GUEST REVIEW: FEEL MY PULSE

Our guest reviewer Bruce Kogan is back for his usual excellent review. This time around he reviews a silent film...

Feel My Pulse casts Bebe Daniels. as a rich girl who because of her parents' fear of germs has been raised like a hothouse geranium. Howard Hughes or television's Adrian Monk has nothing on her.

Because of some 'excitement; it's decided that Daniels needs a rest cure and the family has endowed a sanitarium located on an an offshore island. But the mental health field just ain't that lucrative and the one they put in charge of the place has turned it over to William Powell and a gang of rum runners. Remember this is the time of Prohibition.

One of Powell's gang is roughneck Richard Arlen and while Daniels may have led a sheltered life she sure knows what she likes in men. Though the two don't hit it off at first she comes around.

The film is directed by Gregory LaCava and he would go on to direct William Powell in one of his greatest films My Man Godfrey. When he decides to play along with Daniels and treat her like a patient in her own sanitarium notice his body language. It really does look like Godfrey Park in My Man Godfrey.

The climax is hysterical as Daniels shrugs off all the inhibitions her hot house upbringing has given her. Can't say any more, you have to see it.

Glad this silent film has not been lost...

BRUCE'S RATING: 6 OUT OF 10

PHOTOS OF THE DAY: CANDID WILLIAM POWELL

One of the greatest actors and yet the most elusive was William Powell (1892-1984). He left Hollywood in 1955, and he never looked back. Here are some great candid pics of the great actor...

William in 1899 at the age of 7

William his mother and agent leaving Jean Harlow's funeral in 1937

With his only son William David.. His son would commit suicide in 1968 at the age of 43

William with Marilyn Monroe in 1954

William Powell and his wife Diana Lewis enjoying retirement in the 1960s

Last known photo of William Powell at the age of 86 in 1978.

WILLIAM POWELL AND HIS PERSONAL TRAGEDY

It does not seem easy to be a child of a famous person. Sometimes it is not even easy to be the child of someone not famous! William Powell (1892-1984) was one of the greatest actors that classic Hollywood ever knew. Unfortunately, his only child met a sad and tragic end.

Born on February 27, 1925, William Powell Jr was the only child of William Powell and his first wife Eileen Wilson nine years into their on again off again marriage during a period of reconciliation between the two. They had originally married back in 1915..  They would finally divorce in 1930. His mother died at the young age of 48 in 1942.  As a boy William Jr was apparently plagued by emotional problems.

He would become a television writer, whose work was seen on such series as 'Bonanza,' 'Death Valley,' 'Rawhide,' and '77 Sunset Strip.' He served as an associate producer at Warner Brothers Studios and at Universal Studios as well as holding a position at NBC.

After ill health precipitated his resignation, he was diagnosed with hepatitis and kidney ailments. His lifelong struggle with depression deepened, and at the age of 43, he wrote his father a four page farewell stating that he was "... going where it's better," stepped into a shower, and stabbed himself to death on March 13, 1968. His father never revealed anything else about the letter except the end of it. He was laid to rest at Cathedral City's Desert Memorial Park in Riverside County, California. 

William Powell Sr retired from Hollywood in 1955 after filming a great role in the comedy Mister Roberts. Powell had difficulties retaining his lines during the filming of  Mr. Roberts, something that had not happened to him in earlier films, and this was one of the reasons why this was his final film appearance. Frail health, including bouts with cancer, plus a difficult Hawaii location shoot ultimately led to the actor's retirement decision. He reportedly never got over his only child's death. The elder Powell died at the advanced age of 91 on March 5, 1984.

IRENE DUNNE (1898-1990)

Irene Dunne was a supreme actress in many popular movies of the 1930s and 1940s. She left Hollywood in the 1950s, but when she left the limelight she thankfully left behind many great roles...