Category Archives: pre-code goodies

“You’re just a beautiful bad girl!”

Posted on by under pre-code goodies

 

Letty Strong (Loretta Young) is a single mother, having given birth to her son, Mickey (Jackie Kelk), in the back room of a bookstore at the age of fifteen. She and her son were thereafter taken in by “Fuzzy” (Henry Travers), the owner of the store, who views the pair as his own. Letty has since moved out on her own with Mickey and supports them by working as a model–she is paid to wear beautiful gowns and go to glamorous nightclubs with various men.

One evening, Fuzzy confronts Letty about her son, who has been caught playing hooky one too many times. He accuses her of not raising the boy properly–not only does he skip school, but he smokes, steals, and carouses with older boys in the neighborhood. Letty scoffs at Fuzzy’s concerns, claiming that she merely preparing the boy for the tough reality of the “real world” in ways she herself never was.

While skating one day and hanging onto the back of a moving vehicle, Mickey lets go and is hit by a milk truck that is somewhat implausibly driven by the millionaire president of Amalgamated Dairy, Malcolm Trevor (Cary Grant), who is eager to do whatever he can to help the boy (Trevor later explains that he was driving because he was checking out the day-to-day operations of his business). Letty, seeing dollar signs, takes full advantage of the situation, encouraging Mickey to exaggerate his injuries (which only really amount to a bumped head) in order to get as much money as she can out of the dairy. During the ensuing trial, however, evidence is presented showing that Mickey is perfectly healthy, and the judge, infuriated by Letty’s blatant attempt at fraud, tells her that he will do whatever it takes to have her son removed from her custody. Mickey is taken away soon after.

Letty sneaks into Trevor’s office one night and halfheartedly pulls a gun on him to try to convince him to help her get Mickey back. After disarming her easily (and warding off her advances), Trevor agrees to do what he can to help. Trevor ends up taking Mickey to live on his estate with his wife, Alice (Marion Burns), and the two of them quickly grow fond of the boy. Trevor allows Letty to come as frequently as she’d like to see Mickey, but when she discovers how much her son has grown to like this new lifestyle, she hatches a plan to run away with him.

With the encouragement of her sleazy lawyer, Adolph (Harry Green–playing the offensively stereotypical “Jew” stock character, focused solely on how much money Letty can get out of the Trevors), Letty tries to seduce Trevor into cheating on his wife. Though Trevor is repulsed by her behavior at first, calling her “cheap” and “dishonest,” he cannot resist the alluring young woman, and he professes his love for her–a sentiment that Letty manages to capture on a record. Though Letty now has plenty of ammunition with which to blackmail Trevor, he surprises her by stating that he’s already confessed to his wife that he intends to leave her for Letty. Letty’s emotions are thrown into turmoil, and though she thinks she might finally be in the position to have everything she’s ever wanted, something just doesn’t feel right …

Born to Be Bad (1934) was released less than two months before strict enforcement of the Production Code began in July 1934, but even though that technically classifies the film as a “pre-Code” (as does its racy tone), some heavy edits were made to Ralph Graves’ screenplay. The movie was rejected by the PCA office twice before it was finally deemed satisfactory–something that created quite a bit of conflict between PCA head Joseph Breen producer Darryl F. Zanuck, who felt that Breen was using a harsh evaluation of the film to make “an example” out of 20th Century Fox. Still, in the end, Zanuck agreed to removing several shots of Young in her underwear (but still managed to keep the scene above) and cutting some scenes in which she showed too much skin, and the film was finally released with PCA approval.

Even with the cuts, the film gleefully and luridly plays with the loose morality of its lead character–she is, to borrow a phrase, little more than sex on heels. Still, Letty sees herself as pragmatic and honest; when Fuzzy questions her ability to raise Mickey properly, she launches into a counter-attack to defend herself:

“All right. You’ve made your little speech. Now I’ll make mine. Everything you’ve said about Mickey is absolutely true. Sure, he has no honor, no sense of ethics. Furthermore, he doesn’t believe in Santa Claus and he knows that storks don’t bring babies. I’ve told him the truth, Fuzzy. I’ve told him everything is a fake. He knows all the questions and all the answers. And when he grows up to be a man, if anybody puts over on him, it won’t be because I didn’t tell him! Honor and decency? That’s a lot of hash. What’d it ever get me?”

