So picture this scenario, because I think it's
something almost every single person listening
to this right now has experienced at least once
in their professional lives. Oh, absolutely.
You're sitting at your desk. You've been doing
the exact same job day in and day out, pouring
your absolute sweat into your work. Right. And
you finally decide, you know what? Today is the
day. The day you finally ask for it. Right. You
work up the courage to walk into your boss's
office. You've rehearsed the whole speech in
the mirror. You're going to ask for a raise.
Oh, man, the universally terrifying human experience.
I mean, the sweaty palms, the racing heart, the
mental gymnastics of just lining up all your
bullet points about exactly why you deserve that
extra money. Exactly. And the quiet mental math,
too, of figuring out your fallback plan if it
just doesn't go well. Right, which it sometimes
doesn't. Yeah. So you walk in, you make your
pitch, and it just completely backfires. like
spectacularly. Oh, no. Not only do you not get
the raise, but the conversation just spirals
so far out of control that you actually end up
getting fired. Wow. Just right there on the spot.
Just right out on the street. Everything you
planned your entire life trajectory. instantly
gone. I mean, that is the absolute nightmare
outcome. It's the specific fear that paralyzes
people. It keeps them from ever asking for what
they're actually worth in the first place. Totally.
And you would think a nightmare scenario like
that would be the setup for, I don't know, a
gripping modern psychological thriller. Yeah,
or a really tense drama. But we are looking at
a stack of sources today for this deep dive that
show this was the exact premise. for a Hollywood
film from all the way back in 1935. Which is
wild. And it was billed as a comedy. of all things.
It was called $10 Raise, or depending on what
theater you walked into, it was sometimes billed
as Mr. Feinhart, or $10 Raise within number 10.
Just a nearly forgotten artifact of 1930s cinema.
Yeah, and our mission today is to really look
at the anatomy of this specific movie, because
we've got the background of the film. We've got
a genuinely brutal 1935 review from Variety Magazine.
Oh, it is so mean. It really is. And, you know,
we have the historical record of what actually
happened. we really want to understand what happens
when a movie entirely flops. Right, the aftermath.
Exactly, and more importantly, what it teaches
you about career resilience. Because the aftermath
of this film is just mind -blowing. It really
is a crazy story. So, okay, let's unpack this.
Where exactly are we starting with this one?
Well, we are starting right in the belly of the
Hollywood studio system. So the film was released
by Fox Film Corporation. OK, big studio. Huge.
And the exact release date is May 4, 1935. Got
it. It was directed by a man named George Marshall,
who, well, he becomes the central figure in our
story a bit later on. Right. Keep him in mind.
And it starred a very well -known character actor
of the era named Edward Everett Horton. And Horton
plays our are extremely unlucky protagonists.
Yeah, and Fox Film Corporation clearly thought
they had a massive hit on their hands here. Yeah.
And you can sort of see why when you look at
the raw DNA of the plot. The setup is actually
pretty solid. It is. So the protagonist is this
guy named Hubert T. Wilkins. He's a lowly bookkeeper.
And Hubert has a romantic interest. Emily Converse.
Right, played by Karen Morley. Yes, Karen Morley.
And Emily is really the catalyst here. She pressures
Hubert into this terrible situation by basically
encouraging him to go to his boss, Mr. Bates,
and demand a $10 pay rise. Ten dollars. Ten dollars.
Presumably so they can actually, you know, afford
to get married. Well, we have to pause and look
at the economics of that for a second because
I think it's important. Yeah, please do. In 1935,
$10 a week wasn't just pocket change to go buy
a nicer suit. I mean, we're talking about the
middle of the Great Depression here. Right. Things
were incredibly tight. Exactly. A $10 bump in
weekly salary was a massive life altering increase
for a bookkeeper back then. Oh, wow. Really?
Yeah. It was the literal difference between just
scraping by in some boarding house and actually
being able to rent a home and start a family.
So the stakes of that request were incredibly
high. OK. That makes it so much more stressful.
So Hubert feels that pressure. He goes to Mr.
Bates, who is played by Burton Churchill, by
the way, and asks for the $10. And we all know
how this goes. Yeah. Mr. Bates just fires him
on the spot. So now Hubert has absolutely no
income, no money for his and Emily's wedding,
and he is just totally desperate. And what do
desperate people do? He does what they all do.
He pivots. He takes whatever he has left and
seeks to invest in property to regain his fortune.
