The Barbara Stanwyck-Jack Benny Connection

It was Sunday, November 28, 1943, and there was trouble behind the scenes on "The Grape Nuts Flakes Program Starring Jack Benny."

The show would be live on the air within hours, and the show's female lead, Mary Livingstone, had laryngitis. And on a radio program there really wasn't a workaround for that. The real-life wife of Jack Benny, Livingstone was Benny's most regular on-air tormentor. Without her, at least half the show would be dead air.

Jack Benny got on the phone. He had to find a substitute, and one person immediately and clearly leapt to mind:

Barbara Stanwyck.

Not just because she could handle the role -- she was Barbara Stanwyck, after all. But also because she was also extremely tight with Jack and Mary. Sure enough, she happily showed up to play Mary's part on short notice.

That, friends, is almost a textbook definition of a solid Hollywood friendship. And it symbolizes the bond between Stanwyck and Jack and Mary Benny -- one that led to Stanwyck's numerous guest appearances on Benny's radio show, and at least one TV sketch with Benny that would end up being a topic of discussion at the U.S. Supreme Court.

First, a little background.

From 1934-55, Jack Benny's Sunday night show was one of the most popular on radio. To most Americans it was almost a religious ritual to check in with Benny, Livingstone, announcer Don Wilson, singer Dennis Day, comic Eddie "Rochester" Anderson and bandleader Phil Harris. It was a tight team and everyone had their place -- Livingstone needled Benny; Day sang a song in his Irish tenor and needled Benny; Anderson, as Benny's valet Rochester, played a "subservient" role and needled Benny; Harris told jokes about his drinking or his band's lack of talent and needled Benny; and Wilson did commercials for Lucky Strike cigarettes or Jell-O or Grape Nuts Flakes and needled Benny.

That was the key to Benny's success -- as talented a comic as he was, with a sense of timing honed by years in vaudeville, Benny was the straight man on his show. He was ridiculed as a ham, a miser, an egotist, a pedant and a lousy violin player. And he cried all the way to the bank. His hold on his Sunday night timeslot was so strong that when General Foods ended its sponsorship of Benny's show in the early 1940s, they gave him the slot to work with any other sponsor he chose.

Despite his on-air image, Benny was a generous boss to his cast and to his writers -- whom he signed to long-term contracts, something unheard in the cutthroat world of radio. They repaid him with great work -- Hollywood stars who didn't usually do radio gladly worked with Benny because they knew the material would be great. Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Danny Kaye, James Stewart -- they all made several appearances with Benny. (Bogart even made a very rare TV appearance on Benny's show.) From 1945-47, Ronald Colman and his wife Benita Hume were practically semi-regulars with Benny, playing themselves as Jack's put-upon Beverly Hills neighbors. At first, Colman was terrified of doing straight comedy, but Benny's encouragement and good scripts helped convince him.

Now back to Barbara Stanwyck.

In real life, Jack and Mary Benny were close friends of Stanwyck and husband Robert Taylor. In her Stanwyck biography Steel-True, Victoria Wilson writes that Stanwyck's adopted son, Dion, was a playmate to Jack and Mary's adopted daughter, Joan. Wilson also writes that Stanwyck would visit the Bennys in Palm Springs, where she would sunbathe nude on the roof. (Makes you wonder if Billy Wilder had that in mind when he wrote Stanwyck's opening scene in "Double Indemnity.") Benny told interviewers that Stanwyck had the best sense of humor in Hollywood.

To make their connection even more complicated, Benny freely admitted that he appropriated his low-key comic style from Stanwyck's abusive ex-husband, Frank Fay, a leading vaudeville comic. When the major studios made their big talking revues in the late 1920s, Fay hosted the Warner Bros. entry, "The Show of Shows," while Benny was a co-host of MGM's "Hollywood Revue of 1929."

Although Benny made a handful of movies, including Ernst Lubitsch's "To Be or Not to Be," he did his best work on the radio. And some of Benny's best radio work consisted of parodies of current movies. We've detailed some of them in other blog posts, like "Dive Bomber" and "City for Conquest." On January 7, 1940, Benny burlesqued "Golden Boy," and Stanwyck went along for the ride. The storyline begins with Jack and Mary at the Biltmore Bowl, a dance hall where Phil Harris played with his band. They come across Stanwyck -- she's good friends with Phil Harris, but she mistakes Jack Benny for bandleader Ben Bernie. Still, Jack convinces her to appear opposite him in his production of "Golden Boy" and they schedule a rehearsal at Jack's house. Listen for yourself:

Wilson writes that Stanwyck refused to accept any payment for her performance, so Benny bought her a sable coat.