To Letty, the only way to get by is to use what you know. Sex is all that she knows, and she has no problem using it, because to her, at least it’s forthright: men want her, they pay her in various ways (through money and clothing), and they get her. She uses sex as a tool and a bargaining chip; she makes her living with her body, and her first instinct in any situation is to entice with sexuality–first seen when she flirtatiously convinces the truant officer to let Mickey off the hook, and again when she seduces Trevor. Even though Letty denies it, the film indicates that Letty’s job as a model is not merely decorative; she is, for all intents and purposes, an escort, with her company paid for by the hour by the men whom she accompanies night after night. And it is strongly hinted that on the night Trevor finally capitulates to Letty’s charms, the two of them sleep together; the following morning, Letty–suggestively stroking a finger up and down the top of her cleavage–purrs, “After last night, you and I are just the same. There’s no difference at all. Get it?”

Though the film was originally intended as a vehicle for Jean Harlow (and then Joan Crawford), Young turns in a fascinating performance as Letty. She walks a delicate line between the over-sexed and maternal halves of Letty’s personality, and there’s a ferocious, fiery appeal to many of her scenes. If you’re only familiar with Young from her roles in the 1940s and beyond, you’re in for a treat; the general sweetness that marks her performances in films like The Farmer’s Daughter (1947) is here replaced with passionate, sexy verve as Young brings glorious life to the scheming and determined Letty. The strength of her performance here is encapsulated by the fact that she makes the ending scenes seem somewhat believable: while there is a distinct moralizing tone to the film and to Letty’s eventual reformation (the transition to which is rather abrupt), Young still manages to sell it to the audience.

Grant is not as strong a presence in the film–he’s overshadowed by Young in many of their scenes, and that remarkably suave, alluring “Cary Grant” persona is not fully in place here. Nonetheless, I make no complaints about his performance, for Grant is always a joy to watch even at his most pallid (yes, I am just that much in love with the man). There are also some nice supporting turns by the fatherly Travers and young Kelk as the mischievous and sometimes whiny Mickey. A real-life Mickey (Rooney, in this case) auditioned for the role before Kelk was cast, and though Rooney went on to have a much more illustrious career, Kelk later found his own measure of fame on television and particularly on radio, where he played the first Jimmy Olsen on The Adventures of Superman beginning in 1940.

Born to Be Bad is making its premiere on TCM on Wednesday night (July 25th) at 8PM (along with a full prime-time lineup of Loretta Young-helmed classics, including the aforementioned Daughter). If you’ve never seen this film, I can say without hesitation that it’s well worth your time.

The ladies they talk about.

Posted on by under blogathon, gangster films, pre-code goodies, we're here we're queer

With the publication of his 1994 biography of Barbara Stanwyck, Axel Madsen infuriated a legion of the actress’ fans by claiming that Stanwyck had been bisexual, as evidenced–he says–by a lifelong friendship with her publicist, Helen Ferguson. Indeed, Madsen provides little evidence for his speculation; he admits that there is no proof of Stanwyck’s supposed bisexuality, and equates her with Greta Garbo as “Hollywood’s most famous closeted lesbian,” something that “everybody” in town allegedly knew.

Madsen seems to base much of his claim on Stanwyck’s onscreen persona rather than anecdotal evidence from the actress’ personal life, writing: “To lesbians growing up in loneliness, lacking contacts with other lesbians, fearing parental shock and despairing of finding examples to emulate, the Barbara Stanwyck screen image defined her as ‘one of us.’ The reason was not any coded message in gestures or delivery, but the way the screen characters to which she gave life defined themselves in their own terms and were comparatively independent of men and of household expectations.”

Whether or not Stanwyck was gay (and really, who could even say for sure at this point?), the fact that she was so willing to take on potentially controversial, “tough-girl” roles throughout her career indicates that, at the very least, she had no fear of being accused as such. According to Madsen, when gossip columnist Louella Parsons questioned Stanwyck’s choice to play a lesbian brothel owner in 1962’s Code-pushing Walk on the Wild Side, the actress reportedly snapped, “What do you want them to do, get a real madam and a real lesbian?” [Still, as Dan Callahan points out in his recent biography of the star, Barbara Stanwyck: The Miracle Woman, Stanwyck's character in that film is little more than a "shallow conception, a woman who needs to be 'explained' by some Penguin Freud, a lesbian who doesn't even get to be a real lesbian because that would be too threatening" even in the more permissive cinematic atmosphere of 1962.]

From her earliest days in Hollywood, she was unafraid to play characters that exist outside the realm of so-called “normalcy”—from prostitutes to gun molls to prisoners and every kind of dirty dealer in between, there was never a bad girl so deliciously bad as Barbara Stanwyck. Nowhere, perhaps, is this more evident than in the 1933 film Ladies They Talk About, in which Stanwyck plays an unrepentant criminal whose crimes land her behind bars. Based on the play Women in Prison by Dorothy Mackaye (an actress who had herself been incarcerated for a short period of time after her husband’s death at the hands of her lover), Ladies is, as Callahan states, “a crackerjack women’s prison movie that has all the punchy, vital virtues of a Warner Bros. film of this era.” The film certainly shares many themes with the popular, sometimes gritty fare offered up by that studio, which by the 1930s had turned from pioneering sound pictures with a series of low-budgeted musicals (many of them in early two-strip Technicolor) to offering up “social statement” and gangster films like Little Caesar and The Public Enemy (both 1931) and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932). Much like its male-led predecessors, Ladies does not shy away from depicting violence and mayhem; it celebrates vice even while showing the potential consequences for indulging in it, and courts controversy for its frank and sometimes sympathetic depiction of criminality.

