Authors: Bernard F. Dick
Big Business Girl
(1931) could have jump-started the woman’s movement, particularly after the Constitution was amended in 1920 to grant women the long overdue right to vote. The problem was the denouement, which was another indication of Hollywood’s refusal to allow women the related right to choose a career over marriage and explain to a potential mate that she intends to balance both. A woman’s only other option was to chant the “woman’s place is in the home” mantra, from which Hollywood rarely deviated. Loretta’s character, a college graduate, marries a bandleader who goes off to play gigs in Paris while she heads to New York to become a copywriter. She is an instant success, adored by her womanizing boss, who guarantees her access to the executive suite—a rarity in 1930s Hollywood movies where such an elevation was usually contingent upon a woman comprising her virtue. When the husband comes back, the boss sets him up with a hooker (a charmingly brash Joan Blondell) to establish grounds for alimony. But, always faithful to her marriage vows, the wife saves the day and returns to hubby. If women in the 1930s wanted to believe that marriage was preferable to a career, even though they may be superior to their washed out husbands,
Big Business Girl
vindicated their desire. Land a husband and see if he will allow you to pursue a career. Otherwise, resign yourself to shuttling between the bedroom, the kitchen, and the nursery.
Loretta was equally convincing as a member of the working class. It was as if she had been whisked from behind the counter and plopped down in front of the camera. You could actually believe that if Loretta waited on you, you would not have to return the merchandise. She played such a character in the deceptively titled
Play Girl
(1932), looking as if she came straight out of sales. A compulsive gambler (Norman Foster, later to become her brother-in-law) woos and wins her, convincing her that he has a steady job, when he is squandering their money on poker. After becoming pregnant, she learns the truth and demands that
he leave. But he returns, repents, and promises to get a job, now that baby makes three.
When Loretta expressed anger and disillusionment, she looked like any woman who discovered that she had been deceived. She delivered her lines with such bitterness that they had a poignant rhythm, each syllable colored with the right emotion. She was an angry shop girl and pregnant wife, whose tolerance had been exhausted. Despite the reconciliation, her character has gone through a cycle of suffering that many women could not have endured. Yet Loretta created a woman of such resilience that audiences knew that, even with her husband’s return, she could survive what lay ahead.
There is a line in
Play Girl
that, in retrospect, is prophetic. When Norman Foster proves to be a less than satisfactory lover, Loretta tries to activate his libido: “Come on, Gable, get hot.” Little did she know that Gable would “get hot” three years later, and that she would find herself in the same situation as her character.
Play Girl
’s message was echoed throughout the period: If you land a better job than your husband, give it up if you want to keep him. Or, as the mother of Lola (Loretta) puts it in
Weekend Marriage
(1932), “the man you love is worth all the jobs in the world.” The title,
Weekend Marriage
, was titillating but misleading. Loretta was again paired with Norman Foster. They marry, and when she has the opportunity to run her company’s St. Louis office, he turns to drink and develops pneumonia. Lola flies back to New York, only to hear her doctor denounce her as a “modern woman.” Again, the audience is expected to overlook the husband’s inadequacies, ignoring the fact that his wife gets promoted while he loses jobs. Loretta played the final scene as if she believed Lola had made the right choice: Return to your husband and don’t rub his nose in his failures. That may have been fine for Lola, but as an actress, Loretta had to breathe credibility into a script that discredited wives who succeeded while their husbands failed. Loretta was not Lola, yet she was so convincing that it seemed she would make the same sacrifice in real life. A script is a script, however unenlightened.
Weekend Marriage
was one of six films she made in 1932. She was expected to make Lola believable, and she did. She had a career to pursue and a mansion to maintain.
They Call It
Sin (1932) revealed Loretta’s burgeoning ability to balance the extremes of the conventional rich boy/poor girl plot with the excesses of lurid melodrama. She was again directed by Thornton Free-land (
Weekend Marriage
), who this time realized that hers was a face and
a figure to which painterly lighting and flattering camera angles could impart an otherworldly beauty. Loretta was now a blonde, back lit so that her hair seemed glazed with silver, and front lit so that her face was translucent. She wore long billowy dresses that ran down her body, curving around the hips and spilling down to her ankles.
