Heat Lightning

Director: Mervyn LeRoy Mervyn LeRoy

Overview

An interesting precursor to such films as The Petrified Forest and Bus Stop, Heat Lightning takes place in a remote California-desert gas station-café. Several strange characters pass through the establishment's portals during one fateful 24-hour period, including cad-and-bounder George (Preston S. Foster). Resourceful proprietress Olga (Aline MacMahon) tries to remain detached throughout but is forced to take drastic action when George threatens to seduce and abandon her own sister Myra (Ann Dvorak). Glenda Farrell, one of Warners' most reliable players, is surprisingly wasted in a glorified bit role; even further down the cast list as "Husband and Wife" are 2-reel comedy star Edgar Kennedy and future Oscar winner Jane Darwell (talk about an odd couple!) Heat Lightning was based on a stage play co-scripted by George Abbott.

Product Details

Release Date:	12/14/2010
UPC:	0883316278062
Original Release:	1934
Rating:	NR
Source:	Warner Archives
Presentation:	[Full Frame]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	1:03:00
Sales rank:	6,966

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Aline MacMahon	Olga
Ann Dvorak	Myra
Preston Foster	George,George
Lyle Talbot	Jeff
Glenda Farrell	Mrs. Tifton
Frank McHugh	Frank the Chauffeur
Ruth Donnelly	Mrs. Ashton-Ashley
Theodore Newton	Steve
Willard Robertson	Everett
Harry C. Bradley	The Man
James Durkin	The Sheriff
Jane Darwell	The Wife
Edgar Kennedy	The Husband
Muriel Evans	The Blonde
Jill Bennett	Black Bangs
Chris-Pin Martin	Mexican
Margareta Montez	Wife
Eddie Shubert	Man
Jill Dennett	Black Bangs

Technical Credits

Warren Duff

Brown Holmes

Samuel Bischoff	Producer,Producer
Mervyn LeRoy	Director
Warren Duff	Screenwriter
Brown Holmes	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

Heat Lightning demonstrates what Warner Bros. lost when Mervyn LeRoy, the movie's director, pulled up stakes and decamped for MGM three years later -- he did, of course, direct some extremely important and acclaimed pictures for Warner Bros., but it is a little 63-minute diamond in the rough like this movie that showed his ability where it really counted, taking a quiet little story and making it memorable, not just in the acting and the tone, but the look of the picture and the visuals. Obviously shot very quickly, and on a low budget for the studio, the picture benefits from lots of clever and subtle camera work, especially for its introductory segments, in which we meet protagonists Aline McMahon and Ann Dvorak, as two siblings at odds over their past and their future -- both sink their teeth into two of the juicier roles (at least, in terms of the actual writing) of their respective careers, and run with the parts; and the same can be said for Preston Foster and Lyle Talbot, the latter in one of his better weasle-type roles (see Three On A Match) -- in another year or two, it would have been Humphrey Bogart and Alan Jenkins in those parts. True, there are lots of places where the plot anticipates The Petrified Forest that make it interesting viewing on that basis -- and it should be said that the original George Abbott/Leon Abrams play on which this movie was based ran for a month on Broadway in the fall of 1933, more than a year before Robert Sherwood's The Petrified Forest opened on Broadway. But Heat Lightning makes a very full course of entertainment (especially for just over an hour of screen time) in its own right, and is well worth re-discovering in the twenty-first century.

All Movie Guide - Bruce Eder