Cross Streets (1934) User Reviews

Sentimental But Solid

[boblipton · 6/10 · 4 July 2021]

Johnny Mack Brown is graduating from college. He'll go to to medical school, and Claire Windsor will wait for him. Until, that is, until she realizes she'll have to wait years, and marries Niles Welch, who can step into his father's successful business. Twenty years pass, and they all return for a reunion. He's offered a position at the new medical facility the college is building; not only is Miss Windsor willing to run away with him, but so is her daughter. Then Brown tells what he has been doing for the last score of years.

It's a surprisingly good film from Poverty Row producer George Batcheller, a trifle too sentimental for my taste, but solidly written and performed under the direction of Frank Strayer. With Anita Louise, Matty Kemp, Edith Fellowes, and Mary Gordon.

Johnny Mack Brown....and it's NOT a western!

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 3 October 2015]

In the 30s and 40s, Johnny Mack Brown made a ton of low-budget westerns. The films were, by an large, enjoyable but slight films-- -quickie productions starring the manly yet genial Brown. He made about a hundred of them--so he was obviously a very popular star. However, with "Cross Street" yet get a rare chance to see him in something OTHER than a western...a romance! So is this cowboy star any good? Read along and see for yourself.

When the film begins, Adam (Brown) is in love. However, his fiancée Anne (Clair Windsor) is a bit stupid and one of Adam's 'friends' convinces her to break the engagement. Soon, Adam's life is a mess and he loses his job as a surgeon. He's a hobo and spends years doing nothing with his life. Much time passes and he's back on his feet and is finally making something of himself and staying sober. Now he meets a new woman--and she seems perfect until he learns the truth. Clara (Anita Louise) is his ex-fiancée's daughter!!! It sure makes for some awkward moments when he and Anne meet once again!!

So is this soap opera film any good? Well, I appreciated that the big twist (that Clara is his ex's daughter) is NOT held out to the end but is introduced more naturally. How everyone reacts and the repercussions make this worth seeing--especially the spiteful and vicious Anne. If you do see it, don't expect a perfect film. A couple times I think Brown could have done a better job (he's GREAT at playing nice but seemed a little less convincing when angry or hurt) and the film is a bit rushed since it's a B-movie. And, the ending was a bit over the top and too selfless! But the film is very interesting and could have made for a terrific A-picture--with more gloss and a longer run time.

By the way, the copy of this film on YouTube is absolutely horrid-- very, very blurry. This would be one best seen on a computer (due to the smaller screen) instead of a big TV like I used.

Tale as old as the oldest soap opera.

[mark.waltz · 6/10 · 24 August 2016]

A lover from the past of a miserably selfish but wealthy woman appears out of nowhere, one of the world's most acclaimed doctors. The wife, still in love with the old beau, is willing to hive up everything to get him back, except there's a catch. Well, several catches. He is in love with another woman, a much younger one. In fact, it's her own daughter, and to keep him attached to her, threatens to reveal that he's the girl's father, not her husband. Of course, they both know it's true. Then, there's the matter of his past, living as a drunk after his medical career was destroyed by his causing the death of a patient. Who is the protagonist here? In the case of this pre-code melodrama, the leading man, future western star Johnny Mack Brown.

Amazingly good, this shows Brown atoning for his sins and finding the girl who left him behind to marry well wasn't worth becoming a drunk over. Claire Windsor is bright but shallow, going from young co-ed to embittered socialite, while rising star Anita Louise shows promise as her innocent daughter who almost makes the same mistake. But the shining light here is Brown, giving the male character the opportunity to expand in different directions. Brown gets a great exit scene that I did not see coming and a great line of dialog that should be on the list of great exit lines. Even with a few minor soap opera clichés, this manages to strike an emotional cord that makes it stand above the others.

Johnny Mack Brown Is Terrific

[drednm · 18 December 2012]

Somber little film from poverty row about how a man's life takes an unexpected turn for the worse after his girlfriend decides not to wait for him to establish himself as a physician. Instead, she runs off with a wealthy man, leaving Adam Blythe (Johnny Mack Brown), the man most likely to succeed, devastated.

His life spirals downward as he turns to drink and kills a patient during an operation. His life continues to disintegrate until he almost saves himself by saving a dog in a small town. Nearly 20 years have passed before he runs into an old college chum who tries to save him.

Attending a reunion, the chum builds up Blythe as a successful physician to runs a clinic in Germany. The chum almost gets Blythe established in the new medical clinic he's endowing on campus.

But Blythe has the misfortune to meet a beautiful young woman (Anita Louise) who reminds him of that long-ago girlfriend. Of course she's the daughter and threatens to marry Blythe in a rebellious moment. But the old girlfriend (Claire Windsor) is unhappy in her marriage and fancies running off with Blythe. The selfish woman threatens to expose Blythe as her daughter's father if he dares try to marry her. Blythe's bad luck continues to the surprising ending.

At a major studio this material could have made for a major motion picture. Here it's a stark tale told on a low budget. But that doesn't keep it from being a moving film with solid performances by Johnny Mack Brown and Anita Louise. Kenneth Thomson plays the old chum, Josef Swickard the old professor, Edith Fellows and Tommy Bupp are the small-town children, and Mary Gordon is the old lady.

Contrary to the listing here, this film is not lost.

Surgeon on the Skids!!

