ABOUT THE EPISODE:

Whatever you do, do not play a drinking game in which you drink every time our hosts sigh dejectedly this episode. You will be hospitalized. That Flirtation Walk was nominated in the same year as Here Comes the Navy is straight up confounding. Actually, that it was nominated at all is confounding. But David and Suzan wrap up the 1934 nominees and tell you if the right movie was rewarded.

SHOW NOTES

Year Eligible: 1934 (Nominated)

Additional audio from Flirtation Walk (1934)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

The final Claudette Colbert nominee for 1934, Imitation of Life attempts to deal with issues of racism, passing, and white supremacy in America. The first movie in this project that really had its claws removed by the Hays Code (a full year before it was universally enforced), this is at least a fascinating artifact in the history of Hollywood’s failed attempts to tell stories dealing with racism.

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1934 (Nominated)

Additional audio: Imitation of Life (1934)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

The movie they should have watched this week, The White Parade, is unavailable to watch (outside of the super secret UCLA Film Archives vault that they still haven’t managed to crack), so our hosts chose another movie from 1934 with a spooky Halloween theme! What is it? You’ll have to listen to find out!

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1934 (Not even nominated)

Additional audio: Music from the movie (no spoilers!) (1934)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

Our hosts' first foray into the world of Fred and Ginger, The Gay Divorcee is a bit of a mixed bag, but at least it's an improvement over the last two weeks! The good: Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers sing and dance a bunch, Alice Brady plays a hilarious one liner machine named Aunt Hortense, and the sets are so beautiful the movie single handedly increased the sales of Venetian blinds (no, really). The bad: some outdated and frankly dangerous tropes, a frankly nonsensical plot, and a desperate attempt by the studios to, as David puts it, "Make fetch happen." Find out what he means on this week's episode!

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1934 (Nominated)

Additional audio: “The Continental” from The Gay Divorcee (1934)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

SToT favorites Norma Shearer and Frederic March star in this unfortunately agonizing biopic about Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Charles Laughton returns in a brutal role that entirely erases the memory of his jovial and sympathetic-ish Henry VIII in this period drama torture porn. But there is a cute dog.

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1934 (Nominated)

Additional audio: The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

Grace Moore stars as a helpless aspiring prima donna who runs away to Italy to study with a famously cruel and abusive vocal coach, while consistently rejecting a genuinely good rich guy who just wants her to live her own life in this deeply misogynistic trash fire.

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1934 (Nominated)

Additional audio: One Night of Love (1934)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

Last week, Suzan predicted this was going to be 100 minute of Claudette Colbert fan service, and for once, her instincts were spot on. An absolute burlesque of a film that specifically pushed the limits the year before the Hays Code was going to be enforced, Cecil B. DeMille’s Cleopatra is gorgeous to look at, but has an absolute mess of a script. But does that matter when there’s so many beautiful costumes and so much cleavage on display?

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1934 (Nominated)

Additional audio: Cleopatra (1934)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

The aircraft carrier and the airship featured in this movie both figured into horrible accidents after this film was shot. And that's the most interesting thing about Here Comes the Navy. A confusing romantic comedy(?) that seems to center more on two boys making each other miserable than a guy and a girl falling in love, this Jimmy Cagney vehicle is not just nonsensical and filled with unlikable characters, it’s also super racist. The worst movie our hosts have watched yet.

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1934 (Nominated)

Additional audio: Here Comes the Navy (1934)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

The Thin Man is almost perfect: main characters Nick and Nora Charles, are perhaps the world’s most charming detective couple; they have an adorable dog; the banter is fast and witty; and the multiple side characters are fleshed out and fascinating… and yet there’s one little problem. David realizes that a B+ movie frustrates him more than a solid C, while Suzan comes to the disheartening revelation that the history of film is not, in fact, a straight line toward cultural and political progress.

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1934 (Nominated)

Additional audio: The Thin Man (1934)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

Another in a long line of Hollywood white wash casting, Viva Villa! is an absolutely infuriating, stereotypical portrayal of Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa by Wallace Beery (The Champ, Grand Hotel). Not going to bury the lede— this movie fails the Screen Test of Time hard, but at least this episode will remind you of a minor Looney Tunes character you probably forgot about…? (Editorial correction: Katherine DeMille’s father died in World War I, not World War II.)

SHOW NOTES:

Year Eligible: 1934 (Nominated)

Additional audio: Viva Villa! (1934)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

CONTENT WARNING: This week's film, The House of Rothschild, includes a number of offensive stereotypes about Jewish people, which Suzan and David critique in the episode. Please proceed with caution. 

If you're looking for a master class in how well meaning racism is still racism, look no further than The House of Rothschild, a film that tries to indict anti-semitism while reinforcing anti-semitic stereotypes. Non-Jewish actor George Arliss, who played the eponymous character in Disraeli, nominated for Best Picture in 1929, returns to play not one two members of the family of European bankers, in this tone deaf mess. 

SHOW NOTES

Year Eligible: 1934 (Won)

Additional audio from The House of Rothschild (1934)

(Explicit language, as always)

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

This week, on a very special episode of the Screen Test of Time: it was really a movie! A very good movie! Frank Capra's It Happened One Night starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert is the Ur-romantic comedy, the movie to which most of the tropes in the genre can trace their lineage. It's not perfect, but it's the highest scored movie David and Suzan have watched so far. The first of a dozen nominees and the winner from 1934, it's going to be tough to beat. 

SHOW NOTES

Year Eligible: 1934 (Won)

Additional audio from It Happened One Night (1934)

(Explicit language, as always)