Stanwyck plays Nan Taylor, who is arrested for helping her “gang” rob a bank by acting as the decoy to distract the guard. The embattled District Attorney, Walter Simpson (Robert McWade), knows Nan’s claims of innocence are a bunch of baloney, as she’s been in trouble with the law before. Nonetheless, she is paroled under public pressure led by Nan’s childhood friend, a radio host/preacher named David Slade (Preston S. Foster) who has long criticized the local politicians for perpetuating the city’s out-of-control crime wave through their own corruption. Slade believes that every man (and woman) should have the chance for redemption, and wants to believe that Nan–with whom he is deeply in love–is not guilty. He tells her that “bygones should be bygones” as they start a new life together, but when Nan confesses to him that she really is guilty, David turns her back over to the authorities.

Nan is convicted and sentenced to the San Quentin penitentiary for two to five years. As “fresh fish” at the prison, Nan immediately comes into conflict with “Sister Susie” (Dorothy Burgess), a fellow prisoner who reveres David Slade and resents Nan for turning off his radio show in the common room. Nan wins the respect of the other women when she verbally cuts Susie down to size, and Linda (Lillian Roth) takes Nan under her wing and advises her about her new domicile, introducing her to other prisoners like overly jolly former madam “Aunt” Maggie (Maude Eburne).

In the meantime, David continues to write and tries to visit Nan in prison, though she refuses to have anything to do with him, tearing up his letters and not leaving her cell on visiting days–much to nosy Susie’s anger. But when her old pal Lefty (Harold Huber) comes to visit and tells her that fellow gang members Don (Lyle Talbot) and Dutch (Harold Healy) have been captured and sentenced to San Quentin themselves (albeit for twenty to life in their cases), Nan agrees to help her boys with their escape plan, even if it means seeing David again in order to make the plan work.

Her timing is put in jeopardy when Susie manages to get Nan into trouble, causing her to lose her privileges for thirty days. But the matrons, sympathetic to David’s obvious love for Nan and his desperation to see her, give her special permission to meet with him anyway. She manages to slip a letter to Lefty–with an impression of the matron’s key–into David’s pocket as he embraces her, and when David later finds it, he drops it into a mailbox. But in quick order, the police intercept the letter, Don and Dutch are killed in their escape attempt, and Nan is denied parole when her involvement comes to light. Certain that David had turned her in once again, she plots her revenge–but it doesn’t turn out exactly as she planned.

As indicated previously, most of the Warner Bros. pictures in the “gangster” milieu center around men, but Ladies They Talk About is a scintillating look at the life of crime from the other side of the coin. Still, the movie has its weaknesses, and is largely unable to reach the same level of brilliance as films like Little Caesar and Scarface. Part of that is the way the film is constructed: the framing scenes–the ones outside the penitentiary–are the weakest ones of the film, and the ending, in many ways, is simply absurd, grasping at comic straws in a jarring moment of supposed reformation (seriously, when’s the last time YOU told someone who shot you, “That’s okay”)?

The movie finds its strength in the middle section, with its non-glamorized depiction of life under incarceration. None of these women are innocent, retiring creatures–they are guilty, they know they are guilty, and many of them are unrepentant in their guilt. The prison functions as a microcosm of the world outside—the women are subjected to the oversight of the men who put them there, just like their “free” sisters outside the prison walls. When fellow prisoner Linda shows Nan the ropes of life in the joint, she tells her that the women are “always a few feet away” from what they want most–”freedom and men.”  And yet the female prisoners have managed fine on their own, creating a sort of dysfunctional family with the atmosphere of a dormitory, complete with its own caste system that intrinsically mirrors the one outside.

