Joyce Compton News & Notes

Melodramatic intrigue meets down 'n dirty truck driving in director Raoul Walsh's They Drive By Night , a typically energetic Warner Bros. production from 1940. The film follows truckers George Raft and Humphrey Bogart as they deal with punishing hours and low pay hauling produce on all-night drives. Ann Sheridan adds a salty cynicism as the waitress whom Raft takes a shine to. Although enjoyable, this is truly a movie with a split personality. It begins as a gritty working-class melodrama of the type Warners did so well, but then the latter half veers into overheated murder mystery with the arrival of Ida Lupino as the scheming wife of the trucking company boss (Alan Hale). Lupino's big courtroom scene is campy beyond belief, but it only detracts slightly from what is an exciting corker of a movie. Joyce Compton appears in They Drive By Night 's second half as the ditsy girlfriend of Raft and Bogart's fellow driver, played by Roscoe Ates (when Ates declares that sh...

Behind the Mask counts among the handful of films Joyce Compton did for the budget Monogram studio in the 1940s — whether she was a signed contract player there remains to be seen. Monogram's offerings spanned several genres including Westerns, Romances, Musicals and Film Noir Melodrama. Solid, modest entertainment was the hallmark of their best product, but even the lousiest of Monogram pictures (and trust me, there's plenty) had a scrappy charm. Behind the Mask was the second of three Monogram productions starring popular radio character The Shadow. What sounds like a promising, gritty drama going in, however, ends up a strange, grimy little film that awkwardly injects comedy into an otherwise unremarkable whodunit. The story concerns the murder of a blackmailing newspaper reporter. Witnesses believe it was the Shadow who committed the deed; the Shadow's alter ego Lamont Cranston (Kane Richmond, sort of a poor guy's Phillip Terry) must prove otherwise with the help ...

In the same year that Joyce Compton made a splash supporting Cary Grant and Irene Dunne in The Awful Truth , she marked time in the shoestring-budgeted Small Town Boy . Here Joyce plays a girl named Molly Summers, sweetie-pie girlfriend of Stuart Erwin's title character. Erwin's Henry Armstrong is a bumbling sap who works in an insurance office run by Joyce's domineering uncle (Clarence Wilson). He's also suffering through a turbulent home life with a nagging mother (Clara Blandick), indifferent dad (Jed Prouty) and ne'er-do-well brother (James Blakeley) - so it comes as a pleasant surprise when he finds a crisp thousand dollar bill under a stubborn horse's hoof. Erwin does the honest thing by advertising his find in the local paper, offering the bill to anyone who can supply the serial number. This causes even more trouble in the Erwin household, and when the bill is misplaced it leads to a comic chase all across town. Scripted and directed by Glenn Tryon (fath...

Under 18 is a great, lesser-known example of the prototypical Warner Bros. Pre-Code drama. In the film, pretty Marian Marsh stars as a young woman from the slums of New York trying to make ends meet with her recently widowed mother (Emma Dunn). Although she is dating a sweet delivery truck driver (Regis Toomey), witnessing the stormy relationship of her sister (Anita Page) and her lazy gambler of a husband (Norman Foster) has made her cynical about love and marriage. Working as a seamstress at a local fashion house, Marsh is drafted into a modeling job and meets a slimy millionaire (Warren William in the first of many "heel" roles) who invites the comely girl up to his penthouse. Although she is turned off by the way the models in her workplace have become rich mens' mistresses, a desperate turn for her sister prompts Marsh to re-think the man's offer. Despite the film's salacious title, Under 18 is actually quite a gritty and compelling drama which is given spi...

Go Into Your Dance was Al Jolson’s final star vehicle at Warner Brothers, and the only film in which he co-starred with his then-wife Ruby Keeler. As far as Al goes, he delivers a surprisingly subdued performance here (who knew?), and the relative lack of black-faced hamminess makes it a better bet to modern viewers. Here he plays an eccentric former Broadway star who lives exiled in Mexico. Al’s snappy sister (Glenda Farrell, always terrific) persuades him to go back to work, a situation where he is so emboldened he opens a nightclub funded with shady gangster money. At some point, he also deals with a sweet dancer (Keeler) who is stuck on him but doesn’t know quite how to express it. This is a typically predictable yet super-slick outing with a lively cast and a few polished, Busby Berkely-ish numbers (particularly “A Quarter To Nine”). Ruby Keeler is cute as always and rises to the occasion despite her shortcomings in the acting department; singer Helen Morgan actually outshines th...

I need to do Google image searches on Joyce Compton more often. Although many of the results are commonly circulated publicity shots, occasionally some rarely seen photos come up. For example ... From a Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy fan site - a racy shot with Jeanette and Joyce (and Sally Blane at center) in the partially lost 1931 Fox production Annabelle's Affairs : From Film Noir Photos , a casual shot of Joyce standing in front of a rather dangerous looking succulent in 1925: From the site of author Michael Ankerich ( The Real Joyce Compton ), another 1920s publicity portrait with Joyce taking on a classic pose in a bolero hat: From eclectic weblog Curiosity Killed The Cat , a shot of Joyce stiking a most flapper-esque pose: From Golden Age Autographs , a signed photo from 1938's Artists and Models Abroad . This photo session produced a lot of great ones, but this is a new one for me: Finally, from Flickr user le beau monde , a candid photo of silent queen Clara Bow...

I just finished watching our Joyce Compton in her 1935 actioner Suicide Squad . Joyce appears lovely and confident in the leading lady role here, but that's about the best thing I can say for this routine bottom of the bill filler. Norman Foster, who usually played cocky young men, stars as a cocky young fire recruit whose initiation into the department is all the more daunting since he's dating the fire chief's daughter. This short b-movie is shoddily directed and weirdly paced - with interminable dialogue scenes sandwiched between documentary footage of real building fires. It has the feel of being shot in a series of single takes, with the actors often reciting their lines out of the range of a camera that rarely if ever budges. Norman Foster is an affable enough lead, but the character he plays is so misguided and downright stupid that it's hard to care about the guy - even after he redeems himself in the end! Joyce completed this independent production in the peri...