Mervyn LeRoy | Big City Blues / 1932

on the town

by Douglas Messerli

 

Lillie Hayward (screenplay based on the stage play New York Town by Ward Morehouse), Mervyn LeRoy (director) Big City Blues / 1932

 

In 1932 alone director Mervyn LeRoy directed 5 films, High Pressure, Heart of New York, Two Seconds, Blue City Blues, Three on a Match, and I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, the last two of what we can still describe as early film classics. So it should be of no great embarrassment to admit Big City Blues, with it’s short 63 minute running time, and a plot as thin as a couple of tourist postcards, is not considered among LeRoy’s most memorable work.

   That said, this movie is a quite lively, despite its fully stereotypical view of a young innocent man, in this case the likeable Bud Reeves (Eric Linden) from a small town in Indiana, who arrives like thousands of men and women from the Midwest and elsewhere as celebrated in Stephen Sondheim's song "Another Hundred People," all enchanted with New York City only to discover it’s filled with crooks and dangers beyond their imagination. Bud Reeves is so beautifully and intensely naïve that you have to wonder if he hasn’t spent his whole life back home hiding in some closet, but, no, he’s not gay, just a green as they get and, not so incidentally, his pockets filled with a small inheritance of $1,100 (about $26,000 today).

    Indeed, this film begins as a pure comedy with even the Willow Creek, Indiana Station Master, to whom Bud hands over his beloved dog, and who bets another friend that the eager boy will be back from Manhattan with a month.  

    Critic J. B. Kaufman intelligently summarizes the situation:

“Linden’s character, naive innocent though he is, believes he has prepared well for his transition to the big city: he has a well-connected cousin in New York who can guide and protect him. The cousin turns out to be Walter Catlett, one of the most colorful character players in Hollywood, cast here as a fast-talking opportunist who welcomes his young relative with open arms and dubious motives. It is soon revealed that Catlett is far less interested in Linden’s well-being than in his inheritance. Within minutes, Linden is swept into Catlett’s circle of friends, his savings diverted to the purchase of copious amounts of bootleg liquor. The day’s activities culminate in a party, the party turns dangerous, the cousin conveniently disappears, and soon Linden is on the run from the police. The one bright spot in his day is his introduction to a chorus girl, with whom he is instantly smitten. The chorine is played by Joan Blondell, who had come into her own at Warner Bros. by 1932. Easily the best-known star in this film, she gets top billing and delivers a sympathetic, nuanced performance.”

     Most of the early part of this film, after Bud wanders through a montage of New York City images a bit like the sailors arriving in port in On the Town, is spent with him getting engagingly rooked out of his money by his Ed Wynn-like cousin "Gibby" Gibboney (Catlett), who may not be gay but is nonetheless such a giddy eccentric that one cannot truly imagine him in bed with a woman, and who seems more interested in drinking and partying than anything to do with romance. Gibby spends his life as a grand pretender, citing his connections with practically everyone in the city and playing a giggly and almost girlish dandy by surrounding himself with second-rate chorines.

     Yet it all seems comic fun, as, after discovering that his young innocent cousin Bud has checked into a decent suite at the Hotel Hercules, he determines to throw a slightly raucous party. Besides, one of the chorines, Vida Fleet (Blondell), as Kaufman suggests, is as immediately attracted to Bud as he is to her. And the others, well if nothing else they make for interesting types, one woman, carrying around everywhere with her—pretending to read as she hears “Stacky” Stackhouse (Ned Sparks) recite the places to which he’s traveled—the infamous lesbian novel of 1928, Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness.

       Almost at the very same moment that we see her diving behind her lesbian book covers, another local gangster who has been invited to the party, Shep Adkins (played in an early film appearance by Humphrey Bogart), cynically comments on how New York is changing, the police having just arrested a man with two knives in one pocket and “a power puff and a lipstick” in the other, suggesting either a transgender individual or simply a gay man with murder on his mind, reminding us somewhat of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1930 film Murder!

    In short, gender is very much an issue in this macho New York environs where one moment the whole gang is ordering up sandwiches and the next they are rushing down to another room for champagne and better eats, leaving Bud and Vida in the room alone to get better acquainted.

    But soon they are back with champagne bottles ready to party anew, even if by this time a couple of the chorines have passed out drunk. A hotel dick Hummel (the comic Guy Kibbee) tries to squelch their fun, until Gibby offers him up some wine.

     And the comic fun continues until it no longer seems fun, Shep daring to put his paws on a chlorine, to whom another thug, “Lenny” Sully (Lyle Talbot) lays claim. A fight breaks out, lights are turned off, and as the bottles are hurled at one another, one of passed-out nightclub dancers, Jackie DeVoe (Josephine Dunn) being hit in the head; by the time the lights are switched back on, she lies dead.

