User reviews

From First National Pictures, some big names: Glenda Farrell was "Torchie"...Loretta Young was just in EVERYTHING in old hollywood. Paul Lukas and Loretta Young are Peter and Marcia Stanislavsky, experts at bridge. Roscoe Karns and Frank McHugh are along for laughs. We're nine minutes in, and no plot so far. One of the bridge players keeps doing flips and somersalts while the others keep playing. Peter writes a book on bridge, but when things go wrong, they go wrong in a big way. Peter challenges his main opponent to a bridge tournament, and it's the game of the century. It's all quite a silly show, and you really have to go along for the ride. Seems to be based on the up-and-coming bridge experts that were appearing in all the newspapers around the country. It's all okay. No big deal, but it does have some pretty big stars in here. Interesting for that fact alone.

1933 seemed to be a great year for satires ("Duck Soup" for instance) and this one fits in well even though it is about the obsession with contract bridge. The tone is like a humorous piece from The New Yorker, appropriate, since the film begins with the "Goings On About Town" page of that magazine. The only thing odd is the casting. Made a few years later William Powell and Myrna Loy would have been perfect. However, after 1934, you wouldn't have had adultery handled in such a sophisticated fashion, the young and beautiful Loretta Young in some shear and slinky outfits, or a group of prostitutes listening to a bridge contest on radio. Even if you know nothing about bridge, you may still want to check out a rare example of Hollywood satire.

One of the funniest comedy shorts I've seen is Al St. John's "Bridge Wives". It's ridiculous and over the top as it shows a husband losing his mind because his wife has been playing a marathon bridge game for weeks...only for it to end in a tie! Well, while "Grand Slam" isn't quite as memorable, it's quite similar and is apparently evidence that bridge was a VERY popular game back in the 1930s. It would help to understand the movie better if you understand Bridge, though you still can enjoy it regardless.

Peter Stanislavsky (Paul Lukas) is apparently very good at playing bridge, though he obviously doesn't seem to enjoy the game nor the drama that often accompanies it. Later, he ends up being pushed into playing a game and doesn't realize that one of the people he's playing against is considered the world's greatest Bridge player. Well, after defeating this champion handily, suddenly Peter is famous...and his life certainly changes for the worse. Ultimately, it even ruins his marriage to Marcia (Loretta Young).

While I'd never say it's a laugh out loud film like "Bridge Wives", it is clever and enjoyable...and I nearly gave it an 8. Unusual and well made for a B-movie.

In a more leisurely era, lots of people played cards, bridge being one of the big games, and took the game very seriously. I had an old boss who hated cards because her relatives used to play and the next day, no one was speaking to anyone. I can remember my aunt and uncle getting into a big fight over bridge.

Bridge is still a big game, of course, and in this film, "Grand Slam," it's the biggest! Paul Lukas stars as a Russian waiter now in America who finds the game silly and develops his own system, the Stanislavsky system, which becomes all the rage. At the urging of his ghost writer friend (Frank McHugh), he puts together a book about it, written by McHugh. This was probably inspired by the Russian bridge player Culbertson (I was once a member of the Culbertson Bridge Club) who made a big splash in that era.

Loretta Young plays his admiring girlfriend, who becomes his wife and partner in bridge on the radio (I guess they did everything on the radio), as the Stanislavsky method is supposed to keep couples from fighting. It doesn't.

Young is gorgeous and a bright presence as usual, and Paul Lukas plays it straight, which is perfect for his character. He was a fine dramatic actor but he did whatever the studio gave him, including, of all people, Philo Vance! The movie has some fun things in it, including a performance by Glenda Farrell, and footage of the world stopping when the two great bridge players meet for their championship game - divers stop in mid-air, ocean waves stop, etc. - quite funny.

I used to stay up all night playing bridge and also whist, and this movie made me miss both of them. Unfortunately nowadays I'm too distracted to keep track of what's been played. That didn't seem to bother Paul Lukas - he just big 7 spades whenever anyone asked him for a bid.

Short, light film, with the beautiful Loretta and her amazing outfits.

This may be the only full-length Hollywood film about contract bridge so I suppose you could as well call it the "War and Peace" or the "Abbott and Costello Go to Mars" of contract bridge films. The point is that it has as much connection with how bridge is played as its contemporary "Horsefeathers" has with how football is played. In case you missed it, Harpo Marx scores the winning touchdown in "Horsefeathers" while driving a horse-drawn garbage truck.

