Stella Dallas (1937)

Stella Dallas is sentimental melodrama, and as far as the plot is concerned it’s fairly conventional melodrama. But then the essence of melodrama is that it is formulaic to some extent - the genre has certain conventions and if you can’t accept those conventions then you had best avoid Stella Dallas. What really matters is how sincerely and how skillfully such conventional themes are treated and in that respect this film scores highly.

The first thing that needs to be understood is that the movie was made in 1937. They were different times. Criticising the movie because the characters don’t behave the way people today would behave (as some online reviewers have done) is to miss the point. The movie deals with the world as it was in 1937, not the way it is today.



This Samuel Goldwyn production was directed by King Vidor and gave Barbara Stanwyck her most demanding role up to that point in her career. It’s a powerhouse performance and it shows that Stanwyck was not afraid to be unglamorous and even at times to appear ridiculous and even pathetic. Despite this she always maintains a certain dignity and we never lose sympathy for her, but at the same time we can never despise her enough to pity her.

Stanwyck is Stella Martin, a mill-hand’s daughter who dreams of a better life. Rather ambitiously she sets her sights on Stephen Dallas. Stephen is the scion of a wealthy and distinguished family. His millionaire father managed to lose his fortune and now Stephen has to work for a living. He is the advertising manager for the factory in which Stella’s father and brother work. He might not be wealthy but Stella knows class when she sees it, and Stephen has class.



They marry but they are always at cross-purposes. Stella wanted to escape from her working-class life and family while Stephen was charmed by her simplicity and her naïvete. Stella’s attempts to fit in with the high society crowd embarrass Stephen. Stella tries hard but her working-class background always betrays her. She always ends up making herself look foolish.

The situation is complicated by the birth of their daughter Laurel. Stella devotes herself to her daughter while she and Stephen drift apart. They end up living separate lives in separate cities. Stella wants Laurel to have all the advantages she never had and she works hard to give her those things. Unfortunately her unconventional behaviour and her obvious lower-class background cause continual problems and also cause Laurel more and more embarrassment as she grows older. Finally Stella finds she has to make a choice between her own happiness and Laurel’s future.



Stella is caught between two worlds. She cannot go back to being a simple working-class girl but she cannot adapt to the rich society world in which Stephen moves so effortlessly. She has done a fine job in raising Laurel but her daughter is now about to move into that world of high society and Stella is now a hindrance to her.

Stanwyck was 30 when she made this movie but in the later stages of the movie she manages to look like a blowsy and faded 45. The makeup effects are subtle - mostly it’s Stanwyck’s sheer acting skill that conveys the sense of a woman ageing none too gracefully.



Stella is a tragic figure but she never gives in to self-pity. She is too concerned for her daughter’s future to have the luxury of feeling sorry for herself. Her self-sacrificing behaviour might be annoying to some modern viewers but there was a time when parents really did unhesitatingly sacrifice themselves for their children. And such behaviour was not despised.

John Boles as Stephen is a little colourless, or perhaps he just seems that way since his performance is so low-key while everyone around him is giving bravura performances. Alan Hale is amusing as always as Ed Munn, Stella’s indefatigable admirer who can never win her because Stella always puts Laurel first. Anne Shirley as Laurel is over-the-top at times but avoids making her character annoying and she is generally effective. The emotional bond between mother and daughter is convincingly and movingly portrayed.



King Vidor never allows the inherent sentimentality of the story to overwhelm the film. This is a three-hankie weepie but he’s never overly obvious.

There are many people who believe that women got better roles in the pre-code era than they did post-Code. I don’t agree and Stella Dallas is a good example of the much more emotionally challenging roles that actresses got in the late 30s and in the 40s.

The Spanish DVD from Regia Films is a little grainy at times but generally it’s a very good transfer. It includes the original English-language version as well as the dubbed Spanish version and it seems to be the easiest DVD edition of this film to get hold of. I recommend both the movie and the DVD.