Ah, yes. The classic desperation pivot. Yeah,
and this is where I have to push back on the
framing of this as just some breezy, silly 1930s
comedy. How so? Well, when I read through these
sources, Hubert's pivot to real estate felt so
intensely modern to me. Oh, I see what you mean.
Right. Like you lose your foundation. you're
terrified of losing your partner, and instead
of taking a week to slowly look for another bookkeeping
job, you just bet your remaining chips on a volatile
long shot. Right, like a quick fix. Exactly.
It's like modern side hustle culture or... I
don't know, crypto bros. It is the timeless human
reflex to try and get rich quick when the floor
just falls out from under you. Yeah, that panic
investing. And panic investing after losing a
job is a deeply stressful real life nightmare.
I'm stressed out just thinking about Hubert's
situation. I mean, the financial anxiety radiating
off that plot is totally palpable. Audiences
in 1935, they were living that reality every
single day. Because of the depression. Right.
Banks had failed, life savings were just wiped
out, and the fear of sudden destitution was this
collective national trauma. But the irony I found
in the production notes, which is so funny, is
that this wasn't even a fresh script born out
of 1935 depression anxiety, was it? No, it wasn't.
It was recycled intellectual property. I couldn't
believe that. Yeah. What's fascinating here is
how Hollywood was already cannibalizing its own
back catalog even back then. So early on. Yeah.
The screenplay for Ten Dollar Rays was written
by Henry Johnson and Lou Breslow, but it was
based entirely on a silent film from 1921. That
earlier film, which was called The Ten Dollar
Rays, spelled out, was written by Peter B. Kine.
So they were doing literal reboots of 14 year
old movies in 1935. They were. But, you know,
the technological shift kind of Oh, because of
sound. Exactly. In 1921, the story was told entirely
through pantomime and title cards. By 1935, the
industry had fully transitioned to talkies. Right.
People wanted to hear the dialogue. Yeah. Audiences
wanted to actually hear the snappy dialogue of
a bookkeeper pleading for his job, and they wanted
to hear the boss yelling at him to get out. That
makes sense. But the underlying fear of financial
ruin, the fear of disappointing the person you
love because you can't provide, I mean, that
never goes out of style. It's universal. Right.
A story about a bookkeeper getting fired over
a $10 raise resonated just as much during the
post -World War I economic shifts of 1921 as
it did in the depths of the 1935 depression.
And because this premise touches on such universal
financial anxieties, you might naturally assume
it really struck a chord with those 1930s audiences.
You would think so, yeah. Right. Like you'd think
people would go to the theater, see Edward Everett
Horton sweating in his boss's office, and see
themselves on screen. Unfortunately, the historical
record points in the exact opposite direction.
Oh, man, does it ever. When we move to the critical
reception of the film, we see the critics just
pull out their knives and go to work. It is brutal.
We have the review from Variety magazine published
on May 8th, 1935, which is just four days after
the film was released, by the way. Wow. They
didn't waste any time. No. And it is an absolute
master class in professional savagery. And we
have to remember what Variety was and still is.
It wasn't just a new paper for the general public.
It was an industry paper, right? Exactly. It
was a trade publication. So the studio executives,
the producers, the casting directors, the people
who literally controlled your livelihood, they
were reading this over their morning coffee.
Oh, that is so stressful. Right. A bad review
in variety carried real industrial weight. It
could end your career. Which makes the phrasing
of this review so much more brutal. Like, the
reviewer writes, quote, it isn't likely that
anybody will get as excited about the plot as
do the actors in this picture. Oh, ouch. That
goes on. Such an arrangement is always embarrassing
and never an inducement at the box office. I
mean, calling an actor's effort embarrassing
is a very specific type of cruelty. Right. Can
you imagine working on a film, giving it your
absolute all, And the critic essentially says,
it's embarrassing how much you actually care
about the story. It's so dismissive. Yeah. And
they also complained that the film had, quote,
no special pull in its cast. Which is pretty
harsh considering the actors they had. Exactly.
Meaning, despite having established working actors
like Edward Everett Horton, Karen Morley, and
Alan Deinhardt, the reviewer felt there was just
no actual star power to draw an audience into
the theater. Right. And that leads into the most
colorful critique in the entire review, I think.
It beautifully captures the vernacular of the
1930s. Oh, the telegraph line. Yes. The critic
writes, quote, On top of sending its punches
by postal telegraph, the punches thus sent are
few and far between, and these few bear little
weight behind them. Sending its punches by postal
telegraph. I mean that is such a vivid way to
insult someone's comedic timing. It's great.