This episode is from what, to me at least, is Benny's funniest period, mostly because of the contributions of writers Bill Morrow and Eddie Beloin, who worked for Benny from the mid-1930s until 1943 and gave the show a fresh, eccentric flavor. The team broke up when Morrow was drafted, and Benny turned to a staff of four writers, most of whom would stay with him until the end of his career -- Sam Perrin, Milt Josefsburg, George Balzer and John Tackaberry. From the time of that switch, "The Jack Benny Program" became slicker, more self-referential and, in one guy's opinion, just a little stale, but the show was still a ratings powerhouse. When Benny jumped from NBC to CBS in 1949 for tax reasons, virtually all of his audience jumped with him.    

In June 1953, Benny teamed with Stanwyck for a spoof of "Gaslight," called "Autolight," for his TV series, He had done the sketch on live TV in 1952, so this was simply a way of getting it on film. But once it was in the can, an unusual lawsuit was filed by MGM parent Loews, Inc. They argued that because the sketch incorporated the film's plot to an unusual degree, it went beyond being a parody and constituted "infringement and unfair competition." Benny and his sponsor, the American Tobacco Company, went to court, and the judge found in favor of Loew's. Arguing that the ruling would have a stifling effect on comics and comedy, Benny's lawyers took the case to the Supreme Court in 1957. The next year, the court upheld the lower court's verdict, and Benny knew he was beaten. He bought a seven-year "license to parody" from MGM and the sketch finally aired in January 1959, five and a half years after it was shot.

A couple of notes before you watch:

1. The cartwheeling girl who interrupts the sketch is part of a running joke introduced earlier in the show.

2. The man from Scotland Yard is played by Bob Crosby, who became the show's bandleader after Phil Harris left in 1952.

3. And while you watch, wonder if MGM maybe had a point -- the sketch includes a fair amount of the plot of "Gaslight," albeit infused with jokes about salami and horses in closets. Also notice Stanwyck's reference at the end to her friend, Mary Livingstone:


"Executive Suite," or Separate Tables

The 1954 film "Executive Suite" begins with an ending:



The man lying dead on the Wall Street sidewalk, shot from a POV perspective by director Robert Wise, is Avery Bullard, CEO of the Tredway Corporation of Millburgh, Pennsylvania. Tredway makes furniture, and until about two minutes ago Bullard was the man whose hard-driving leadership had saved Tredway after the suicide of its founder. Now he is gone, with no successor in place -- just an anxious group of vice presidents looking over their shoulders and jockeying for position.
  

Based on a best-selling book by Cameron Hawley, "Executive Suite" is the kind of movie where the credits list the middle names of the characters. Why? To make it all seem a little more sophisticated, maybe, and to make the characters seem a little more three-dimensional than they are.

Still, this is one of my favorite 1950s movies. It's kind of the cinematic equivalent of the mid-century skyscrapers that started popping up about the time the movie was released -- sleek, modern, no big surprises but well constructed. And it has a great cast -- Barbara Stanwyck, Walter Pidgeon, June Allyson, Paul Douglas, Shelley Winters, William Holden as Kennedy and Fredric March as Nixon. (More about that in a few paragraphs.)

On a more emotional level, I enjoy "Executive Suite" because it reflects a time in recent history when manufacturing was done in America, and not farmed out to Mexico or China in order to beef up a stock dividend or add a bonus to the CEO's already obscene salary. It was a time when a company demonstrated a certain loyalty to the community that supplied its workforce, and when factory jobs helped build America's middle class. Millburgh is a company town, but in a good sense -- prosperous and populated by people who've worked for Tredway for generations.

Meanwhile, back at the executive suite, which has the ornate woodwork, stained glass and peaceful but prosperous air of a nice Episcopal chapel, personal and professional dramas are unfolding.

