Edward Arnold, plucking his nose hairs.

The thing about Hollywood "pre-code" movies is, yeah, they're great in that they provide you prolonged views of Joan Blondell and Barbara Stanwyck in their underwear, or glimpses of Claudette Colbert's nipples in a milk bath, and they've got that great snappy irreverent dialogue and freewheeling attitudes, but what I really love about a pre-code picture is the occasional repellent curve ball it'll offer up, as in this indelible, unfortunately, image from Mervyn LeRoy's 1932 Three On A Match:

Mr. Edward Arnold is herein, in the role of master gangster "Ace", captured in the extreme pre-code "raw," before he became one of the more venerated, if not beloved, character actors of The American Cinema. His Jim Taylor in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, as despicable as he was, was never seen quite like this; and let us remember Arnold's uber-dignified, positively heroic Daniel Webster in The Devil and Daniel Webster, aka All That Money Can Buy.

And yet here he is in an early role giving up whatever actor's vanity he might have had in a fashion that might cause Stephen Root or Tom Noonan to raise an eyebrow. Those WERE different times, in many ways.

Three on a Match is one of several worthwhile films in the second Forbidden Hollywood collection, which I commend to all of you. One of the joys of cinephilia lies in its ability, beyond the concerns of edumacation and aesthetics, to just out and out blow your socks off in surprise.

And if you're not buying it, here's a Motorhead video:

Comments

[Gorilla Bob]

My favorite pre-code is hands down, Mervyn Le Roy's "2 Seconds" with Edward G. Robinson. I call it the "Citizen Kane" of pre-codes. And it's only about 60 minutes long! Saw it first at a pre-code fest at Fim Forum, then Turner, God Bless "Em, showed it. A must see, with a deranged Expressionist Ending with Robinson explaining he had to murder his wife to be a man. Opens with an execution, and then -- We're off! Racing down memory lane.