Waterloo Bridge (1931)

Waterloo Bridge
Directed by James Whale
Written by Benn Levy and Tom Reed from a play by Robert E. Sherwood
1931/US
Universal Pictures
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Forbidden Hollywood Collection

Roy Cronin: Where would I be likely to find her?
Mrs. Hobley: Oh, anywhere along the Strand, Leicester Square, Piccadilly. And of course there’s always Waterloo Bridge. A good many of ’em hangs about there to try to get the soldiers just coming in on leave.

James Whale shows that he was much more than a director of monsters in this sensitive portrait of doomed lovers.

The setting is WWI London.  Myra (Mae Clarke) was a chorus girl in a West End musical but has been out of work since the show closed two years earlier.  She now works the streets but has so much competition she is behind on her rent and everything else.

One night when she is cruising Waterloo Bridge looking for doughboys to pick up, she is caught in an air raid with fellow American Roy Cronin (Kent Douglass).  He escorts her back to her flat.  She doesn’t reveal her occupation and he doesn’t ask.  Instead, he begins courting her.

Roy tricks Myra into visiting his family who have a country estate near London.  They welcome her but Roy’s mother takes a private moment to have a conversation with Myra about the fate of their romance.  Roy is hearing wedding bells.  Both mother and Myra know this is impossible.  But Roy is set on the idea.  With Bette Davis in her third movie appearance as Roy’s sister.

1931 was the year of Mae Clark who did well in a wide range of roles – the fiance in Frankenstein, Jimmy Cagney’s rather strait-laced moll in The Public Enemy and as a sensitive but street-wise woman in this one. I enjoyed Whale’s restrained handling of the melodrama. I could have lived without the ending. I didn’t know they would have to resort to that in the pre-Code days. Highly recommended.