Monthly Archives: April 2022

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.

Red-Headed Woman
Directed by Jack Conway
Written by Anita Loos from a book by Katharine Brush
1932/US
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 1

Lil Andrews: Listen, Sally, I made up my mind a long time ago, I’m not gonna spend my whole life on the wrong side of the railroad tracks.
Sally: Well, I hope you don’t get hit by a train while you’re crossing over.

Jean Harlow makes a good pre-Code temptress.

Lil Andrews (Harlow) works in an office and is roommates with the wise-cracking Sally (Una Merkel).  She has decided that her best route to wealth is through seducing her married boss Bill Legendre Jr. (Chester Morris).  Bill is not an easy catch because he is in love with his wife Irene (Leila Hyams) who he has known since he was a child.  But Harlow is absolutely relentless and, well, she is an expert at breaking down resistance.  Once she has hooked him, they are surprised by Irene.  A divorce soon follows and Bill marries Lil.

Bill ran with the country club set.  All his friends look down on Lil both because of their friendship with Irene and because her sense of taste and decorum are strictly from the other side of the railroad tracks.  Bill is quickly tired of Lil.  But Lil is determined to climb the social ladder and there are other patsies waiting in the wings.  With Charles Boyer as a chauffeur.

This film made an interesting contrast with Baby Face (1933).  I found Barbara Stanwyck the more sympathetic of the anti-heroines, probably because her film took time to show her backstory.  Harlow’s character comes off more like a stalker.  Don’t get me wrong the film is enjoyable and Harlow makes a gorgeous red head.  I love Una Merkel and her scenes were the best in the film as far as I was concerned.

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.

Ladies They Talk About
Directed by Howard Bretherton and William Keighley
Written by Brown Holmes, William McGrath and Sidney Sutherland from a play by Dorothy Mackaye and Carlton Miles
1933/US
Warner Bros.
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Forbidden Hollywood Collection

Susie: Listen. Don’t think you can walk in here and take over this joint. There’s a lot of big sharks in here that just live on fresh fish like you.
Nan Taylor: Yeah, when they add you up what do you spell?

What could be more fun than a pre-Code women’s prison movie starring Barbara Stanwyck at her seductive bad girl best?  Not much, according to me.

Nan Taylor works with a bank robbing gang as sort of a shill and a watchdog. Although she is disguised as a blonde, she is easily recognized by a policeman as somebody he picked up before and the cops make short work of their investigation.

Dan Slade is both a prosecutor and an evangelist. He instantly falls for Barbara but also convicts her for her crime. She serves her sentence in the women’s prison at San Quentin, where she is as tough as any of the other girls .  She hates Dan and refuses his many requests to visit … at least until she can use him for her gang’s escape attempt.   With Lillian Roth as a fellow inmate and Ruth Donnelly as a guard.

I thought this was ultra fun. Stanwyck is absolutely gorgeous and beautifully dressed by Orry Kelly. The script is sharp and her delivery is spot on. This is the seductive bad Stanwyck we have learned to love. The women’s prison is a hoot! The prisoners spend most of their time in a common area when they aren’t smoking in the bathroom. Stanwyck’s cell looks exactly like a bedroom. Each prisoner has a distinctive uniform with lace etc. And they are all expert wisecrackers. My favorite scene from the film is when Lillian Roth sings “If I Could Be with You (One Hour Tonight)” to a pin-up of Joe E. Brown. IMO, one of the essential Stanwyck pre-code films.  Recommended.

Even though it’s a cockatoo and the scene isn’t politically correct, this really made me laugh.