Out By That Old San Francisco Bay-Kay Francis And George Brent’s “Stranded” (1935)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Leslie Dumont     

Stranded, starring Kay Francis, George Brent, Barton MacLane

The Golden Gate Bridge will forever in my mind (my heart too maybe) be connected with San Francisco. Forever starting the first time I went to California with my companion then and still fellow writer here Josh Breslin and saw the majestic rust red bridge in the gleaning daylight (on one of those fogless days of which there are sometimes too few of out in the Bay Area). Josh and I had been leisurely travelling up the Pacific Coast Highway along the ocean until we hit the Seal Point section of San Francisco out by Ocean Beach. We parked the car and Josh said let’s take a walk along the paths at the Sutro Baths. As we turned the corner at one point there was the bridge some freighters passing under heading out to the Japan seas, warning fog horns blaring periodically and all the thoughts in my head associated with land’s end in America. Breathe-taking.  (Josh influenced by the jazz-infested “beat” generation guys in the 1950s when Frisco was one of the nodal points on that map would always say that he could hear the high white note from some sexy sax player in North Beach floating out to those Japan seas. I wonder how he would write the lead to his version of this film review.)         

The bridge actually plays an important part as a backdrop in the film under review Stranded (or if you take the point of view of the main male character for much of the film the centerpiece). Or rather the construction of the bridge back in the Great Depression 1930s (making an important short-cut across the bay which previously you had to traverse either by ferry or go all around the bay to get north or south from what I understand). This was one of Warner Brothers’ social dramas which they were well known for in those days and although there is some woodenness to the dialogue and some “filler” in this short film it makes a few points worthy of mention in the plot.   

Mack, played by a younger 1930s heartthrob George Brent (pre-mustache which made him look a bit more dashing), is the construction boss on the big bridge project. No one can deny the social usefulness of that project. Lynn, played by Kay Francis, is basically a private charity social worker in the days before the government took its rightful place in providing services for those in need of help working for the Travelers Aid (an organization that previously mentioned “beat” generation took advantage of in their travels as did Josh and his friends in the 1960s when they were all crazy to get to San Francisco in the Summer of Love days).

They “met” when Mack was looking for a stray worker who had left town (although they had actually met in Pasadena some years before when she was 15 and too young for him). They hit it off fine and things were looking like wedding bells in the not distance future. Along the way though they hit a snag, a very modern snag if you think about it. Mack is one of those old-fashioned take charge guys who thinks he should be the sole bread-winner and let the little woman stay at home and vegetate. Lynn is a thoroughly modern Millie who sees her career, unlike Mack who see the whole social work thing as servicing losers, as socially important and part of her persona. So the old two career conundrum which pulls them apart for a while. Needless say they, deeply in love but thwarted by Mack’s Neanderthal approach, will in the end sit by the moonlit bay together.

The other dramatic tension in the piece is provided by a conflict between Mack and a labor contractor, a shark, who wants hush money to keep the bridge project going on schedule or else he will pull the guys off the job. This was a union job (in the aftermath of the General Strike out there along the waterfront which made Frisco a labor-friendly town then) in a time when jobs were scarce as hen’s teeth and so there was definitely a conflict brewing. This shark, Sharkey played by well-known character actor Barton MacLane last seen here as a Frisco cop taking a drubbing from Sam Spade after accusing Sam of murder in The Maltese Falcon, stirs things up enough to have the men ready to walk out on Mack. Guess who is instrumental in saving the day. Yes, Lynn and therefore that moonlit bay finale.