Julia Tredway (Stanwyck), daughter of the company founder, is mourning the loss of Bullard because he was her lovah --er, lover. A cool, remote, rather thoughtless lover, true, but you can't have everything. Julia owns a chunk of Tredway stock, which puts her in a position of power when it comes to selecting the next man at the top of the Tredway tower. Besides that, her voice is deeper than everyone else's.

Fred Alderson (Pidgeon), the company treasurer, is torn -- by rights and based on seniority he should be Bullard's successor, but he knows he is too old and tired and not the visionary the company needs.

Erica Martin (an Oscar-nominated Nina Foch) is Bullard's executive secretary, who, like most successful secretaries, knows and sees much more than she lets on.

Caswell (Calhern) is a scheming board member whose only concern is to make as much as he can from his Tredway stock. He was the only one to witness Bullard's death, and he sold his stock short as a result. His interest is in keeping the company chaotic so the stock will tumble and he can get back in at a bargain.

Dudley (Douglas) is the glad-handing vice president of sales who prefers to do business on the golf course or over cocktails. He has his own problem -- he's having an affair with his secretary (Winters).

Then there are the two main competitors for Bullard's job -- Kennedy and Nixon. Actually, that's a bit of an oversimplification, but the characters played by Holden and March are clearly meant to embody two very different ways of doing business.

Holden is MacDonald Walling, the vice president of design and development. He'd rather be in the mill, creating new products, than in the office. He's given to wearing single-breasted tweed jackets, Brooks Brothers shirts and never a hat.

Don, as he is known (not "Mac" -- that's an old man's name) has a background in design, and the house he shares with his loving wife (Allyson) and son is a model of clean, contemporary function. He wants Tredway to be known for well-made, useful furniture.

March is Shaw, the Machiavellian company controller. He didn't go to college the way Walling did -- he got his degree through night school. His focus is on the buck -- he advocates a cheaply-made, low-quality line of furniture that Walling despises. He is a definite hat wearer.

Walling is cool and confident, good looking and smart. Shaw always seems to be grasping and nervous -- he's constantly wiping perspiration from his upper lip. And he's driven by resentment, which leads him to use blackmail and other threats to get the top job.

"Executive Suite" comes down to a battle between Shaw and Walling for the future of Tredway, and, by implication, of Millburgh. It's pretty easy to see who the movie is rooting for. When Walling walks through the warehouse, he's approached by the nervous workers, who know and love him:



In the final showdown, Shaw defends his legacy by bragging about the dividends he's helped ensure for the stockholders. Walling doesn't have a problem with dividends, but he also believes in investing in the company's product. And he has a special scorn for the low-quality, high-margin furniture that Shaw supports:

    
These days, it's understandable to feel that the Shaws have won -- that too many of our major companies excessively squeeze profits and the workforce. Maybe the Wallings out there, few and far between, are too optimistic and idealistic. But once upon a time, Kennedy beat Nixon.

Neglected Post Theatre: "Baby Face," or The Pubic Enemy

On this edition of Neglected Post Theatre, we take a look at "Baby Face," with Barbara Stanwyck, John Wayne, George Brent and a cast of foolish, foolish bank executives.

The Dorothy Burgess Film Festival: "Playgirl" and "From Headquarters"

Of all the actors and actresses who appeared in 1930s films, Dorothy Burgess (1907-61) was certainly one of them.


Here she is in the 1932 film "Play-Girl," opposite Winnie Lightner.











And who could forget her in "Hold Your Man," with Clark Gable and Jean Harlow?

Or "From Headquarters," with Kenneth Thomson?

And "Ladies They Talk About," with Barbara Stanwyck.

"Put up your dukes! I mean your duchesses!"

So, as you can see, the traditional Burgess role was the woman who was always picking herself up off the floor.

She was the troublemaker, the spiteful gossip, the jealous other woman. If you happen to be watching an old movie where one of the characters is always standing around with her hands on her hips, giving the stinkeye to the heroine, it's probably Burgess.

The niece of actress Fay Bainter, Burgess was born into a well-to-do Los Angeles family (dad was the first president of Western Airlines) and after a stint in a tony boarding school she made her Broadway debut while still a teenager in a play that starred Aunt Fay.

