For the Love of Mike | |
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![]() Film poster | |
Directed by | Frank Capra |
Written by | J. Clarkson Miller Leland Hayward |
Based on | Hell's Kitchen by John A. Moroso |
Produced by | Robert Kane |
Starring | Ben Lyon Claudette Colbert George Sidney Richard "Skeets" Gallagher Ford Sterling Hugh Cameron |
Cinematography | Ernest Haller |
Production company | Robert Kane Productions |
Distributed by | First National Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 75 min |
Country | United States |
Languages | Silent English Intertitles |
For the Love of Mike (originally titled Hell's Kitchen) is a 1927 American silent romantic drama film. Directed by Frank Capra, it starred Claudette Colbert (in her film debut) and Ben Lyon. [1] [2] It is now considered to be a lost film. [3]
A baby boy is found abandoned in a Hell's Kitchen tenement and subsequently is raised by three men: a German delicatessen owner (Sterling), a Jewish tailor (Sidney), and an Irish street cleaner (Cameron). They adopt the boy and raise him as their own. The timeline jumps 20 years into their future. The now-grown Mike (Lyon) resists going to college because he does not wish to be a financial burden to his adoptive fathers, however a pretty Italian girl, Mary (Colbert) working at the delicatessen convinces him to go.
Mike enrolls at Yale and gains a reputation as a sports hero. He disavows his three fathers, which leads to the Irishman giving him a thrashing in front of the boy's best friends. He begins to associate with gamblers and ends up owing them money. To settle his debts, they demand he purposely lose the school's big rowing match with Harvard. His three fathers and the girl come to support him during the race, and he defies the gamblers and wins the race. His three fathers then come forward to confront and deal with the gamblers. [4]
For the Love of Mike is based on the story Hell's Kitchen by John Moroso. [4] Frank Capra himself referred to the film as his first flop. [5] [6] Having recently ended his association as writer/director for actor Harry Langdon, this became Capra's first opportunity to direct a New York based production. [7] Producer Robert Kane had contracts to provide First National Pictures with 10 films, and had planned each to be financed with profits from the preceding. [6]
For the Love of Mike was the tenth in this package, funding was limited, and agent Leland Hayward convinced Capra into deferring his salary until the end of production. [5] Capra was never paid for his participation. [7] The film was considered a commercial failure despite a strong cast and decent production values. [7]
The film is marked as being the screen debut of Claudette Colbert and her only silent film appearance. [8] [9] [10] After the film received poor reviews and failed financially, Colbert vowed, "I shall never make another film". [11] However, two years later, she signed with Paramount Pictures. [12]
Critic Mordaunt Hall of The New York Times wrote that the film "makes no pretensions of being anything but a movie. It seemed to satisfy the audience at the Hippodrome yesterday afternoon, for there was laughter and, at the end, applause", and concluded "Claudette Colbert, who was seen in Kenyon Nicholson's play "The Barker," lends her charm to this obstreperous piece of work. She seems quite at home before the camera". [13]
Frank Russell Capra was an Italian-American film director, producer, and screenwriter who was the creative force behind several major award-winning films of the 1930s and 1940s. Born in Italy and raised in Los Angeles from the age of five, his rags-to-riches story has led film historians such as Ian Freer to consider him the "American Dream personified".
It Happened One Night is a 1934 American pre-Code romantic comedy film with elements of screwball comedy directed and co-produced by Frank Capra, in collaboration with Harry Cohn, in which a pampered socialite tries to get out from under her father's thumb and falls in love with a roguish reporter. The screenplay by Robert Riskin is based on the August 1933 short story "Night Bus" by Samuel Hopkins Adams, which provided the shooting title. Classified as a "pre-Code" production, the film is among the last romantic comedies created before the MPPDA began rigidly enforcing the 1930 Motion Picture Production Code in July 1934. It Happened One Night was released just four months prior to that enforcement.
The Smiling Lieutenant is a 1931 American pre-Code musical comedy film directed by Ernst Lubitsch, starring Maurice Chevalier, Claudette Colbert and Miriam Hopkins, and released by Paramount Pictures.
Émilie Chauchoin, professionally known as Claudette Colbert, was an American actress. Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the late 1920s and progressed to films with the advent of talking pictures. Initially contracted to Paramount Pictures, Colbert became one of the few major actresses of the period who worked freelance, independent of the studio system.
The Big Pond is a 1930 American pre-Code romantic comedy film based on a 1928 play of the same name by George Middleton and A. E. Thomas. The film was written by Garrett Fort, Robert Presnell Sr. and Preston Sturges, who provided the dialogue in his first Hollywood assignment, and was directed by Hobart Henley. The film stars Maurice Chevalier and Claudette Colbert, and features George Barbier, Marion Ballou, and Andrée Corday, and was released by Paramount Pictures.
