"Call Her Savage," or Texas Hold 'Em

The personal, private, top, top super-secret diary of Nasa Springer

No boys allowed! (tee-hee)

June 12, 1932

Dear Diary:

Just got back from riding my horses across our vast Texas estate. We stopped for a water break at Dallas and then got as far as Amarillo before we turned back. Oh, and I savagely killed a rattlesnake with a whip. No wonder that whenever people refer to me, they say, "Call Her Savage"!

June 13, 1932

Dear Diary:

Did I mention I love horses? I love their smooth skin, their tight hindquarters, their bulging muscles, their sinewy legs ... and did I mention I also like boys? Oh, and also today my temper got the best of me again and I crashed a guitar over someone's head.

June 14, 1932

Dear Diary:

Father is mad at me again! All I did was bring a family of rabid possums into the house and interrupt some silly cotillion or something. Oh, and I forgot to put on underwear. The babies were so cute! The possums, I mean. But daddy was having none of it. He just gave me an angry look the way he always does, and said, "She's no daughter of mine!" And mother gave him a funny look and said, "You don't know how right you are!" Wonder what she means by that?

June 15, 1932

Dear Diary:

Well, now I'm in Chicago attending finishing school. I've been on my very best behavior, which means I have reduced my fighting to once a week. Oh, and I've met the most wonderful man! He looks just like that actor in the movies, Monroe Owsley. Except that in the movies Monroe Owsley always plays rotten cads, and this man seems great! I'm sure things will work out perfectly! P.S. I have learned enough in finishing school to know that you don't put an apostrophe in "kayos," silly Daily Express! P.P.S. I am wearing underwear more often.

June 16, 1932

Dear Diary:

I've found out that married life has its challenges, especially when your husband turns out to be a congenitally unfaithful sociopath whose brain is being eaten by syphilis. But nobody's perfect. Oh, and I am pregnant.

June 17, 1932

Dear Diary:

My baby is sick and my husband has deserted me, so in order to afford medicine I must walk the streets. I really don't have any other choice -- the only things I know how to do are ride horses and get into fights. So I went out and pretended to be very interested in a Bromo-Seltzer sign and one thing led to another. Oh, and while I was out my apartment building burned down.

 

June 18, 1932

Dear Diary:

You'll never believe this, but I'm wealthy again! My grandfather or whatever left me a lot of money, so I've been going out with very handsome men. I've learned to control my hot-blooded nature and I'm down to fighting only once a month. Or maybe twice. Oh, and under police orders I am allowed to eat off of only paper plates.

June 19, 1932

Dear Diary:

I have begun to seriously re-evaluate my relationships with men. What makes me such a savage around them? Why was I such a disappointment to my father? Why has my mother always had such an interest in Native American culture? What happened to those rabid possums? So many questions, diary, and so few mirrors!

June 20, 1932

Dear Diary:

What a crazy month! It's been as tempestuous as my very nature! But now I am home again in Texas because my mother has passed away. In her final words, she pointed to my father and said, "He's not your real -- " and that was it! I'll never figure out what she meant! But my lifelong friend Moonglow is here, and today we went together to the wooded glen where I have so many happy memories of whipping rattlesnakes to death. And there, diary, I asked Moonglow the question that has long been on my mind ...    

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.