Like Myrna Loy, Burgess found fame in fiery temptress roles -- she played a gypsy girl in "The Squall" (a role Loy played in the film version) and an African-American woman in "Lulu Belle." She played a Mexican girl in her film debut, 1928's "In Old Arizona."

In late 1931, Burgess signed a contract with Warner Bros.-First National and began playing a string of mean girls.

In the 1932 film "Play-Girl," for instance, she is Edna, the bitter, negative counterpart to our heroine Buster, played by Loretta Young. Buster and Edna are sales clerks at the Mayfield Department Store, along with Buster's bosom buddy, Georgine (Winnie Lightner). Edna is a mean girl, always snidely criticizing the others:



Buster is swept off her feet by the brash Wallie, played by the hardly-ever-charming Norman Foster. They get married, and Buster thinks Wallie is a successful businessman who's always closing on big deals. Then he makes a confession -- the "deals" he's out making involve playing cards and poker chips! Then Buster makes a confession -- she's pregnant! They argue, and Wallie takes a powder. Buster is forced to return to the department store, and Edna is waiting to pounce:



In the 1933 films "Hold Your Man" and "Ladies They Talk About," Burgess crossed paths with Jean Harlow and Barbara Stanwyck, respectively. In "Hold Your Man" Burgess plays Gypsy, the old flame of Eddie (Clark Gable), who's now hooked up with Ruby (Harlow). In "Ladies They Talk About," Burgess is Susie, a religious fanatic and bonafide nutcase who has eyes for political reformer Dave Slade (Preston Foster). Unfortunately, Slade is all about Nan (Barbara Stanwyck), a convict in the same cell block as Susie, which leads to Burgess picking herself up off the floor.

In the 1933 crime drama "From Headquarters," Burgess is Dolly, the drug-addicted former girlfriend of a millionaire who's been murdered. At first she is a suspect, but under questioning her mental foundation shows signs of cracking like dried oatmeal:



By late 1933, Burgess's career began to sputter. She was in the headlines due to her involvement in an auto accident where a young woman was killed, and in July she was injured while filming -- of course -- a fight scene at Universal Studios. She appeared in only a handful of films after that, concluding with 1943's "The West Side Kid."

Here is a complete filmography.
  

"Ladies of Leisure," or Easel to Love

Barbara Stanwyck enters the 1930 film "Ladies of Leisure" -- and film history -- in a rowboat. The oars squeak. Her face is marked by mascara-streaked tears and she's clutching a broken dress strap. She's Kay, a party girl who just left a wild one on a yacht.

On shore is Ralph Graves as Jerry, who's also left a wild party, this one at his Manhattan penthouse. He's gone for a drive, but now he's fixing the flat tire on his Lincoln. Stanwyck climbs on shore, shivering.

Kay: How far is it to town?

Jerry: What town?

Kay: There's only one town.

So Jerry gives her a ride back to Manhattan, where the night is obliterated by blinking neon signs selling Squibb's Dental Creme and Aeolian Player Piano Rolls -- but where Kay will eventually learn to see beyond them to the stars.  

"Ladies of Leisure" isn't Stanwyck's first film, but it's the one that made her a star. It also marked the beginning of a five-picture collaboration with director Frank Capra (seen with Stanwyck at right) -- one that almost didn't happen. Capra wasn't impressed with Stanwyck at their first meeting, and she left upset. It wasn't until Capra was bawled out by Stanwyck's husband, comic Frank Fay, who urged Capra to watch an older Stanwyck screen test, that she was cast in the role.

Now back to the plot -- Jerry's an artist who's anything but starving. He lives high thanks to his family wealth -- dad runs a couple of railroads. On the ride back, Kay dozes off:



While she's asleep, Jerry sees something in Kay's face -- something that leads him to use her as a model for his new painting, "Hope."

"She had a mask on, like everybody else," Jerry tells his mother, "but underneath I think she had this."

The tricky part is getting down to it, and their first rocky sessions together show a bit of improvisation on Stanwyck's part:



 Jerry knows that if Kay can get past her streetwise exterior, Hope will come through. But she's a tough nut to crack.   

Jerry: It's like a man I knew once. He was suspicious, bitter, harsh, cruel. Those things were written in hs face like a map of his life. He died -- I saw him laid out. His face was a new face -- it was fine, noble. There was peace in it. He was himself again. Do you see what I mean?

