Gregory La Cava | Subjects
| Structure and Story Telling | Visual Style
| Rankings
Films: Womanhandled
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Gregory La Cava
Gregory La Cava was a Hollywood film director.
Gregory La Cava: Subjects
Subjects in the films of Gregory La Cava:
- Kind-hearted heroes (Womanhandled, My Man Godfrey)
- Concern for the poor (tramps: Womanhandled, poor in New York: Symphony of Six Million,
unemployed: My Man Godfrey, heroine: Fifth Avenue Girl)
- Upper crust men who organize men into elite groups (hero makes cowboys: Womanhandled,
Franchot Tone makes regiment: Gabriel Over the White House, hero hires tramps for night club: My Man Godfrey)
- Women quite poor, in the theater (chorus girls on the road: Womanhandled, at boarding house: Stage Door)
- Woman and their older woman relatives (aunt: Womanhandled, mother of home-wrecker: Smart Woman,
mother of heroines: My Man Godfrey)
- Women reform straying husbands (Smart Woman, What Every Woman Knows)
- Servants (Womanhandled, Smart Woman,
maid: Bed of Roses,
brainy butler and maid: My Man Godfrey, Fifth Avenue Girl)
- New York City, viewed in concrete detail (Central Park: Womanhandled, poor: Symphony of Six Million,
Statue of Liberty in background of firing squad: Gabriel Over the White House,
theatre: Stage Door, city dump, Sutton Place: My Man Godfrey, Fifth Avenue Girl)
- Mansions, full of strange, disparate people (Western ranch: Womanhandled,
Long Island: Smart Woman, New York: My Man Godfrey, New York: Fifth Avenue Girl)
- Construction and building (closing off bathroom: Womanhandled, moving shacks, new nightclub: My Man Godfrey,
new housing: Living In a Big Way)
- Transportation portals (train station: Womanhandled, dock with ocean liner: Smart Woman)
- Lavish bed for women (heroine: Bed of Roses,
rich women: My Man Godfrey)
- Men's spaces (barge: Bed of Roses,
butler's room: My Man Godfrey)
- People lock doors (heroine locks room after stealing from man: Bed of Roses,
hero locks his butler's room after throwing out heroine: My Man Godfrey)
- Bottles of sauce used on food (beans: Womanhandled, Worcestershire in tomato juice: My Man Godfrey)
- Immersion in water (jumping in pond: Womanhandled,
heroine jumps overboard: Bed of Roses,
shower: My Man Godfrey)
- Technology (buzzers, hanging prisms: My Man Godfrey)
Animals:
- Livestock (horses, cattle: Womanhandled,
goat, horse in library: My Man Godfrey)
- Other animals (talk about boll weevil: Bed of Roses,
monkey at scavenger hunt: My Man Godfrey)
- Polo players (hero: Womanhandled,
Tommy (Alan Mowbray): My Man Godfrey)
Gregory La Cava: Structure and Story Telling
Story Structure:
- Sardonic point-of-view characters, who enter a world and take a jaundiced look (hero out West: Womanhandled,
hero among the rich: My Man Godfrey)
- Hoaxes (fake cowboys: Womanhandled,
friends pretend husband is loyal, husband's loss of money: Smart Woman,
heroine pretends to drink while getting man drunk: Bed of Roses,
use of resignation letter: What Every Woman Knows,
fake ambulance used by gangsters: Gabriel Over the White House,
hero as friend's old valet, engagement, "stolen" pearls: My Man Godfrey,
pretend girlfriend: Fifth Avenue Girl)
Gregory La Cava: Visual Style
Geometry:
- Geometric objects (armored cars: Gabriel Over the White House)
- Geometric architecture (metalwork screen in love nest: Bed of Roses,
court martial with circular platform with cylindrical wall: Gabriel Over the White House,
window doors in drawing room, curving turn of stairs: My Man Godfrey)
Camera movement:
- Lateral movements (down row of prison cells with women: Bed of Roses,
President enters Congress, down firing squad: Gabriel Over the White House,
hero and heroine leave dump at start, couple with goat move through crowd to judge's table: My Man Godfrey)
- People and camera move forward towards viewer (couple with goat at scavenger hunt, hero and heroine enter hunt: My Man Godfrey)
- Stairs (mansion: My Man Godfrey)
- Crane shots (moving up to judge at court marshall: Gabriel Over the White House,
up and down stairs: My Man Godfrey)
Costumes:
- Dressy uniforms (Richard Dix uniformed as European royally with sword and giant boots: Say It Again,
officers in white mess jackets with stiff epaulettes: His First Command,
Franchot Tone and his regiment get special uniforms: Gabriel Over the White House)
- Men dressed alike (white tie and top hats at scavenger hunt: My Man Godfrey)
Rankings
Here are ratings for various films directed by Gregory La Cava. Everything at least **1/2 is recommended.
