"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 Barbara 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 while Kay is awake, 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 his 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."

"The Big House," or Slammer Time

In the 1930 film "The Big House" people are constantly dwarfed by their surroundings. The prison where most of the story takes place is full of high walls and towers but it's also claustrophobic, crammed with sweaty prisoners sleeping three to a cell and filling the courtyard like a swarm of ants.

We first see the prison from the viewpoint of a new prisoner, Kent (Robert Montgomery). The paddy wagon that transports him to the gates is overwhelmed by the structure itself in a striking opening shot:

Once he enters, Kent is systematically reduced from a normal guy to just another convict -- they're givin' him a number and takin' way his name.

Kent is there because he's been found guilty of being a standoffish prig -- oh, and also of killing some guy in a drunken car accident. His cellmates are Butch (Wallace Beery at his Wallace Beery-ist, full of childlike bluster and yet handy with a machine gun) and Morgan (Chester Morris). They urge Kent not to hang out with the prison stool pigeon -- he's the only convict who's wearing a necktie -- but Kent hopes that he can trade inside information for a reduced sentence.

"The Big House" is full of scenes that have become prison movie cliches, showing up in films from "White Heat" to "Birdman of Alcatraz" to "The Shawshank Redemption." One of the best is the mess hall riot, not just because of Beery's violent protest of the dehumanizing effects of prison, but because of the silence -- and the hopeless panorama of convict faces -- leading up to it:

Beery's character is punished for the riot by being sent to "the dungeon," but before he goes he passes his knife to Kent. Then, during a surprise search, Kent slips the knife into Morgan's jacket. As a result, Morgan, a day away from parole, also gets sent to the dungeon. After his 30-day stretch of living in darkness, Morgan fakes illness and escapes through the infirmary. While on the outside, he seeks out and falls in love with Kent's sister (Leila Hyams), and she with him. But it isn't long before Morgan is nabbed and sent back to stir.

While Morgan's been out, Butch has been planning a massive escape to take place on Thanksgiving Day, while the place is low on guards. In a witty scene taking place that morning, all the convicts end up at a church service, singing "Open the Gates (of the Temple)." Then as they all kneel in prayer, Berry starts passing guns and bullets down the row to his fellow escapees.

Morgan refuses to be involved in the break, but he won't rat on Butch, either. That task falls to Kent. When the escape turns into a standoff between the convicts and the guards, Butch blames Morgan. But he finally figures out the truth. Meanwhile, Kent seems to be melting into a puddle of sweat:

Kent is killed in the riot, and Morgan is forced to shoot Butch. But Butch forgives him just before he dies. "The Big House" ends with a focus on Morgan, who's given an early release for his role in stopping the escape and saving a guard's life. The "decent" prisoner, Kent, is revealed as a coward and a stool pigeon, and Morgan effectively takes the place of Kent within the family.

"The Big House" won an Oscar for screenwriter Frances Marion, who adapted the script from Lennox Robinson's play. It was smoothly directed by George Hill, Marion's husband at the time. It represented a career-saving role for Beery, who got the role as a result of the death of Lon Chaney, Sr., who passed away after making only one talkie, "The Unholy Three."  

Here are the complete credits.

"Children of Pleasure," or The Great Spite Way

The 1930 MGM film "Children of Pleasure" tries to whip up big-city showbiz razzle-dazzle in the manner of the same studio's Oscar-winning "The Broadway Melody" or "Chasing Rainbows," but due to a wan leading man and subpar musical numbers (including one where the dancers are dressed as brooms), the effect is more like a handful of confetti shaken out of a pant cuff by a surly headwaiter.

The leading man, Lawrence Gray, is a handsome fellow who supported Marion Davies in her first talkie, 1929's "Marianne," and who played opposite Marilyn Miller in "Sunny," one of the year's top-grossing films. But left to his own devices, Gray has little more than a smile and a shoeshine, and a mildly pleasant singing voice.

Gray plays songwriter Danny Regan, whose tunes are being whistled by every Dick and Dora along the great white way. "That's the stuff!" they say in unison. Yes, the world is Danny's oyster -- he even knows Jack Benny (playing himself)!

Danny's big hit at the moment is "A Couple of Birds (with the Same Thing in Mind)," sung in a Broadway revue by Fanny Kaye, played by May Boley. This is Boley's only musical role, which should tell you something. Her other credits include the 1930 film "Moby Dick" (as Whale Oil Rosie) and the 1939 version of "The Women" (as woman under mud pack). From its heard-it-before rhythms to its blackface chorus, "A Couple of Birds" is highly missable.

Meanwhile, back at Danny's music publishers, we meet the warm, vivacious Emma (Wynne Gibson), Danny's former vaudeville partner who secretly lurrves him as she helps him put over his songs. Alas, Danny has met Pat (Judith Wood, acting under the name Helen Johnson), a rather chilly society girl, and the big sap falls for her like a tycoon jumping off a skyscraper ledge on Black Thursday.

Then there is more plot -- we're introduced to Fanny's piano player and reluctant lover, Andy (Benny Rubin). Fanny and Andy keep popping up to banter about Andy's roving eye.

Fanny (on Andy ogling a secretary): You never looked at me like that!

Andy: You never looked like that!

A production number based upon
particulate matter.

Danny pitches his next big number, called, um, "Raisin' the Dust." And brother, it's sweeping the country! Or at least this soundstage, where the chorus girls wear broom bristles on their arms and legs and rhyme "hades" with "ladies." What fun this must have been to shoot.

At the end of the number, Fanny -- wearing a one-horned hat that makes her look like a cockeyed unicorn -- brings Danny on stage. He sees Pat in the audience and is smitten again, much to Emma's disappointment. Danny and Pat finally formally meet at a nightclub, where we also get a musical number with Lawrence Gray, Wynne Gibson and Benny Rubin.

Because I can never resist including a number that ends with a joke about "my fanny.")

Anyway, before you can say "Why in the world would you want to marry an iceberg like her?", Danny and Pat are engaged. But she's still hanging around with old flame Rod (Kenneth Thomson playing the same kind of smarmy rich guy he plays in "The Broadway Melody"). And just before the ceremony Danny overhears Pat and Rod making baby talk, with Pat telling Rod "you're Danny's understudy." So the heartbroken Danny breaks up the wedding rehearsal, giving Gray his only opportunity in the movie to display emotion that isn't expressed by a smile.

But never fear -- Danny turns to the long-suffering Emma to relieve his broken heart.

"Children of Paradise" is based on the play "The Song Writer," which author Crane Wilbur based on the courtship of Irving Berlin and heiress Ellin MacKay. The plot of the movie-play turns out differently than the Berlin-MacKay affair -- despite the strong objections of her anti-semitic father, MacKay and Berlin were married more than 60 years, until her death in 1988 (he died the next year). In a bit of poetic justice, Berlin reportedly helped his father-in-law financially when the old guy was wiped out by the 1929 crash.

As for Gray, his career faded quickly and he ended up in grade-C westerns before dropping out of show business in the mid-1930s.

 

Public Domain Theatre: "Lights of New York" (1928)