Skyscraper Souls
Directed by Edgar Selwyn
Written by C. Gardner Sullivan from a novel by Faith Baldwin
1932/US
Cosmopolitan Productions for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
IMDb page
First viewing/Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 7
David ‘Dave’ Dwight: They laughed at me when I said I wanted a hundred-story building. They said it wouldn’t hold together. But I had the courage and the vision and it’s MINE and I own it! It goes halfway to hell and right up to heaven and it’s beautiful!
Director Selwyn tries to stuff an expose of capitalism run rampant, a love triangle, and a couple of other romances into 90 minutes with mixed success.
Dave Duke (Warren William) is obsessed with the skyscraper he owns and is named after him. He needs capital to continue to own the building and will resort to low tricks to keep it. Duke is a great womanizer. He has an open marriage with his wife (Hedda Hopper) who lives in Europe. Currently he is having an affair with his executive assistant Sarah Dennis (Verree) Teasdale whom he keeps at arms length by claiming his wife won’t divorce him. Soon he begins to mess with Sarah’s secretary and protege Lynn Harding (Maureen O’Sullivan).
Meanwhile, Lynn is being pursued by bank teller Tom (Norman Foster). She gives him the cold shoulder initially but soon begins to date him. They fall in love but she tells him she can’t marry a man without money. Then Dave pounces. There are a couple of other unresolved romances – one between Jake Sorenson (Jean Hersholt) and prostitute Jenny (Anita Page) and one between Slim (Wallace Ford) and the perpetually hard up Myra (Helen Coburn). I’ll stop here. The film gets more and more lurid until its stunning climax.
This movie simply has too much plot. It could have cut a couple of unnecessary romances that only confuse the point. Then maybe we would have the time to explore Maureen O’Sullivan’s sudden and disconcerting change from good girl to bad girl and back again. Warren William’s character is so despicable that you can only applaud his fate. We do get a nice art deco office building and some pretty good acting.
