LADIES THEY TALK ABOUT: Blu-ray (Warner Bros., 1933) Warner Archive
Hollywood’s pre-code era in
picture-making was particularly rife with hard-boiled dames, unapologetic for
their perceived lack of morals, scruples etc. and playing the ole boy’s club on
their own terms, often with ruthless sexual abandonment and a determination to
claw their way to the top, with convention and religious hang-ups be damned. It
made for excellent melodrama for sure and some highly entertaining and unique
movies where women were decidedly in the driver’s seat, not as America’s little
dumplings, the happy home-maker, or ‘his’ gal Friday, but darkly purposed vixens,
vipers or vengeful sluts with the proverbial axe to grind against all mankind.
After the introduction of Hollywood’s self-governing code of ethics, these
daring departures for the ‘fairer sex’ dried up. A few actresses, like Joan
Crawford and Bette Davis, survived the deluge. However, even their gutsy
heroines were increasingly brought to heel and pay penitence for their wayward
behavior before the final reel. No such redemptive quality on tap in directors,
Howard Bretherton and William Keighley’s Ladies They Talk About (1933),
the story of Nan Taylor (Barbara Stanwyck) – not a gun moll but an active
participant in an otherwise all-male bank-robbery gang. Based on Dorothy
MacKaye and Carlton Miles play, Gangstress (a.k.a. Women in Prison),
Ladies They Talk About is a rather uncompromising portrait of that ‘tougher
than nails’ female who thinks like Cagney and reacts like Bogart. In men, such
details are reassessed as self-determination, hardcore, rugged toughness run
amuck. The female version merely gets distilled into ‘bitch virtuosity’. Sad,
in a way, but telling in others. And MacKaye ought to know, actually having
spent 10-months serving a 1-to-3-year sentence in San Quentin. The particulars
leading up to her incarceration are worth reconsidering: MacKaye, on trial for
her complicity in the murder of Paul Kelly with whom both she and her husband,
Ray Raymond were having an affair. Too bad for MacKaye, hubby was of the
jealous sort, to arrive at a particularly compromising moment. Raymond, violent
and alcohol-induced *no excuses, please) beat Kelly senseless about the head,
enough for him to expire from a brain hemorrhage several days later in
hospital. At trial, MacKaye had tried to obfuscate the bisexual nature of this
affair, laughably to infer Kelly might have died of ‘natural causes.’ It didn’t fly with the jury or the judge.
Personally, I have always loved
Barbara Stanwyck in these kinds of roles. For although Stanwyck, like the
aforementioned Davis and Crawford, managed to survive the code and prosper
under its spirit-crushing edicts for decades to follow, her work, just prior to
its instillation, was nothing short of miraculous, to reveal an alternative
trajectory it might have gone had the code not intervened in Stanwyck’s
particular ilk of smarmy guts, thereafter more slickly packaged as
self-awareness, only moderately burdened by an attack of conscience. Ladies
They Talk About is at its best when analyzing what makes a good girl go bad,
following that progression and fall from grace. The prison scenes are
perfection, (think Orange is the New Black for Depression-era audiences)
and depict Stanwyck’s anti-heroine and her motley crew of contemporaries in all
their enterprising glory. The screenplay by Brown Holmes, William McGrath and
Sidney Sutherland takes great pains to expose the female animal, serving time
behind bars, as no lady, neither misunderstood nor wrongfully accused of being
a hardcore criminal in petticoats. Instead, we learn about their misdemeanors
and their unapologetic investment to get out and break the law again. So, it is
a bit of a disappointment, in the wet noodle finale, a murderous Nan, having
decided she would rather be bad than bonded to any man, tearfully succumbs to
regret. “I didn’t mean to do that!” Nan insists after superficially
shooting her would-be lover and champion in the shoulder. Ever-loyal
hubby-to-be, David Slade, recovers from the initial shock of having his rotary
cuff blasted with a pistol, suggesting to Nan, “It’s nothing!” Nothing
but love of the tear-jerking Hollywood sappy/happy ending sort, with a whiff of
a nervous studio exec pushing for reconciliation to salvage box office and keep
the ever-growing outcry of religion groups, calling for government intervention
into the popular arts at bay. But I digress.
Ladies They Talk
About begins with Nan, an integral member of a motley crew of bank robbers.
Her M.O. is simple, but effective; pose as a flirtatious and sexy distraction
for the security guards while her accomplices steal the cash. Alas, Nan’s luck
is about to run out as one of the police officers on their latest heist
recognizes her from a previous arrest. She is taken into custody. However, Nan’s pleas for reconsideration do
not fall on deaf ears. In fact, she is taken under the wing of reform-minded
radio host, David Slade (Preston S. Foster) who uses his popular clout to press
D.A. Walter Simpson (Robert McWade) for clemency. Slade’s finagling almost
works, until Nan confesses her guilt, forcing Simpson to have her imprisoned.
Now, a ward of San Quentin, Nan meets her fellow inmates, Linda (Lillian Roth),
Sister Susie (Dorothy Burgess) and Aunt Maggie (Maude Eburne). Aside: the
verisimilitude in Roth’s own downward spiral and eventual incarceration is
worth noting here. The Boston-born Roth, who began life as an aspiring torch
singer with a move to New York in 1916, was, by 1933, heading places…or so it
would seem. Then, it all began to fall apart. The introvert was plagued by
crippling bouts of anxiety. After the sudden, unexpected death of her fiancé,
Roth turned to the bottle for solace, entering a mental institution for her
addiction, and finally, to turn her life around, revealing all in the
unvarnished autobiography, ‘I’ll Cry Tomorrow’ – eventually turned into
an Oscar-winning movie of the same name. In her emeritus years, Roth made a
return to pictures and her recording career, never quite to recapture the
limelight of her promising youth. But she proved a rather indestructible force
of nature who somehow went through this trial by fire and survive the
burns. Knowing this actually strengthens
our appreciation for Roth’s brief turn in Ladies They Talk About. She,
among these rough gals, offers a rare ray of vulnerability.
