Baby Face (1933)

Baby Face
Directed by Arthur E. Green
Written by Gene Markey and Kathryn Scola; story by Darryl F. Zanuck (as Mark Canfield)
1933/US
Warner Bros.
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Forbidden Hollywood Collection

Lily Powers: Of course, if Fuzzy Wuzzy really wants to give me something, he could put a few more pennies in my bank account.
J.P. Carter: My Dear, ask me something difficult.

To me this is the epitome of all that is Pre-Code.

Smart and sassy Lily Powers (Barbara Stanwyck) has been raised in squalor by her abusive father who runs a low-rent saloon and brews his own liquor.  She has been encouraged to be nice to the male clients since she was 14.  They all grab and paw at her. Now she hates men.  One night, her father empties the joint so she can spend some alone time with the politician who protects the saloon from the cops.  Lily breaks a bottle over his head.  Shortly thereafter, the saloon’s still catches fire killing her father in the process.

Friedrich Nietzsche: Face life as you find it – defiantly and unafraid. Waste no energy yearning for the moon. Crush out all sentiment.

Lily turns to a fatherly friend for advice.  He tells her that her youth and beauty gives her power over men and she should use it to get ahead.  Exploit or be exploited.

So Lily and her maid (Theresa Harris) hop a train bound for New York with $4 between them.  On arrival, they see a bank several stories high and Lily sets her sights on the top floor.  She gets advice from a friendly policemen and starts her career by seducing a personnel clerk and winning a job as a secretary.  She doesn’t stick to small fry for long, seducing each new boss in turn until she reaches the tippy top and makes bank president Courtland Trenholm (George Brent) fall in love with her. With John Wayne as one of the small-fry and Douglass Dumbrill as one of the bosses.

The plot description doesn’t convey how really fun and funny this movie is. Stanwyck is quick with some great one-liners and her procession of lotharios are comically dense. Little lingerie but this is about as risque as it gets.  Very highly recommended.

I watched the pre-theatrical release of the movie this time which includes scenes cut by censors before theatrical release.  I can’t remember my first viewing scene by scene.  I do know that the version I watched yesterday omits a scene where the fatherly guy is appalled by what Lily is doing and tells her she has got Nieztsche all wrong.

This is the end of my Stanwyck pre-code retrospective.  It has been great fun. I will next tackle the 40+ movies in TCM’s “Forbidden Hollywood” collection.  Red-Headed Woman (1932) up today.