However, "Horsefeathers" did make some salient points about universities where football has priority over education and the administration pays professional "students" to play who never see the inside of a classroom. Of course that was back in the 1930s. Today's universities are ...

Never mind. Getting back to bridge, in 1931-32 the game enjoyed its fifteen minutes of fame with "The Bridge Battle of the Century" between Ely Culbertson and Sidney Lenz, with the winner getting to sell more books about his bidding system. The fifteen minutes were somewhat literal in this case as NBC radio broadcast a fifteen-minute summary of each day's action, which was also reported on the front pages of the nation's newspapers.

So just as "Horsefeathers" was more accurate about the milieu in which football was played than about how the game was played, "Grand Slam" has its fun with the idea of crowds gathered around radios and electronic news tickers for the latest results of a bridge match. It's also fairly accurate in depicting the whining, gloating and backbiting endemic among serious bridge players, of which I am one.

Aside from that, it's a lightweight romantic comedy of average quality. Nothing really "pre-code" about it. If you play bridge at all you may get a kick out of the ridiculousness of the few scenes where they're supposedly playing the game. If not, I hope this description of the film's circumstances will increase your enjoyment of it.

This reminds me of the Monty Python sketch, 'Summarising Proust' in its absurd silliness. The whole world stops to listen to a radio broadcast of.....a card game!

Although it's actually based on a real event, this has to be one of the daftest premises for a film ever. The outlandish pitch that someone must have given to Jack Warner and Darryl Zanuck to convince them to finance this sounds like one of the cons James Cagney did in his fabulous film, HARD TO HANDLE! Incredibly it works...well almost. It's not one of Warner Brothers' best comedies but it's still a pretty decent one.

It's directed in typical Warner Brothers breakneck speed so you don't have time to think to yourself: this is ridiculous. You just get dragged along with the madness. The script is both witty and natural which again adds to the overall believability of this and the acting is first rate. We get a lot more of Frank McHugh than in most of these types of film which is great; he's the one who makes this comedy an actual comedy. Loretta Young was an exceptional actress and is of course as faultless as ever in this. She was however not a comedian so Frank McHugh makes a perfect partner for her. What about Paul Lukas you might wonder - isn't he her co-star? He's probably the weakest link in this picture. I'm not sure whether he's playing his silly character straight for comedic effect or whether he's just a bit dull.

This film breeches the fine line between satire and silliness. While a bridge system that has no rules may promote marital harmony, it certainly can't promote winning bridge, so the satire didn't work for me. But there were some items I found enjoyable anyway, especially with the big bridge match between Paul Lukas and Ferdinand Gottschalk near the end of the film. It is treated like very much like a championship boxing match. Not only is the arena for the contest roped off in a square area like a boxing ring, there is a referee hovering between the contestants, and radio broadcaster Roscoe Karns delivers nonstop chatter on the happenings. At one point he even enumerates "One... Two... Three... Four..." as though a bid of four diamonds was a knockdown event. And people were glued to their radios for it all, a common event for championship boxing matches. That spoof worked very well indeed.

Unfortunately, few of the actors provide the comedy needed to sustain the intended satire. Paul Lukas doesn't have much of a flair for comedy and is miscast; lovely Loretta Young and the usual comic Frank McHugh weren't given good enough lines; Glenda Farrell has a nice comic turn as a forgetful blonde at the start of the film, but she practically disappears thereafter. What a waste of talent!

This movie surely has one of the strangest themes in history -- right up there with Ed Wood's impassioned defense of cross-dressing in "Glen or Glenda?"

The subject: playing bridge. The Park Avenue set plays it; the Bohemians play it. The Russians -- who speak very questionable "Russian" and have most unconvincing accents when they speak English -- play it at the restaurant where they work.

If one isn't interested in bridge, one -- even despite the great cast -- isn't likely to be much interested in this bizarre movie.

Loretta Young and Paul Lukas are fine. (Well --Frank McHugh is an unlikely ghost writer -- as Lukas is an unlikely Russian.) But they are all sunk by the fetishistic script.

The current score for grand slam is astounding for a little movie so well-directed, well-acted and so truly funny.

For those who know bridge and satire, there are some laugh-out-loud moments, particularly the vignettes of husbands and wives fighting across the tables. In fact, Stanislavsky's bridge "system" is all about keeping couples together by doing away with the rules entirely. Of course, this is a goof on the other Stanislavsky's "method" acting, which is not to act at all.

