BULLDOG DRUMMOND
US, 1929, 89 minutes, Black-and-white.
Ronald Colman, Claude Allister, Laurence Grant, Montagu Love, Wilson Benge, Joan Bennett, Lilyan Tashman, Charles Sellon.
Directed by F. Richard Jones.
This is an early talkie and received Oscar nominations for Ronald Colman as Best Actor and for Art Direction by the famous William Cameron Menzies. It was based on a play by Supper (Herman C. McNeille) and “adapted for the talking screen� by Sidney Howard.
The film proved the Ronald Colman was a natural for talking films, strong screen presence, handsome with his moustache, a British accent, ironic humour, ready to go into action. In a few years Errol Flynn was to imitate his look and his presence. There are a number of character actors but the leading lady is Joan Bennett in her late teens, not always persuasive in her performance, but on the road to a very successful career over several decades.
The direction is by F. Richard Jones, a director of many comedies, moving into serious silent films, but this film was his last and he died at the age of 37 the next year of tuberculosis.
The film is often stagebound, with its theatre background. It starts with some ironic humour in the Conservative Seniors Club, all the elderly members sitting in their armchairs, reading the papers, dozing, being outraged when a spoon drops. Hugh Drummond, Ronald Colman, declares to his very P.G. Wodehouse type a friend, Algy, Claude Allister, that he is bored and puts an advertisement in the paper – getting many replies, including one that intrigues him from a young woman who wants him to meet at a country hotel at midnight.
This leads to a complicated plot. The young woman’s uncle, a rich man, is being held by criminals at a mansion which is posing as a hospital. Lawrence Grant as the doctor over-overacts while the rest of the cast, excluding Colman, just over act, drawing from experience on the stage.
There are various adventures, this one has Drummond intruding into the mansion defying the criminals, leading them on a car chase, doubling back, rescuing the uncle, deceiving the criminals by posing as the uncle, risking electric shock, able to get free, rescuing the young woman who has fallen in love with him. Algy and the butler have followed and become very much involved in all the activities.
There is a shrewd move at the end when the confident criminals called in their thugs disguised as police and they all get away.
Bulldog Drummond became rather popular in films even into the 1950s with such actors as Walter Pidgeon, Ray Milland and several films in the 30s with John Barrymore.
