegraph deliverer has a spiffy uniform.
There are many gags about hair tonic and grooming hair.
The players tear off each others' uniforms, after their big victory.