     Like so many rats, Gibby and his friends, male and female, immediately go scurrying off in fear, leaving the poor innocent rube Budd in his own room with a dead girl on his couch. The arrival of the half-drunken house detective for another refill, reveals the dead girl.

    By this time even Bud has escaped, Vida having returned with at least a tiny bit of conscience, but now also having to go on the run. What was a comedy has now transformed into tragedy.

    Both Budd and Vida are now suspected criminals, Budd not even being able to leave and run for home. Somehow he makes his way to an underground theater bar where the conversation runs heavy about the gossip of stage actors, and there he meets up with a wealthy older woman, Serena Cartlich (Jobyna Howland) who herself throws daily parties, and is only too delighted for such a handsome young man to show up, sit down next to her, talk, and even offers to buy her a drink.

     She suggests they go somewhere else more celebratory, and we wonders if they might not go to Club55 where he has heard that Vida sometimes can be found. Recognizing that he has already found another woman lived, Serena, however, is only too happy to accompany him to the Club55, where amazingly he does run into Vida, who immediately apologizes for having left him in the lurch, both commiserating about their condition.

      Deciding to quite literally abandon all hope, but have fun in the process, they move upstairs to the gambling casino where they both lose all their money on the toss of the dice. Moreover, they are arrested and taken to police headquarters where an insensitive Chief of Police (Wallis Clark) interrogates them without believing a word about their claims of innocence regarding the death of Jackie.

     Eventually, the police round up all the other partyers but one, waiting it out until one of them admits the crime. At a sad moment of Bud’s despair, Bogart’s character turns to the Indiana boy and meanly turns to him, “Now how do you like New York?”

      Once more seeking liquid refreshment in the linen room where the Hercules Hotel house detective hides his flasks, Hummel returns to the room where he discovers, in a nearby closet, the body of Lenny Sully hanging from a coat rack, the other half of the bottle that killed Jackie at his feet. Apparently, he has killed himself in despair over the girl’s death.

     The police, all too hurriedly for the sake of belief, quickly release the others, and somehow Bud finds money enough to take him back in Indiana, his dog, and home, while still determined to work hard enough to save up money in a year or so to return to New York City and Vida.

     Whether or not he’ll be able to raise the money or Vida will still be waiting for him, is almost beside the point. Our young dunce is still enchanted by the big city and is only to ready to face its lights again, perhaps to even show up at one of Serena Cartlich’s evening soirées.

     Like so very many of the so-called “pre-code” films of 1930s, while telling basically a heterosexual love story, the movie is filled with references to sexual and gender queerness. This was LeRoy’s third such movie just in 1932.

 

Los Angeles, April 25, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (April 2026).

 

Djibril Diop Mambéty | Touki Bouki (The Journey of the Hyenas) / 1973

voyage to nowhere

by Douglas Messerli

 

Djibril Diop Mambéty (screenwriter and director) Touki Bouki (The Journey of the Hyenas) / 1973

 

Djibril Diop Mambéty’s 1973 Senegalese film in the Wolof language, Touki Bouki (sometimes translated into English as The Journey of the Hyenas) is a film influenced, in part, by Godard’s Breathless and Pierrot le Fou as well as Truffaut’s The 400 Blows.

      The loving couple of this film, Mory (Magaye Niang) and Anta (Mareme Niang) are desperate to leave their beloved Senegal not just because of their personal poverty—Mory owing debts to nearly everyone—but because of the cruelty they constantly witness in that country’s treatment of its long-horned bulls and goats, incapsulated in the near-orgiastic blood baths of the butchers, in particular Aunt Oumy (Aminata Fall).

      They proceed on a somewhat ridiculous series of robbery sprees to raise enough money to catch a ship out to France, where Mory is certain that they will be able to get jobs and return as wealthy figures, or at least revered ones for just having been able to escape. In fact, a bit like Pierrot le Fou this movie is an imaginary road trip of escape. Afterall, Mory has opened a sacred package of gris-gris, removing what he perceives as a lucky charm.

     Their attempts to raise money are not only absurd but often transition them to near surrealistic worlds that border on sexual abuse and near sadism.

