Posts from ethanedwards in thread „Up the River (1930)“

Just to bump one of John Ford's more discussed movies to Page 1 of the reviews

Well said and done Arthur.
It is a fruitful and rewarding exercise analyzing these old films,
and already we have re- written and indeed written something new.

Elly has proven that Duke appeared an an earlier movie then we thought,
namely Careful Please, shot before Brown of Harvard
which was always considered his first visual movie.

None of the books have ever stated exactly where and when he met John Ford,
but from just watching a readily available documentary,
one can hear and watch Duke say, Mother Machree.
Perhaps the authors can now re-edit their books!

Quote from arthurarnell

[/I]In view of the above I think I am on solid ground by saying that there is no way that Wayne appeared as an extra in Up The River

Regards

Arthur

Having said that Arthur,
how is it then Duke appeared in

Born Reckless(1930)
Men Without Women (1930)

Unless they were made before The Big Trail!

Shall we therefore list is as an official visible in our Filmography?
Your Yes or No's please!

Previous posts from the thread

MYSTERY FILM with JW?

Quote

[…]

Quote from chester7777

I would say that that could easily be him, and that might even be Yakima Canutt standing behind him.

Chester

Quote from chester7777

The Mrs. and I were looking at John Ford movies for 1930, and thought the movie might be, "Up the River", as several pictures we saw had the same type of stone work as your picture, plus everyone was wearing the same kind of cloths.

Chester and the Mrs.

Quote from dukefan1

The one thing that jumped out at me, Elly, is the way the man is standing. That is the classic John Wayne stance! Just might be him.

Mark

Quote from Elly

Hi Keith

I think with these really early ones where we are 95% sure we should keep them on a separate list until we can prove it 100%.

I do like the idea of you profiling them as well, perhaps then others might get interested enough to view it and add thier opinion.

AND it is a good film from FORD.

I am keeping a list going and for completeness I am also marking it with films I have viewed but did not even spot JW.

I will send you a copy of it after I have viewed a few more films then update it on a regular basis.

the problems I am always going to have of course, is getting good quality prints if I can even get a print in the first place.

and following on from Chesters picture he posted here is another taken around the time of Up the river.


dukewayne.com/wcf/index.php?attachment/2684/

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Quote from ethanedwards

We can almost be once again updating
Duke's Filmography, and more opinions on this?

Up the River is a Pre-Code comedy film about escaped convicts,
and featuring Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart
in their feature film debuts.

Take a look at the attachments below, and see
if you think it is a young Duke,
as if we are sure, we can once again re-write the Filmography

From
Prison Movies
Prison stuff. In prison movies.

Quote

Up the River is a low-key comedy drama starring Humphrey Bogart and Spencer Tracy very early in their careers. An early talkie directed by John Ford, it was apparently going to be a drama until The Big House (1930) beat it to the punch.. so it was rewritten as a comedy.

Bogart plays young Steve Jordan, a trusty in a mid-Western prison who comes from a well-heeled New England family. His family believe he’s in China. Tracy (in his first Hollywood film) plays a feted baseballer (Saint Louis) who is brought back to the same prison after having escaped from another prison with his simple sidekick, Dannemora Dan (Warren Hymer). Steve falls in love at first sight with a newly received prisoner in the women’s section, Judy Fields (Claire Luce), who has landed in prison after taking the rap for Frosby (Morgan Wallace), a much-older swindler with whom she was teamed. Steve and Judy get engaged after two brief meetings; the Warden kindly allows them a third on the day he is paroled.

Steve returns home. Frosby tracks him down, sets up his scam in the same town and threatens to expose Steve to his mother if he blows the whistle. Judy asks Saint Louis for help… not such a difficult task as conveniently the men’s and women’s exercise yards are separated only by bars. Saint and Dan escape again, this time during a concert in the prison, and head straight to New England where they manage to sort things out with the blackmailing Frosby… and then surrender themselves back into prison just in time for Saint to take his place in a much-awaited baseball match against a rival prison.

It does have a number of features that distinguish it from most other prison movies. For starters, it is an extraordinarily benign, almost-utopian prison. Then there’s the warden’s 8-year-old daughter Jean, for example, (in real life the daughter of Lewis Lawes, the Warden of Sing Sing), who plays unsupervised out in the yard with all the male inmates, doing cartwheels and showing off her bloomers. There’s the prison’s baseball mascot, a zebra - the only zebra ever to have a role in a prison movie, as far as I’m aware. A big brass band. And a foolish, upper-class welfare worker, at whom much fun is poked as she dispenses apples, magazines and judgmental opinions to the prisoners, and is the unwitting means through which kites are trafficked from the women’s section to the men’s.