The Birds - Camille Paglia

Camille Paglia’s book on Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (published by the British Film Institute in 1998) focuses, not surprisingly, more on the women in the movie than on the birds.

This approach is I think quite justified. It’s easy to get carried away by the technical achievements of the film (which were mightily impressive in 1963) but given Hitchcock’s obsession with women and his famously ambivalent attitudes towards them it makes sense to concentrate on the fascinating dynamics between the various female characters.

There’s certainly a power struggle going on between Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) and Mitch’s rather possessive mother Lydia (Jessica Tandy), and of course there’s the rivalry between Melanie and Annie (Suzanne Pleshette) for Mitch’s affections.

Paglia also notes the gradual disintegration of Melanie. She starts out as confident and assertive, perhaps even aggressive. Her pursuit of Mitch is certainly aggressive. She has the self-confidence that money brings, but as  is often the case with inherited rather than earned wealth it’s a rather superficial self-confidence. By the end of the movie she’s down, if not quite out. And Lydia has reasserted her power.

Paglia sees a parallel between the remorseless and mysterious power of nature and female power. Paglia has never subscribed to a view of women as powerless and this sort of parallel not surprisingly appeals to her.

She also makes a strong case that Tippi Hedren’s performance has been under-appreciated and I think she’s right. Considering her inexperience her roles in the two movies she made with Hitchcock, The Birds and Marnie, were both very demanding and in both cases she acquitted herself well.

I’ve always considered The Birds to be one of Hitchcock’s masterpieces and Paglia’s book makes me want to watch this movie yet again, even though I’ve seen it at least a dozen times. The book is typical Paglia - provocative and amusing and idiosyncratic. I highly recommend it.

The Crash (1932)

The Crash is a cynical little pre-code romance enlivened by some energetic performances. It’s not quite a top-tier pre-code movie but it’s worth a look.

Geoffrey Gault (George Brent) is a New York City stockbroker, married to Linda (Ruth Chatterton. Geoffrey is in love with Linda in his own way but he has no scruples about using her to further his business. Linda is very much in love with Geoffrey’s money. That’s not to say that she isn’t fond of him, but she is more fond of money than anything else in life. Linda grew up in poverty and she is horrified by it. As she freely admits, it scares her.

They’re doing pretty well. Geoffrey’s success as a stockbroker is based on inside knowledge, knowledge that Linda obtains for him. She gets this information by using her charms. How far she actually goes to obtain the information is left to our imagination but we can be quite certain than neither Geoffrey nor Linda are constrained by any considerations of morality. And Linda gets bored easily and she likes men. We can be fairly sure that sometimes she employs her charms even when there’s no information to be had.

They’re happy in their own way. They’re rich, and that’s their way of being happy.



Then comes the stock market crash. When the first rumblings of trouble are heard Geoffrey asks Linda to get the inside dope from John Fair. He’s the man who would know if there was any likelihood that the market was really going to go bad. Fair has been pursuing Linda for years and he’s become weary of the fruitless pursuit and this time he won’t play ball unless Linda can offer him something to make it worth her while, which she refuses to do. When Geoffrey asks her what she’s found out she’s not in a very good mood and doesn’t want to admit that she’s failed so she tells him the market is fine.

This will have devastating consequences, and not just for Geoffrey and Linda. The next day the market crashes and by lunchtime Geoffrey is wiped out. And so are all their servants - they’ve all been making use of Linda’s information as well to play the market.

The stock market crash is just too awful and too tedious for Linda to bear so she begs Geoffrey for some money (which is in fact virtually all the money he has left) so she can get away from all this unpleasantness. She sails for Bermuda.



In Bermuda she meets an Englishman named Ronnie Sanderson (Paul Cavanagh). He has a sheep station in Australia. Linda finds the idea of sheep almost as horrible as the idea of Australia but on the other hand Ronnie does have money. And Geoffrey has none. She can’t possibly be expected to live without money. Ronnie is a nice enough fellow, she becomes quite fond of him, and he does have money. When he suggests that she should divorce Geoffrey and marry him, well really what can she do? If Geoffrey has been inconsiderate enough to lose all his money that’s hardly her fault.

