Red Time For Bonzo: A Marxist-Reaganist Film Podcast (Ronald Reagan Filmography)
32 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 5 years ago -At last, it's the Revanchist Left American Studies project you've been pining for since November 4, 1980! Join Romy, Gareth and David on a vitriolic voyage through Ronald Reagan's filmic oeuvre.
Consider this an audio cease-and-desist missive to the hordes of "#Resistance" tweeters who've seen fit to critique the Trump regime with soothing prune-faced Gipper memes. Ronald Reagan was not a "moderate", and the fact that anyone in our cohort thinks he was only goes to demonstrate the magnitude of his grim hegemonic coup. The time has come to reclaim the discourse from the criminals who plopped The Great Communicator atop the electoral Christmas Tree in the Fall of 1980, and have been hogging 99% of the gifts ever since.
Our humble thesis? Want to deploy Reagan against Trump and late capitalism? Go to it! Just use his filmography instead.
Or, better yet, let us do it for you.
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Episodes
Episode 16A: Hell’s Kitchen (1939)
March 05, 2019 05:30 - 1 hour - 22.9 MBAfter a long winter’s recording layoff, the Red Time For Bonzo crew reassembles to discuss Hell’s Kitchen, a Warner Dead End Kids programmer powered by the studio’s characteristic Late New Deal fervor. The Gipper doesn’t have a whole lot to do in this remake of 1933’s The Mayor of Hell, but he once again finds himself playing a mediating role as the collegiate consiglieri to gangster-cum-reformer Stanley Fields. Scripted by correctional connoisseur Crane Wilbur, the film traces folk hero g...
Episode 15B: The Hasty Heart (1949)
February 09, 2019 22:43 - 1 hour - 14.4 MBBased on John Patrick’s popular 1945 play, The Hasty Heart became a smash screen hit four years later – taking an already-Cold-War-weary public back to the waning days of a marginally less cynical conflict. Our characters are convalescing British Empire conscripts at a MASH unit in Burma – along with one gruff, pragmatic “Yank” (Reagan, dusting off his Brother Rat roommate persona). All of the acting accolades went to Richard Todd, as a singularly standoffish Scot, who refuses to reveal what...
Episode 15A: Naughty But Nice (1939)
February 05, 2019 05:38 - 1 hour - 17.3 MBThe Gipper’s fourth and final supporting appearance in a Dick Powell buffoon-and-crooner finds Reagan headed in the wrong direction down the cast list. To be fair, it’s quite an assemblage, with Ann Sheridan, Helen Broderick, Allen Jenkins, ZaSu Pitts, Gale Page, Granville Bates, William B. Davidson, “Slapsie Maxie” Rosenbloom, and Quarter-Million-Dollar-Moustache-Man Jerry Colonna hoovering up most of the comedic oxygen. The film also benefits from a set of mildly diverting novelty tunes ...
Episode 14B: Louisa (1950)
January 26, 2019 07:38 - 1 hour - 20 MBThe Gipper’s slow segue out of the Warner fold began with this tone-setting suburban sitcom for Universal-International. Part of his new sometime-studio’s “Big Push” at the dawn of the television decade, Louisa shows how easily Reagan might have stepped into a Father Knows Best/My Three Sons-style second career. If only he had done so, American (and Canadian) marginal tax rates might still be at 70%. As usual (and as per Gareth’s thesis), Reagan mainly holds down the stage for the benefit...
Episode 14A: Code of the Secret Service (1939)
January 19, 2019 17:40 - 1 hour - 19.2 MBIt’s the return of Brass Bancroft! (In Reagan’s own least favorite of his films.) This episode was recorded on August 27th, 2018, with your humble panel suffering through the embarrassing Ballet McCainique that had a stranglehold on the American media that week. After venting our collective spleens on that particular topic, we turn our attention to the film at hand – also kind of an embarrassment to Warner’s vaunted Foy unit. They fell down on the job here. In The Films of Ronald Reagan,...