A rising executive (David Manners), sent by his prospective father-in-law to check out the Kansas territory, drops in at a church service, where he is immediately attracted to Marion, the organist (Loretta). He even promises that if she is serious about a musical career, she should contact him in New York. That is all Marion has to hear. She takes off for New York, where she discovers that Manners wants the best of both worlds: Marion and his affluent fiancée. When Manners discovers that a predatory producer (Louis Calhern) has hired Marion as a rehearsal pianist, he turns moralist and, along with his doctor-friend (the always reliable George Brent), decides to enlighten her about the producer’s intentions (which are strictly dishonorable). By this time Marion has undergone a further transformation. Chicly dressed and brandishing a cigarette holder while sipping champagne, she is now a woman of the world—until the patriarchs sabotage her relationship with the producer, who retaliates by firing her and appropriating the music she has written. When Manners accuses the producer of theft, an argument ensues on the penthouse terrace resulting the producer toppling over the railing
They Call it Sin
was an apologia for patriarchy. If Manners had not interfered, the relationship would have unraveled by itself, ending with the producer’s disenchantment with Marion, whose overriding ambition was to succeed as a composer. But the film works from the assumption that man knows best, and woman is Adam’s rib. Patriarchy triumphs. Only a male can save the day, even though Marion is willing to lie for Manners and tell the police that she caused the accident. Marion doesn’t have to. The producer briefly regains consciousness and exonerates Manners before dying. And what about Marion and the doctor, who loves her? After they’re married, he may even allow her to continue composing or go back to being a church organist.
The sadly neglected
Life Begins
(1932) was a true woman’s film. Unfortunately, it has been virtually ignored because few film historians know of it or have seen it. Originally entitled “Woman’s Day,” it was a tribute to Warner’s refusal to compromise on a script that was never meant for a happy ending. Grace Sutton (Loretta) is married, pregnant, and a murderer. The circumstances of the crime are deliberately vague; apparently, Grace shot a corrupt politician who was trying to frame her.
Loretta’s two-piece wardrobe consisted of a drab cloth coat and a floppy hat, replaced with a euphemistically named “hospital gown” after she is admitted to the maternity ward. The ward represents a cross section of women on the eve of delivery: the maternal type, eager to share her experiences and offer words of hope; a show girl (flamboyantly played by Glenda Farrell), who has given birth to twins, intending to put them up for adoption until her motherly instincts get the better of her; an Italian woman who lost her child (and may get one of the twins); and then Grace, forced to decide between abortion and C-section, which would save her child at the expense of her life. She chooses the latter.
Earl Baldwin’s script is ingeniously plotted, with enough hints to suggest that Grace could get a suspended sentence and justice would prevail. But he wisely chose a different route—the one to which the film was inexorably heading.
Life Begins
did not cater to audiences hoping for an ending in which mother and child survived. But when a nurse folds up Grace’s shawl and removes the chart from her bed—to free it for the next patient—we know what has happened. Wisely, Loretta was given a role in which she could look simultaneously like an angel slumming on earth and a mortal on her way to eternity. Again, it was astonishing that, at nineteen, Loretta could display such a range of emotion. Although she is fearful, she conceals her anxiety from her husband; she is compassionate toward a mental patient who wanders into the maternity ward looking for her “child”; finally, she resigns herself to dying so that life can begin. The final shot is of the title,
Life Begins
, superimposed over Loretta’s serene face, implying that she has made the right decision: Life will continue, if not hers, then her daughter’s. And from the way her husband cradles the infant in his arms, he believes this, too.
Variety
(30 August 1932) commended Loretta on her convincing performance, noting that she succeeded admirably despite the restrictions of wardrobe and setting. The “must see” reviews did not convince the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences:
Life Begins
did not receive a single Oscar nomination. But Loretta, now about to turn twenty, had no time to fret. There were more movies to make.