Linda is still not completely broke. She still has her pearls and they cost Geoffrey $90,000. At least she had her pearls until her maid Celeste stole them to get her boyfriend out of prison. He’s been embezzling money to try to recoup the losses he made on the stock market following Linda’s phony tip from John Fair. Linda doesn’t have the heart to hand Celeste over to the police so now she’s really broke. Things are so desperate than when she returns to New York she is forced to make the ultimate sacrifice. She gets a job. But there’s still that offer from Ronnie Sanderson and maybe she could learn to like Australia. Maybe she could even learn to like sheep.



Linda is a pretty appalling character, entirely without morals. It’s not that she’s incapable of love. She loves money very much indeed. It’s just never occurred to her that there might be anything else worth loving. Ruth Chatterton manages to make us almost like Linda. She’s so brazen about her selfishness, and so unapologetic about it, that we almost admire her. Chatterton approaches the role with whole-hearted enthusiasm.

George Brent manages to do something similar with the role of Geoffrey. Geoffrey is pathetic and despicable but he has a certain breezy boyish charm about it.

The supporting cast is solid, with Henry Kolker’s turn as John Fair being particularly good.

This is cynicism done with enough style and with a sufficiently light touch to make it fun. The movie wants us to be appalled by these two people but it wants us to like them as well. They’re really just spoilt children who have been able to avoid growing up. Their money sheltered them for years from confronting anything as tiresome as real emotions or real responsibility. When they do have to confront such things it comes as something for which they are entirely unprepared. Now they’re faced by a stark choice - whether to continue their childish existences or to grow up.



At 58 minutes this is a very short movie even by early 30s standards but director William Dieterle keeps things moving along so briskly that he has more than enough time to accommodate what is in truth a fairly sketchy plot.

The sheer cynicism on which Geoffrey and Linda’s marriage is based marks this as being very much in typical pre-code territory.

The movie approaches the stock market crash in such a whimsical manner as to be almost shocking. The scene in which the servants are queued up desperately trying to telephone their brokers is a nicely sardonic touch.

This movie is paired with Registered Nurse on one made-on-demand disc from the Warner Archive series. The print of The Crash is mostly excellent with just a few minor flaws that can be easily overlooked.

An amusing and diverting little movie that pre-code fans should enjoy. Recommended.

The Lady from Shanghai (1947)

In 1946 Orson Welles had scored a surprise hit with The Stranger (a movie Welles considered to be the weakest movie of his entire career). On the strength of this he was able to persuade Harry Cohn to let him make The Lady from Shanghai at Columbia. For which we can be eternally grateful to Cohn since The Lady from Shanghai is one of Welles’ greatest movies.

Welles had intended the movie to be an unassuming B-movie, but that all changed when his wife Rita Hayworth persuaded him to cast her as the female lead (she was hoping that making a movie together would save their marriage but her hopes were to be dashed). Hayworth’s presence immediately upgraded the movie to A-picture status. While Welles had not intended the picture to be such a big production on the plus side it did mean he had some real money to work with, and was able to persuade Cohn to allow him to do much of the movie on location. The movie was not released until 1948 but it was shot in 1946 making it one of the first film noir titles to be shot largely on location.



Michael O’Hara (Orson Welles) is a sailor with a colourful past. He thinks he’s seen a great deal of life but he is about to find himself frighteningly out of his depth. He has just met Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth) and now his life is about to spin dangerously out of control. Elsa is married to the country’s top criminal lawyer, Arthur Bannister (Everett Sloane). Michael knows that chasing married women is a bad idea but it’s too late now. He’s hooked. It’s actually Arthur Bannister who persuades him to sign on as crew for the couple’s luxury yacht. When a married woman’s husband persuades a man he knows is obsessed with his wife to join them on a cruise, well when that happens the smart thing to do is to run. But Michael hasn’t done a single smart thing since he met Elsa.

