THE WET PARADE
US, 1932, 118 minutes, Black and white.
Dorothy Jordan, Neil Hamilton, Lewis Stone, Walter Houston, Robert Young, Myrna Loy, Wallace Ford.
Directed by Victor Fleming.
The Wet Parade is a high-production MGM film of 1932, the year that Grand Hotel won the Oscar.
The theme is alcohol and prohibition, its plot set is in both the South and the North, the contrasting ways of life, especially with the black servants and the racism compared with the gangsters of the North. Prohibition had been in place for some years, the 1920s had seen the effects of bootlegging.
Commentators ask whether this is a film for Prohibition and/or for moderate drinking. The drama is played out in the two fathers and their collapse, Lewis Stone and a highly melodramatic Walter Huston. Dorothy Jordan and Neil Hamilton did not have the successful careers on screen that newcomers, Robert Young and Myrna Loy did. There is a curiosity casting in Jimmy Durante as an agent, playing his comic self in a serious role. The screenplay was written by John Lee Mahin, writer of Quo Vadis, Heaven Knows, Mr Allison. The uncredited director was Victor Fleming, director of Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz.
1. Alcohol, prohibition? 1930s perspective? The experience of the 1920s? The US, World War I, prohibition, bootlegging?
2. Production values, strong cast, MGM production, director, score?
3. The title, alcohol, and Prohibition?
4. The story in the South? The setting, the blacks, the whites, racism? Work? Servants? And wealth? Maggie May, a life, writer, her father and his cronies, the drinking, collapse, concern, promises and failure, the DTs, his death?
5. The contrast with the North, the hotel, poverty, the clients, arrogance, Kip and his mother, the South, his father, Maggie May, his father and his dealings and his drinking, death?
6. The clubs, wealth, drinking, Eileen, the life?
7. Prohibition, the countdown, decadence, changes in behaviour?
8. The political issues, the police, bootlicking and the companies?
9. Kip, Maggie, the relationship, possibility for a life, plans?
10. Jimmy Durante as the agent, early in his career, disguise, his usual self, his final words?
11. Club, the set-ups, the raid?
12. How much was the film support for prohibition, or for moderate drinking? Its presentation of Prohibition gangsters? The repercussions on American society?
