Central Park

This movie is beautifully photographed. George Cukor did well by Central Park a couple decades later. In between (and after) -- has the beauty been paralleled?

In this Central Park, there are actual sheep in Sheep Meadow!

There are also the always marvelous Joan Blondell, Wallace Ford, a lion, gangsters, a touching cop losing his eyesight, and as many plots as there are in "Grand Hotel" (though this movie seems less dated than that more famous one.)

Central Park is a short not quite an hour B film that starred Joan Blondell and Wallace Ford who meet in the famous park over a pair of purloined hamburgers. They are the leads in a series of interconnected incidents involving a robbery of the famous Central Park Casino, an escaped lion from the zoo, Guy Kibbee as a beloved patrolman who is slowly losing his vision and trying to stick it out until retirement and an escaped mental patient who happens to be the former zoo keeper.

Of course the zoo and the Sheep Meadow are there, but today's audiences unless they're read in the history of the times wouldn't know about the Central Park Casino or that there was gambling and a nightclub on the park grounds. And in 1932 when the film came out, the Central Park Casino was the favored hangout of Mayor James J. Walker. An added dimension that theatergoers of the day had that people watching on TCM can't appreciate.

The film is structured kind of like Boogie Nights or Crash with the separate elements all coming together at the end. For B film, Warner Brothers put a lot of care into this one.

Set entirely in Central Park (albiet a studio bound, rear projection version of it), this is one of Warner's most fascinating 60-minute lightning rounds, with Joan Blondell as the out of work Roxy usherette who gets caught up with gangsters (in her first scene she steals a hot dog from a vendor, out of starvation). On hand are Wallace Ford as the "Forgotten Man" who falls for her, Guy Kibbee as a Central Park cop, and John Wray as a sociopath on the loose.

If that isn't enough plot for an hour, there's a lion that escapes from the Central Park Zoo, and I don't know if it's special effects or just brilliant editing, but I'd swear that the extras and stunt men where REALLY put in harm's way with this animal, especially in the horrifying scene in the cage.

I have to address another reviewer's question about the "appeal of Joan Blondell." I totally disagree. Blondell's pre-code output is worthy of its own book. She was a master of rapid fire dialogue and wisecracks, with excellent comic timing. She instilled energy into films that are now unimaginable without her (GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933, NIGHT NURSE, BIG CITY BLUES, DAMES, etc), and if nothing else was the best co-star James Cagney ever had (BLONDE CRAZY, FOOTLIGHT PARADE, HE WAS HER MAN). I'd vote that her performances survive intact, and haven't dated a bit in 75 years (which I cant say for Garbo, Shearer, Crawford and some other shining lights of the era).

A Warners B that crams a lot into just under an hour, and belongs to no genre. It's a comedy! It's a tragedy! It's a drama! It's Warner Brothers social consciousness! Joan Blondell and Wallace Ford, both unemployed and living in the titular park, meet, flirt, and get into adventures, mostly involving her being hired by thugs posing as cops to help throw a charity event at the Central Park Casino. Meanwhile, in the Central Park Zoo, a keeper is abusing a lion, and is about to be confronted by a former colleague, who has escaped from the loony bin. So we've got gangsters, Depression romance, a sympathetic cop going blind (Guy Kibbee, plunging deeper than usual), and a lion loose in the park. It's fast and lively, far livelier than the usual output of John Adolfi, who tended to drag scenes out. It may have been filmed in Burbank, but the combination of stock footage and studio footage is expertly assembled, and the mad-lion sequences are satisfyingly frightening--I wouldn't be surprised to learn that extras WERE harmed during the making. Blondell is in her beguiling sexy-sassy mode, and Ford may not have been her strongest lead ever, but he gives good Forgotten Man.

In New York's Central Park, jobless Joan Blondell (as Dot) flirts with unemployed Wallace Ford (as Rick) as they ogle unaffordable hot dogs. When a wayward baseball strikes the vendor's window, Ms. Blondell swipes two juicy hot dogs, which she shares with Mr. Ford. The two are mutually attracted, and arrange a more proper date. Ford is acquainted with the park cop Guy Kibbee (as Charlie). Mr. Kibbee has one week of work until he is eligible for pensioned retirement. However, Kibbee is no longer a competent policeman - his vision is failing...

Blondell is duped, by gangsters, into working undercover in a "Most Beautiful Girl" contest. Ford smells trouble, and gets into danger of his own. Meanwhile, lunatic John Wray (as Smiley) escapes from his insane asylum. A former keeper at the "Central Park Zoo", Mr. Wray causes trouble for everyone by causing the zoo's killer lion ("Nebo") to escape from his cage, and threaten the environs. Henry B. Walthall (as Eby) is a Kibbee confidante. Harold Huber (as Nick) is the gang leader. Director John G. Adolfi and his cast make this creaky early talkie roar with all their might.

****** Central Park (12/10/32) John G. Adolfi ~ Joan Blondell, Wallace Ford, Guy Kibbee, Henry B. Walthall