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International House (1933) DVD, Video Download, USB Flash Drive

International House (1933) DVD, Video Download, USB Flash Drive
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W. C. Fields, Rudy Vallee, Burns And Allen, Cab Calloway, Bela Lugosi And More Find Themselves In A Chinese Hotel Where All And Sundry Assemble Despite Many Zany Misadventures To Bid On An Invention That Would Show Them All To The Whole Wide World On The Late Late Show In The Years To Come - Television! Presented In The Highest DVD Quality MPG Video Format Of 9.1 MBPS As An Archival Quality All Regions Format DVD, MP4 Video Download Or USB Flash Drive! (Black/White, 1933, 1 Hour 8 Minutes.) #InternationalHouse #WCFields #RudyVallee #BurnsAndAllen #CabCalloway #BelaLugosi #Hollywood #ClassicalHollywoodCinema #ClassicalHollywoodNarrative #ClassicHollywoodCinema #GoldenAgeOfHollywood #OldHollywood #Movies #Film #MotionPictures #Cinema #AmericanCinema #CinemaOfTheUS #SilverScreen #DVD #MP4 #VideoDownload


Director:
Edward Sutherland

Writers:
Neil Brant, Louis E. Heifetz (Story), Francis Martin, Walter DeLeon (Screenplay)

Cast:

Peggy Hopkins Joyce ... Peggy Hopkins Joyce
W.C. Fields ... Professor Quail
Rudy Vallee ... Himself
Stuart Erwin ... Tommy Nash
George Burns ... Doctor Burns
Gracie Allen ... Nurse Allen
Sari Maritza ... Carol Fortescue
F. Chase Taylor ... Colonel Stoopnagle
Budd Hulick ... Budd
Cab Calloway ... Himself
Bela Lugosi ... General Petronovich
Marie Osborne ... Herself (as Baby Marie)
Franklin Pangborn ... Hotel Manager
Edmund Breese ... Doctor Wong
Lumsden Hare ... Sir Mortimer Fortescue
Sterling Holloway ... Sailor
Lona Andre ... Chorus Queen
Harrison Greene ... Herr Von Baden


International House (1933 Film) is a 1933 American pre-Code comedy film starring Peggy Hopkins Joyce and W. C. Fields, directed by A. Edward Sutherland and released by Paramount Pictures. The tagline of the film was "The Grand Hotel of comedy". It is a mixture of comedy and musical acts tied together by a slim plot line, in the style of the Big Broadcast pictures that were also released by Paramount during the 1930s. In addition to some typical comedic lunacy from W. C. Fields and Burns and Allen, it provides a snapshot of some popular stage and radio acts of the era. The film includes some risque pre-Code humor. International House was produced before a strict Hollywood Production Code took effect in July 1934, and it is notable for the kind of risque subject matter, humor and costumes associated with Pre-Code Hollywood. Top-billed Peggy Hopkins Joyce was famous as an unabashed real-life gold-digger, not as an actress. Her many affairs with and several marriages to wealthy older men earned her millions, and in the film she makes several humorous references to her profitable divorces, a topic that would become almost completely off-limits with enforcement of the Code. Several of the "cellophane" costumes in the "She Was a China Tea-cup" production number allow the bare outlines of breasts to be seen, a degree of nudity that the Code would not permit. The setting of Wuhu, China also serves as a play on "Woo-hoo!", an exclamation which at that time was sometimes used to comment that something was sexually naughty. Hearing the city's name, W. C. Fields, as Professor Quail, responds to what he mistakes as homosexual flirting with "Don't let the posy fool you", referring to his own boutonniere, which he plucks out and tosses away. Walking down a hotel corridor, Fields pauses to peep through a keyhole, then comments, "What won't they think of next!" Such implications of what the Code called "sex perversion" (usually defined then as anything other than procreative sex in the missionary position) would soon be strictly prohibited. This was one of several films in which Fields tweaked censors' noses with one particular deniable double entendre. Sitting next to him in a small car, Joyce (whom he has punningly called "my little Laplander") squirms uncomfortably and tells him she is sitting on something. After saying "I lost mine in the stock market" Fields checks, finds a cat under her, and exclaims, "Ah, it's a pussy!" Performing with his hot dance band, Cab Calloway sings "Reefer Man", which describes the odd behavior and ravings of the titular heavy marijuana smoker (portrayed by bass player Al Morgan, who performs as if in a trance). In one gag, W. C. Fields enters a scene contentedly smoking an opium pipe (but with a cigar in place of the opium) and commenting, "They stupefy! They're roasted!", a play on two then-current cigarette advertising slogans. References to recreational drug use were among the many Legion of Decency thou-shalt-nots that would soon be rigidly enforced. In the sequence with the Austin - the smallest car sold in America at that time - W. C. Fields remarks that it "used to belong to the Postmaster General." This was a potshot at Will Hays, the diminutive former Postmaster General who was then trying to enforce an essentially voluntary and often disregarded early Production Code. On March 10, 1933, an earthquake occurred during production, and a Paramount newsreel featured what was presented as footage of cast members on the set reacting as it struck. A documentary featurette on W. C. Fields accompanying the film's DVD release, however, reveals that Fields and director Sutherland faked the footage for the publicity. The actual earthquake, centered off nearby Long Beach, caused widespread major damage to unreinforced masonry and about 120 consequent fatalities. A 1976 episode of the television series "In Search Of..." that dealt with earthquakes showed the footage. Lyricist Leo Robin and composer Ralph Rainger wrote three songs for the film: "She Was a China Tea-cup and He Was Just a Mug", performed offscreen by an unidentified male vocalist; "Thank Heaven For You", sung onscreen by Rudy Vallee; and "My Bluebird's Singing the Blues", sung onscreen by Baby Rose Marie (at a UCLA screening of the restored film at the Billy Wilder Theatre on March 10, 2013, Rose Marie indicated that her song was filmed in New York at the Astoria studio and she had no contact with the Hollywood players). A fourth Robin-Rainger song, "Look What I've Got", originally featured in the slightly earlier film A Bedtime Story, is heard as an instrumental, supposedly played by "Ah Phooey and His Manly Mandarins" in a broadcast from a radio station that calls itself "The Voice of Long Tung"; it provides the musical accompaniment for an otherwise silent he-and-she undressing scene. Cab Calloway and His Harlem Maniacs perform 1932's "Reefer Man", written by Andy Razaf (lyrics) and J. Russell Robinson (music).