Not So Dumb

United States

1930

76 Min

Black and White

1.20:1

English

Currently 2.6/5 Stars.
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PROD Marion Davies, King Vidor

SCR Marc Connelly, George S. Kaufman, Edwin Justus Mayer, Wanda Tuchock, Lucille Newmark

CAST Marion Davies, Elliott Nugent, Raymond Hackett, Franklin Pangborn, Julia Faye, William Holden, Donald Ogden Stewart, Sally Starr, George Davis, Sidney Bracey, Jay Eaton, George Irving, Ruby Lafayette, John Miljan

SOUND Fred Morgan, Douglas Shearer

Synopsis

The basics of the plot are explained in the first scene, which is not in the play. A title card introduces the location and the first joke, “Sunny California”. Standing under a small umbrella in a driving rain, Dulcy Parker and her fiancé Gordy Smith are waiting for a train. Dulcy and Gordy discuss the importance of the passengers on the train, Mr Charles Forbes and family. Gordy must carry out a merger of his jewelry factory with Mr Forbes’ company in order to stay in business and have enough money to marry Dulcy. He warns Dulcy about the sensitive nature of Mr Forbes and asks her not to talk too much or attempt to induce Mr Forbes into the merger. Of course, Dulcy will do everything she was asked to avoid. She irritates Mr Forbes immediately. Her chatter keeps the family standing in the rain. After Mr Forbes has been further delayed by a photographer, Dulcy knocks over the camera and spoils the photograph.

Dulcy’s palatial home is the setting for the rest of the movie. Dulcy is having a weekend party for Mr Forbes and his family. The other guests at this party are introduced individually. Dulcy’s brother, Bill, is annoyed because she persists in calling him “Willie”. He knows, and is attracted to, Miss Forbes. Dulcy instructs Perkins, the butler, in the proper manner of greeting guests. Perkins is awkward and untrained. He is a convicted robber who has been paroled to Dulcy’s custody. Skylar Van Dyke arrives. He is rich, highly eccentric, and an avid golfer. Finally, Vincent Leach arrives. He is rather prissy, a film scenarist, and has been courting Miss Forbes.

After the arrival of the Forbes family, Dulcy unsuccessfully attempts to entertain Mr Forbes. She causes him to become increasingly annoyed and grumpy. The antics of Messer’s Van Dyke and Leach only add to Mr. Forbes’s irritation. Events climax with Dulcy bringing about both the apparent theft of Angela’s pearl necklace by the butler and the elopement of Angela and Mr. Leach.

Gordy despairs about the merger with Forbes. However, Mr. Van Dyke offers to back his business and with better terms than Forbes has offered. Gordy tells Forbes about Van Dykes’ offer. As Gordy and Dulcy are rejoicing, a well-known attorney, who represents the Van Dyke interests, arrives. He is looking for his insane cousin, Horace Patterson, who goes about posing as a rich man, Mr. Morgan, Mr. Rockefeller, or Mr.Van Dyke. Dulcy and Gordy are staggered.

At this point, when everything has gone wrong, all the pieces of the plot are brought together for a happy ending. Mr. Forbes joins them as the lawyer is taking his cousin away. He recognizes the lawyer as representing the actual Van Dyke interests, misunderstands the situation, and makes Gordy a new and better merger offer. Bill and Angela return without Mr Leach. A wedding has occurred, but Bill is the groom. The butler arrives and returns the necklace. He found it carelessly dropped and had taken it for safe keeping. Dulcy and Gordon kiss. Happiness all around. —obscurehollywood.net

Director

King Vidor

King Wallis Vidor (February 8, 1894 – November 1, 1982) was an acclaimed American film director whose career spanned nearly seven decades.

He was born in Galveston, Texas, where he survived the great Galveston Hurricane of 1900. His grandfather, Charles Vidor, was a refugee of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 who settled in Galveston in the early 1850s.

A freelance newsreel cameraman and cinema projectionist, he made his debut as a director in 1913 with Hurricane in Galveston. In Hollywood from 1915, he worked on a variety of film-related jobs before directing a feature film, The Turn in the Road, in 1919. A successful mounting of Peg o’ My Heart in 1922 got him a long term contract with Goldwyn Studios, later to be absorbed into MGM. Three years later he made The Big Parade, among the most acclaimed war films of the silent era, and a tremendous commercial success. This success established him as one of MGM’s top studio directors for the next decade. In 1928, Vidor received… read more

King Wallis Vidor (February 8, 1894 – November 1, 1982) was an acclaimed American film director whose career spanned nearly seven decades.

He was born in Galveston, Texas, where he survived the great Galveston Hurricane of 1900. His grandfather, Charles Vidor, was a refugee of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 who settled in Galveston in the early 1850s.

A freelance newsreel cameraman and cinema projectionist, he made his debut as a director in 1913 with Hurricane in Galveston. In Hollywood from 1915, he worked on a variety of film-related jobs before directing a feature film, The Turn in the Road, in 1919. A successful mounting of Peg o’ My Heart in 1922 got him a long term contract with Goldwyn Studios, later to be absorbed into MGM. Three years later he made The Big Parade, among the most acclaimed war films of the silent era, and a tremendous commercial success. This success established him as one of MGM’s top studio directors for the next decade. In 1928, Vidor received his first Oscar nomination, for The Crowd, widely regarded as his masterpiece and one of the greatest American silent films. In the same year, he made the classic Show People, the last silent film of Marion Davies, a comedy about the film industry in which Vidor had a cameo as himself.

Vidor’s first sound film was Hallelujah!, a groundbreaking film featuring an African American cast, and in which he established the new language for sound films (which is still used today by most directors). His directorial career extended well in to the sound era and he continued making feature films until the late 1950s. Some of his better known sound films include Stella Dallas, Our Daily Bread, The Citadel, Duel in the Sun, The Fountainhead, and War and Peace. He directed the Kansas sequences in The Wizard of Oz (including “Over the Rainbow”) when director Victor Fleming had to replace George Cukor on Gone with the Wind, but never received screen credit.

Vidor entered in the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest career as a film director: beginning in 1913 with Hurricane in Galveston and ending in 1980 with a short documentary on painting entitled The Metaphor. He was nominated five times for an Oscar but never won in direct competition; he received an honorary award in 1979.

In 1967, Vidor researched the unsolved 1922 murder of fellow director William Desmond Taylor for a possible screenplay. Vidor never published or wrote of this research during his lifetime, but biographer Sidney D. Kirkpatrick posthumously examined Vidor’s notes. He alleged in his 1986 book Cast of Killers that Vidor had solved the sensational crime but kept his conclusions private to protect individuals still living at the time. The widely cited newsletter Taylorology later noted over 100 factual errors in Cast of Killers and strongly disputes Kirkpatrick’s conclusions but credits the book with renewing popular interest in the crime.

n 1944, Vidor joined the anti-communist Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals.

Vidor published his autobiography, A Tree is A Tree, in 1953. This book’s title is inspired by an incident early in Vidor’s Hollywood career. Vidor wanted to film a movie in the locations where its story was set, a decision which would have greatly added to the film’s production budget. A budget minded producer told him, “A rock is a rock. A tree is a tree. Shoot it in Griffith Park” (a nearby public space which was frequently used for film exterior shots).

Vidor was married three times:

1. Florence Arto (1917-1924); one daughter

Suzanne (born 1918) (Florence later married Jascha Heifetz, who adopted Suzanne);
2. Eleanor Boardman (1926-1931); two daughters
Antonia (born 1927)
Belinda (born 1930)
3. Elizabeth Hill (1932-1982) —Wikipedia

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