Also on board the yacht is Arthur Bannister’s law partner, George Grisby (Glenn Anders). It’s immediately clear that Arthur and Elsa Bannister and George Grisby are three very strange and dangerous people. They enjoy playing games with other people, the way a cat enjoys playing games with mice. In one memorable scene Michael compares them to sharks so crazed by blood that they devour each other. In fact, compared to this trio, sharks are comparatively harmless creatures.



It’s also clear that the Bannisters’ marriage is deeply unhealthy. Arthur Bannister is a cripple and he’s much older than Elsa. It’s never explicitly stated but we’re free to assume that Elsa doesn’t get much satisfaction out of the marriage, either sexual or emotional. In fact it appears that Arthur Bannister gets his jollies from watching innocents like Michael take the offered bait and then watching them wriggle once they’re hooked.

The games played by the Bannisters and by Grisby will lead to murder and Michael will find himself caught in the middle. The really dangerous thing is that this is a game where there are three puppet-masters all pulling the strings. Michael is hopelessly out of his depth, and he’s more obsessed by Elsa than ever.



This is film noir but it’s more than just film noir. It’s also a psycho-sexual thriller and Welles is at the top of his form. The movie died at the US box office although it did very well in Europe. Harry Cohn had been hoping for a straightforward crime thriller but he’d hired Orson Welles and what he got was an Orson Welles movie. Stylistically this is perhaps the most flamboyant and eccentric thing Welles had done up to that point in his career. It was all much too much for American audiences at the time. The casting of Rita Hayworth may also have damaged the movie’s chances because this was most definitely not what audiences expected from a Rita Hayworth movie.

Welles had decided to change Hayworth’s image radically. The long red locks were shorn (much to Harry Cohn’s horror) and her hair was died blonde. The change of image was appropriate since this movie and this role were very different from anything Hayworth had done before. Audiences might not have been pleased but in fact Hayworth is absolutely superb. This movie should have established her credentials as a serious actress once and for all, but it was not to be.



Welles’ performance is very good but he’s overshadowed by the other major players. I’m certain this was a deliberate decision on his part. Michael O’Hara is a regular guy who finds himself in a world of extravagant psychologically pathological exotics. Michael is the fly in a web spun by three spiders and it’s important that he should be shown as being powerless. He is not calling the shots. He quite rightly keeps his own performance as low-key as possible.

Hayworth as Elsa, Everett Sloane as her husband and Glenn Anders as Grisby dominate the movie and all give powerhouse performances. Hayworth this time is a true femme fatale (which she had not been in Gilda) and she exudes a terrifyingly potent but dangerous sexuality. In one scene Arthur Bannister explains that a tough guy is a guy who has an edge. His edge comes from money and from his powerful if twisted intellect. Elsa’s edge is sex and she knows how to use it.



The movie was shot on location in San Francisco and Mexico and on board Errol Flynn’s yacht (with, according to some accounts, Flynn below decks drunk as a lord and thoroughly enjoying the proceedings). The making of the movie was delayed when Hayworth fell ill and as a result the location shooting was curtailed and the picture had to be completed on a sound stage. Welles always firmly believed that a director should be prepared to make use of accidents and in this case he later felt that the artificiality of the sequences done in the studio actually enhanced the picture, giving those sequences a dream-like quality.

Of course the highlight of the movie is the spectacular fun-house set-piece at the end. Sadly much of this sequence was lost in the editing process, much to the disappointment of Welles. Enough remains to make it one of the greatest set-pieces in movie history.



Columbia’s Region 2 DVD release includes a commentary track by Peter Bogdanovich. It’s  typical Bogdanovich - chatty, informative, enthusiastic and entertaining. He got to know Welles quite well in the latter part of the great director’s life. Possibly the most interesting thing he learnt was that Welles wasn’t deliberately trying to be stylistically eccentric. He simply shot scenes the way that felt right for him. It just happened that the way that felt right for Welles was nothing like the way most directors would have done things.

