Barbary Coast

During the gold rush, Robinson runs San Francisco like a mafia boss. Enter Hopkins as a gold-digging young lady, who apparently is just about the only white woman in the whole city, given how the men react to her. The familiar cast also includes McCrea as an earnest young prospector, Donlevy as Robinson's hatchet man, and Brennan as an old guy named "Old Atrocity." Entertaining film has a decent story but is marred by acting that is either wooden or melodramatic, with Hopkins particularly guilty of the latter. It's fun watching Robinson play the heavy. Hawks does a nice job of evoking foggy San Francisco of a bygone era.

Enjoyable adventure is filmed at a lively clip and delivers a fine entertainment. A bit heavy on the ham in a couple of places but entertaining nonetheless. Edward G.Robinson is fine as always although he should have rethought the earring. He is full of brio and shows his versatility but his costume does him no favors. He and Miriam are a fine pair even though he despised her offscreen. A good actress if a bit dithery she managed to destroy her starring career with cheap tricks and constant attempts to upstage her co-stars. The story goes that Edward G. became fed up with it and when the script called for him to strike her he was so frustrated with her shenanigans that he didn't pull the slap and sent her flying to the applause of the assembled crew.

Censors had a profound influence in shaping movies during the Golden Age of Hollywood. No better example was Samuel Goldwyn's October 1935 "Barbary Coast." Joseph Breen, chief censor for the Production Code Administration (PCA), hated unredeemable characters in movies that made them out as heroes. When he received Goldwyn's initial script for the Howard Hawks-directed film, Breen rolled his eyes and described it as "one of sordidness, and low-tone morality." The adapted screenplay from Herbert Asbury's 1933's 'Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld,' was about the city's red light district in the 1850. A film industry trade magazine writer familiar with Asbury's book concurred with Breen, calling it "one of the filthiest, vilest and most degrading books that have ever been chosen for the screen."

Goldwyn hired several writers to assist Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur in delivering a screenplay the PCA would pass. Several rewrites sanitized the pair's first script, upsetting Hecht to the point he described it as "Miriam Hopkins (Mary Rutledge in the movie) came to the Barbary Coast and wandered around like a confused Goldwyn girl." Finally, after several months of going back and forth, changing "Barbary Coast" into a romance, Breen beamed to his boss Will Hays the script contains a "fine, clean girl," where there's no mention of "unpleasant details of prostitution." He described the screenplay "now has a full, and completely compensating, value, the finest and most intelligent picture I have seen in many months."

After viewing the final product, some contemporary critics saw just the opposite, with Time Magazine writing the movie was "painfully uninspired," while Newsweek said the plot in the original book was thrown away. Modern day reviewer Stacia Jones agrees "Barbary Coast" would have been a far different, and better, film if it had been made during the Pre-Code era, but "despite some general flakiness and the unmistakable hint of changes made to appease moralists, the script is pretty solid."

"Barbary Coast" is also known for the outrageous behavior Hopkins displayed to her leading man Edward G. Robinson on the set. Miss Rutledge (Hopkins) journeys to San Francisco to marry a rich gold miner she knows. Trouble is, he lost all his money to a casino owned by Louis Chamalis (Robinson) and commits suicide. The resigned Rutledge eventually works at the casino's crooked roulette wheel, where Chamalis falls for her. Robinson described working with Hopkins 'a horror." He claimed she was always late, keeping the film crew waiting, she repeatedly tried to upstage the other actors, and she was constantly haughty. Hopkins didn't read her lines as any actress should when Robinson's close-ups were filmed; she had a script girl stand in for her to read them while Edward always read his lines to her. For one scene, Robinson wanted to rehearse where he had to slap her in the face so he wouldn't actually hit her. She refused, demanding they just shoot it once with him really slapping her and then be done with it. Robinson wrote in his memoirs, "I slapped her so you could hear it all over the set. And the cast and crew burst into applause," apparently tired of Hopkins' behavior. The actress had to pick herself up from the floor, so hard was Robinson's slap.

Initially Walter Brennan, whose acting career saw him in brief roles, was given yet another short part in "Barbary Coast" as Old Atrocity, a regular presence in the district's saloons. Hawks loved Brennan's acting so much the director expanded his lines in several scenes where the actor's trademark excitability is on full display. The movie turned out to be his first significant role after ten years slogging in numerous Hollywood films. He began to get larger parts after the movie's release. "That really set me up," claimed Brennan, the winner of three Academy Awards, and is tied with Jack Nicholson and Daniel Day-Lewis for the most Oscars for an actor.

