Success at Any Price

This is a pretty routine gritty early thirties drama which looks like a Warner Brothers picture although it's from RKO. It's pretty well made, reasonably entertaining but nothing special.

I can see what they were trying to do with this: make a gangster picture but without gangsters. Although this is set in the world of business - a marketing company advertising beauty cream, it is a gangster movie without guns. There's the big boss, who's worked his way up to the top but now his future is uncertain. There's his moll, an ultra-glamourous opportunist who is only with him because he's the boss and can shower her with gold and gifts. There's the other members of the gang or rather company licking their boss's boots and making sure their firm is more successful than their rival across town. And then there's the new kid on the block - a rough, tough, fast-talking guy from the streets who doesn't respect nobody including the boss and maybe not even himself. He's ruthlessly going to force his way to the top and he ain't taking no prisoners on the way, see.

This picture almost works, the characters are almost believable and the story is almost exciting but although it's trying quite a clever and original idea, it still feels a little stale. There's nothing wrong with this, it simply doesn't stand out from the pack. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Gets a little annoying after a while with his constant machine-gun style delivery of his words being used for every single line of dialogue. Whether he's ordering an underling to do some dirty work, ordering some flowers or telling someone he loves them, it all sounds like it's coming out of a tommy gun. This is meant to show his focus, his determination, that nothing is going to change the way he looks at life - it doesn't however make him likeable though. You can't grow to care about a caricature.

Colleen Moore is remarkably dour and uninteresting but she's another caricature and is there only to contrast with Genevieve Tobin's over-the-top gold-digging glamour puss. Genevieve Tobin seems to give her character more depth than perhaps even the writers envisaged. Her accent, her mannerisms, her attitudes are all so absurd that you think at first, you're going to absolutely hate her but the talented Miss Tobin turns this potential pantomime villain into a very real person with real vulnerabilities. She is someone you feel you'd like to know more about. Fairbank's character is however just what you see on the screen - nothing more.

Douglas Fairbanks Jr's brother was a gangster. He was gunned down. His reward was a gold casket. Fairbanks wants money, success, Gebevieve Tobin, all respectably. He gets it, but trample everyone around him.

It's a pretty straightforward handling of John Howard Lawson's morality play, without much fun involved. Despite the lack of leering visuals -- the themes are definitely pre-Code, but even the marriage bed is a twin set -- it makes its points plainly and sometimes even succinctly; Fairbanks' rise from clerk to Master Of The Universe is charted by the same nameplate on increasingly exalted doors. It's also ill-tempered, not just in its disapproval of Fairbanks, but in its casting. Colleen Moore, in her penultimate screen appearance, has her key role as the good girl Fairbanks should have married trimmed exhaustively. Still, J. Walter Rubens ably directs a fine cast that includes Frank Morgan, Edward Everett Horton, Nydia Westman, Henry Kolker and June Brewster in a manner that would have gladdened my Marxist grandfather's heart.

Douglas Fairbanks Jr. plays an angry young man working at a large company. Many of his co-workers are college men and he has a strong sense of inferiority because of his high school education. On top of that, he's got a HUGE chip on his shoulder. It's so bad it almost gets him fired, but because he is very talented, he manages to shoot up the corporate ladder. It also helps that he's ruthless and wants to succeed more than anything. Through the course of the film, he manages to be very successful and a complete failure at the same time. How will it all end? Unfortunately, very, very poorly. In fact, it has one of the worst endings I can recall--which is amazing, as up until about a minute before the film ended, I loved it. But the miraculous ending just seemed VERY contrived. My wife suggested that perhaps this terrible ending was tacked on because the new Production Code was about to be implemented (only three months later) and this sappy ending would not upset censors. While I am not sure that this is the case, I do know that the film's miracle ending really annoyed me and Fairbanks' character getting a happy ending just made no sense at all....none.

Here is a picture that not only deserves recognition for its considerable merits, but is one whose existence remains largely unknown, even to those with more than a casual interest in film. Its characters are sharply and honestly drawn, defined primarily by crackling dialog that is both earthy and literate. These are real people, with no illusions about themselves or the world they move in; they speak from the heart, revealing their needs, longings and frustrations. The performances are rock-solid by all the players (and how refreshing to discover one of Frank Morgan's few roles in which he does not dither and sputter). Fast-paced and seamless, the direction is also deserving of special praise.

Admittedly (or arguably?) the ending is less than totally convincing, what with Joe's change of heart occurring too quickly and without sufficient motivation. Similarly, his determination to succeed (yes, at any price) is presented at the start as a result of his gangster brother's having been murdered. This appears unnecessary, and more than a little contrived. He wants to break out of a poor, aimless existence, and has a loyal, loving girlfriend encouraging him to do so. That's more than enough.

Even with those weaknesses punctuating the first and last five minutes of this picture, it remains a first-rate drama that can easily hold its own with a host of better-known films.

Joe Martin (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) is a poor guy who never gets any breaks. He sits and wonders what it'd be like to be rich with his girlfriend Sarah (Colleen Moore), but can't seem to plot a scheme to achieve wealth. Finally, he realizes that he can weasel his way into Sarah's office by taking advantage of Mr. Merritt's (Frank Morgan) taste for a good gamble. He achieves his goal, and skyrockets to the top so fast, Mr. Merritt isn't able to say a word before Joe steals his society girlfriend Agnes Carter (Genevieve Tobin). Agnes knows that Joe only wants her because she represents what he can't have, but she marries him anyway, and the more Joe gets what he thinks he wants, the more unhappy he becomes.

This film tries unsuccessfully to fully illustrate its point that happiness is not always achieved through the methods society glorifies. Joe does all he can to better himself thinking he'll be happier with Mr. Merritt's job when true happiness was his in Sarah all along. However, the movie is much too short, and although his motives are explained in short throwaway sentences, his actions do not always make sense from one moment to the next. If more time were given to shooting (this movie is less than 90 minutes long) and a little more dialogue added to the script, it could have been a much better film.