‘Hollywood Before Code’ Series Continues

The UCLA Film Archives “Hollywood Before the Code” series continues at Melnitz Hall on Thursday at 8 p.m. with “Skyscraper Souls” (1932), a lively melodrama adapted from a Faith Baldwin novel. It could be described as “Grand Hotel” set in a skyscraper and was, in fact, released by Metro the same year as its all-star classic. It’s also like a vintage “Wall Street” in that it centers on a Manhattan financial wizard (suave Warren William) who has even fewer scruples than Michael Douglas’ Gordon Gekko.

Beyond standard plot contrivances and sentimental cliches, the film makes palpable the impact of the dizzying stock market fluctuations and subsequent desperation of the Depression. William’s David Dwight is just as much in danger of losing his beloved new skyscraper, a 100-floor Art Deco monument to his ego, as the building’s countless office workers are in danger of losing their modest life savings. The film’s Pre-Code candor is exemplified in a matter-of-fact cut from a shot of Dwight’s devoted, efficient secretary (Verree Teasdale) at work, to a shot of her en negligee in his apartment. A very young Maureen O’Sullivan is the film’s exquisite ingenue. “Skyscraper Souls” was exceedingly well directed by Edgar Selwyn, remembered today for providing his former partner Samuel Goldwyn (ne Goldfish) with a new ending to his name.

Also available for preview in this fascinating series was Rowland Brown’s “Hell’s Highway” (1932), a blunt, energetic expose of the horrors of Southern prisons that actually opened before Mervyn LeRoy’s classic “I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang.” The film’s stalwart star is Richard Dix, who by now had shed the silent-screen mannerisms that had marred his performance in the landmark “Cimarron” (1930). “Hell’s Highway” will be preceded Saturday evening at 8 by Brown’s “Blood Money” (1933) and “Quick Millions” (1931)--with “Hell’s Highway,” the only three films the talented, ruggedly independent Brown was ever able to direct.

For full schedule: (213) 206-FILM, 206-8013.