Kay: No. All I get out of it is you gotta die to find yourself. Not me -- not for two dollars an hour.

Also hanging around is Jerry's upper crust fiancee (Juliette Compton). She's cool and controlling -- we know she isn't right for our hero because she calls him "Jeddy." Marie Prevost is around for comic relief as Kay's roommate and best friend. And then there's Jerry's boozy friend Bill Standish, played by the ever-welcome Lowell Sherman. He and Stanwyck are perfectly matched in the wisecrack department:

Kay (seeing Bill enter): Drunk again!

Bill: Congratulations, so am I.

Of course, Jerry eventually gets through to Kay and she lets down her defenses and becomes a perfect model. They also fall in love, in a scene that echoes the moment in Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life" when George Bailey (James Stewart) realizes in a mixture of anger and awe that he loves Mary Hatch (Donna Reed):



 The Jerry-Kay relationship upsets Jerry's wealthy parents, and there's a father-son standoff. Jerry's mother (Nance O'Neil) visits Kay and tries to get her to break up with Jerry for his own sake, and in return mom gets the full Stanwyck:



Capra writes in his autobiography that, if she was filming an emotional scene, Stanwyck left everything on the field in the first take. And in this performance, so early in her career, she already has the ability to combine outer toughness with a sudden inner vulnerability that can tear your heart out. Sherman and Prevost perform like the pros they are. Graves, who was already a star thanks to his roles in the Capra-directed action pictures "Flight" and "Submarine," has a tough time impersonating someone with artistic temperament.

Here are the complete credits for "Ladies of Leisure."

"Baby Face," or The Pubic Enemy

Saint Louis woman with her diamond rings 
Pulls that man around by her apron strings.
'Twant for powder and for store-bought hair, 
The man I love would not gone nowhere, nowhere.

The 1933 film "Baby Face" opens to the strains of "St. Louis Blues," and the song keeps popping up on the soundtrack as it chronicles the rise of Lily Powers (Barbara Stanwyck), who leaves a squalid Pennsylvania steel town and uses her womanly charms to seduce and abandon a series of men at the giant bank where she works, moving up the executive ladder with each conquest.

Lily Powers uses sex like Tom Powers (James Cagney) uses violence in "The Public Enemy," and "St. Louis Blues" follows her around the way "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" follows Cagney in that film, from his days as the neighborhood bully to his rise as a gangster, until he ends up perched in the family doorway at the end of the movie, murdered by a rival gang and trussed up like a badly-wrapped mummy.

We first see Lily in her hometown, working for her father (Robert Barrat), who runs a speakeasy for the steel workers:



Her father isn't above selling his daughter in exchange for "protection" from the local hoods, but fortunately he meets a suitable end when he's killed in a still explosion. After his funeral, Lily visits one of her few friends, Cragg (Alphonse Ethier), who introduces her to Nietzsche and has a few words of wisdom for her:



Lily decides to follow Cragg's advice to use men to get da tings you vant, and she and her friend Chico (Theresa Harris) hop a freight out of town: 




By the way, the brakeman Lily seduces in that scene is James Murray, the star of King Vidor's legendary "The Crowd." He was playing bit roles at this point in his career, including a role as a blind World War I veteran in "Heroes for Sale."

In New York City, Lily gets a job at the bank, where she has the darndest way of moving up, even though it means she spurns suitors like a young John Wayne:



Lily keeps taking care of business, if you know what I mean and I think you do, until a relationship with one executive (Donald Woods, who played Cagney's brother in "The Public Enemy") ends in a murder-suicide.  To avoid scandal, and to prevent Lily from selling her story to the newspapers, she is transferred by the new bank president (George Brent) to the Paris office. And darned if he doesn't end up in Paris a few months later to visit the bank, and a romance develops. What Lily sees as just another business transaction turns into much more because of that old debbil, love. But her feelings are put to the test when her wealthy man gets into a legal scrape and suddenly needs her financial help. Will she let loose of her ill-gotten gains, or will she look for another ladder to climb?

"Baby Face" is arguably the ultimate pre-code movie. It has everything -- prostitution, infidelity, spicy dialogue and punchy performances. And if you don't agree, then you tell Stanwyck. I'm scared of her.

