Dynamite is a 1929 American pre-Code drama film produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille and starring Conrad Nagel, Kay Johnson, Charles Bickford, and Julia Faye.
[1] Written by Jeanie MacPherson, John Howard Lawson, and Gladys Unger, the film is about a convicted murderer scheduled to be executed, whom a socialite marries simply to satisfy a condition of her grandfather's will.
By the terms of her grandfather's will, if she is not married by her twenty-third birthday (only a month away), she will not inherit his millions and will be left penniless.
When her friends show up to party the night away, he sees Cynthia writing a $25,000 check as a down payment to Marcia and discussing the terms of their agreement.
Hagon returns from work to find the door of his tool shed demolished and learns that Cynthia withdrew $2,000 from the bank (to pay the specialist).
Dynamite was DeMille's first full-length sound film (a silent version was also released simultaneously), and casting the right actors (with adequate voices) proved a difficult process.
Development began on the heels of the release of his previous film, The Godless Girl, which had featured hastily added sound footage (now currently unavailable for viewing) and which had been a box-office disappointment.
Male actors tested but passed over included Buck Jones, Bob Custer, Jason Robards, Sr., Guinn "Big Boy" Williams, Dean Jagger and Randolph Scott.
Actresses tested but passed over included Carmelita Geraghty, Merna Kennedy, Leila Hyams, Dorothy Burgess and Sally Blane.
[3] Leisen reportedly tried to interest DeMille in up-and-coming Carole Lombard for Johnson's role; allegedly, she can be glimpsed in the surviving versions of the film.
"[6] Dorothy Parker, who was living in Los Angeles at the time, was commandeered to pen the lyrics for an original song for Dynamite.
[4] The New York Times reviewer Mordaunt Hall had mixed feelings about DeMille's first talkie, calling it "an astonishing mixture, with artificiality vying with realism and comedy hanging on the heels of grim melodrama.
"[7] "Even in the work of the performers, there are moments when they are human beings and then, at times, they become nothing more than Mr. De Mille's puppets", "behaving strangely and conversing in movie epigrams".
[7] Nonetheless, Hall approved of the efforts of Johnson ("an accomplished actress") and Bickford ("a splendid performance"), though he could not say the same of Nagel ("does not act up to his usual standard").