Post by rmichaelpyle on Dec 27, 2010 12:47:52 GMT -6
If you think that "The Petrified Forest" was utterly new ground in 1935-6 when the play and the film were released - you're wrong!
I watched "Heat Lightning" (1934) with Aline McMahon, Ann Dvorak, Preston Foster, Lyle Talbot, Glenda Farrell, Frank McHugh, Ruth Donnelly, Theodore Newton, and Willard Robertson. This is based on a play by George Abbott and Leon Abrams, although you'd think that the play "The Petrified Forest", written by Sherwood Anderson, was based on this! Basically the same story, although the bad guy is Preston Foster, and he's nowhere near as mean as Duke Mantee, and he gets his at the end from the star herself - his ex-girlfriend! And it's satisfying, may I add! Acting honors go to Aline McMahon who continues to surprise me every time I see her in something I've not seen before. She's a truly wonderful actress. Ann Dvorak is not much in this. Too bad. She'd already burned enough bridges in Hollywood to be put on the back burner.
Anyway, this is a re-mastered film from the Warner Archive Collection, and it's wonderful. A "lost", brilliant precursor to "The Petrified Forest" that has obviously been buried for decades due to the prominence of the other. It's well worth seeing. Extremely well done.
I watched "Heat Lightning" (1934) with Aline McMahon, Ann Dvorak, Preston Foster, Lyle Talbot, Glenda Farrell, Frank McHugh, Ruth Donnelly, Theodore Newton, and Willard Robertson. This is based on a play by George Abbott and Leon Abrams, although you'd think that the play "The Petrified Forest", written by Sherwood Anderson, was based on this! Basically the same story, although the bad guy is Preston Foster, and he's nowhere near as mean as Duke Mantee, and he gets his at the end from the star herself - his ex-girlfriend! And it's satisfying, may I add! Acting honors go to Aline McMahon who continues to surprise me every time I see her in something I've not seen before. She's a truly wonderful actress. Ann Dvorak is not much in this. Too bad. She'd already burned enough bridges in Hollywood to be put on the back burner.
Anyway, this is a re-mastered film from the Warner Archive Collection, and it's wonderful. A "lost", brilliant precursor to "The Petrified Forest" that has obviously been buried for decades due to the prominence of the other. It's well worth seeing. Extremely well done.