Here's the full cast listing from "Baby Face," and a preview: 

The Monroe Owsley Film Festival: "Ten Cents a Dance" and "The Keyhole"

"Don't hate me because I'm beautiful."

Of all the actors who appeared in movies during the 1930s, Monroe Owsley (1900-37) was certainly one of them.

In various films, he appeared opposite the likes of Gloria Swanson, Clara Bow, Bette Davis, Kay Francis, Barbara Stanwyck and Margaret Sullavan, leading critics to exclaim, "Who is that guy who always plays schmoes opposite Gloria Swanson, Clara Bow, Bette Davis, Kay Francis, Barbara Stanwyck and Margaret Sullavan?"

Alas, someone has to play the schmoe. And Monroe Owsley, not to be confused with Marilyn Monroe, was pretty good at it. He played conceited schmoes, selfish schmoes (say that three times fast), gigolo schmoes, cowardly schmoes, greedy schmoes and psycho schmoes.

In fact, if you're watching a pre-code movie where a heroine is starting to find true happiness, and some nogoodnik comes along to blackmail her, threaten her or otherwise weigh her down like an anchor made of hair pomade, old spats and neediness, chances are it'll be Monroe Owsley.

In the interest of giving you the full Owsley, here's how he appears at the beginning of 1933's "The Keyhole":



He's a blackmailer, and the blackmailee is Kay Francis. He's the old vaudeville partner who tried to lower her curtains, if you know what I mean. She's married to a rich guy who doesn't know about her past, and Owsley's being all Monroe Owsley-ish about it, talking blackmail and such. So Francis goes to Cuba for a quickie divorce from Owsley. Her rich husband doesn't know what's going on, and thinks Francis is being unfaithful to him, so he hires detective George Brent to follow her. In the climax, they all meet in Francis's hotel room:



Fortunately, Owsley has the decency to fall off the side of the hotel and get killed, thereby ridding Francis of her problem.

In "Ten Cents a Dance," a 1931 film directed by Lionel Barrymore (!), Owsley is another kind of problem entirely. He's Eddie, a mild-mannered sort who lives in the same apartment building as taxi dancer Barbara (Barbara Stanwyck). She feels sorry for Eddie and takes him under her wing, but she has another admirer -- decent rich guy Bradley Carlton (Ricardo Cortez). He gives her $100 just to talk to her, and when she finds that Eddie is about to be evicted, she gives him the c-note. This is how we know she is extremely decent, and he is a needy schmoe.

Barbara ends up marrying Eddie, who in turn ends up being selfish, neglectful and snobbish -- he's like a member of the one percent without any money:



Actually, he does have money, but only because he embezzled it from his boss, who happens to be RICARDO CORTEZ. Stanwyck goes to Cortez to ask for a loan to keep Owsley out of jail, and he gives it to her, and instead of being grateful, Owsley ... well, you can guess. Owsley just disappears at the end of this one instead of falling off the side of a building, and that's too bad.

For full credits for "The Keyhole," click here. For full credits for "Ten Cents a Dance," click here.

"Ladies They Talk About," or The Old Cell Game

It's not news to proclaim Barbara Stanwyck as one of the screen's greatest actresses, and it's practically impossible to dislike her once you learn of her casual, profane attitude on the set, or her preference for directors like Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder, or that fact she had an affair with Robert Wagner when he was in his 20s and she was in her 40s (he says they did, anyway).

By all accounts, she was rigorously professional in front of the camera, and pretty down to earth otherwise. She did comedy as well as she did drama, and had enough of a sense of humor about herself that she made numerous guest appearances on "The Jack Benny Program." Stanwyck grew up in Brooklyn, in poverty, and came to Hollywood with her husband, vaudeville comic Frank Fay -- in true "A Star Is Born" fashion, his career faded as hers flowered.

The 1933 film "Ladies They Talk About" finds Stanwyck still learning her craft. She had already made a couple of movies with Frank Capra and the first film version of the best-selling novel "So Big," but still there are moments in this film when she seems uncomfortable. Then, in others, she's startlingly self assured.