And the mechanism of that insult is just brilliant.
For people who don't know, what was a postal
telegraph? So the postal telegraph was a major
communications company at the time. Sending a
telegraph was this multi -step mechanical process.
Like it took a while? Yeah. Someone types it
out, it goes over a wire, it gets printed on
the other side, and then a courier physically
hands it to you. So it's not exactly instant.
No. So the critic is saying the jokes and narrative
twists in this movie are so heavily signaled
that you can literally watch them being manufactured
miles in advance. Oh, I see. Yeah. By the time
the punchline finally arrives at your front door,
it lands with absolutely zero impact. It's savage.
Just completely savage. But you know, there is
a hilarious contradiction in the source text
that I absolutely have to point out here. Oh,
the runtime thing. Yes. So at the very end of
this review, the variety critic dismisses the
entire film with this sweeping final judgment.
The nail in the coffin. Right. They call it one
of those nice pictures intended as a pleasantry,
but resulting in 60 minutes of inconsequential
celluloid. The ultimate dismissal. Inconsequential
celluloid. But if you look at the official production
details for $10 raise, the official running time
is listed as 70 minutes. Right. Not 60, 70 minutes.
A full 10 -minute discrepancy there. I just love
the idea that this movie was so incredibly inconsequential,
so mind -numbingly boring to this critic, that
their brain just mentally erased 10 full minutes
of it. They just blacked it out. They walked
out of the theater and just rounded down at a
pure spite. They lost 10 minutes of their life
to the void and just refused to acknowledge it.
That is pretty funny. But, you know, to keep
the picture balanced here, we should probably
note that the critic didn't hate absolutely everything.
Right. There were a few nice words. Yeah. Even
in the midst of this devastating takedown, the
Variety reviewer threw a few crumbs of praise.
They specifically praised Edward Everett Horton.
Our main guy. Right. They said he delivered a,
quote, Clever portrait of a poor sap. So Horton's
individual performance as the desperate fired
bookkeeper actually landed well with them. It
did. And perhaps even more surprisingly, the
critic noted that the film contained samples
of exceptionally good screenwriting. See, that
is a very confusing mixed message to me. It really
is. You have a clever portrait by the lead actor
and you have exceptionally good screenwriting.
by Henry Johnson and Lou Breslow. Yet the movie
as a whole is this embarrassing telegraphed failure.
This raises an important question, though. How
can a film possess exceptionally good writing
and a clever, well acted lead performance, yet
still completely fail as a cohesive piece of
art? Right. It's the eternal mystery of collaborative
projects. I always think of it sort of like building
a car. OK, I like that. Having a great script
and a talented lead actor is like having a top
tier engine and a fantastic steering wheel. Sure,
the core components. Right. But the director
and the pacing of the film, they serve as the
transmission. And if the transmission is broken,
it doesn't matter how much horsepower the script
has or how well the actor steers, you know. The
car isn't going anywhere. Exactly. That power
never connects to the wheels. The movie stalls
out. The pacing is off. The chemistry misfires
and the entire vehicle just collapses into 60.
Excuse me, 70 minutes of inconsequential celluloid.
That is a perfect analogy. And when a project
collapses that hard, and the transmission basically
falls out on the highway in front of all the
studio executives reading Variety, the career
is dead. Right. The logical assumption is that
the driver's career is over. You read a devastating
review of an inconsequential film like that,
and you think that director is completely finished
in Hollywood. But here's where it gets really
interesting. Because the sources we have don't
just give us the plot and the bad review of $10
raise. We also have the complete historical list
of films directed by this movie's director, George
Marshall. Which is just a massive list. It is.
Looking at this list reveals a reality that completely
shatters our modern assumptions about failure.
His filmography is absolutely staggering. I am
marveling at the sheer volume of it. George Marshall
didn't just survive the humiliation of $10 raise.
He thrived. He really did. This man had a 50
-year continuous career as a director. 50 years.
His list of credits starts all the way back in
1916. He was directing silent films like The
Committee on Credentials, Loves Lariat, and A
Woman's Eyes. Way back in the teens. Yeah. He
worked through the teens, the 20s, the 30s, the
40s, the 50s, the 60s. His final listed credit
is a movie from 1969 called Hook, Line, and Sinker.