The scenes where the stuffed-shirt bridge establishment meets Stanislavsky are priceless. They just can't imagine how anybody, much less a common waiter, can make an opening bid of 7 spades, much less win. And there's the cleft between bridge players and pinochle players, who consider bridge players sissies.

A younger Paul Lukas is charming as Stanislavsky, a Russian emigré who is not an aristocrat, not a general, but rather "a genius". His wife, the key to his fame, is Loretta Young at her loveliest. They and a great supporting cast are handled, and the scenes expertly paced, by A-list director William Dieterle.

The crucial match is fought as if it were a heavyweight title fight, complete with breathless play-by-play, complete with climactic moment where the whole world stops -- literally! Of course, all of this is over-the-top, and all of it works, if you get the bridge craze that had swept America for the first half of the 20th century to ridiculous extremes.

In fact, it's still going on. Did you know that the 2008 financial meltdown and recession we're still feeling can arguably be put to bridge? One of the key players in the meltdown was investment bank Bear Stearns. There was a run on this bank, while its CEO was out of the loop...playing bridge.

Grand Slam is a good-natured dig at pop fame and enthusiasms. As Stanislavsky said to the microphone as he was being carried of the field of play, "Hello, Ma!"

In fact, the more I think of how delightful this comedy of manners is, the more frustrated I am by the score. This movie deserves at least a 7. I give it an 8.

I usually enjoy Loretta Young's early movies: her acting back then was light and breezy, and she sure knew how to wear clothes. But this one is just a loser from the word go except for a funny supporting turn by Glenda Farrell. Young is a hatcheck girl who talks her writer-husband (Paul Lukas) into becoming a championship bridge player. It's not the most cinematic of games, and the long, talky middle part in which their marriage falls apart just about kills the film.

There's one interesting bit though. As Lukas and Ferdinand Gottschalk start their climactic game, a series of quick shots show airplanes, trains, football games, even a diver in mid-air, freezing in anticipation of the event. It's the earliest use of a freeze frame I've seen in an American film. Wish the rest of it were that inventive-and funny.

I like the oldies, usually, and this one did not disappoint.

I thought it was wittily presented, taking the upper-middle class game of bridge and making it the national obsession across all classes. And it was a nice touch that the Russian hero/waiter/writer/bridge expert did not try to present himself as a Czarist aristocrat.

Loretta Young was her gorgeous, likable self; Paul Lukacs was a revelation to me (so handsome, so youngish); and the rest of the cast were the usual great 1930's supporters.

One of its virtues was its length. Movies today are too long, especially comedies where the humorous premise gets overworked. This little bit of froth was just right!

This is the only full length feature film about the world of bridge. I found the first 10 minutes a bit slow, but after that, the movie is absolutely perfect in describing professional bridge players and how they go about earning a living.

Some of the scenes are very funny. I don't think that a non-bridge player would get the charm of this movie.

Some of the dresses are really beautiful, pity the movie is in black and white - I can only imagine what they would look like in colour. The way the media are portrayed is absolutely hilarious. There is no way on earth bridge will ever be like that.

Watch it as soon as you can, and tell your friends about it.

This is the only full length feature film about the world of bridge. I found the first 10 minutes a bit slow, but after that, the movie is absolutely perfect in describing professional bridge players and how they go about earning a living.

Some of the scenes are very funny. I don't think that a non-bridge player would get the charm of this movie.

Some of the dresses are really beautiful, pity the movie is in black and white - I can only imagine what they would look like in color. The way the media are portrayed is absolutely hilarious. There is no way on earth bridge will ever be like that.

Watch it as soon as you can, and tell your friends about it.

Paul Lukas played a Russian intellectual making his living as a waiter in

"Grand Slam," directed by William Dieterle (1933). It is a surprisingly funny satire of the building up of celebrity. The waiter and the Russian restaurant's hat-check girl played by Loretta Young become America's sweethearts as bridge partners who do no squabble. With the aid of publicist and ghost-writer 'Speed' McCann (the wonderfully deadpan Frank McHugh) they become walking advertisements

for the "Stanislavsky system," a "system" of bidding whatever one feels like

(since bids are not rational, there is no basis for recriminations about their stupidity).