Episode 13B: Storm Warning (1951)
January 11, 2019 05:58 - 1 hour - 22 MBIt's Ginger Rogers, Doris Day, and the Gipper himself against the all-corrupting power of the Klan! If you listen to one episode of Red Time For Bonzo in 2019, this is the one! Also discussed: the then-impending death of John McCain (we recorded this in August 2018), the miserable life of actor Steve Cochran, the coal-fired crocodile tears of Michael Barbaro, and the ideological barrenness of anti-corruption politics. Novel suggestion: Peter Delacorte's Time on My Hands Follow us a...
Episode 13A: Dark Victory (1939)
December 21, 2018 06:17 - 1 hour - 24.7 MBJoin a radically divided panel as they discuss and dissect the biggest film Ronald Reagan made during "Hollywood's Golden Year" of 1939 - Dark Victory. Is this a prime example of "Prestige""/"Too-Extra-By-Half""/"Middlebrow"/"White Elephant" filmmaking? Or is it a gossamer haymaker born of the nearly miraculous fusion of Edmund Goulding's auteurist preoccupations and Bette Davis' acteurist ambitions? Are we to interpret Judith Traherne's autumnal days in "that pinched up little state on the...
Episode 12B: Bedtime For Bonzo (1951)
December 12, 2018 22:27 - 1 hour - 17.4 MBReceived as an innocuous time-waster on first release, Bedtime For Bonzo later blossomed into the go-to "President Cheeto"-style resistance pseudo-witticism of the '80s. However, from your panel's point of view, this film furnishes nigh-inexhaustible avenues of inquiry into mid-20th Century American modalities and myths. Join us as we delve into/debate the semantic availability of proto-animal rights discourse in 1950 (alongside the monstrous treatment of animal actors themselves), the...
Episode 12A: Secret Service of the Air (1939)
December 05, 2018 06:18 - 2 hours - 27 MBThis week, we find the Gipper embarking upon his self-described "Errol Flynn of the Bs" period with the first of 4 "Brass Bancroft" not-so-extra-vaganzas. Loosely based on "material compiled" from the memoranda of ex-Secret Service honcho W.H. Moran (a close second in sexiness to Admiral Chester Nimitz), the films deliver a nice little wallop on behalf of the New Deal Deep State. This unassuming programmer comes out swinging with a scene of callous criminality that's sure to shock even...
Episode 11B: The Last Outpost (1951)
November 28, 2018 06:05 - 1 hour - 21.3 MBThe Last Outpost aka Cavalry Charge is the quintessential (although certainly not the best) "Civil War Western", a staple mid-century genre which performed yeoman ideological work on a pair of dubious fronts: 1. Doubling down (often literally, by offering up equally likable brothers on either side of the conflict) on the "revisionist" take on the "War Between The States" that dominated the historiography from the 1920s into the early 1960s; and 2. painting the "unsettled" western frontier as...
Episode 11A: Going Places (1938)
November 21, 2018 05:01 - 1 hour - 24.3 MBThis time on the podcast, journey back to August 2018, when your faithful panelists projected their hopes and fears onto the post-Midterm landscape. After 38 minutes' worth of our deathless political prognostication, journey back even further to yet another lackluster late-1930s Dick Powell film. Ol' Dick must have considered the Gipper a jinx - most of his non-Reagan films are so much better (at least Dave thinks so - Gareth and Romy were far more favorably disposed toward Going Places). Ev...
Episode 10B: Hong Kong (1952)
November 11, 2018 18:24 - 1 hour - 23.6 MBThis week on the podcast, a little-seen Pine-Thomas "Far-Easter" that has been identified (by one or two dreamers - i.e. 20% of the living people who've watched it) as an antecedent of the Indiana Jones films. Why? Well, there's the hat. You need more than that to hang a theory on? You might be out of luck. HONG KONG reunites the Gipper with friend of the podcast Rhonda Fleming during the last days of the Maoist revolution. The film takes its name from the British-occupied city, but a lot ...