In 1848 the Treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican - American War, with the secession of territory from Mexico to the U.S. of most of the current southwestern U.S. (California, Arizona, New Mexico, any claims to Texas - as well as parts of Colorado, Utah, and Nevada). This was a war of conquest by the U.S., but to assuage American consciences fifteen million dollars was paid to Mexico for this territory. Only a subsequent bit of southern Arizona and New Mexico (known as the "Gadsden Purchase") was made as an addition in 1853 by the Pierce Administration, giving us the current southwestern border.

While the territory of Northern California (as opposed to the territory of Baja or Southern California - still part of Mexico) had always been a bit too far from Mexico City for proper control over local government, the change to Washington, D.C. - more than twice the distance and across a continent - further seemed to weaken national control of the territory. Moreover the population, being mostly Latino, was hostile to the non-Latino U.S. Government. It is in the next few years that California's so-called answer to Robin Hood, Joachin Murrieta, is continuing the Mexican War by his guerrilla/bandit attacks.

Under normal circumstances, it would have taken a generation for the U.S. to be really bothered by this. But in 1849 gold was discovered in California, and the world rushed in. Suddenly the territory had nearly one million population within a year, and demanded statehood. This would lead to the controversy about admitting California to the Union as an free state, and unbalancing the balance of the U.S. Senate. This in turn led to the Compromise of 1850 which enabled California to enter the Union as a free state, but guaranteed a fugitive slave act as a sop to the South. It put off the Civil War (or ignited the path to the Civil War) ten years later.

But for a big state, with wealth and population and size, California had a bad reputation. The towns of San Francisco and Los Angeles boomed in population - in particular San Francisco with it's immense harbor. But their governments were pitifully unable to maintain public order. Fires (arson caused) were frequent. So were killings, usually tied to robberies of the prospectors with more gold than sense. Judges and police were frequently paid off by gamblers and crime gang leaders. Finally, in 1851, the better elements of San Francisco put their foot down and formed a vigilante committee. They arrested several dubious characters, held stream-lined trials (where many legal niceties were ditched) and if the parties were found guilty (which usually happened) they were hanged in public. It sort of calmed things down, but then the continued prosperity of the state caused the same problems to reappear. In 1856 two incidents reignited the Vigilante Committee. First a local outspoken newspaper editor, James King of William, was shot and killed by a corrupt local political alderman named James Carey. Then a gambler named Charles Cora shot and killed a police official. Both men were arrested, given the drum-head trial, convicted, and hanged. The Vigilantes retained control of San Francisco for the rest of the next year before disbanding. They never had to make a third appearance.

Were they real heroes or a lynch mob? It still is debated. James King of William was right about the corruption and crime, but he was a "Nativist", and his attacks were also against Catholics, such as Carey (an Irish American) and Cora (an Italian American). Many of his fellows were also Protestants, and some may have had pecuniary interests in attacking the businesses controlled by the Catholics. So the real situation is not black and white, like this film suggests.

Edward G. Robinson's Luis Chamalis was based on Charles Cora, although the triangle with Miriam Hopkins and Joel McCrae is from whole cloth. Col. Marcus Cobb (Frank Craven) is based on James King of William (although King of William was never reduced to such stunning superficiality as Cobb is for nearly a year). Robinson's grip on the whole of San Francisco is fictitious (Cora never had that much power). The leadership of the Vigilantes (Harry Carey) reflect the moral center of the Vigilantes movement that was unquestioned in American History books of the 1935.

It is a good film, with fine performances by Robinson, Hopkins, Craven, Brian Donleavy (who's physical appearance makes him look like the corrupt contemporary Mayor of New York City, Fernando Wood), and Brennan. McCrae is sturdy and acts well, but his role seems terribly naive. It is fun trying to locate David Niven as a drunken cockney sailor tossed out of Robinson's saloon (he recalled it fondly in THE MOON'S A BALLOON). Robinson's recollections of the film were downers in ALL MY YESTERDAYS: he had political disputes about the on-coming World War II with isolationists Hopkins, Carey, Craven, Brennan, McCrae, and director Hawks. Hopkins kept trying to upstage him and the others, until he let her have it before the cast and crew (who applauded him for it). He also felt the end was a let down. Quietly told by Carey and his associates it is time to accompany them to his neck stretching party, he quietly joins them, as though they have come to take him to deliver a political speech! Still the film merits an "8" out of "10".

Apparently Sam Goldwyn picked the words Barbary Coast as a title then called in his writers and told them to write a story. That was the way they did things at Hollywood studios in the thirties.

This is actually a pretty entertaining movie that catches some of the anything goes atmosphere of San Francisco in gold rush days.Edward G. Robinson is miscast (and has to wear some peculiar costumes) in his role as a bad guy but he gives it everything he's got and some of his scenes are quite effective. Miriam Hopkins is very good as a gold digger of the non mining kind and Joel Mcrea as her hearts desire spouts some poetic dialogue quite eloquently.

Good drama of the typically Hollywood kind.