Year: 1929-30
Cast: Chester Morris, Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone, Robert Montgomery, Leila Hyams, George F. Marion, JC Nugent, Karl Dane, DeWitt Jennings, Mathew Betz, Claire McDowell, Robert Emmet O'Connor, Tom Kennedy, Tom Wilson, Eddie Foyer, Rosco Ates, Fletcher Norton
Director: George Hill
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor (Beery), Best Writing-Achievement, Best Sound Recording
This film was among the nominees in only the third Academy Awards ceremony. This means it didn't actually win any Oscars. Only Academy Awards. It wasn't nicknamed "Oscar" until 1931. Thus, none of the movies I'm looking at for this category are "Oscar" winners.
This film won two Academy Awards, losing Best Picture and Best Actor. Its wins for writing and sound were very deserved, as it's kind of amazing how well this film holds up. If it were remade today, I don't think much would change, other than the period dialogue, costumes, etc. And there'd probably be at least one rape, even if only implied. This is a pre-Hayes Code movie, but I guess some subjects just didn't get talked about in films back then. Not that I'm complaining.
The focus in this film is on three prisoners; Kent Marlowe (Robert Montgomery), a straight who accidentally killed someone in a car accident and was convicted of manslaughter, John Morgan (Chester Morris), a thief and forger with an easy manner, and "Machine Gun Butch" Schmidt (Wallace Beery), a hardened, violent thug.
Marlowe isn't prepared for prison life and is easily taken advantage of by the other inmates, with Morgan and Butch, as his bunkmates, trying with various levels of success (and effort) to make sure he doesn't get himself killed. Morgan sees Marlowe's sister during visiting hours and is smitten with her. He coaxes information about her from Marlowe and then stages an escape, where he goes to meet her. He charms her out of calling the police and she even lets him stay with her and her folks, until eventually the police catch up with him.
Butch, meanwhile, is also planning an escape, but of a far more violent nature. The ending is something to behold, considering it was 1929 and the "talkies" were a relatively new concept.
Wallace Beery was the sole acting nominee from this film, and it was for Best Actor, though the category of Best Supporting Actor did not exist at the time. There's some question, I guess, of which category he would have been nominated in should there have been another, but I'm gonna say supporting. This movie belongs to Chester Morris, and even though Robert Montgomery's name is far down in the credits, I think he's got more of an arc than Beery does. If I were to compare it to another prison drama, in this case HBO's Oz, Beery's Butch is comparable to JK Simmons's Vern, or perhaps Adewale Akkinuoye-Agbage's Adebisi. Montgomery is very much comparable to Lee Tergesen's Beecher while Morgan is like a proto-Ryan O'Reily (Dean Winters).
Beery is very believable as the unrepentant criminal, and he's got a few almost sentimental moments. There's a sad early scene where he gets a letter that he says is from one of his girls. He "reads" part of it, then says it's "too juicy" to share with anyone but Morgan. So he and Morgan go off alone...and Butch asks Morgan who it's from and if he can read it to him. It turns out to be news that Butch's mother has died.
So Beery acquits himself well, and it's no real surprise he was nominated. What about his co-stars, though? Should any of them have joined him? Honestly, not really. I never once bought Chester Morris as a criminal. He was too nice. Too heroic. Which is odd because he made his career playing criminals and tough guys. Montgomery is wasted as a character who should have been the most sympathetic of the three, and instead is the least. Lewis Stone, one of two actors in this cast to already have an Academy Award nomination (the other being Chester Morris, though in both cases the nominations were unofficial), has little to work with as the tough but fair warden, who seems to care about the prisoners as people (at least in private) but doesn't do anything to alleviate their situation. So, if they only chose one actor from this, I'm glad it was Beery.
The Big House is a pretty stirring, involving film even today, which should prove that age has nothing to do with a film's quality. We'll see if Beery's competitors, and their films, were just as good in the next few posts.
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