Leathernecking (1930, Irene Dunne, Ken Murray, Eddie Foy Jr) – Classic Movie Review 12,032

Irene Dunne was put under contract to RKO Pictures in 1930. Her first film was the supposedly long vanished, but now rediscovered movie Leathernecking (1930). Cimarron was the first of her five Academy Award nominations, but she never won an Oscar, not even an honorary award. The others are Theodora Goes Wild (1936), The Awful Truth (1937), Love Affair (1939) and I Remember Mama (1948).

Director Edward F Cline’s 1930 American musical comedy film Leathernecking [Present Arms] is based on the stage show Present Arms with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart and a book by Herbert Fields, and stars Irene Dunne, Ken Murray, and Eddie Foy Jr.

Aged 32, the bright young Irene Dunne makes her movie début as the well-brought-up Hawaii girl Delphine Witherspoon, who loves a humble US marine private Chick Evans (Eddie Foy Jr) until she finds out that he is not the captain he is supposed to be after borrowing his captain’s uniform to impress her.

This simple entertainment misses most of the Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart score that made the original 1928 musical Present Arms such a success on stage, and reportedly the whole daft enterprise lacks energy and vivacity, though apparently the stars work hard and are attractive and appealing.

There are seven songs altogether, only two of them Rodgers and Hart (‘You Took Advantage of Me’ and ‘A Kiss for Cinderella’). The new Benny Davis (music) and Harry Akst (lyrics) songs (‘All My Life’, ‘Evening Star’, ‘Careless Kisses’, ‘Mighty Nice and So Particular’ and ‘Shake It Off and Smile’) are comparatively quite poor.

The film is shot in black and white but there is a two-tone Technicolor musical sequence. It has 1475 feet of two-strip Technicolor footage in reels eight and nine, mainly of numbers performed on the desert island and the finale back in Honolulu.

The screenplay is by Alfred Jackson and Jane Murfin.

For long it was thought that no print of this film was known to survive but in 2016 The Warner Archive announced on their Facebook page that they have found a copy of the film in their archives. Sound discs are held by the UCLA Film and Television Archives.

In 1958, the film entered the public domain in the US because the claimants did not renew its copyright registration in the 28th year after publication.

The show Present Arms ran from April to September 1928 at Lew Fields’ Mansfield Theatre (now the Brooks Atkinson Theatre). Produced by Lew Fields, it starred and was choreographed by Busby Berkeley.

The cast are Irene Dunne as Delphine Witherspoon, Ken Murray as Frank, Louise Fazenda as Hortense, Ned Sparks as Reynolds, Lilyan Tashman as Edna, Eddie Foy Jr as Chick Evans, Benny Rubin as Stein, Rita La Roy as Fortune Teller, Fred Santley as Douglas, William von Brinken as Richter, Carl Gerard as Colonel, Werther Weidler as Richter’s son, and Wolfgang Weidler as Richter’s son, and The John Tiller Sunshine Girls.

© Derek Winnert 2022 Classic Movie Review 12,032

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