Citizen's Top 62, 1930s Actors & Actresses

Luise Rainer
Don't believe I've seen any of her 30s output, as mentioned before The Good Earth is one I earmarked for viewing but as of yet that's not come to fruition. I'll have to see if I can dig anything of her's from the period out at some point.

edit: watched her in The Emperor's Candlesticks and she acquits herself nicely enough in a tale that's fairly entertaining up until the twee conclusion.

Eugene Pallette
Seen him in The Stolen Jools so that's job done already really Seriously though have seen him in a few (Godfrey & Mr. Smith to name but two) but will fit in a watch of Steamboat Round The Bend and a rewatch of The Kennel Murder Case ('cos it's been quite some time since) in the coming days.

edit: Gave Steamboat Around The Bend a run out and he gives a decent performance in an entertaining enough tale though it's Irvin S. Cobb that's most memorable in it for me. Also watched The Kennel Murder Case and again he plays his part well enough with another likeable character.

Charlie Chaplin
Both are recent watches in prep for the upcoming countdown so for once it's 'no further action required'

As this thread has just slipped off of page 1 it's probably a good time to comment to say I also recently watched Girls About Town with Eugene Pallette in .... not a movie or role to set the world alight but he performs his part in proceedings well enough and the whole is an easy enough watch.

I'm going to finish this! It might take me awhile, but I'll get do it. I haven't seen Girls About Town.

It's ok, go at your own pace - I know you have HOF's and other stuff going on as well .... and real life sometimes gets in the way too. The 'directed by women' hasn't even started yet

All I ask is that I don't wake up one morning and find you've block-posted the next ten or twenty entries

Ha, I wish I had time to do 10 entries, but nah it'll be just a couple here or there. Soon I'll be getting to the biggies.

My #19 Favorite 1930's Actor is

His best known 1930s film is Stagecoach (1939)





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Wayne is not that great of an actor but he is great to watch, he's really intimidating and surprisingly funny in The Quiet Man at least. Seen 10 of his films, 2 from the 1930's. I did not like The Big Trail much at all, Stagecoach is incredible though.

My #20 Favorite 30's Actress is

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I never use to like Wayne, but he kind of grows on you. One of my favorite Wayne films was a comedy with Claudette Colbert Without Reservations (1946), thought there's lot of good Wayne films out there. Geez I feel like watching one tonight.

The Quiet Man is the only comedy i've seen him in i think. Like i said he was surprisingly funny in it and he was good with O'Hara. Otherwise it's just been Westerns, think like six or seven of the films i've seen with him are from John Ford.

Never heard of Una Merkel. Apparently i've seen her in the original Parent Trap but i barely remember that.

I liked The Quiet Man, and I'm pretty sure I reviewed it too. I liked John Wayne's more quiet & subdued but strong character. The overall story was to my liking. And yup, Maureen O'Hara is good in it too. I always like her in most of her movies.

The one thing I didn't like, which is a John Ford thing, is the idea of fist fighting as a manly way to bond and becomes friends.
It just seems so silly to me. But then again I guess it was a comedy, so I guess I can give it some leeway for comic appeal.


The High and the Mighty (1954) is a good non western film.I really liked him as a man trying to avoid violence for the sake of a Quaker woman in Angel and the Badman (1947)Gail Russell had a special quality and sadness to her, that Wayne most have noticed as he requested her for a role in another fine non western film Wake of the Red Witch (1948)

John Wayne
Not a huge fan of the Duke's 'acting' but he certainly became a film icon and it never precluded me from liking a number of his fillums. Of his copious 30s output I've more than likely seen plenty of the westerns as a nipper but my memory is awful and having overdosed on that genre as a kid it's one I tend to primarily only revisit some of the more respected entries, one of which was Stagecoach which I last viewed in November just gone. I'll have to see what else of his from that decade, if anything, takes my fancy.