Films:
- Womanhandled ***
- Smart Woman **1/2
- Symphony of Six Million **1/2
- The Half-Naked Truth ***
- Gabriel Over the White House *1/2
- Bed of Roses **1/2
- What Every Woman Knows **1/2
- My Man Godfrey ***
- Stage Door *1/2
- Fifth Avenue Girl **1/2
- Primrose Path **1/2
- Living In a Big Way ***
Womanhandled
Womanhandled (1925) is a silent comedy, a spoof of the Westerns that were so popular in its era.
Womanhandled assembles a wildly disparate group of characters at its ranch, and revels in their comic confrontation.
This is a persistent approach in Gregory La Cava.
Womanhandled opens in a real place in Central Park. An interest in New York City runs through Gregory La Cava's work.
The Desperately Poor
Two tramps in Central Park form a sort of Greek Chorus throughout Womanhandled,
commenting on the action. They anticipate the more extensive look at tramps and the homeless
in My Man Godfrey. La Cava is plainly highly sympathetic to such characters.
When the hero meets the hungry tramps, he immediately gives them money for food.
Today's Republicans, many hugely wealthy, would give these poor people lectures about how evil they are!
Conservatives have really demonized the poor.
The Kind-Hearted Hero
The hero is an unusually kind-hearted man. He is always nice to others, and sometimes quite generous.
Partly this is star Richard Dix, who convincingly played nice guys through his career.
It is also director Gregory La Cava. The hero of My Man Godfrey is even more generous and kind.
Organizing Elite Groups
The hero of Womanhandled organizes the modern-day ranch hands of his uncle's ranch,
into a group of traditional cowboys. This situation anticipates others in later La Cava films,
ouch as the uniformed officials in Gabriel Over the White House and the finale of My Man Godfrey.
In all three scenes:
- Ordinary modern-day men are organized into a elite group: cowboys in Womanhandled,
an elite regiment in Gabriel Over the White House, night club staff in My Man Godfrey.
- All of these groups involve elite images of masculinity, more "manly" than these "ordinary" guys
ever experienced in the past.
- The men get new, very fancy and sharp clothes, that have an extra "masculine" edge.
These are not clothes they ever had a chance to wear in regular life.
- The organizer too gets into far dressier and fancy clothes, at least in Womanhandled and Gabriel Over the White House.
- The organizer is an upper class male. For him too, the clothes involve a more aggressive, manly image
than in his conventional refined upper class past.
The politics of the three situations is drastically different: non-political comedy in Womanhandled,
right-wing, near-Fascist politics in Gabriel Over the White House, left wing,
New Deal attempts to help the unemployed in My Man Godfrey. It is rare to see a common situation
given such different political associations as in these three films.
In his notes on the DVD of Womanhandled, film historian Scott Simmon refers to the hero's transformation
as a "man-up". This 2000's slang is surprisingly apt and accurate as an account of Womanhandled,
a film made 75 years before.