We don’t have The Lady from Shanghai in the form that Welles intended. He was particularly distressed by the unimaginative score which was imposed on the film, a score that was directly contrary to his intentions. But what we have is still a very great movie. Very highly recommended.

Bright Lights (1930)

Bright Lights (AKA Adventures in Africa) is a fascinating pre-code oddity, a backstage musical with romance and even a murder. This Warner Brothers release was made under the First National Pictures banner in 1930 with Michael Curtiz in the director’s chair.

Louanne (Dorothy Mackaill) is a major Broadway musical star who has snared a rich husband. At least she’s almost snared him - they’re going to get married after her final performance in her current stage hit, Bright Lights.



Louanne doesn’t really love this rich man, Emerson Fairchild, but he’s crazy about her and it seems like too good a chance to miss. His family aren’t exactly over the moon about the idea of the son and heir marrying an actress but they’ve reluctantly acquiesced. Louanne is actually in love with fellow performer Wally Dean (Frank Fay) although she won’t admit it to herself. He’s in love with her but he refuses to stand in the way of her marriage. He intends to bow out gracefully.

She’s given her husband-to-be a rather sanitised account of her past. As she tells this cleaned-up version of her life story to reporters we get several flashbacks that make it clear that her past was rather more colourful than she’s admitted. She worked in a series of sleazy dives in Africa (hence the alternative title) as well as doing the carnival circuit. In Africa she had made the acquaintance of Portuguese diamond smuggler Miguel Parada (Noah Beery), an encounter that ended rather badly. Miguel has the scars to prove it.



The final night goes off with a bang, literally - it culminates in a murder. In fact everything seems to be conspiring to sabotage Louanne’s wedding plans, with her past threatening to catch up with her.

Dorothy Mackaill had worked in the Ziegfeld Follies in the early 20s so she has no trouble handling the singing and dancing. She also has no trouble handling the movie’s mixture of comedy and drama. She gives a spirited performance as always. Mackaill had been a major star in the silent cinema but her career was over by 1934. Why her career crashed remains something of a mystery - there was certainly nothing wrong with her performances  during the pre-code era.



Frank Fay had been a big star in vaudeville but his film career was patchy, largely due no doubt to his chronic drinking problems. He makes an engagingly sympathetic leading man.  His major success was as a comic but he proves more than adequate as a dramatic actor and his vaudeville background makes him the perfect choice for this movie. Like Mackaill he has no difficulty at all with the musical and comedy elements in this movie.

Frank McHugh provides comic relief as a drunken reporter with a fondness for chorus girls.

Michael Curtiz was one of those directors who could work in any genre (and he worked in them all) and despite the slightness of the plot he keeps the movie rolling at a suitably frenetic pace.



The musical numbers are not as lavish as those in the great Warner Brothers musicals of the 30s but they’re still reasonably impressive, and this being a pre-code movie they’re fairly outrageous with the Cannibal Love number being a highlight.

The murder angle is handled in a typically pre-code manner. Murder is not a matter to be taken too seriously and no-one is worried about whether justice is seen to be done or not.



This is lightweight fun, typical of the breezy pre-code style. It’s a fine showcase for Dorothy Mackaill’s considerable talents and while it reaches no great heights it’s consistently entertaining. Pre-code fans won’t want to miss this one.

This movie is paired on a single disc with The Reckless Hour in a Dorothy Mackaill double-header in the made-on-demand Warner Archive series. It’s an unrestored print but it’s quite serviceable.

The Crooked Way (1949)

The Crooked Way is a good stylish B noir that deserves to be a lot better known than it is. This 1949 United Artists release has a lot going for it with John Alton’s superb cinematography being a highlight.