Episode 10A: Brother Rat (1938)
November 04, 2018 07:46 - 1 hour - 18 MBWe've got a watershed moment in the Gipper's career for you this week. In fact, it's two watershed moments in one - Reagan's first substantial role in a commercial hit film and our protagonist's first pairing with the Greatest First Lady Manquée of them all, Jane Wyman! Your humble panel takes enthusiastic note of these facts (and of Jane's stellar performance as Claire Adams); however, that enthusiasm dries up pretty quickly when they consider the puerile military college hi-jinks documente...
Episode 9B: She's Working Her Way Through College (1952) [Bonus: The Male Animal (1942)]
October 28, 2018 16:00 - 2 hours - 26.7 MB*** Fair Warning - the first 29 minutes of this episode are devoted to a rather lengthy discussion re: whether Toronto really is the worst city in the world, or just another typically terrible blight on the late capitalist landscape. Feel free to skip ahead - although, if you do, you'll miss out on the ballad of whining Beaches resident Viola Bracegirdle.*** Conventional wisdom may hold that Reagan's political career began with his sociopathic campaign encomium to Presidential-Not-Too-Hope...
Episode 9A : Girls on Probation (1938)
October 14, 2018 03:51 - 1 hour - 19.7 MBWe've got a bona fide Foy Unit gem for you this week on the podcast - courtesy of screenwriter Crane Wilbur, director William C. McGann, and a personality-studded cast which includes studio up-and-comer Jane Bryan, show fave Sheila Bromley, Sig Ruman in The Wedding Night demon patriarch-mode, lovable contract players Elisabeth Risdon, Dorothy Peterson, and Henry O'Neil - plus wildcards Susan Hayward & Esther Dale. Girls on Probation is an archetypal late-30s Warner Brothers programmer, a ta...
Episode 8B: The Winning Team (1952)
October 08, 2018 23:06 - 1 hour - 21.2 MBThis week, we find the Gipper playing presidentially-monikered baseball star Grover Cleveland Alexander in The Winning Team. Reagan's Warner Brothers swan song was produced and directed by his old comrades from the B-unit trenches (Bryan Foy and Lewis Seiler, respectively), and pairs him with new studio world-beater Doris Day (#7 box office star in the country that year - and rising). The resulting film treads a fascinating line between inspirational sports/disability narrative and post-war ...
Episode 8A: Boy Meets Girl (1938)
September 30, 2018 14:38 - 1 hour - 18.8 MBWe conclude our acclaimed "Ronald-Reagan-appears-for-two-minutes-as-a-radio-announcer" series with Boy Meets Girl (1938), a Hollywood satire/"crazy comedy" adapted from the smash Sam and Bella Spewack play. Directed by Warner comedy ace Lloyd Bacon, the film certainly has its charms, but James Cagney and Pat O'Brien are playing roles originally intended for Olsen and Johnson - 'nuff said. The star duo's destabilizing antics are cribbed from the career-limiting capers of Ben Hecht and Charles...
Episode 7B: Tropic Zone (1953)
September 23, 2018 02:45 - 2 hours - 25.7 MBTropic Zone may not be much of a film, but it proved to be a hell of a conversation piece for your Bonzo panelists! We delve into the afterlife of the WW2-era "Good Neighbor Policy", the sadly stunted career of co-star Estrelita Rodriguez, the relationship of this 1950s A-minus Pine-Thomas production to Warner Brothers' Cagney-Sheridan-O'Brien extravaganza Torrid Zone (1940), and, above all, the economic Imaginarium of American corporate and paramilitary meddling in the affairs of Central an...
