Ladies of the Big House (1931)

Ladies of the Big House is a 1931 Paramount pre-code crime/romance melodrama.

Kathleen (Sylvia Sidney) is a sweet girl who works in a flower shop. Her problem is that she’s the girlfriend of mobster Kid Athens (Earle Foxe). Now whether she’s really his girlfriend and whether she’s ever given him any real reason to think that she is doesn’t matter. It’s possible that, being young and naïve, she may have given him some encouragement before finding out that he was a gangster. It’s also possible that she really was romantically involved with him. Girls have been known to be attracted to bad boys. The cops definitely think she’s involved with him.

What really does matter is that as far as Kid Athens is concerned she is his girl.

Kid Athens is facing a possible murder rap and has to get out of town for a while but he has his goons watching Kathleen. And they have reported to him that she’s been seeing some other guy.

Even worse, she’s about to marry this other guy.

This other guy is Standish McNeil (Gene Raymond), a young engineer who has been out of the country for a while, he’s as naïve as she is and he’s socially awkward and he has no idea how to talk to girls. Kathleen thinks he’s wonderful and wants to marry him.

Kid Athens has plans to make sure that that doesn’t happen.

The young couple find themselves framed for a murder. We, the audience, know right from the start that it really is a frame-up.

The bulk of the movie takes place in the prison. It’s a prison with a wing for male prisoners and a wing for female prisoners. So Kathleen and McNeil are in the same prison but cannot see each other which is a special kind of cruelty.

And Kathleen discovers she has an enemy among the prisoners - Susie Thompson (Wynne Gibson). Susie had been Kid Athens’ girl. When he decided to go after Kathleen he didn’t just dump Susie, he had her framed and sent to prison to get her right out of the way. Susie now blames Kathleen for all her troubles.

The running time is only 77 minutes but the plot is very simple and the movie drags just a little in the prison sequences. The suspense does build effectively towards the end.

I’m not going to talk about the plot in detail but since this is a pre-code movie one can’t predict the ending with absolute certainty. What I will say is that the plot does get kinda wild. Much hinges on the behaviour of a certain supporting character, behaviour that might seem surprising but if you watch the movie carefully it makes total sense ad is not inconsistent.

What makes this a pre-code movie is the overwhelming atmosphere of corruption. There is corruption among elected officials, within the D.A.’s office, within the prison service and there’s a crooked slimy reporter as well. Once the Production Code came in the suggestions of endemic official corruption would not have been allowed.

I generally find Gene Raymond to be a rather bland actor and he’s a bit bland here.

Sylvia Sidney on the other hand is adorable and cute and lively although at times she overacts just a little. And at times she’s rather sexy!

Wynne Gibson is very good as Susie. There are some decent hardboiled supporting performances from the actresses playing the prisoners.

The ending provides some well-mounted surprise action scenes and some fine melodrama. Ladies of the Big House was much praised at the time and it stands up well. Highly recommended.

The movie was based on a play by Ernest Booth. Booth spent most of his adult life in prison and write the play while serving a life sentence on Folsom Prison. While the movie might present a sanitised view of prison it does benefit from Booth’s understanding of the psychology of convicts and the interpersonal dynamics of prison life.

This has been released by Kino Korber as a double-header Blu-Ray disc, paired with another Sylvia Sidney pre-code film, Confessions of a Co-Ed. The transfer is lovely. There’s an audio commentary.