Una Merkel
Like Camo, hers is not a name I'm familiar with and even though she had a part in The Bat Whispers (which I only watched the month before last) I'm sadly not able to place her in it I've never seen the original The Maltese Falcon nor 42nd Street so I'll definitely have to see if either are available to me, if not some of her other 30s output looks of interest to me. It's also a timely reminder that I'm supposed to watch Destry Rides Again which I'll hopefully finally be able to get round to sometime next week (for some unknown reason our Minix doesn't seem to like Dailymotion).

Looking at Letterboxd the only other John Wayne 1930's film i was planning on watching is Baby Face and i'm pretty sure he only has a small role in that. Which other ones would you say are worth watching?

With Una Merkel i was already planning on seeing D.W. Griffith's Abraham Lincoln and Lubitsch's The Merry Widow.

Also wow didn't know there was a 30's film called Some Like It Hot - https://letterboxd.com/film/some-like-it-hot-1939/

Just saw this. That's exactly what i said about it. The machismo manly man BS is ridiculous, it definitely dragged the film down a bit. If it wasn't a comedy i would have hated it, i do think Ford was kind of mocking the idea himself or maybe i'm giving him too much credit.

Wayne did a lot of films in the 1930s as a mostly unknown star. Unfortunately only Stagecoach and Baby Face are real note worthy. The rest I would say are OK. I've seen some, but like you it's been so long I can't remember them. Most of his 30s work was in B matinee westerns, which means many are public domain so should be easy to find.

Una Merkel

It's funny because from time to time, I'll watch a newer film...like from the 60s or 70s (ha, that's newer to me) and I'll spot an older Una Merkel. Mostly she had smaller roles. Destry Rides Again is a good one.

Baby Face is top 100 for me. Definitely that one, but other than Stagecoach, not much from the 30s stands out for Wayne.

I've seen The Merry Widow It's a good one. I've liked most of Lubitsch's work. I haven't seen D.W. Griffith's Abraham Lincoln, but I should before the 1930s Countdown deadline is up.

Somehow i missed Chaplin on the last page. His performance in City Lights is probably my second favourite male one of the decade after Muni in I Am A Fugitive unless i'm forgetting something. Still got to see Modern Times.

It's weird that he was the biggest movie star of the 1920's (probably) then he's only in two films in the 30's, two in the 40's two in the 50's and one in the 60's. Guessing that's the transition from silent to sound.

I get the feeling that John Ford personally believed in 'celebrating manliness' and male bonding, with fist fights in his movies. Seems to me he did that in a number of films and often it's done in a more light moment in the film. The fights are never taken too seriousl, and often ends in deepening the friendship between the two fighters. I remember he did that in How Green Was My Valley.

Yeah, the transition from silent to sound left a lot of silent actors in the dust. Some of the reason is: the more well known silent actors had contracts for really big money... and the studios broke that by hiring a whole new batch of actors at much lower prices at the start of the sound era.

You may be right. What i think those two have in common though is they are both set in working class 19th Century or early 20th Century societies, societies where men are expected (have no choice basically) to work very hard and from a young age along with other men in ridiculously long working days, while the wife cooks and watches the kids. Those sorts of hyper masculine atmospheres do tend to foster these types of situations. One was set in Ireland and one in Wales too, those countries have of course modernized since and these things aren't as common but i think like travellers still have that sort of a culture, women have their roles and the men sort things out with fist fights. It's really dumb and prehistoric. I think in The Quiet Man at least Ford didn't take it seriously i mean the fist fight is ridiculously long and pointless and it's with a much older man than Wayne as if he's one of the last remaining members of that era. It's also pretty slapstick with loads of silly jokes sprinkled throughout and it was basically a last resort for Wayne and there wasn't much of it outside of those two so i think it can be seen as a ritual that won't continue once the older generation dies out with Wayne representing the younger one.

That's well said, and I could see that point, that Ford was showing a past culture by showing more stereotypical male female roles.