Even within the hierarchy of life inside the prison, it is the more “masculine” prisoners who rule the roost–prisoners like the overly aggressive Susie (whose jealousy, Linda warns, is dangerous to Nan), who eventually backs down under threat of Nan’s fist after Nan manages to knock her out with a single punch during an ill-picked cat fight. There’s also the haughty dowager, Mrs. Arlington (Cecil Cunningham), who lives and breathes the patriarchy that produced her, lording her breeding above the other prisoners and calling the black inmates her “servants.” And then there’s the unnamed “butch” stereotype whom Nan meets in the washroom (as Linda wryly teases: “Watch out for her; she likes to wrestle”). This character is later shown during a brief montage to be doing bicep curls in her cell, much to the amazement of the young brunette prisoner sitting on her cot (“You’re just always exercising!” she exclaims as the woman continues to flex her arms) … and, in case this prisoner’s sexuality is questionable to the viewer, she is constantly shown with quite the phallic-looking cigar hanging out of her mouth. In a world without men, this film seems to say, it is only those who essentially become men–by exerting their influence on their fellow prisoners through intimidation, force, or respect for their physical strength–who can hold any amount of power (however limited) in the institution. Even in a world without men, the “men” still find a way to run the joint.

Ladies They Talk About is one of the more notable precursors to the “women’s prison film” subgenre that really began to thrive in the 1950s. Movies such as Caged (1950), Women’s Prison (1955), and, later, Caged Heat (1974), further explore the themes of isolation and powerlessness associated with incarceration—and, more broadly, the same isolation and lack of power that comes from simply being a woman in a man’s world. And the movie is recognized today in LGBT scholarship as a notable film for its inclusion of lesbian imagery (however fleeting). Though Ladies‘ depiction of its gay character is “coded” in shades of obvious cliche, it is nonetheless impressive that directors Howard Bretherton and William Keighley managed to include these references without delving into broad caricature of the character–she is not ridiculed or feared for her obviously differing sexuality, but is shown to be admired or, at the very least, healthily respected by her fellow inmates in her relatively few moments on screen. Funny, how the world of prison is shown to be more inclusive and accepting than the world outside it, isn’t it?

 

This post is a contribution to the Queer Blogathon, co-hosted by Garbo Laughs and Pussy Goes Grrr. Head over to their sites to check out the other wonderful entries that have been posted throughout the week, and make sure to enter the raffle to win one of two excellent film books on the topic of queer theory in film!

Helloooooooooooo, nurse.

Posted on by under pre-code goodies

We’re wrapping up our April of Barbara Stanwyck flicks with a look at one of my favorite pre-Codes, the 1931 drama Night Nurse, co-starring Joan Blondell and a villainous, non-mustachioed Clark Gable.

Stanwyck stars as Lora Hart, an aspiring nurse who finagles a probationary training position at a hospital after meeting the chief of staff, Dr. Bell (Charles Winninger), when he inadvertently knocks her purse to the ground. She is partnered with wisecracking, no-nonsense fellow nurse Maloney (Blondell), and the two become fast friends despite their differing views on the nursing profession–Maloney is just working until she can entice a rich patient to marry her, while Lora truly believes in helping people. After being assigned to the night shift as punishment for missing curfew one night, Lora meets a charming bootlegger, Mortie (Ben Lyon), who comes in for treatment for a gunshot wound. Lora agrees not to report the incident to the police, gaining her an instant fan and admirer in Mortie (who calls her “my pal”).

After earning their nursing certification, Lora and Maloney are assigned to private nursing duty for two children, Nanny and Desney Ritchey, who are very sick and don’t seem to be getting any better. Maloney, who works the day shift, voices her suspicions that the children’s recovery is being deliberately impeded by their shady physician, Dr. Ranger (Ralf Harolde), and Lora herself becomes concerned when she realizes that all the children are being fed is milk. When she tries to talk to the children’s mother (Charlotte Merriam), she finds the woman is a perpetual drunk and unconcerned about her children’s well-being. Mrs. Ritchey’s equally drunken paramour, Mack (Walter McGrail), attacks Lora, and he is pulled off by Nick (Gable), Mrs. Ritchey’s animalistic chauffeur. Nick demands that Lora pump Mrs. Ritchey’s stomach, but when she tries to call a doctor to get approval for the procedure, he knocks her out with a sock to the jaw.

The next day, Lora tries to talk to Dr. Ranger about the children’s health and Nick’s brutality, but he brushes off her concerns. An enraged Lora quits; once she leaves his office, Dr. Ranger calls Nick, revealing that he has been conspiring with the chauffeur to kill the children (we later learn that Nick’s plan is to marry the children’s mother after their deaths and thus get access to their trust fund). Lora seeks advice from Dr. Bell, who advises her to get her job back so that she can be in the Ritchey house to better help save the children. She convinces Ranger to hire her back, but by this time, Nanny’s health has deteriorated to the point of near-death. Lora enlists the help of “old pal” Mortie to foil Nick’s plans, but will it be enough to save the children?

