Central Park

Central Park (1932)

Runtime: 57 minutes

Directed by: John G. Adolfi

Starring: Joan Blondell, Wallace Ford, Guy Kibbee, Henry B. Walthall, John Wray

From: Warner Bros. 

The 57-minute length plus my schedule necessitated viewing this for a special late Thursday Letterboxd review posting. I DVR’ed this from a TCM showing yesterday due to someone on the site I follow posting this review several years ago. They weren’t over the moon for it (and accurately stated that the similar Union Depot from the same year was better) yet this was a breezy good time.

This covers one day in the famed New York City locale; this includes Joan Blondell & Wallace Ford as poor people falling in love, cop Guy Kibbee retiring in a week due to failing eyesight (does this portend doom for him?), gangsters attempting to rob a charity event, a lion escaping the park’s zoo, AND a dude named Smiley who’s not only a former zookeeper, but escaped from what we now call a mental health facility.

Plenty happens in less than an hour; there’s at least 90 minutes’ worth of story. At times the story is more than a little preposterous and Smiley-in an OOT performance-is such a lunatic, a beer bottle broken over his head had no effect. There’s also playing cards tossed into a hat, a homemade lasso, the Central Park Casino (an actual location; it’s Italian for “little house” so it did not host any gambling), a wild herd of sheep-was that ever a thing-people jumping head-first through an open window, and more.

Blondell & her eyes were a highlight, as typical. So much happens there’s not even a minute where boredom sets in. Of course there are many other details, that factor into my thinking a movie’s great. Central Park isn’t a masterpiece by any regards but was still fun, with many familiar Warner Brothers stock players and B-movie actors in bit parts, including Edward LeSaint, best known by me for his role as a judge in Disorder in the Court AND Reefer Madness.

I’m glad TCM played this flick; otherwise it’s hard to track down unless you take a journey to the Bowels of the Internet.