Eddie Rice (John Payne) is a war veteran without a past. He has a piece of shrapnel lodged in his brain and he is suffering from amnesia. As the doctor explains to him, this is not the sort of amnesia than can be treated by psychotherapy. It’s organic and it’s permanent. There is however a way he can regain something at least of his past. Army records show he enlisted in Los Angeles so the chances are that’s where he lived. If he goes back there he may find someone who knew him, someone who can fill in the blanks in his life.

Eddie soon discovers that while he can remember nothing of his life there are plenty of people who remember him. They remember him as Eddie Riccardi. And none too fondly either. He makes the unsettling discovery that he was a hoodlum. That’s bad enough, but he double-crossed his partner in crime, Vince Alexander (Sonny Tufts), by turning state’s evidence against him. Vince is now a major gang boss and he’s a man who is not inclined to forgive or forget.

The police don’t remember Eddie with much affection either. They assume he’s back in town to pick up his criminal career where he left off. They’re not going to be very helpful to him and Eddie will soon need all the help he can get.

Vince’s initial reaction is to have Eddie beaten up. He considers killing him but he comes up with a better idea. If Eddie sticks around Vince may be able to get his revenge and have Eddie help him out of a tight spot. Vince has had one of his men killed for sqealing to the cops so maybe he can pin the murder on Eddie. That would be a nice way to get his revenge. And subsequent events provide Vince with an even better chance to frame Eddie and escape the rap for an even bigger crime.

Eddie’s only possible ally is Nina (Ellen Drew). Nina works in Vince’s gambling joint but she is also Eddie’s ex-wife. Eddie Riccardi treated Nina very badly, but Eddie is not Eddie Riccardi any more. Eddie Riccardi died when he took that piece of shrapnel in Italy during the war. Now he’s a different man, but can he convince Nina of that? And he needs Nina’s help badly.

Eddie Rice might have the same personality traits as Eddie Riccardi but he knows the mistakes Eddie Riccardi made, the mistakes that led him to choose the crooked way. Eddie is older and wiser and since he has no memories of his unpleasant past he hasn’t been hardened and twisted by that life. He is the man Eddie Riccardi might have been if he’d made smarter choices.

Of course the really smart thing for Eddie Rice to do would be to get out of LA and start a new life somewhere else. Start the decent life he now wants. Get an honest job, get married, have a family. That’s the sort of life that Eddie Rice would like. There are however two reasons why he can’t just do that. The first reason is that Vince has now got him embroiled in big trouble with the cops. The second reason is that just as Eddie Riccardi once loved Nina, Eddie Rice now finds he’s falling for her as well. And she is his ex-wife and if he’s going to find redemption he’s not going to find it by running out on her again, especially as she is now just as deeply involved in the mess Vince has gotten Eddie into as Eddie himself.

Amnesia was a bit of an obsession with Hollywood in the 40s. This is one of the more successful attempts to deal with this theme. Of course the plot requires a certain amount of suspension of disbelief but the movie is sufficiently well-crafted to provide that. The amnesia theme also neatly gives us a classic noir set-up - Eddie Riccardi may have been a gangster but Eddie Rice is an innocent man, and a decent man, who is being sucked into the noir nightmare world.

John Payne was always good in film noir. He conveys the right blend of toughness and sensitivity and his tendency to underplay his performances is perfect for noir. Eddie Rice doesn’t have time to indulge himself in self-pity - he’s too busy trying to survive.

Sonny Tufts is an excellent villain, playing Vince as a man always on the edge of violence. Ellen Drew is quite competent as the heroine who combines the attributes of the noir good girl with just a hint of femme fatale. She’s not a bad woman but she’s been hardened by her life and she’s no angel.

Director Robert Florey had a long career in film and later in television and he knew how to make a solid no-nonsense B crime thriller.

Of course the real star, as so often, is John Alton’s moody cinematography. No-one ever did noir cinematography better than Alton. He captures the noir mood effortlessly and gives us a wonderfully seedy but compulsively watchable view of the underside of LA in the 40s.