Night Nurse was directed by William A. Wellman, marking the first of five collaborations between Stanwyck and Wellman. The actress was inordinately fond of the sometimes temperamental director, and in later years she would remember him as one of the best directors she had worked with throughout her long career. As with much of Wellman’s body of work, Night Nurse is smartly paced from its opening scene (a point-of-view shot from the driver’s seat of a speeding ambulance, careening through the streets before screeching to a halt in front of the emergency room) through its book-ended conclusion of a similar scene (recreated with a body we know in tow). Though the film is rather noticeably split into two definitive sections–beginning with Lora’s training before sliding into the thriller/mystery that marks the second half–it works well as a whole, showing Lora’s progression from wannabe nurse to defiant savior.

At its heart, Night Nurse is an indictment of the excesses of the Jazz Age; in fact, all of the scenes in which Mrs. Ritchey appears are accompanied by loud jazz music in the background, as if to underscore the evils of the period. We never see Mrs. Ritchey sober, nor do we ever see her in the company of her daughters. Liquor is the devil, used to keep Mrs. Ritchey drunk and under Nick’s control, enabling her to forget her motherly duties. In a fit of self-pity, she claims Dr. Ranger told her that she makes the children “too nervous” and has therefore been forbidden from visiting them; whether this is true or not, our frustration with Mrs. Ritchey mirrors that of Lora, whom we cheer when she finally lashes out at the woman for her less-than-maternal behavior.

And yet Lora herself is guilty of less-than-seemly behavior. She readily agrees to forgo reporting Mortie’s gunshot wound to the police, and she appears to have no problem associating with a known bootlegger (so long as they aren’t going too public with their friendship). In the end, she even seems to accept Mortie’s inference about Nick’s “whereabouts” with nary a blink of an eye. She is far from an innocent figure, though the audience is conditioned to support her regardless … making us, thereby, implicit in her morally-questionable behavior. Interesting consideration, to say the least.

Though Stanwyck and Blondell play a pair of seasoned, worldly females and are far from victimized, there is nonetheless a sense that femininity is devalued throughout the film. The women are slapped around, brutalized, cowed, and used. Their opinions and concerns are cast as “hysterical” or ignorant. Lora fights back against this, and largely succeeds because she takes a more aggressive approach to her interactions with most of the other characters–she’s unafraid to raise her voice, use her fists, or get right up in Nick’s face and accuse him of attempted murder. In other words, because she takes on more traditionally “male” characteristics, Lora escapes the same level of treatment that the frightened housekeeper, Mrs. Maxwell (Blanche Frederici) or Mrs. Ritchey are subjected to (for the most part). Despite this, all of the women of the film are, at times, treated as mere objects: stared at and lusted over not only by the men of the film, but by the audience as well, a sleazy note of voyeurism that is unavoidable considering the sheer number of scenes in which Wellman has his two leading ladies strip down to their undergarments. It’s titillation for titillation’s sake–seriously, is there any real reason for so many scenes in which the female characters disrobe?

Stanwyck’s typical film persona is that of the prototypical “tough broad,” and she takes that to new heights in this film. She is a smart-assed, take-no-crap dame who is determined to do what’s right regardless of the rules of “ethical” nursing (which would, in theory, prevent her from telling the full truth about what’s happening in the Ritchey household)–and it’s a shame that, by the end of the film, Lora is forced to choose between doing the right thing and the job that she has come to love and excel at. Lora’s confrontation with Mrs. Ritchey over the welfare of the children is perhaps the best scene in the entire film, a fiery burst of passion from Stanwyck that ends with her standing over Mrs. Ritchey’s prone body, muttering, “You mother.” Stanwyck delivers the line with a mix of sarcasm and derision–it’s an epithet, an ironic label, and an insult, all wrapped into one, and in her tone, you can just hear the implicit ” … fucker” added to the end of the phrase.

Though their scenes together are relatively few, Gable and Stanwyck demonstrate a potent chemistry in their moments of confrontation. Watching the movie now, it’s easy to see how and why Gable simply exploded into popularity in 1931. Night Nurse was released right on the heels of the film that arguably made Gable a star, A Free Soul, in which he appeared opposite Norma Shearer and Lionel Barrymore. Though Gable is mostly remembered for his more heroic or romantic film roles–let’s face it, to many film fans, he will always be the roguish Rhett Butler and nothing more–this movie presents Gable as an effectively chilling psychopath. He plays Nick as a sort of pit bull–always nipping and barking, exerting more muscle than brains, dangerously fueled by testosterone and coldblooded determination as opposed to logic and reason.

A potent mix of sex and violence, marked by strong performances and a relatively solid, entertaining plot, Night Nurse is one of the better melodramas to come out of the pre-Code period, and one I highly recommend.

Buying Barbara Stanwyck.

