The Line-Up

"The Line-Up" is a short sound film from 1929 that really shows its age. As you watch it, you soon realize how primitive the sound equipment was as well as how primitive the acting is...and that acting really is awful.

The story begins in the world's smallest night club. It's not billed that way...it's just that the film is so cheaply made that they used a room no bigger than many dining rooms (with nothing to indicate it was a night club)! There, you learn through some stilted and poorly delivered dialog that the place is dying as no customers are coming there. When a gangster tells the night club owner he'll give him $5000 to deliver a letter, the owner jumps at the chance...even though even a total imbecile would realize that for all that money it was something illegal and dangerous! What's next? See it...or better yet, don't!

I have rarely heard actors deliver their lines worse than in "The Line-Up"...and I've seen "Robot Monster" and "Plan 9 From Outer Space" and both feature better acting! The only reason I give this stinker a 2 is that I am cutting it a tiny bit of slack due to how early it was made and it must have some historical importance.

A long-lost short film recently resurrected online, The Line-Up is one of 12 planned crime shorts that failed to materialise - only this one was made. To be honest, on the evidence here the failure to continue with the series was no great loss. While some allowance has to be made for the fact that this was made when sound production was in its infancy, the acting is so poor that it is almost embarrassing to watch, and the production values are extremely low.

I'm writing this in response to the condescending review posted from one Martin Hafer - and I don't know where he viewed the film in its entirety unless purchasing a DVD of it from Greg Luce's Sinister Cinema (my having allowed Greg to make copies available in this format, these derived from my 16mm print). And I just gave Geno Cuddy the go-ahead to make it available, in full, on one of his Websites; prior to that he was using a condensation containing all of the credits but only the final scene! The picture had its initial public airing yesterday evening (Sunday, May 31st, 2020).

"THE LINE-UP" (not to be confused with the 1934 Columbia feature of that title) is an awkward production which, like any number of contemporary Poverty Row productions, wasn't even copyrighted (copyright dates printed on their films notwithstanding!). Its crudity can be attributed to, as the case with any number of releases from even the major studios, their attempts to master sound recording (here using the Cinephone system, as also utilized by Walt Disney, Mascot Pictures, the Ub Iwerks cartoons released by MGM, etc.). Its gritty, realistic look, however, is commendable, particularly as concerns sequences involving the police (with a good number of official detectives, this rather surprising for a film shot on the proverbial shoestring). The plot resembles that of the first all-talking feature (which itself started out as a short subject), "LIGHTS OF NEW YORK" (Warner Bros.; 1928); but it contains a surprising finale involving the identity of the chief culprit - a plot twist apparently considered a no-no in cinema stories up to this time although used in mystery fiction by Marie Connor Leighton and Robert Leighton (1899); Melvin Severy (1904); Gaston Leroux (1908, preceding his famous 1910 novel, "The Phantom of the Opera"); et al. - and subsequently used by such noted detective-story writers as Edgar Wallace (who resorted to the ploy more than once) and Ellery Queen, this with but slight variations. Not till Paramount released two feature-length movies, in 1931 and 1933 respectively, did the motif employed in "THE LINE-UP" again materialize. Since then, it has shown up in any number of mystery pictures.

My print is believed to be the only one extant, purchased years ago from a Los Angeles film-rental library, the proprietor of which mistakenly sold it to me as an entry in the early-Fifties TV series bearing the same title! No doubt having passed away by now, the explanation as to how he could've mistaken an item from his plethora of theatrical films, all of long-ago vintage, with a Fifties TV program, will remain as lost to us as "THE LINE-UP" previously had been!

• Ray Cabana, Jr.

THE LINE-UP was one of those movies which went missing for a long time until it turned up where it was not expected -- confused for a kinescope of a episode of a TV series by the same name. It has a good story, interesting staging, and terrible acting.

First, let's talk about the sound. With the rise of sound in movies, there was competition between the Warner Brothers Vitaphone sound system, and William Fox's Motivetone. Eventually the latter won out, but in the meantime, other systems arose. Long-time producer Pat Powers bought a system, named it 'CInephone', and tried to interest producers in it. Its only well-known use was in Ub Iwerks' cartoons, which, not coincidentally, were produced by Powers. The system was also used in this movie, the first and only effort of a projected series of a dozen shorts.

It's not easy to tell what the end result was at the time, but the sound track as it exists is buzzy and patchy. The actors' voices are no help, because they all speak stagily, and some, like Viola Richards, are nearly inaudible. Certainly, the Iwerks cartoons had good sound, but those were recorded separately from the images. Whether the poor sound quality is an artifact of the recording or the copy of the movie is impossible to tell. To put it kindly, it does not impress, and its hand lies heavy on the movie as a whole.

None of the performers had a major film career after this. Miss Richards had appeared in several Hal Roach shorts a few years earlier, and she was a competent comedian in them.

The IMDb trivia for this movie states that Miss RIchards made no further sound films. That is wrong. A consultation with her IMDb filmography will show she would appear in a coupl of Roach shorts in 1935.

Watched some weird ones last night. Began with "The Line-Up" (1929), with William Black, Joseph Garry, Jack Irvin, Viola Richard, and Charles Slattery. This one makes "Plan 9 From Outer Space" look like "Gone with the Wind"! This one is about 30-35 minutes long, and it's a crime drama. There are a couple of silent scenes and two or three intertitles, but the rest is - well, I'll call it sound. If you've seen "Singin' in the Rain", you're familiar with the actors being told to "speak to the microphones!" This film's why. Sometimes they miss by a mile, and it's like listening to space between Mars and Jupiter coming out of the mouths of anything but babes. Frankly, this film should be shown to all those in college courses wishing to learn about the history of movies. It's so bad it's good. Viola Richard is such an embarrassment as an actress my face is still red this morning from blushing last night. I wish I could say it was because I'm shy and she was that good looking, but I think I heard insects running away in our room last night when she was on the screen. I can't even find a single prokaryotic bacterium under the microscope this morning. I also admit to some strange dreams last night... Wait till you see the actual line-up in the movie! The "hunters" and "the hunted" is how it's labeled on screen. The cops even wear masks...no, I'm not making this up. I did enjoy Jack Irvin's character, "Bum Chiggers": yes, he'll make you scratch for a month after watching him. And that accent... I honestly think they really dug him up to play the part. He WAS alive; about the only one...