I mean, he witnessed and actively participated
in every major technological and cultural shift
in the history of the medium. Pretty much all
of them. The birth of Hollywood, the transition
to sound, the introduction of color, widescreen,
the peak of the studio system, and its eventual
collapse. He was there for all of it. And what's
really striking to me is the power of brute force
volume here. We look at a flop like $10 raise
and think, oh, it's a career ending disaster.
Right. But look at what else George Marshall
was doing in 1935, the exact same year this movie
bombed. This is the craziest part. He directed
Ten Dollar Race. Right. But in 1935 alone, he
also directed Life Begins at 40, Music is Magic
in Old Kentucky, and Show Them No Mercy. Five
feature films. Five feature films in a single
calendar year. How is that even physically possible?
Well... To understand how he produced that volume,
we have to look at the mechanism of the 1930s
Hollywood studio system. Because George Marshall
wasn't a modern independent auteur who, you know,
had to spend three years hustling for financing
after a movie flopped. Right, he wasn't out there
pitching to investors. Exactly. He was a contracted
employee of Fox Film Corporation. The studio
lot was essentially a factory. An assembly line
for entertainment. Precisely. The studios owned
the movie theaters back then, and they needed
to supply those theaters with a constant stream
of content every single week to fill out double
features. Oh, they just needed product. Yeah,
they needed A pictures and B pictures. $10 raise
was just product on the assembly line. Wow. If
a movie flopped on a Friday, the studio boss
didn't fire the director. They handed him a new
script on Monday because the machinery couldn't
stop. He was contractually obligated to just
show up and shoot the next picture. That mechanical
necessity completely changes the context of his
survival, doesn't it? It really does. The studio
didn't have the luxury of canceling him over
a bad review because they literally needed him
on set the next morning to direct in Old Kentucky.
Exactly. And if we connect this to the bigger
picture, Marshall's filmography shows us that
being a reliable gear in that machine allowed
him to just outlive his failure. Just keep working.
Yeah. And it wasn't just churning out forgettable
B -movies forever, either. Because he kept working,
he eventually directed some massive, highly respected
titles long after this supposed career -ending
flop. Oh, really? Like what? Well, in 1939, he
directed Destry Rides again. Oh, a certified
classic. Right. In 1940, he directed The Ghostbreakers.
In 1945... Murder, he says. He directed the famous
noir film The Blue Dahlia in 1946. Wow, okay.
And skipping all the way forward to 1962, he
was one of the directors on the massive star
-studded epic How the West Was Won. Wait, from
an inconsequential comedy about a $10 raise to
a sprawling epic western like that? Yep. Same
guy. It really puts the life cycle of a career
into perspective, doesn't it? It really separates
the identity of the artist from the outcome of
a single project. So what does this all mean
for us? We started this deep dive talking about
the fear of asking for a raise, the fear of failing,
and the fear of being told your efforts are embarrassing.
Right, those very real fears. The reason this
forgotten 1935 film matters to you, listening
to this right now, is because you undoubtedly
have a $10 raise in your past. Or... You know,
you will soon. It is an unavoidable part of participating
in any industry, really. You have a project that
bombed. You have a moment where you stepped up,
pitched an idea, and just got rejected entirely.
You have work that... critics or your peers or
your bosses deemed inconsequential. Yeah, it
happens to everyone. And it feels like the end
of the world when you're standing in the boss's
office getting fired or when you're reading a
brutal performance review. It feels permanent.
But George Marshall's massive decade -spanning
list of films proves that one failure is just
a tiny data point. It only defines you if you
stop producing. I think there is a really profound
takeaway here about the mechanics of success.
What's that? Well, the real lesson isn't just
a generic platitude about never giving up. The
lesson is that prolific output actively dilutes
failure. Oh, I like that. Think about the harsh
permanence of that variety review. It has been
phrasing in time since May 8th, 1935. It was
written by a critic who was completely confident
that this director had produced nothing of value.
Right. Yet because George Marshall was embedded
in a system that demanded volume, and because
he just kept showing up to do the work, he built
a mountain of films so large that it stripped
that single critic of their power. Volume as
armor. Exactly. When you produce a massive volume
of work, you ensure that no single failure and
no single critic has the power to define your
narrative. That's incredibly empowering. And
you know, in our modern age of instant internet
reviews, immediate feedback and rapid fire public
judgment, it is so easy to feel destroyed by
a single misstep. Oh, for sure. One bad tweet
or bad review and you feel like it's over. Right.
But consider how many inconsequential stepping
stones we harshly judge today without realizing
they're just one necessary chapter in someone's
50 year long story of success. The failure only
matters if it's the last thing you do.