A duel with displaced bridge guru Cedric Van Dorn (sounds close to Goren, no? and I suspect the choice of the character's name "Stanislavsky" was also a slam at another kind of system), a puffed-up charlatan played very well by Ferdinand Gottschalk, is broadcast on radio stations across America like a prize-fight by Roscoe Karns (another great fast-talking deadpan comic actor of the 1930s).

The bridge players are even in a roped-off square, though the audience is

above them, unlike in boxing "rings."

The wide variety of American types prefigures the comedies of Preston Sturges, though for manufacturing celebrity, "Grand Slam" most calls to mind two better movies from the same (pre-Code) era with Lee Tracy playing fast-talking

publicists: "The Half-Naked Truth" and "Bombshell," but "Grand Slam" has its

moments, especially for anyone who has played bridge with serious point

counters.

Loretta Young was already a clothes horse. (To me, her face seems a bit long

and horsey, too. Another era's notion of beauty, I guess...) The movie

unfortunately all but drops Glenda Farrell, who plays McHugh's forgetful

girlfriend.

A brilliant Russian émigré devises the ‘Stanislavsky' system for winning at contract bridge - which makes him and his beautiful wife the GRAND SLAM Sweethearts of America.

What could have been just another silly soap opera is elevated by fine production values & excellent acting to the status of a very enjoyable little comedy. A few unexpected touches are thrown in to keep the viewer's attention engaged - the way in which the principle cast is introduced as faces on a deck of cards; the introduction of a zany acrobat into the plot for no other reason than to enjoy a bit of lunacy; and the way in which a wide variety of different kinds of Americans are shown to be transfixed by listening to the broadcast of the concluding game.

Paul Lukas & Loretta Young do very well as the Bridge Sweethearts - Lukas suave & sophisticated and Miss Young passionately loving and beautiful (even if the script keeps her puffing on a cigarette a bit too much). They are fun to watch, even when their behavior is not always the most believable or compelling.

Frank McHugh gives another good performance as a relentlessly cheerful ghost writer who adores Miss Young. The delightful Glenda Farrell eschews her customary wisecracking persona in a small role as McHugh's ditsy gal pal. Roscoe Karns handles the fast-talking dialogue as a brash radio announcer. Diminutive Ferdinand Gottschalk is wonderful as a snobbish bridge expert.

Movie mavens will recognize Dewey Robinson as a belligerent nightclub patron; Emma Dunn as a sob sister reporter; Paul Porcasi as the owner of the Russian nightclub; Charles Lane as a Russian waiter; and Jimmy Conlin as a kibitzer at the final bridge game - all uncredited.

The film takes advantage of the fad for contract bridge which had swept across the country since its development in the 1920's. It expects the viewer to have a basic knowledge of the intricacies of the game and makes no attempt to explain anything to the uninformed.

Grand Slam (1933)

** (out of 4)

An intelligent Russian man (Paul Lukas) living in New York City and working as a waiter sees Bridge as a childish game but when he beats a world famous player, his wife (Loretta Young) talks him into letting a ghost writer (Frank McHugh) write a book about it. Soon the husband and wife are rolling into money and fame but as we know there's always a price to pay with this. It should be noted that GRAND SLAM was made during a time when Bridge was storming the country much like the way poker did this past decade. It should also be noted that I don't know a thing about Bridge and this film doesn't try to explain anything about it so clearly it was meant for people who know the game. Some of my favorite actors appear in this movie but sadly the film isn't all that memorable. I'm willing to say that if you know the game then you'd probably want to add on an additional half star but I'd say the rest will find much of the humor flying over their heads. I think for the most part the cast members do a nice job with Lukas leading the film as the man too smart for the sport but soon finds himself being turned upside down by the fame. Lukas certainly makes you believe he's this genius and there's no denying that his acting has a certain style all his own. McHugh is always nice to see in a movie like this because his fast talking always keeps the speed up. Glenda Farrell, Helen Vinson and Roscoe Karns round out the supporting players. Loretta Young, my favorite actress, isn't given a very good part but she does what she can with it. As usual she's very easy on the eyes and she also adds that charm like only she has. The film is done in an extremely light manor meaning that most of the situations are quite over-the-top and silly. Just check out the scenes with the fighting couples trying to play Bridge but they can't get through an entire game without smacking each other around. The ending has a big game with the principle characters going at it but the suspense that the filmmakers go for never reaches a high level but things have already fallen apart by this time anyways.