In 1933, she appeared in nine films, one of which was
The Life of Jimmy Dolan
, a tightly constructed melodrama about the boxing world, vividly brought to life by director Archie Mayo. The film was the forerunner of such classics of the ring as
Body and Soul
(1946),
The Set-Up
(1949), and
Champion
(1949). But it was not the
Raging Bull
of 1933. Loretta was cast as Peggy, the generic virgin, with lightened hair and homespun clothes. But it was not her film; in fact she does not appear for the first third of it.
Again Loretta was paired with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., appearing as the title character. Jimmy Dolan is a prizefighter, who flees a crime scene after accidentally killing a reporter. Dolan goes on the lam, changes his name, rides the rails to Salt Lake City, and ends up at a farm run by Peggy and her aunt (Aline MacMahon, with a respectable Scottish burr), where the two women educate orphans with polio. When niece and aunt cannot meet their mortgage payment, Dolan returns to the ring, and while he doesn’t defeat his opponent, he lasts long enough to get the mortgage money. A detective (Guy Kibbee, giving the best performance in the film), in disgrace for having sent the wrong man to the electric chair, attempts to redeem himself by locating Dolan. Just when it seems that Dolan will have to stand trial, the detective turns deliverer. Only the benign Kibbee could perform such a magnanimous gesture. Thus the film does not end, as it should, with Dolan getting a reduced sentence and Peggy agreeing to wait for him until he walks through the prison gates.
The role took little out of Loretta; it was just another movie, this time requiring her to get down and dirty as a farm girl. If
Jimmy Dolan
is remembered, it is not for Loretta, but for the brief appearance of John Wayne, as a visibly nervous boxer counting on the prize money for his family. In his few minutes of screen time, Wayne revealed a vulnerability that he rarely had a chance to exhibit. This was not the first time that Wayne appeared in a film with Loretta. In
Three Girls Lost
(1931), in which Loretta was one of a trio hoping to make it big in Chicago, Wayne played a minor role. The
Los Angeles Times
review (15 June 1931) complimented him on his “nice voice,” but noted that he “still needs a few lessons in acting.” Fortunately, Wayne never took the review to heart. Once he and John Ford teamed up, his image was carved in celluloid, Hollywood’s equivalent of Mount Rushmore. For a time, Loretta and John Wayne, strangely enough, were friendly—or as friendly as she could be with someone with whom she had little in common. The sole connection was his first wife, Josephine Saenz, a friend of Loretta’s and a devout Catholic. Since Wayne was not a Catholic, Loretta arranged for the couple to be married at her home on 24 June 1933. A decade later they divorced, Saenz charging “
extreme cruelty
.” Loretta and Saenz remained close, but she never worked again with Wayne.
For Loretta it was back to work, costarring with two actors who revolutionized the crime film, Edward G. Robinson (
Little Caesar
[1930]) and James Cagney (
The Public Enemy
[1931]), and another familiar to moviegoers but not in Robinson or Cagney’s league, Warren William. Although
Robinson and Cagney could play more than upwardly mobile gangsters, they had few opportunities to demonstrate their versatility. Robinson displayed an amazing flair for comedy in
The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse
(1938) and
Larceny, Inc
(1942), but audiences preferred Robinson the heavy. Cagney fared better. He was a superb dancer (e.g.,
Taxi!
,
Footlight Parade
,
Something to Shout About
, and, above all,
Yankee Doodle Dandy
, for which he won his only Oscar). He could also exude an air of menace that can still make a viewer uncomfortable. In
Taxi!
(1932), which dramatized the wars waged by a combine against independent taxi drivers who refused to give up their stations, Cagney played a hot-headed cabbie, who would haul off at anyone who looked at him the wrong way. Then cockiness turned to petulance, as the actor’s eyes registered a maniacal glee. But he is not the only one with a short fuse. The usually benign Guy Kibbee was cast as an independent driver, whose refusal to relocate results in the loss of his cab when the combine arranges for a truck to crash into it. Enraged, Kibbee shoots the driver and ends up in prison, where he dies.