Daily Archives: May 23, 2018

Red-Headed Woman (1932)

Posted on May 23, 2018 | 10 comments

Red-Headed Woman
Directed by Jack Conway
Written by Anita Loos from the novel by Katherine Bush
1932/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/FilmStruck

 

[box] Man Outside Pool Hall: There’s a dame. Strictly on the level, like a flight of stairs.[/box]

Jean Harlow has sex appeal to spare. But her character is pretty unappealing in this one.

Lil Andrews (Harlow) has a great body to go with her bright red hair and she knows it.  She goes on a single-minded campaign to bed and wed her boss Biill (Chester Morris).  Bill is the son of the company president and is very much in love with his wife (Leila Hyams), his childhood sweetheart.  Through pure unmitigated gall, Lil manages her homewrecking mission but is disappointed when Bill’s crowd refuses to have anything to do with her.

Eventually Lil sets her sights on a much-older tycoon that disapproves of her mightily.  She initially wins him over.  Can Lil’s wicked ways succeed forever?  With Una Merkel, wonderful as usual, as Lil’s wise-cracking friend.

I like it better when Harlow is the one doing the wise-cracking.  I found her character just plain annoying in this.

Clip

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Posted in Pre-Code Reviews

The Story of Temple Drake (1933)

Posted on May 23, 2018 | 2 comments

The Story of Temple Drake
Directed by Stephen Roberts
Written by Oliver H.P. Garrett from the novel “Sanctuary” by William Faulkner
1933/USA
Paramount Pictures
First viewing/YouTube

Ruby Lemar: [to Temple Drake] Now you’re satisfied. You got ’em all fightin’ over ya. You nice women. I know your kind. You get a kick out of playin’ with kids. Burnin’ their gas. Eatin’ their food. Spendin’ their money. And whatdya give em? Always got away with it before, ain’t ya? And now you’re scared. ‘Cause these ain’t kids, they’re men. If one of em laid a finger on ya, you’d faint.

Frank treatment of rape and lurid violence label this film pre-Code practically from word go.

Temple Drake (Miriam Hopkins) is the granddaughter of the local judge and has been raised to be a Southern Belle.  Grandad wants her to marry attorney Stephen Benbow (William Gargan).  But Temple is “wild” and has unfulfilled desires that prevent her from committing to one man.  On the night he proposes once again, she goes joyriding with an already drunk boy from her set and he crashes the car.  Miles from home and in a rainstorm, the two proceed to a cabin where the boy swiftly leaves the picture.

The cabin is occupied by some hillbilly types and a bootlegger (Jack La Rue).  All of them eye Temple with great interest.  In the end, it is the bootlegger that attacks her.  He takes her to town where he basically makes her a prisoner.  I won’t reveal much more.  The film ends up as a courtroom drama.

This movie is strong on sexual menace and expressionist lighting.  Sometimes Hopkins grates on me but here she hits all the right notes between terror and outrage.

The film was banned in Pennsylvania and Ohio and heavily censored in New York.  The Breen office ordered that it never be re-released after the Code came into effect in 1934. Seems pretty tame by modern standards, but it’s still strong stuff if you read between the lines.

The film is currently available on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHnI4nGiMek

Clip – Hopkins explains why she can’t marry

2 Comments

Posted in 1933, Pre-Code Reviews