Untamed

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Movie
Original title Untamed
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1929
length 86 minutes
Rod
Director Jack Conway
script Sylvia Thalberg ,
Frank Butler ,
Willard Mack
production MGM
music Nacio Herb Brown
camera Oliver T. Marsh
cut William S. Gray , Charles Hockberg
occupation

Untamed is an American film with vocal inserts from 1929 and is the first sound film by Joan Crawford . The film was shot before The Hollywood Revue of 1929 , but was not released for rental until a few months later.

action

Alice Dowling, called Bingo, grew up in the middle of the jungle of South America on her father's oil fields. Bingo knows no rules and lives only for your pleasure. When her father dies, the girl inherits the entire empire without being even remotely prepared for the responsibility. Ben Murchinson, her father's best friend, takes bingo to New York, where she is supposed to learn good behavior and appropriate public behavior in addition to bookkeeping. On the crossing, Bingo meets Andy McAllister, a poor but decent engineer. They both want to get married on an impulse, but Ben demands that bingo wait another year to test the seriousness of their feelings. Time goes by, bingo turns into a cultivated young lady of the best company and the love for Andy threatens to fail because of the differences in class. Andy eventually decides he'd rather live with bingo millions than without the girl he loves. Both move back into the jungle and live rich but happy.

background

Joan Crawford had come to fame since 1928 with her portrayal of fun-loving young women, then called flapper , in films like Our Dancing Daughters . In mid-1929 she was faced with the challenge of mastering the transition from silent film to sound film . In contrast to most other studios, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer initiated the transition with care. While competitors such as Paramount Studios lost a large part of their established stars due to a hasty switch to the new medium, all established names at MGM made the switch. In the middle of the year, The Hollywood Revue of 1929 was distributed, which presented almost all of the top stars in speaking roles with the exception of Greta Garbo in a loose sequence of musical numbers and skits . The film marked Joan Crawford's official sound film debut, although Untamed was completed a few weeks earlier.

Untamed varied the popular image of Joan Crawford as a fun-loving, rich girl who celebrates exuberantly, has many admirers and in the end finds true love. The actress prepared herself intensively for the challenge of the microphone. She described her simple but effective method to Roy Newquist:

“Most of the time I read aloud [...]. Whenever I had trouble pronouncing a word, I kept repeating it. I've talked to myself a lot. I've read the newspapers aloud. 'Untamed' started with my singing, 'Languid and plain-tive, hear the chant of the jun-gle!' I was horrified until Paul Bern explained to me that my hoarse voice was exactly what people expected from a girl with my wild looks. "

However, she was less satisfied with the finished result and, looking back, said succinctly:

"[...] silly but funny - Bob Montgomery was great, I was terrible, mainly because I was miscast."

Theatrical release

With a manufacturing cost of $ 229,000, Untamed was an inexpensive production. Revenue in the US was $ 718,000, slightly higher than the actress's previous films. With foreign revenues of $ 260,000 and total earnings of $ 974,000, the studio was able to realize a profit of $ 508,000 in the end, an indication of the rapidly growing popularity of Joan Crawford.

Reviews

In the New York Times, Mordaunt Hall criticized the film:

"Miss Crawford has a good voice, but as a girl who has lived outside civilization for most of her life, it is not convincing."

The Brooklyn Eagle critic was less critical:

"If" Untamed "does anything for Miss Crawford, it is to show that she is an actress who the microphones shouldn't frighten. Her pronunciation is clear and unaffected [and] she manages to make the impulsive heroine of the story even more believable than it should be. "

literature

  • Roy Newquist (Ed.): Conversations with Joan Crawford . Citadel Press, Secaucus, NJ 1980, ISBN 0-8065-0720-9 .
  • Lawrence J. Quirk : The Complete Films of Joan Crawford . Citadel Press, Secaucus, NJ 1988, ISBN 0-8065-1078-1 .
  • Lawrence J. Quirk, William Schoell: Joan Crawford. The Essential Biography . University Press, Lexington, KY. 2002, ISBN 0-8131-2254-6 .
  • Alexander Walker: Joan Crawford. The Ultimate Star . Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1983, ISBN 0-297-78216-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mostly I read aloud to myself [...]. If I had difficulty pronouncing a word, I repeated it over and over again. I talked to myself a lot. I read newspapers aloud. 'Untamed' opened with me singing, 'Languid and plain-tive, hear the chant of the jun-gle!' I was horrified until Paul Bern explained that my husky voice was what people expected from a girl with my torrid looks.
  2. ↑ […] silly but fun - Bob Montgomery was terrific, I was awful, mostly because I was miscast.
  3. ↑ Miss Crawford has a good voice, but she never strikes one as a girl who has been away from civilization for most of her life.
  4. ↑ If "Untamed" does little else for Miss Crawford, it proves that she is an actress for whom the microphones should hold no fear. Her diction is clear and unaffected [and] she managed to make the impulsive heroine of the story somewhat more credible than the part deserves.