In his memoirs Cecil B. DeMille got the idea for Dynamite which became his first all talking film after reading a small article about a man on New Jersey's death row who got married three days before his execution. What if DeMille reasoned, the execution was canceled and the two had to live with each other? What might be the consequences. From this germ of an idea, DeMille got his favorite screen writer and sometimes mistress Jeanie MacPherson to fashion a story for the camera. The result was Dynamite.
DeMille was doing the first of a three picture deal with MGM and his memoirs do talk about his having to deal with sound, in fact they read a whole lot like the scenes from a future MGM classic, Singing in the Rain. You ought to read them.
Charles Bickford is a coal miner on death row for a crime he didn't commit. His only concern is the care for his younger sister Muriel McCormac when he dies. He even offers to sell his corpse to medical science.
At the same time good time party girl Kay Johnson has a different problem. According to the terms of her grandfather's will, Johnson can't inherit until her 23rd birthday and at that time she must be a married woman, otherwise she gets zilch. The guy she's in love with is polo player Conrad Nagel who is married to Julia Faye who in real life was another of DeMille's mistresses. Faye always got parts of varying size in just about every DeMille production and in this one she's got one of her more substantive roles. She'll part with Nagel for a price, but in the meantime she's got young Joel McCrea on the side.
Johnson reads about Bickford's offer and pays him $10,000.00 for a prison wedding right their on death row. But wonder of wonders within minutes of the execution, someone else confesses to the crime and Bickford is freed. And he wants to exercise his husbandly prerogatives also.
Instead of the usual triangle, what we've got is a lover's pentagon. Obviously one of the men will have to be eliminated in some fashion, but who will it be? That is the crux of Dynamite.
Cecil B. DeMille did a lot of discovering here. Dynamite was Kay Johnson's motion picture debut and was Bickford's second film and first substantial role. DeMille personally selected both of them from the stage because of sound to be cast. As for Joel McCrea, in his memoirs DeMille says that McCrea and his daughter Cecilia went to Hollywood High School together and he remembered him as one of Cecilia's friends over at his house many times. McCrea had several bit roles in silent films before Dynamite, but this was his first part of substance. In the book The Films of Joel McCrea, McCrea states that he was forever grateful to DeMille for this exposure. It led to a contract with RKO and his first lead the following year in The Silver Horde.
The song How Am I To Know comes from this film and its sung during the scenes on death row by a young convict who was starting his all too brief career. Written by Jack King and lyrics by Dorothy Parker, it's sung by Russ Columbo who got his first critical notice after several other bit parts that year. Quite a staggering list of people for whom this was a key film.
It wouldn't be a DeMille film without a big bacchanalian party and and some spectacular special effects. DeMille could show debauchery on screen like no other usually followed by a sermon on living a clean and sober life and Dynamite is no exception. The jazz age scenes with Kay partying with her friends are good risqué before the Code stuff.
And the mine cave-in at the end is also well staged in true DeMille style. Even his severest critics always credited DeMille with handling spectacle like no other.
Dynamite is a film that's melodramatic, overacted as most early sound films were and definitely does not hold up well today. Still it's good for its type and as it turns out a key film in many lives.
DeMille was doing the first of a three picture deal with MGM and his memoirs do talk about his having to deal with sound, in fact they read a whole lot like the scenes from a future MGM classic, Singing in the Rain. You ought to read them.
Charles Bickford is a coal miner on death row for a crime he didn't commit. His only concern is the care for his younger sister Muriel McCormac when he dies. He even offers to sell his corpse to medical science.
At the same time good time party girl Kay Johnson has a different problem. According to the terms of her grandfather's will, Johnson can't inherit until her 23rd birthday and at that time she must be a married woman, otherwise she gets zilch. The guy she's in love with is polo player Conrad Nagel who is married to Julia Faye who in real life was another of DeMille's mistresses. Faye always got parts of varying size in just about every DeMille production and in this one she's got one of her more substantive roles. She'll part with Nagel for a price, but in the meantime she's got young Joel McCrea on the side.
Johnson reads about Bickford's offer and pays him $10,000.00 for a prison wedding right their on death row. But wonder of wonders within minutes of the execution, someone else confesses to the crime and Bickford is freed. And he wants to exercise his husbandly prerogatives also.
Instead of the usual triangle, what we've got is a lover's pentagon. Obviously one of the men will have to be eliminated in some fashion, but who will it be? That is the crux of Dynamite.
Cecil B. DeMille did a lot of discovering here. Dynamite was Kay Johnson's motion picture debut and was Bickford's second film and first substantial role. DeMille personally selected both of them from the stage because of sound to be cast. As for Joel McCrea, in his memoirs DeMille says that McCrea and his daughter Cecilia went to Hollywood High School together and he remembered him as one of Cecilia's friends over at his house many times. McCrea had several bit roles in silent films before Dynamite, but this was his first part of substance. In the book The Films of Joel McCrea, McCrea states that he was forever grateful to DeMille for this exposure. It led to a contract with RKO and his first lead the following year in The Silver Horde.
The song How Am I To Know comes from this film and its sung during the scenes on death row by a young convict who was starting his all too brief career. Written by Jack King and lyrics by Dorothy Parker, it's sung by Russ Columbo who got his first critical notice after several other bit parts that year. Quite a staggering list of people for whom this was a key film.
It wouldn't be a DeMille film without a big bacchanalian party and and some spectacular special effects. DeMille could show debauchery on screen like no other usually followed by a sermon on living a clean and sober life and Dynamite is no exception. The jazz age scenes with Kay partying with her friends are good risqué before the Code stuff.
And the mine cave-in at the end is also well staged in true DeMille style. Even his severest critics always credited DeMille with handling spectacle like no other.
Dynamite is a film that's melodramatic, overacted as most early sound films were and definitely does not hold up well today. Still it's good for its type and as it turns out a key film in many lives.