Stanwyck plays Nan Martin, a gangster's moll who gets caught when the gang pulls a bank job and the investigating cop sees through her disguise:



She ends up in jail, but Nan has an admirer -- the anti-crime crusader Dave Slade (Preston Foster). They grew up in the same neighborhood and Slade believes in her innocence. He even talks a skeptical D.A. (Robert McWade) into paroling her:



But for once, Nan thinks of someone else. She knows if her guilt is proven, it'll tarnish Slade's reputation. So she confesses to her role in the robbery. She's sent to San Quentin, and this is where "Ladies They Talk About" kicks into high gear with vivid little set pieces about life in a woman's prison. And Stanwyck has a great sidekick in Linda, played with winning ease by singer Lillian Roth:



(In real life, Roth's career as a singer and stage star was overshadowed by alcoholism, and her biography, "I'll Cry Tomorrow," was made into a 1955 film with Susan Hayward as Roth.)

Meanwhile, back in stir, Nan's only enemy is Susie (Dorothy Burgess), an unbalanced little number who's obsessed with Slade and whose cell is filled with his photos. We see her in one scene that scans a cell block as the prisoners are turning in:



Oh, and here's one more interesting touch -- the giant cockatoo that belongs to prison matron Noonan (Ruth Donnelly):

Noonan gives them the bird.

The films builds to a moral dilemma -- will Nan help her male co-robbers escape from a nearby prison? Will she meet Dave Slade for love -- or revenge? One thing's for sure -- in love or war, Stanwyck's a badass.

For full cast and production information, click here.

"Platinum Blonde" and the Birth of "Cinderella Man"

Give Frank Capra credit -- once the guy found a formula, he stuck with it. Specifically -- an honorable man, pure at heart, up against powerful and/or wealthy forces out to destroy or at least ostracize him. You can apply it to almost any Capra film, from "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" to "Meet John Doe" to "It's a Wonderful Life" to "A Hole in the Head."

And this isn't meant as a criticism -- if the idea was a little familiar, Capra knew enough to work with writers who infused his scripts with lively, humorous dialogue. And Capra put the words in the mouths of some of Hollywood's best actors -- Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, James Stewart, Thomas Mitchell, Jean Arthur. And his own background as a gagman and director of comedies for folks like Harry Langdon didn't hurt, either.

Still, it is interesting to see the idea of the "Cinderella Man" and the phrase itself being introduced in Capra's 1931 film "Platinum Blonde."  Clearly it captured the public's imagination -- columnist Damon Runyon applied it to boxer James Braddock in 1935 (director Ron Howard used it as the title of his 2005 film about Braddock), and it pops up again in Capra's "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" in 1936.

Anyway, back to "Platinum Blonde." The titular heroine of the 1931 film is Jean Harlow, who singleheadedly made the haircolor famous. She's Ann Schuyler of THE Schuylers, a high-society family whose blood is as blue as their noses. When the Schuyler son gets mixed up in a scandal with a chorus girl, Ann's path crosses that of reporter Stew Smith (Robert Williams). She takes a fancy to him and tries to sweet talk him into caving on the story. He doesn't do that -- he might be a goofoff and a drinker, but he's a dedicated newspaperman. But once the story is published, he does help her out:



A romance develops between Ann and Stew, and they get married. She almost immediately begins to try and change him, though he resists. All of this happens to the dismay of Stew's best "buddy" on the newspaper, Gallagher, played by an 18-year-old Loretta Young, already demonstrating her acting chops:



And speaking of acting chops, "Platinum Blonde" is a real showcase -- tragically, one of the only ones -- for Robert Williams. He'd done a fair amount of stage work before coming to Hollywood, including a long run in the Broadway hit "Abie's Irish Rose," but in this role he's a movie natural -- and sadly, he died of peritonitis just after this film was released. With his pipe, easy-going manner and hooded eyes, he's an early Bing Crosby. His rapport with Harlow is so obvious that they can get away with scenes like this, when she tries to make him wear garters:



Young is luminous as the girl who gets left behind, at least temporarily. And the cast includes old pros like Walter Catlett and Halliwell Hobbes. There aren't many other 1931 films that move with the style and assurance of "Platinum Blonde," made when Capra was hungry and still making a name for himself as a real-life Cinderella Man.

Here are the first few minutes of the movie: