Two steelworker buddies are real FAST WORKERS when it comes to romancing & dumping the women in their lives - until a loose lady with a shady past shakes up their complacency & threatens their friendship.
According to cinematic legend, all the talkie MGM films starring John Gilbert were dreadful - the result of a bitter hatred between Gilbert (the highest paid star in Hollywood, with a $1.5 million contract) & studio boss Louis B. Mayer. A determination on Gilbert's part to fulfill the contract, and a campaign instituted by Mayer to destroy Gilbert's career - including spreading the rumor that Gilbert's voice was 'high & feminine', culminated in several unwatchable movies.
Not entirely true. The Studio had a huge financial investment in Jack Gilbert and was not going to completely cut its own throat by showcasing him in nothing but dreck. However, of the 8 MGM talkies in which he appeared as solo star (1929 - HIS GLORIOUS NIGHT; 1930 - REDEMPTION; WAY FOR A SAILOR; 1931 - GENTLEMAN'S FATE; THE PHANTOM OF Paris; WEST OF Broadway; 1932 - DOWNSTAIRS; 1933 - FAST WORKERS) most were certainly rather ghastly.
FAST WORKERS was a sad end to Gilbert's MGM contract. Although it boosts some fine moments in the alarmingly vertiginous opening scenes atop a skyscraper (for once using decent rear projection), back on the ground it descended into turgid romantics which were a waste of the stars' talents. Unattractive & depressing, the film could easily be subtitled The Tawdry Lives Of Unpleasant People.
Gilbert was always trying to push himself as an actor, attempting to produce the best performance possible. But the script and the cheap production values gives him no assistance. It is to Mayer's eternal shame that the actor who was the most popular male star at the end of the silent era and who made a great deal of money for MGM, should be treated in such a shabby, humiliating way at the end of his career.
The film was also a Studio letdown for director Tod Browning, who had helmed several splendid silent Lon Chaney shockers and whose talkies included the classics Dracula & FREAKS. His career would soon spiral into obscurity.
Robert Armstrong and a funny Sterling Holloway offer fine support to Gilbert, as do Mae Clarke, Muriel Kirkland, pretty Muriel Evans and unbilled Herman Bing & Nora Cecil, but it's all to no avail. The picture was doomed & John Gilbert was out the door, his contract expired.
It must be stated that there was nothing at all strange or unnaturally high about Gilbert's voice. As a matter of fact, it was of medium range & rather cultured & refined - which was the crux of the problem, of course. While it is possible that no voice could have ever matched the perfect one viewers heard in their minds while watching his strong, virile silent roles, the reality was very different from what they were expecting (imagine Robert Montgomery's voice coming out of Clark Gable's mouth). Gilbert was doomed from his first scene in his debut talkie; his war with Mayer only intensified the agony.
At Garbo's insistence, John Gilbert would return to MGM later in 1933 to appear as her love interest in QUEEN Christina, but she was the star and Gilbert received below-the-title billing. He would make only one more film - THE CAPTAIN HATES THE SEA for Columbia in 1934. Then he retired to his villa to live a life of drunken, sybaritic obsolescence. He was planning to return to the screen to costar with his last lover, Marlene Dietrich, in THE GARDEN OF ALLAH when he suddenly died on January 9, 1936 of heart failure, forgotten by most of his former fans. John Gilbert was only 36 years old.
According to cinematic legend, all the talkie MGM films starring John Gilbert were dreadful - the result of a bitter hatred between Gilbert (the highest paid star in Hollywood, with a $1.5 million contract) & studio boss Louis B. Mayer. A determination on Gilbert's part to fulfill the contract, and a campaign instituted by Mayer to destroy Gilbert's career - including spreading the rumor that Gilbert's voice was 'high & feminine', culminated in several unwatchable movies.
Not entirely true. The Studio had a huge financial investment in Jack Gilbert and was not going to completely cut its own throat by showcasing him in nothing but dreck. However, of the 8 MGM talkies in which he appeared as solo star (1929 - HIS GLORIOUS NIGHT; 1930 - REDEMPTION; WAY FOR A SAILOR; 1931 - GENTLEMAN'S FATE; THE PHANTOM OF Paris; WEST OF Broadway; 1932 - DOWNSTAIRS; 1933 - FAST WORKERS) most were certainly rather ghastly.
FAST WORKERS was a sad end to Gilbert's MGM contract. Although it boosts some fine moments in the alarmingly vertiginous opening scenes atop a skyscraper (for once using decent rear projection), back on the ground it descended into turgid romantics which were a waste of the stars' talents. Unattractive & depressing, the film could easily be subtitled The Tawdry Lives Of Unpleasant People.
Gilbert was always trying to push himself as an actor, attempting to produce the best performance possible. But the script and the cheap production values gives him no assistance. It is to Mayer's eternal shame that the actor who was the most popular male star at the end of the silent era and who made a great deal of money for MGM, should be treated in such a shabby, humiliating way at the end of his career.
The film was also a Studio letdown for director Tod Browning, who had helmed several splendid silent Lon Chaney shockers and whose talkies included the classics Dracula & FREAKS. His career would soon spiral into obscurity.
Robert Armstrong and a funny Sterling Holloway offer fine support to Gilbert, as do Mae Clarke, Muriel Kirkland, pretty Muriel Evans and unbilled Herman Bing & Nora Cecil, but it's all to no avail. The picture was doomed & John Gilbert was out the door, his contract expired.
It must be stated that there was nothing at all strange or unnaturally high about Gilbert's voice. As a matter of fact, it was of medium range & rather cultured & refined - which was the crux of the problem, of course. While it is possible that no voice could have ever matched the perfect one viewers heard in their minds while watching his strong, virile silent roles, the reality was very different from what they were expecting (imagine Robert Montgomery's voice coming out of Clark Gable's mouth). Gilbert was doomed from his first scene in his debut talkie; his war with Mayer only intensified the agony.
At Garbo's insistence, John Gilbert would return to MGM later in 1933 to appear as her love interest in QUEEN Christina, but she was the star and Gilbert received below-the-title billing. He would make only one more film - THE CAPTAIN HATES THE SEA for Columbia in 1934. Then he retired to his villa to live a life of drunken, sybaritic obsolescence. He was planning to return to the screen to costar with his last lover, Marlene Dietrich, in THE GARDEN OF ALLAH when he suddenly died on January 9, 1936 of heart failure, forgotten by most of his former fans. John Gilbert was only 36 years old.