Flesh (1932)

In Barton Fink the Coen Brothers created a New York playwright who decides to take a whack at Hollywood script-writing. His first assignment is a wrestling picture for Wallace Beery. If the character of Fink had been suggested by Moss Hart instead of Clifford Odets, Flesh would have been the movie he worked on. It's a wrestling picture with Wallace Beery.

Beery is Polakai, a waiter who doubles as a wrestler at the beer garden where he works. He's also the German champ, which means either wrestling didn't pay well or Weimar Germany had the toughest damn waiters in Europe. One day a recently released female con named Laura (Karen Morley) stops by the joint to enjoy a meal she can't pay for. Polakai, who is an old softy (in the heart and in the head) feels sorry for her and pays her tab. Later that night, seeing her caught in the rain, he invites her to share his apartment. She does and soon he is madly in love and she has a comfortable compartment on the gravy train.

Not long after that, her brother shows up for a visit with the newly married couple. Brother Nicky (Ricardo Cortez, in full greasy-arrogant manner) is really Laura's long-time lover and partner in crime. He tells her what a sap she was to marry this polooka only to discover that she had to due to the fact that she's pregnant with Nicky's baby. It's a little hard to figure out the film's chronology—women in Germany must have remained pregnant for a lot longer than nine months.

Anyway, Polakai and Laura sail to America so he can make some real money at his sport only to discover that Nicky, who is now Polakai's manager, has hooked the big guy up with a crooked promoter. Melodrama ensues.

Beery's accent comes and goes, often within the same sentence. Annoying as that can be when he goes absolutely California flat, it doesn't matter when director John Ford couldn't care less about any real Germanness, except for the oompah music. The background could just as easily be Irish.

The fact that Nicky pushes his gal into another man's bed doesn't bother either him or her. Laura will eventually start to feel sorry for Polakai, who is such a big cluck he'd bring out the cynicism in Little Mary Sunshine. "I'm not going back," she yells at Nicky. "I've done all I'm going to do to that man." I guess the title, in addition to suggesting something unpleasant about wrestling, is meant to reference "the way of all flesh."

The usual cast of MGM supporting players is one hand, including Jean Hersholt, Herman Bing, and Edward Brophy. The dialogue was written by Moss Hart from a story by Leonard Praskins, who had worked on Beery's Best Actor Oscar-winning vehicle The Champ the year before. (He tied with Fredric March.) There's nothing here to keep you awake.

Whatever charm Beery held for audiences in the 1930s is lost on me in this one.

6