Episode 7A: Cowboy From Brooklyn (1938)
September 16, 2018 20:01 - 1 hour - 16.7 MBIf Wyoming Steve Gibson didn't exist, those darned culture industry stupidity profiteers would've had to invent him. What's that? He doesn't exist? Hot damn! The Gipper takes a back saddle to Dick Powell once again in 1938's COWBOY FROM BROOKLYN, a film that (as contemporaries were quick to observe) did absolutely nothing for any of the talented people involved in its creation. An elaboration of the (white) cultural appropriation narrative popularized by earlier Powell vehicles like B...
Episode 6B: Law & Order (1953)
September 08, 2018 23:47 - 1 hour - 22.4 MBIn yet another cinematic variation on the Earp legend, some John McCain-Republican types enlist the Gipper to clamp down on the wrong kind of vice and chicanery in Cottonwood, Arizona. Reagan is aided in his quest by a pair of blond brothers (Alex Nicol and Gilligan's Island's Russell Johnson) - one of whom gets himself involved in a rather tiresome romance with destined-to-fail bombshell Ruth Hampton. The film boasts an extremely tense lynching scene, good chemistry between its protagonist ...
Episode 6A: Accidents Will Happen (1938)
September 02, 2018 21:54 - 1 hour - 22.3 MBAccidents Will Happen (1938) represents kind of a milestone in the young Gipper's career - his first chance to play a non-radio announcer/reporter. In classic Warners "ripped-from-the-headlines" style, the film tackles an Insurance Fraudster Scare that generated more than 400 New York Times headlines during the late 1930s. Our panel discerns the lineaments of the future politician's crowd pleasing persona in the figure of Eric Gregg, intrepid accident claims detective, who is both the ultim...
Episode 5B: Prisoner of War (1954)
August 25, 2018 18:43 - 1 hour - 22.6 MBJoin Ronald Reagan behind enemy lines in a North Korean prison camp so terrifyingly coercive, even the U.S. Military did not want the public to see it! Filmed with the full cooperation of the Pentagon, the Cold War brass revoked their imprimatur after viewing the final product. You might say this one was declared off-Nimitz, if you were a certain kind of HELLCATS OF THE NAVY-centric punster. PRISONER OF WAR actually dares to put a viable socialist critique of the new U.S. World Order in t...
Episode 5A: Sergeant Murphy (1938)
August 18, 2018 17:51 - 1 hour - 18.5 MBBryan Foy's B-movie unit at Warner Brothers churned out some of the best bottom-of-the-bill features of the late 1930s, but B. Reeves Eason's "Horseratio Alger" tale Sergeant Murphy is kind of a nag. Nevertheless, this seldom seen army/racing/equine buddy film is a crucial item in the Gipper's filmography, as it demonstrates the studio's continuing commitment to the coltish actor as a leading player (it's his second starring vehicle, following closely on the hooves of Love is on the Air). ...
Episode 4B: Cattle Queen of Montana (1954)
August 11, 2018 07:06 - 1 hour - 18 MBOur second Reagan/Dwan collaboration is far inferior to Tennessee's Partner, despite some fine directorial touches and characteristically brilliant open air cinematography from John Alton, but it does furnish your hosts with a textbook example of colonialist hermeneutics in action. On the surface, Cattle Queen of Montana may come across as a "progressive" film, with its anti-bigotry rhetoric and championing of Colorados' "good" (i.e. assimilationist) faction of the Blackfoot tribe; however, ...
Episode 4A - Swing Your Lady (1938)
August 04, 2018 07:39 - 1 hour - 20.4 MBWhen proletarian Warner Brothers hightails it to the Ozarks, things can only go two ways: toward tragedy or rough mockery. Swing Your Lady offers a touch of the former (thanks primarily to genuine chemistry between unlikely screen lovers Louise Fazenda and Nat Pendleton), and a whole mess of the latter. There's not much Gipper in this one, but what there is, is choice - by now he's got his sharpie media character persona so well honed that he runs rings around wrestling promoters Humphrey Bo...