Posted on by under melodrama, pre-code goodies

Joan Gordon (Barbara Stanwyck), a nightclub singer in New York City, intends to marry Don (Hardie Albright), the scion of a wealthy family. But Don’s father discovers that Joan had been the mistress of a bootlegging gangster, Eddie Fields (Lyle Talbot), and forbids the union. Resentful of the fact that her association with Eddie ruined her chances for a good marriage, Joan flees to Montreal. When Eddie’s men eventually find her, she takes drastic measures to get out of town, becoming the mail-order bride for a young wheat farmer, Jim Gilson (George Brent), in rural North Dakota. Though their quickie marriage gets off on the wrong foot when a nervous Joan rejects Jim’s wedding-night advances, the two of them stick it out, somewhat awkwardly, through a harsh winter. But when Eddie tracks her to the farm, Joan and Jim’s blossoming feelings for one another are threatened as Jim discovers the truth about his wife’s past.

And there you have the twisted set-up for 1932′s The Purchase Price, a pre-Code drama that strains credulity. There’s enough material here for several films, and it’s all crammed into a little over an hour of sometimes abruptly-cut scenarios. That wouldn’t be such a bad thing, however, if the narrative as a whole made a lick of sense. Instead, the movie seems as though it were thrown together with a half-cocked script designed solely to showcase naughty behavior and not-so-sly sexual innuendo. When I realized that the movie was directed by William Wellman, I was initially surprised, as it seems very unlike his typical milieu … and then I remembered that this is the man who went on a B-movie lark with Stanwyck in 1943′s Lady of Burlesque, and it didn’t seem so odd. At the very least, Wellman got something out of working on this film with Stanwyck–reportedly, when he began writing the script for 1937′s A Star is Born, he based the marriage of Norman Maine and Esther Blodgett on the union of Stanwyck and Frank Fay, which began disintegrating while she was filming The Purchase Price.

Joan is not a “nice” girl, in the strictest sense; she’s an unmarried lounge singer sleeping with a married man, who puts her up in an apartment and showers her with shiny baubles. Yet she displays the most moderate behavior of any of the women in the film. There are no shrinking violets here; the women are worldly (to say the least) and unafraid of sexual banter, but Joan seems reluctant to participate. Take the scene in which Joan travels on the train to meet Jim. She sits with three other mail-order brides, all of them comparing photographs of their intended husbands. One of the women munches on a banana. “You know what they say about men with bushy eyebrows and a long nose?” she asks suggestively before sliding the banana halfway into her mouth and taking a bite. All the while, Joan sits by the window, visibly trying to suppress a grimace of distaste. If this were a 1930s version of Sex and the City (I kind of hate myself for making this reference right now), Joan would be the Charlotte York of the group.

As indicated by its title, one of the central themes of the film is the link between commerce and sex. The “purchase price” can be any number of things: the $100 that Joan paid to her maid, Emily, so she could take her place as Jim’s bride (Emily having sent Joan’s picture as her own made the lie conveniently easier); Emily’s intent to use the money to find a husband in town so she can “try the goods before I bought it”; the very notion of “buying” a prospective spouse; the money Joan borrows from Eddie to save Jim’s farm, which he only offers because, as he says, he’s still “nuts” about her; even the money Bull McDowell (David Landau), Eddie’s sleazy neighbor, offers to pay to cover Jim’s debts … IF Joan will come act as his “housekeeper” in return. Everything in the movie–especially the people–has a price, if someone is willing to pay it. It’s a bleak commentary on a world driven by dollars, and despite the far-fetched nature of the film’s plot, it’s a chillingly accurate one.

Stanwyck, per usual, does the best with what she is given here, but the character of Joan is so poorly drawn and contradictory that there is ultimately little that even she can do. Early in the film, Joan tells Eddie, “I’ve been up and down Broadway since I was fifteen years old” (interestingly, much like Stanwyck herself, who had become a Ziegfeld girl in her teens), and she later indicates to Emily that she has no experience being a housewife or working on a farm. But once she arrives in North Dakota, Joan is baking bread, cooking meals, and milking cows with the best of them, and without a word of complaint–all of which is more than a little implausible.

The other inexplicable factor regarding Joan is the source of her attraction to Jim. The man is little more than a rube, albeit one who is prone to violence; when Joan rejects his kiss on their wedding night and slaps him across the face, he has to restrain himself from punching her. His jealousy over Eddie leads him to whale on the man with no more provocation than Eddie’s placing his hand on top of Joan’s in a friendly manner, and in the midst of that fight, he throws Joan to the ground twice as she tries to intervene. Not only is he violent, but he’s extremely judgmental, essentially labeling Joan a slut because of her past relationship with Eddie. Top that off with his ignoring her throughout most of the film, and Joan’s sudden love for her in-name-only husband strikes me as extremely odd. Is there anything redeeming to the man? Other than the fact that he looks like George Brent, that is?