      When Mory attempts to outwit a local card shark by betting a large sum of money against the dealer’s tricks, he of course loses, and when unable to pay is forced to go on the run, finally being slowed down by a gun-toting policemen, who stops him, not for his immediate crime, but closely looking him over, asking simply for the handsome Mory to provide him with a cigarette. This early into the film, we already sense a kind of homosexual insinuation here, a kind of public flirting by a man of power with the young would-be lover of Anta, whose sexual relationships with him are discretely—and somewhat comically—portrayed with his lover’s hands on his motorcycle rather than portraying any actual sexual interactions. Like Jean Seberg, her hair is short-cropped. But this is not precisely the same as in Godard’s great work, but a bit more like Fassbinder’s early works.

     The second failed robbery takes place at a local, well attended, Lebu tribal wrestling match, its male participants stripped down to what sumo wrestlers wear, mawashi—in this case even a bit less than those loin-cloths. Is it any wonder that the central attendees of this affair are most women, attired in their best robes?

      Mory and Anta observe the delivery of the large boxes wherein the tribal organizers keep their profits, which are carefully cordoned off and guarded by a policeman—coincidentally by the same policeman who stopped Mory the previous day. The self-assured Mory now knows he and Anta will easily be able to steal the wealthy proceeds of this Coliseum-like event. But a question remains regarding which the two boxes actually contains the money. Anta suggests the small box on top, while Mory is certain it is the lower and larger blue case, protected by the smaller green one on top.

       We never know quite how they pry the lower box away from the attending policeman, but the trip by taxi that the beautiful Anta takes to meet up with Mory is perhaps one of the most hilarious and creepy rides ever presented on film. Anta takes the poor taximan through some of the wealthiest areas of Dakar, before forcing him to venture into a territory of what appears to be abandoned European-built bunkers by the sea. The taxi driver is absolutely confused and terrified by where he is being taken to Anta’s so-called “summer mansion.” He clearly knows, with the large blue case on the top of his taxi, that something is amiss.

     Nonetheless, he obediently carries the large, almost unbearable, blue case down numerous steps (reminding one somewhat of Laurel and Hardy’s impossible passage downstairs with a piano) and attempts to deliver it to the location that Anta, bit by bit, steers him to. Finally, and quite expectedly he stumbles, opening up the trunk to reveal no money within, but a skeleton.

      Mory, speeding by motorcycle to the rocky terrain, has an accident, and the still-running cycle is discovered by a tree-bound kind of wild-child, which he later discovers how to operate, showing up in the streets of Dakar.

     Throughout this entire film we observe the waves of the sea, both washing away the suffering of the Senegal people, but also alluring them to the sandy beaches and what may lay just beyond. In a scene in which Mory and Anta seem almost encrusted by beach sand, the good-looking young man suddenly comes up with another idea to visit a wealthy friend who lives in a villa not far from where they are stranded.

     Mory’s acquaintance, it turns out, is Charlie (Ousseynou Diop), a gay man lounging with other boys in his large pool. When he sees Mory, he immediately dismisses not only his current devotee, but Anta as well, sending her off to the small women’s circle. “Who’s the ugly chick?” he latter challenges Mory.

     What immediately becomes clear is that Mory has visited Charlie—who massages, showers with, and likely has sex with his “boys” and other male visitors—several times. And after a short foot-pedaled boat ride around his pool, quickly invites Mory in, while he takes a shower, attempting to entice the young man into his now warm bathroom. What might have once seemed an exciting Romeo and Juliet romance is suddenly turned on its head, as we realize that Mory, in this largely Muslim country, has long been involved—perhaps for financial remuneration—in a homosexual relationship. The shock of recognition ignites the film with a completely new overlay of what has been happening all along.

     Mory steals Charlie’s entire wardrobe, and with Anta returns to Dakar in grand attire, as if the two, indeed, had just returned, as in their dreams, from France. Having probably sold several of Charlie’s garments, they now have money, displaying it openly to their city friends. They can now purchase tickets on the ship to whisk them away to their magical kingdom. And, dressed in their new “drag” costumes, they appear to be a new kind of royalty, destined to achieve their impossible dreams.

    Charlie, meanwhile, sits naked as he calls the police—apparently having had sex with most of them as well—to report his missing wardrobe. He is assured that one of the officers will be able to meet with him that evening, surely no clothes required.

     Almost to the moment that Mory and Anta are off to their new voyage, Mory suddenly bolts, remaining in Senegal alone—returning as well, evidently, to arrest, imprisonment, or, at the very least—and most probably—an indentureship of a homosexual life to Charlie and others.

     In the end, Mambéty’s film is certainly one of the best African films of all time, and clearly of his decade. Sadly, the director died of lung cancer in 1998, having made only two feature films and several shorter works. It would have been wonderful to see where his “hybridity”—not being one nor the other—would have led him.

 

Los Angeles, January 7, 2020 

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (January 2020).