Robert Anthony Sklar was an American historian and author specializing in the history of cinema.
The Bitter Tea of General Yen is a 1933 American pre-Code drama war film directed by Frank Capra and starring Barbara Stanwyck, and featuring Nils Asther and Walter Connolly. Based on the 1930 novel of the same name by Grace Zaring Stone, the film is about an American missionary in Shanghai during the Chinese Civil War who gets caught in a battle while trying to save a group of orphans. Knocked unconscious, she is saved by a Chinese general warlord who brings her to his palace. When the general falls in love with the naive young woman, she fights her attraction to the powerful general and resists his flirtation, yet remains at his side when his fortune turns.
The comedy of remarriage is a subgenre of American comedy films of the 1930s and 1940s. At the time, the Production Code, also known as the Hays Code, banned any explicit references to or attempts to justify adultery and illicit sex. The comedy of remarriage with the same spouse enabled filmmakers to evade this provision of the Code. The protagonists divorced, flirted, or even had relationships, with strangers without risking the wrath of censorship, and then got back together.
Broadway Bill is a 1934 American comedy-drama film directed by Frank Capra and starring Warner Baxter and Myrna Loy. Screenplay by Robert Riskin and based on the short story "Strictly Confidential" by Mark Hellinger, the film is about a man's love for his thoroughbred race horse and the woman who helps him achieve his dreams. Capra disliked the final product, and in an effort to make it more to his liking, he remade the film in 1950 as Riding High. In later years, the distributor of Riding High, Paramount Pictures, acquired the rights to Broadway Bill. The film was released in the United Kingdom as Strictly Confidential.
I Cover the Waterfront is a 1933 American pre-Code romantic drama film directed by James Cruze and starring Ben Lyon, Claudette Colbert, Ernest Torrence, and Hobart Cavanaugh.
Arise, My Love is a 1940 American romantic comedy film directed by Mitchell Leisen and starring Claudette Colbert, Ray Milland and Dennis O'Keefe. It was made by Paramount Pictures and written by Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett and Jacques Théry. Containing an interventionist message, it tells the love story of a pilot and a journalist who meet in the latter days of the Spanish Civil War and follows them through the early days of World War II. Colbert once said that Arise, My Love was her personal favorite motion picture of all the films she had made.
The Hole in the Wall is a 1929 pre-Code mystery drama film directed by Robert Florey, and starring Claudette Colbert and Edward G. Robinson. This early talking picture was the first appearance of Edward G. Robinson in the role of a gangster, and "can be viewed as a dry run for his eventual success ". It was also one of Colbert's first film appearances.
Tonight Is Ours is a 1933 American Pre-Code drama film directed by Stuart Walker and starring Claudette Colbert, Fredric March and Alison Skipworth. Made by Paramount Pictures, it is based on the play The Queen Was in the Parlour by Noël Coward.
Claudette Colbert (1903–1996) was an American actress who won the Academy Award for Best Actress in It Happened One Night (1934). Born Émilie Claudette Chauchoin, she had early passions for a career in fashion design. Although she is more generally remembered for her film work, Colbert's show business career began on stage, and theatrical work remained part of her professional life for six decades. It was her friend, Anne Morrison, an aspiring playwright, who nudged her towards the acting profession. She chose the professional name of Claudette Colbert, using a family name three generations removed on her father's side.
Jameson Thomas was an English film actor. He appeared in more than 80 films between 1923 and 1939.
Forbidden is a 1932 American pre-Code melodrama film directed by Frank Capra and starring Barbara Stanwyck, Adolphe Menjou, and Ralph Bellamy. An original story inspired by the 1931 novel Back Street by Fannie Hurst, with a screenplay by Jo Swerling, the film is about a young librarian who falls in love with a married man while on a sea cruise.
You Can't Take It with You is a 1938 American romantic comedy film directed by Frank Capra, and starring Jean Arthur, Lionel Barrymore, James Stewart, and Edward Arnold. Adapted by Robert Riskin from the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1936 play of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, the film is about a man from a family of rich snobs who becomes engaged to a woman from a good-natured but decidedly eccentric family.
Flight is a 1929 American pre-Code adventure and aviation film directed by Frank Capra. The film stars Jack Holt, Lila Lee and Ralph Graves, who also came up with the story, for which Capra wrote the dialogue. Dedicated to the United States Marine Corps, the production was greatly aided by their full cooperation.
Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan is a neighborhood in New York City.
A list of books and essays about Frank Capra:
For the Love of Mike, lost film.
For the Love of Mike, Capra.