It’s a weird little film, but as a curiosity, The Purchase Price is worth a viewing, especially for true Stanwyck fans: she’s as beautiful as ever, and as an added bonus, her performance of “Take Me Away” at the beginning of the movie is her first singing performance (not dubbed) ever on film. True, there are better pre-Codes, but perhaps none so filled with delicious “what-the-fuckery” as this one …

“No, sir, nobody can tell me nothin’ about dames.”

Posted on by under blogathon, pre-code goodies

Before Carole Lombard was the “queen of screwball comedy,” she was just another ingenue trying to make a mark in Hollywood. Born Jane Peters in 1908, the soon-to-be-rechristened actress made her debut in silent films at the age of twelve. She eventually became a contract player for Fox, and though a near-deadly car crash in 1925 threatened to derail the momentum of her growing career, Lombard recovered with only the slightest scar on her left cheek. Soon after, Lombard began working for slapstick king Mack Sennett, appearing in several of his comedies. Her work for Sennett in such short subjects as The Campus Vamp (1928) helped hone a comedic timing that would serve the actress well later in her career. Eventually Lombard moved into the sound era with 1929′s High Voltage. The following year, Lombard signed a contract with Paramount, and unsure what to do with their new acquisition, the studio shunted the young actress into roles in a string of minor dramatic films for the next several years.

One of those pre-Code dramas, 1932′s Virtue, which she made while loaned out to Columbia, provides glimmers of Lombard’s emerging comedic talent. In it, she plays Mae, a young prostitute who is commanded by a judge to leave New York City or else face imprisonment. A policeman named Mackenzie (Willard Robertson) is assigned to make sure she gets on a train back to her hometown in Connecticut, but Mae sneaks off the train at an earlier stop and hitches a ride with Jimmy Doyle (Pat O’Brien), a wisecracking, marriage-loathing cab driver. Mae ditches the cab without paying her fare and goes to see her friend Lil (Mayo Methot), a former prostitute involved with the slimy Toots (Jack La Rue). Lil gives Mae some money and Mae tracks down Jimmy to pay him back for the cab ride. An argument on the street and a couple of milkshakes later, the two have fallen in love. Jimmy gets Mae a job as a cashier at a diner, where she works alongside another former prostitute, Gert (Shirley Grey), whom Mae begs not to tell Jimmy about their former occupation. Soon after, Jimmy and Mae decide to get married.

When they met, Jimmy believed that Mae was an out-of-work stenographer, and Mae did not disabuse him of this notion. But as they return from their honeymoon, Jimmy discovers the truth about his new wife when Mackenzie arrives to arrest Mae for defying the judge’s orders. Jimmy is upset by the news, but he clears Mae by showing Mackenzie their wedding license before slapping Mae and storming out. But after wandering around the city lost in thought, Jimmy returns and tells Mae that he’s not one to walk out on a commitment, but warns her that if things are going to work, she has to stay away from “that crowd” she had been hanging with in her working-girl days. Mae agrees and they settle into marriage together. Four weeks later, Gert has come down with an illness and needs $200 for an operation. Even though Mae and Jimmy are saving up to buy half of a gas station, Mae loans Gert the money with the promise that it will be repaid in a week. However, the “illness” turns out to be a scam hatched by Gert and Toots. When Mae tries to get the money back, it sets off a chain of events in which Gert ends up dead, Mae is erroneously accused of her murder, and Jimmy is unsure what to believe.

The print I saw of this film is missing the opening scene–it begins with Mae and Mackenzie buying the ticket back to Danbury, and the scene with the judge’s pronouncement is nowhere to be found. This created a bit of confusion until I looked up the synopsis of the film on the TCM website and realized what was going on. I’m not sure if it was just this particular print, or whether that opening scene has since been lost for whatever reason, but you would think that if it had been lost, a title card would have been inserted into the film to explain the set-up …

That quibble aside, the biggest draw for this otherwise unremarkable film is Lombard’s performance. I find this to be true with the majority of her films, truth be told–she was just that much a star. When watching one of her movies, your eye is immediately drawn to her, much to the detriment of some of her costars. It wasn’t just her beauty, though God knows she was one of the loveliest women to grace the screen in the 1930s. It was that Lombard just seemed like fun. In most of her roles (at least, the ones I’ve seen over the years), Lombard looks like she’s having the time of her life, and that infectious joy makes you like her all the more … even when she’s playing a streetwise, smart-assed hooker. In Virtue, Lombard makes the most of a rather limited script, delivering her lines with a zing that punctuates even the prickliest barbs with a sense of wry humor. And even when the film descends into the stuff of melodrama, Lombard rises above the material, showing that even though comedy was undoubtedly her bread-and-butter, her dramatic chops weren’t so bad, either.

