untamed

January 10 movie: Untamed. Joan Crawford's first talkie! Fairly lame movie, I must confess, plus the sound quality was terrible. It wasn't quite as bad as "The Duelling Cavalier," but it was in that territory. The best part of the movie was Crawford's pet monkey, who clearly pees on an actor in one scene. (The guy doesn't react to it, so I'm guessing it wasn't part of the script.) From then on the monkey wears a dark-colored diaper. Ha! I know, I'm twelve, but I thought it was funny.

The movie features Crawford as an hieress who grew up in the wild with her father, and adventurer. After Dad dies Crawford heads for the US and falls madly in love with the first young man she meets (Robert Montgomery, in one of his first movies). Crawford wore a short sundress that would be cute today, no shoes, and threatened to punch anyone she didn't like, male or female. She must have seemed positively feral at the time. And Montgomery was so skinny! He takes his shirt off at one point and he has tiny little arms.

It's kind of funny how aesthetics have changed in the past 75 years. Besides the lack of steroidal overdeveloped upper bodies, there's also a softness around the face and jawline that you would never see in a male movie star today. It's most obvious in a clinch: when the man leans in for the kiss in an old movie, he often gets a bit of a double chin. Movie stars today have like 5% body fat, so you never see that .. well I was going to say excess flesh, but it's not actually excess. Just the normal result of bending a normal neck.