![]() Even so, after his arrest, Thunderbolt has his henchmen frame Moran for a bank robbery, and he ends up across the hall from Thunderbolt on death row. Ritzy has told him in that soundproof room, in no uncertain terms, that he does not own her. He has already arranged to have Moran fired and concerted all his underworld power to make Moran’s life miserable, in the unrealistic hope of getting his girl back. The cops follow Ritzy and eventually trap Thunderbolt in Moran’s apartment building where he has gone to kill his rival. The lights go out, and Thunderbolt escapes, leaving Ritzy, who is more than ready to leave him and his underworld “show” for her childhood sweetheart, a young banker named Bob Moran (Richard Arlen). The Black Cat Café scene ends with a police raid, but leading up to the raid, as Thunderbolt and Ritzy return to their table, the band sounds like an orchestra warming up, with stray trumpet lines escaping like free jazz. Most of the second half of the film is set in death row where Thunderbolt ponders his life as a brute, and even though the transition from the Black Cat Café to the prison is not direct, echoes of the former infect the latter, particularly through the African American spirituals on the soundtrack. Sternberg uses many bit players, both Black and white, to create a lively underworld community of dynamic characters. In Thunderbolt we see the promise that the young Black actor held, and the future that was denied to “Hollywood’s longest serving maid.” Other actors in the Black Cat Café scene include Louise Beavers and Oscar Smith, two more busy Black actors of the classical era. Harris appears only in this scene, which marks her first screen appearance, inaugurating a thirty-year career in which she was ever after systematically assigned to the role of maid. The setting of the Harlem jazz club introduces the musical underscoring of the film, which is discontinuous and always linked to diegetic sources. In 1929, background music had to be played live during the shooting, and von Sternberg takes this as a creative challenge. Cut back to Harris on stage, and then, when Sternberg cuts to the interior of the private room, the sound is abruptly cut off. As they retreat to a private room, Thunderbolt sneaks a peak at Harris before closing the door. She sings “Daddy Won’t you Please Come Home” with vigor, backed up by Mosby’s Blues Blowers, while Thunderbolt and his girl Ritzy (Fay Wray) talk at a café table. In a mixed-race club called the Black Cat Café, Theresa Harris bursts onto the scene in a sequined dress and a big smile. Von Sternberg’s gangster film is the first he made using sound, experimenting with off-screen dialogue and music to great effect, and he makes a special splash in the first fifteen minutes. ![]() Thunderbolt goes to his death in the end as a man with a big heart and a large laugh, which is the biggest sound that he makes in the entire film. He has a reputation to match, but the film of the same name ironically works to undercut his menace and make him tame. Thunderbolt is a gangster played by George Bancroft who carries a name that sounds as big as he is.
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