Zeus

The Trumpet Blows (1934)

Stars:

George Raft, Adolphe Menjou, Frances Drake

Once the audience accepts the notion than George Raft and Adolphe Menjou are Mexican brothers, the rest of Paramount's Trumpet Blows is easy to take. A retired bandit, Pancho Montez (Menjou) wants to settle down to a quiet life. This proves impossible when his headstrong young sibling Manuel (Raft) insists upon trying to become a bullfighter. Manuel also falls in love with Pancho's fiancee Chulita (Frances Drake), but she renounces both of them, calling them cowards. By film's end, of course, both Manuel and Pancho have proven Chulita wrong -- and one of them (guess which one?) has claimed her for his wife. Beyond its romantic-triangle intrigues, Trumpet Blows was the first major talkie treatment of the bullfighting mystique.