Episode 3B - Tennessee's Partner (1955)
July 24, 2018 05:14 - 1 hour - 18.7 MBThe RED TIME FOR BONZO gang sifts an unexpected nugget out of the silt of Reagan's waning film career - although, in retrospect, no one should ever count an Allan Dwan film out before it's watched (particularly when Dwan is working with cinematographer John Alton and a crackerjack fifties cast that includes John Payne, Rhonda Fleming, Coleen Gray, and Chubby Johnson). The Gipper turns in tremendous work here, too, fusing his character's seemingly incongruous rigidity, resourcefulness and c...
Episode 3A - Hollywood Hotel (1937)
July 18, 2018 03:18 - 2 hours - 25.1 MBRonald Reagan in a Busby Berkeley extravaganza!!?? Well, sort of... The Gipper graduates from Warners' B-squad to the big time, but only to the tune of a 30 second two-shot with the great Dick Powell (67% of our hosts disagree with that description of Dick). And it's not exactly Berkeley's finest effort, either. Nothing proto-psychedelic here. Unless Mabel Todd's dotty dialogue disorients you. And - to quote Mabel - we had some interesting talks! Topics include some notes on Johnny Mercer...
Episode 2B - Hellcats of the Navy (1957)
July 08, 2018 05:04 - 1 hour - 20 MBPrepare to submerge with Gareth, Romy and Dave into the jingoistic backwash of the Gipper's career with our epic discussion of HELLCATS OF THE NAVY (1957). In this episode, we take full advantage of our one and only cinematic opportunity to celebrate the immortal chemistry of those Blacklist Sweethearts, Ronnie and Nancy; critique Admiral Chester Nimitz's Tarantino level acting ability; absorb the leadership lessons the film may have imparted to the future President; and ponder several topic...
Episode 2A - Love is on the Air (1937)
July 03, 2018 00:26 - 45 minutes - 9.14 MBJoin the Red Time for Bonzo team as they contemplate the Gipper's very first starring role, in an unprepossessing little programmer known, for no particular reason that anyone can fathom, as LOVE IS ON THE AIR (more sensibly aka THE RADIO MURDER MYSTERY). Here we see Warners' crackerjack B-movie "Foy Unit" methods in full effect. Just hired a non-actor whose entertainment experience is limited to radio announcing? Cast him as a radio announcer, surround him with mayhem, and spice it up with ...
Episode 1B - The Killers (1964)
June 24, 2018 16:56 - 1 hour - 16.4 MBFor episode 1B, we jump to the ass-end of The Gipper's career, examining Don Siegel's acclaimed 1964 adaptation of Hemingway's THE KILLERS. Reagan's final role finds him cast against type as a sociopathic Southern California entrepreneur who is most at home on the business end of a sniper scope (when he's got former associates to kill) or a pair of binoculars (when he's being cuckolded again). The film is a motion Dorian Gray-picture hiding in plain sight, belying the "Great Communicator's" ...
Episode 1A - They Won't Forget (1937)
June 19, 2018 04:32 - 1 hour - 21.1 MBWe search in vain for the man himself during our inaugural film (IMDB insists that he is among the angry mob at the governor's mansion), but we find a wealth of material for our Marxist-Reaganist manifesto in Warner Brothers' They Won't Forget. Join us as we examine the progressive commitments of the Gipper's home studio and set the table for our ongoing exploration of mid-century American pop cultural politics. Along the way, Dave argues that Tump Redwine is in fact the hero of the film; ...
Episode #1 coming In Mid-June! Red Time For Bonzo: A Marxist-Reaganist Film Podcast
June 03, 2018 17:34 - 1 minute - 332 KBAt last, it's the Revanchist Left American Studies project you've been pining for since November 4, 1980! Join Romy, Gareth and David on a vitriolic voyage through Ronald Reagan's filmic oeuvre. Consider this an audio cease-and-desist missive to the hordes of "#Resistance" tweeters who've seen fit to critique the Trump regime with soothing prune-faced Gipper memes. Ronald Reagan was not a "moderate", and the fact that anyone in our cohort thinks he was only goes to demonstrate the magnitud...