It’s not a standout prison film by any means, but it stands out as being quite different to other films of it era.

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Information from IMDb

Plot Summary
Two prisoners, Saint Louis and Dannemora Dan, escape during a theatrical production in order to go to the aid of Steve, a former prisoner whose past is about to be exposed by the man who framed Judy unless Steve agrees to help him commit another crime.
Written by Ed Stephan

Full Cast
Spencer Tracy ... Saint Louis
Claire Luce ... Judy Fields
Warren Hymer ... Dannemora Dan
Humphrey Bogart ... Steve Jordan
William Collier Sr. ... Pop
Joan Marie Lawes ... Jean (as Joan Lawes)
Ward Bond ... Inmate Socked by Saint Louis (uncredited)
Joe Brown ... Deputy Warden (uncredited)
Bob Burns ... Slim - Bazooka Player (uncredited)
Eddy Chandler ... Guard (uncredited)
Edythe Chapman ... Mrs. Jordan (uncredited)
Harvey Clark ... Nash (uncredited)
Dick Curtis ... New Inmate (uncredited)
Mike Donlin ... Upstate Baseball Manager (uncredited)
Noel Francis ... Sophie (uncredited)
Althea Henley ... Cynthia Jordan (uncredited)
Elizabeth Keating ... May (uncredited)
Helen Keating ... June (uncredited)
Richard Keene ... Dick (uncredited)
Sharon Lynn ... Edith La Verne (uncredited)
George MacFarlane ... Whiteley (uncredited)
Wilbur Mack ... Honest John Jessup (uncredited)
Louise Mackintosh ... Mrs. Massey (uncredited)
Goodee Montgomery ... Kit (uncredited)
Robert Emmett O'Connor ... Prison Warden (uncredited)
Robert Parrish ... Boy (uncredited)
Claude Payton ... Guard (uncredited)
Steve Pendleton ... Morris (uncredited)
Pat Somerset ... Beauchamp (uncredited)
John Swor ... Clem (uncredited)
Mildred Vincent ... Annie (uncredited)
Johnnie Walker ... Happy (uncredited)
Morgan Wallace ... Frosby (uncredited)
Adele Windsor ... Minnie (uncredited)
Carol Wines ... Daisy Elmore (uncredited)

Writing Credits
Maurine Dallas Watkins (story)
William Collier Sr. uncredited
John Ford uncredited

Original Music
James F. Hanley
Joseph McCarthy

Cinematography
Joseph H. August

Trivia
This is the only movie in which Humphrey Bogart and Spencer Tracy co-star. Although Tracy and Bogart were good friends, they never appeared in another movie together, as Bogart was tied to a contract with Warner Bros. for much of his career while Tracy was bound first to Fox, and then (most famously) to MGM. When the freelance era rolled around in the 1950s and both were free of their studio contracts, the two talked about co-starring together in a picture, but according to Tracy's lover Katharine Hepburn, they could never agree on who would get top billing (although Tracy was the more respected thespian, Bogart was more popular at the box office; however, after playing second-fiddle to Clark Gable for many years at MGM, Tracy wasn't about to accept second billing at that time in his career). Hepburn recalled they considered a suggested compromise that would have created an "X"-shaped credit in which Humphrey Tracy would have co-starred with Spencer Bogart, when read normally.

The first of Humphrey Bogart's feature-length films to be released, on October 12, 1930. His second, "A Devil with Women", was released six days later, on October 18.

This is the first John Ford film in which Spencer Tracy appeared: their second collaboration took place three decades later, when Tracy starred in Ford's The Last Hurrah. It is strange to realize that these two great Irish American icons only collaborated two times (Tracy narrated How the West Was Won, one of the sequences of which was shot by Ford, but that doesn't count as a true collaboration), but for most of their careers, they were bound to different studios, Ford to 20th Century-Fox and Tracy to M.G.M. By the time the freelance era rolled around in the late 1950s, Tracy was appearing in very few movies.

Spencer Tracy received a 2-week leave of absence from a hit Broadway show in order to appear in this film. This required the film to be shot under a very tight production schedule.

Broadway producer Herman Shumlin granted Spencer Tracy two weeks leave from his hit drama "The Last Mile" after the actor appealed to him for the opportunity to work for John Ford in this picture.

Memorable Quotes

Watch this clip

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