New York Nights

A Broadway comedy actress (Norma Talmadge) has a philandering husband (Gilbert Roland) who is always out getting drunk. She dangerously finds help from a gangster (John Wray) who becomes possessive of her.

Talmadge (who also produced) made her Talkie debut with this fast wise talking drama with plenty of gangster background and some backstage show drama and a handful of numbers, ticking all the early Talkie boxes. Talmadge took diction lessons for her part, but this clearly wasn't enough to woo the public with fairly poor box-office receipts.

Based off the play, 'Tin Pan Alley' by Jules Furthman and with a decent cast, the 1938 re-release also included scene that included among others Al Jolson and Jean Harlow in cameos.

New York Nights (1929) is no classic or even worth a repeat watching for the average movie-goer, but it does not deserve the toxic reputation it has amassed since its release.

I'm not a terribly big Norma Talmadge fan; she's a competent actress with a deep, powerful voice. For some reasons, rumors of her possessing a shrill Brooklyn accent have lingered for years, no doubt due to the claim that she was the basis for the unpleasant voice of Lina Lamont, the villainess of Singin' in the Rain, a movie which is not a terribly accurate depiction of the silent to sound transition to begin with, though many seem to believe so. Nonetheless, Talmadge is solid as the heartbroken chorus girl. The rest of the cast is fine. William Cameron Menzies's art direction is great and the cinematography is pretty good too. The plot is hokum, but it's entertaining while you're watching the picture.

I'd wager Talmadge's fall from grace was not caused by an inability to exist in sound, but by the cultural shift brought on by the Great Depression. Hard-nosed dames and working girls struggling to survive were more in vogue than the types Norma tended to essay during her 1910s/1920s heyday. Up and comers like Joan Crawford, possessing different images and fresh faces, held more appeal for audiences.

As the Buddhists say, times are always changing. Talmadge's day had passed on by. At least she retired a wealthy woman; as her sister Constance is said to have told her, the critics can't mess with those trust funds, honey!

This is one movie from 1929 that does not deserve the bad reputation it has. Norma Talmadge's voice is fine. Her performance in this remind me of Clara Bow, and director Lewis Milestone throws a costume party for the demi-mondaine that strikes me as something that human beings out for a good time with the rough crowd might go to for: free food and booze -- one at which the neighbors call the cops at 2AM instead of waiting for lightning to set the dirigible on fire a la DeMille.

The story is a little flat and predictable for 1929: showgirl Talmadge throws out songwriter-husband Gilbert Roland after he turns up drunk one time too many and takes up with visiting Chicago hood John Wray, who's crazy for her, but she can't help loving the big sap of a hubby.

There's lots of good stuff, from proto-noir lighting and some nice moving shots by cameraman Ray June, some fine editing by Hal Kern and good acting all around. So why the lack of interest? I think Miss Talmadge was in her mid-thirties, thought that film-making was getting too complicated, she wasn't getting any younger, and she didn't need the money. She and her sister Constance owned a big chunk of San Diego, anyway.

This was silent drama star Norma Talmadge's talkie debut, and it flopped at the box office. However, for the life of me, I cannot figure out why. Legend has it that Singin in the Rain's Lena Lamont was modeled after Norma, but I have to tell you that I really couldn't detect much of a New York accent in her voice, and her speaking was perfectly fine. She also seemed to understand how to integrate speaking and acting into a cohesive whole. Gilbert Roland was a bit hammy, but if you look at his performances just a couple of years later he improved very rapidly. In fact, the worst performance here - and it's really not that bad - is John Wray as the gangster that is after Norma's character. He plays it way over the top yet he had plenty of roles in talking films for years to come.

The story is pretty routine - Jill Deverne (Norma Talmadge)is married to Fred (Gilbert Roland), a struggling songwriter. Their domestic happiness is threatened by a gangster who is interested in Norma and by a chorus girl who is interested in Fred. Lilyan Tashman plays Jill's friend and does a great job with the catty lines as she stands up for Jill.

The only thing I can figure about the original failure of this film is that people had a certain idea about their silent stars and, for the most part, giving them a voice just took away the magic and made them seek out new faces - Cagney, Blondell, Tracy, and Hepburn among others. Very few weathered the transition and Norma Talmadge was among the many casualties. If you're a fan of the early talkies I recommend you check this one out if you get the chance. It's a rare opportunity to see Norma Talmadge in a film since so very few of her silent films survive. That's too bad since she was one of the most popular dramatic actresses of the silent era.

It is difficult for me to mark this picture as the copy I have is of very poor quality in visual and sound. I have seen Norma Talmadge in "DuBarry" and on the evidence of these two films, it certainly was not her voice that ended her career. I think it was simply a matter of her increasing age and weight. Apparently she was 34/35, but at times looks more like 50 and there is clearly a thickening of the neckline and Queen Mothering of the upper arms. A previous reviewer has mentioned the arrival of a new set of younger faces at this time (Joan Blondell and Jean Harlow, for instance),but ironically, only a couple of years after Talmadge's retirement, the big new star was a forty year old, overweight woman with just the type of accent which was supposed to have ended Norma's career, namely, Mae West. The young Gilbert Roland has very much the appearance of his namesake, John Gilbert and the same Latin charm as his friend and fellow Mexican, Ramon Novarro. As is to be expected, the film is tied down by the static microphone, but not as obviously as, say, "Lights of New York". Sadly, my copy is shorn of several minutes; there is one complete song and some musical snippets in the party scene but no sign of Al Jolson in a cameo role.From what I see, however, the film had potential which, somehow, just didn't come to fruition. Returning to the matter of "Lights of New York", not only do these films share a similar title, but even the endings are not a million miles from each other!