Geneon’s Region 1 DVD is barebones but it’s an acceptable if not pristine transfer and since it comes at a budget price it’s worth grabbing.

The Crooked Way is content to be a very good well-made B movie and I highly recommend it.

The Reckless Hour (1931)

The Reckless Hour isn’t one of the great pre-code movies but it’s worth a look if only for the performances.

Margie Nichols (Dorothy Mackaill) models clothes for a fashion house. She lives with her parents and her sister above her father’s bookshop. Her father is rather dotty but he’s a kind old gentleman who worships his daughters. Margie has been dating Harry Gleason (Joe Donahue) but she’s not really that interested. He’s not rich enough or glamorous enough for her. That’s fine by Myrtle (Joan Blondell) because if Margie doesn’t want him she’d be happy to take him off her hands.

It’s pretty clear that underneath her surface sophistication and glamour Margie has a lot less understanding of men than Myrtle has. Myrtle can look at Harry and see that while he’s not an obvious great catch he’s a nice guy and basically decent and a girl could do a lot worse. Myrtle has a firm grip on reality and if a halfway decent man comes along she intends to get a firm grip on him as well.

Margie has meanwhile found what she imagines is the ideal man. Allen Crane (Walter Byron)  is rich and handsome and he and his friends have lots of fun. The more level-headed Myrtle hears the alarm bells going straight away. If a man seems too good to be true, run. And this one has cad written all over him.



Margie however has convinced herself that he loves her and that they will be married. Pretty soon they’re sleeping together.

Of course you can see what’s going to happen next but Margie can’t see it at all. The inevitable disaster ensues.

Margie’s father stands by her but his loyalty to his daughter will have unfortunate consequences. Needing money urgently for Margie’s sake he gets sucked into a get-rich-quick scheme and that turns out the way you’d expect it to as well.



Allen Crane’s friend Edward Adams (Conrad Nagel) is a different kettle of fish. While Allen is not ready for the responsibilities of marriage (and probably never will be) Edward has already taken that step. And he’s been hurt as badly as Margie has. It’s made him bitter towards women but underneath the bitterness he’s quite a nice guy (and more of man than Allen will ever be) and he’s rather taken by Margie. The question is, can she penetrate his cynical bitter exterior to get to the real man underneath? And does she still have a chance for happiness?

The plot was old even in 1931. Allen is a stock-standard melodrama cad and Margie is a stock-standard naïve poor girl just waiting for a cad to come along and ruin her.



Director John Francis Dillon isn’t exactly inspired either, so this movie has quite a few things running against it. What saves it are the performances.

Dorothy Mackaill is one of the great forgotten Hollywood actresses. A big star in the silent era she seemed to be making a successful transition to talkies in the early 30s but the end of the pre-code era also marked the end of her career. She did virtually nothing at all after 1934. That’s a great pity because she was a fine actress and she manages not to make Margie’s naïvete irritating, which is quite a feat. She gets the blend of innocence and surface sophistication just right and she manages to be hardboiled and vulnerable at the same time.



Joan Blondell once again finds herself in a supporting role, which was pretty much the story of her career, always playing the heroine’s best friend (or as in this case the heroine’s sister). As late as 1957 in Desk Set she was still playing the female lead’s best friend! As always she’s delightful and funny and engagingly sassy.

The male characters are less developed but Conrad Nagel is impressive while Walter Byron is an entertaining if predictable cad. H. B. Warner gives the role of Margie’s father the combination of dignity and kindliness that it requires.



Warner’s made-on-demand DVD includes this picture and other Dorothy Mackaill pre-code film, Bright Lights. The prints are unrestored and there are occasional sound problems but picture quality is generally good. Given the obscurity of these movies this is the best they’re ever going to look and this double feature is worth grabbing.

A movie that is worth seeing if only for Dorothy Mackaill and Joan Blondell. Recommended  as long as your expectations aren’t too high. And it does have a considerable quantity of pre-code frankness about pre-marital and extra-marital sex.