Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Director 1928-1929

The Contenders:

Harry Beaumont: The Broadway Melody
Frank Lloyd: The Divine Lady (winner)
Frank Lloyd: Drag
Irving Cummings: In Old Arizona
Lionel Barrymore: Madame X
Ernst Lubitsch: The Patriot
Frank Lloyd: Weary River

I'm Weary, Too

Film: Weary River
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

One of the downsides of working off any list of movies is that I know for a fact when I’ve reviewed one that won’t get many hits or comments. Weary River is just such a case. If I cared about page views more than completeness, I’d have never bothered with a dipstick of a film like this one. Weary River may have been what people wanted in 1929, but I can’t imagine that anyone would be lining up for it now. I’m the third person to tag this film as viewed on Letterboxd, and that’s saying something.

So why isn’t this worth your time? I’ll try to make this brief. Jerry Larrabee (Donald Barthelmess) is a hoodlum who spends his spare time singing and playing the piano to entertain his mildly speech impedimented girlfriend Alice (Betty Compson). Jerry’s gang is running afoul of a gang run by a man named Spadoni (Louis Natheaux). What Jerry doesn’t realize is that Spadoni is aching to get rid of his rival. He pays someone to take a bullet in the 1920s equivalent of a drive-by and the guy names Jerry as the trigger man. We don’t find this out until later, but we know that Jerry isn’t guilty of this particular crime.