But back to the plot, to involve
the prison’s stone-faced matron, Noonan (Ruth Donnally). On the outside, and
still carrying his torch for Nan, Slade writes her daily. She, however, resists
his entreaties, struggling to reconcile what this milquetoast might perceive as
redeemable in her. Susie, however, takes a shine to Slade and comes to resent
Nan for rejecting what she would willingly snatch up in a heartbeat. Meanwhile, one of Nan’s notorious accomplices
on the outside, Lefty Simons (Harold Huber) arrives with ‘good news’. Another
of their troop, Don (Lyle Talbot), whom Nan prefers, is on the men’s side of
the prison. It’s a perfect set up for a jail break especially if Nan manages to
draw a map of the women’s ward and swipe Noonan’s key to make a copy, allowing
the male prisoners to mix in with the female population. Regrettably, Nan
begins to suspect Slade might have tipped off the warden (Robert Warwick) of
their plans as, during the daring execution of their intended getaway, Don and
Nan - briefly reunited – are forever parted when Don is shot dead by guards. Thereafter, another year is added to her
sentence. Bitterly, Nan vows to avenge Don’s death by tracking down Slade once
she is released. Feigning an eagerness to reform, Nan is given clemency for her
‘good work’ and an earlier than planned parole. She immediately attends one of
Slade’s revival meetings, again, under the pretext her time in jail has made
her a new woman. Slade is convinced. Ironically, Nan’s resolve to do him harm
begins to wane. While struggling with her emotions, Nan draws a gun on Slade
who has since professed his love for her. She tries to commit murder but only
manages to superficially wound him in the shoulder. Witnessing this through a
keyhole, Sister Susie tries to have Nan re-arrested so she might have a chance
to win Slade’s heart. Instead, Slade protects Nan from the law, announcing
their intentions to wed.
Despite some incendiary situations
peppered throughout, Ladies They Talk About is a fairly pedestrian
affair, its one salvation, the luminous Stanwyck who commits grave sins against
humanity but somehow manages to do it all with a modicum of class that,
intermingled, translate into sex-appeal plus and really fuels her already
high-octane performance with some truly salacious underpinnings of wickedness
we can simply enjoy for what it is – a woman being so bad she’s good – nee,
great. The rest of the cast are adequate, but otherwise undistinguished.
Particularly disappointing - Preston Foster. One can neither accept his
good-natured and tepidly virtuous Slade as either too-good-to-be-true stud
material or Nan’s loyalist, blind-sided by love. He is simply, and not
altogether, a bit of eye-candy that may or may not have appealed to the paying
female patrons of the day. The actresses cast as prison inmates, apart from the
aforementioned Roth, are solid, but not well-delineated. We get a few moments
of intrigue about their former lives and their current plight in the sisterhood
of damaged dames living together in the big house. But otherwise, this is
Stanwyck’s show, and, for the most part, she has the weight-bearing shoulders to
carry it off. John F. Seitz’s B&W cinematography delivers an appropriately
gritty, ripped from the headlines, visual style akin to the Cagney,
Raft, Bogart golden oldies from the Warner Bros. stable. Retrospectively, Ladies
They Talk About bears far more similarity to this gangster class than the
traditional women’s weepy, eventually to eclipse such tales in the mid-30’s and
throughout the 1940’s. Stanwyck has done
better work elsewhere. And I have always felt she grew into her stardom with
age and far better roles on the horizon as the bloom of youth wore thin,
replaced by a more reserved and infectiously engaging patina of gutsy class to
outshine most of her contemporaries as she gracefully aged and entered her
emeritus years. Ladies They Talk About represents Stanwyck caught in the
cross-hairs of either becoming a rank villainess or pin-up dolly – a persona ill-suited
to her, though it was tried in pictures like Ball of Fire and The
Lady Eve (both in1941) – rare, bright spots from those otherwise awkward
aspirations.
Ladies They Talk
About arrives in pristine fashion from the Warner Archive. WAC has had the
very good fortune to be in possession of not only its own library of classic
movies but also the MGM archives, for the most part, and with obvious
exceptions, properly curated over the decades. That said, due diligence has
once more been applied to these archival elements, ensuring optimal quality in
hi-def. This Blu-ray looks spectacular, belying the age of the movie. The gray
scale is superbly rendered with gorgeous tonality and fine detail
abounding. We can see minute details in
skin hair, clothing, etc. Everything
here is as it should be. You certainly will not be disappointed by the quality,
if, in fact, to only be modestly impressed by the content of the storytelling.
The 2.0 DTS mono sounds excellent with no hiss or pop. WAC has added no extras
here. But the movie really doesn’t warrant any either. Bottom line: Ladies
They Talk About is a solid film, but overall, an unremarkable one. Stanwyck is wonderful, and, even with all the
other shortcomings on tap here, the real/reel reason to keep us coming back
again. A great actress, and a truly great lady besides. Were that we had more
class acts like Barbara Stanwyck in the world of entertainment today. I miss
her kind, and her kindness.
FILM RATING (out
of 5 – 5 being the best)
3
VIDEO/AUDIO
5
EXTRAS
0
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