In a way, Lombard’s character in this movie serves as a sort of prototype for the “hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold” parable that hit its peak in Hollywood with 1989′s Pretty Woman. Indeed, like that later film, Virtue functions as a sort of fairy tale, in which the fallen dame manages to find salvation through her relationship with a “better” man, a “white knight” who, though less morally objectionable than a whore, is far from clean and shining himself. And because Virtue was produced in 1932, before the Production Code was rigorously enforced, the movie does not end with a coda in which Mae is forced to repent for her “dirty” past; instead, she gets a relatively happily-ever-after ending. Talk about your Cinderella stories!

Virtue is not the best film Lombard ever made, nor is it all that engaging of a pre-Code drama. But the movie does demonstrate that, whatever the role, Lombard was a highly capable actress. Still, it wasn’t until 1934, with her casting in the screwball classic Twentieth Century, that Lombard’s talents would be showcased to their fullest. And though her career was tragically cut short with her 1942 death in a plane accident, quite a few of the films in which Lombard starred in the ten-year period after Virtue–Twentieth Century, Hands Across the Table (1935), My Man Godfrey (1936), Nothing Sacred (1937), To Be or Not to Be (1942)–were among some of the best to come out of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Like her contemporary Jean Harlow–another member of the “gone too soon” club–Lombard’s body of work, small though it may be, is nonetheless memorable and wholly entertaining, and it makes you wonder what depths her talent would have reached had she not died so terribly young.

This post is my contribution to the Carole-tennial(+3) blogathon hosted by Carole & Co. to celebrate Carole Lombard’s 103rd natal day (which was yesterday!). Check out Carole & Co. to see entries from other contributing blogs!

SUtS: Norma Shearer

Posted on by under brandie's faves, hays code, pre-code goodies, summer under the stars

Carrie’s choice: The Divorcee (1930)

Airing at 11:00AM EST

I have to confess that, yet again, I haven’t seen this  movie. I want to, though. Norma Shearer plays a woman named Jerry who is in love with Ted. Jerry and Ted are popular and have it all. Naturally, they get married. This breaks the heart of Paul, who is in love with Jerry. Long story short, Paul causes an accident, which disfigures Dorothy, whom he marries out of guilt. Flash forward. Ted is unfaithful, so Jerry leaves him and rejoins the party life while Ted joins misery. Jerry finds Paul, who still wants her. However, she has to rethink her behavior when she meets Dorothy.

What I like about this movie is the idea. I love the redemption theme. Jerry has it all, but then finds she doesn’t, as often happens. After a life of partying and perfection, then perhaps vengeance for her own losses she at last faces the consequences of her actions. It gives her the opportunity to reflect and mend. Her focus shifts from other people’s effect on herself to her effect on other people. How therapeutic. How human.

It is this human element that attracts me to this movie more than anything. I haven’t seen it, so if there is no growth, don’t tell me. However, it’s a classic, so I’m assuming someone in the movie shows growth. It’s that crucial element of a good story.  It’s an interesting take on the American culture and worldview- and that, my friends, takes a lot of courage. So, I encourage and challenge you to give this one a try.

Brandie’s choice: The Divorcee (1930)

I’m going to jump in here and piggyback off of Carrie’s choice, because I have seen this movie, and I want to echo her recommendation. I love The Divorcee dearly. This is an AMAZING pre-Code film, full of all of the fire and liberal feminine sexuality that Hays and his cronies so desperately feared in the 1930s. It tries to address a double standard during an era which frowned upon the very notion of questioning the status quo, and though the movie’s ending (no details) is somewhat of a cop-out on that stance (at least, in my opinion), it’s a very enjoyable film nonetheless.

Norma Shearer is positively brilliant in the leading role, and at the time, her performance was a revelation–no one thought Norma Shearer, of all people, could play this role … not even her own husband, influential MGM producer Irving G. Thalberg. To prove him wrong, she commissioned a set of sexy boudoir photos for Thalberg, which ultimately convinced him that she was perfect for the part. And perfect she was–this movie ushered in a more sophisticated and worldly era in her career. And she won an Oscar for it!

Interesting tidbit: Joan Crawford might disagree that Shearer was “perfect” in this role, since the part of Jerry was, by some accounts, promised to her before Shearer went after it! In fact, some sources say Crawford was bitter about this for years. Crawford had been rivaling Shearer for roles and screen time at MGM for years, and she resented Shearer’s relationship with Thalberg, which she felt gave Shearer an unfair advantage. When Thalberg and Shearer became engaged, Crawford reportedly said, “What chance do I have? She’s sleeping with the boss.” Of course, Crawford became a huge star in her own right in the ensuing years, but Norma and Joan never really became what you would call “bosom buddies.”

In short, let me reiterate: if you’ve never seen this movie, WATCH IT!