[kidboots · 7/10 · 15 January 2015]

I think the thing that really elevates this movie is the make up and even though he is not mentioned here, down the bottom of the credits as the movie begins is "Make-Up Artist - Jack Pierce. Initially the story is set on the eve of graduation from Clifton Medical College and in true Hollywood tradition, the campus is peopled with actors who look as though they could be the fathers of college graduates - not graduates themselves!! John Mack Brown plays Adam Blythe, newly graduated doctor but looking at years of internship. That doesn't suit his fiancée Ann (Claire Windsor found herself suddenly back in demand after a "heart balm" case made it's way into the head lines) - she wants glory and good times now, so is persuaded to ditch Adam and marry established doctor Jerry who really loves her. Adam graduated but now becomes a alcoholic and after an operation goes horribly wrong he goes into hiding, still drinking.....

1933 finds him a hobo but he is also found by his old pal Mort (Kenneth Thomson) - he never graduated but he is now a self made millionaire and he rages at the hypocrisy of the college who shunned him when he was down and out but now are always pestering him for donations. He takes Adam with him to the college reunion, painting him as a renowned surgeon and the college board lap it up. Mort also indicates he will only donate money if Adam is retained as chief surgeon.

Again the make up saves the day - all the cast look older but realistically, not hideously. Adam meets pretty Clara (Anita Louise) who reminds him of Ann and of course it proves to be Ann's daughter but it is a case of like mother, like daughter!! Clara is loved by Ken Barclay (Matty Kemp) but Ken, like Adam was, is just starting out and Clara doesn't want to wait. After the wrap Mort gives Adam, she becomes starry eyed, seeing herself as the wife of a person of renown. Enter the real villain - Ann who has not been kind to her ever loving husband. She thinks she can take off where she left off but when Adam rejects her, she threatens to expose him as well as threaten to tell her daughter that Adam is her real father - of course he's not but Ann is low enough to sink to any level!!

I agree the ending is a surprise but the film ties up all loose ends with polish - a top professional cast was always a big plus in poverty rowers.

Probably the best thing Johnny Mack Brown ever did and loaded with irony...

[AlsExGal · 8/10 · 20 April 2017]

...mainly because of the similarities between Brown and the character he plays here - Adam Blythe. Both start out strong in life, both suffer career setbacks until they are on the bottom rung of their career ladder. Johnny Mack Brown, however, had a happy personal life, unlike his tragic character in this film. Brown also never succumbed to alcoholism, although I could see how he could have done so.

The film starts out just before the graduation of the class of 1914 of Clifton University. A new inductee into a prestigious fraternity is taking a tour, and the member of the fraternity who is held out as most likely to succeed is Adam Blythe (Johnny Mack Brown), graduate of medical school, captain of the football team, also in baseball and crew, all while working his way through. As for member Jerry Grattan, all that is said about him is that he has a very big car - there is a photo shown - at a time when not that many people even had cars.

In the few minutes Adam excuses himself from a moonlight walk with his fiancée Anne in order to help a drunk friend who has just found out he is not graduating, wealthy Jerry moves in, tells Anne she can have all of the things that she wants right now by marrying him instead, and Jerry does not have to sell hard to get Anne to dump Adam without any intention of telling him. I say that because you can tell she is surprised when Adam reappears and she has to tell him she has been sold to the highest bidder in his absence as her original intent was to ride off into the night with Jerry and his roadster leaving Adam to figure out things for himself.

Adam is an idealist, so Anne being a bloodless capitalist when it comes to marriage comes as a shock so big that Adam begins to drink heavily to forget. He does graduate, he does become a doctor, but he drinks heavily to forget Anne. He would remember if he ever stopped drinking, so he continues to drink. He winds up killing a patient due to his drunkenness and runs away. No charges are filed since it is just chalked up to the woman being very sick in the first place. He works in a pharmacy and gets fired for drinking the grain alcohol stored there - by now prohibition is the law.

From this point forward Adam is just a tramp, wandering from one town to the other until one night the college roommate, Mort, who he comforted twenty years before when he didn't graduate finds him in the gutter, picks him up and takes him home. Mort the non-graduate turns out to have become a successful wealthy businessman. Adam sobers up for the first time in twenty years and tells Mort how much he would like to go back to Clifton, but he can't given that he has been a failure and a drunk since graduation.

Now Mort would like a little sweet revenge on the institution that failed him, so he tells Adam that they will dress him up and pass him off as a doctor running a small clinic in Europe doing important but not yet publicized medical research. This will account for nobody having heard from him in twenty years. Mort wants to go back and have them beg him for bucks for their new hospital. So off they go.

However, also at the dedication of the new university hospital is Jerry and Anne. Anne has lost her looks but not her selfishness, and now she is ashamed of Jerry because all he has to show for 20 years in the medical profession is the roadster he started out with - newer model of course. He never did anything with his medical career because he didn't have to, and the contrast between the truth about Jerry and the lies about Adam have her regretting her decision of twenty years ago. Throw Anne and Jerry's daughter into the mix who is the spitting image of mom twenty years ago, yet somehow she is decent in spite of her parentage, and you have an explosive mixture of a reunion between all of these people.

I'll let you watch, if you can ever find a copy, and see how it turns out. I will say there is an unexpected side trip towards the end when Adam talks about the only part of the last twenty years that he can be proud of that is endearing in its sweetness and completely unexpected.