Forbidden Hollywood Collection Volume 2
Forbidden Hollywood Collection Volume 2
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A Free Soul (1931) – full review!
Three on a Match (1932) – full review!
Female (1933) – is a pre-code drama that turns the male stereotype around by having Ruth Chatterton play an executive that’s all business by day but a man-eater by night. As Alison Drake the head of an automobile manufacturing company that was started by her now deceased father the actress plays a confident decisive woman that surrounds herself with good looking male secretaries and assistants that she can invite to her home after business hours for sexual liaisons. If any of the men get too chummy she has them fired or transferred by her only older assistant a trustworthy father-figure type (Ferdinand Gottschalk) named Pettigrew. But Alison tires of the routine realizing that everyone wants something from her and she doubts the authenticity of the compliments (and a marriage proposal from Douglas Dumbrille not looking very suave in a bathing suit) she constantly receives. Desiring to be ‘just a woman’ Alison escapes to a common part of town where she sees and pursues a man (George Brent) that she meets at a shooting gallery. They dance have hamburgers and a good time together but at the end of the evening he declines Alison’s offer to take her home claiming he has a strict rule about pick-ups. Of course the man turns out to be Jim Thorne an engineer that her company just hired to design a car with an automatic transmission. However Alison learns that her regular routine doesn’t work with Jim; the vodka her butler serves doesn’t make him amorous and he spurns her advances. Predictably this causes her to revert to being a more typical female one who’s willing to chuck everything just to win him. Originally directed by William Dieterle and then William Wellman the only screen credit was given to Michael Curtiz who was brought in to reshoot the scenes with Johnny Mack Brown (per some comments Robert Osborne made when the film aired on TCM) who plays one of Chatterton’s pawns. Donald Henderson Clark wrote the story that was adapted by Gene Markey and Kathryn Scola.
Night Nurse (1931) – is a pre-code drama that features a few ‘B and S’ scenes (not ‘T and A’ but bras and slips). Otherwise it’s fairly tame dialogue-wise and visually when compared to other racier movies of its type though it does deal rather openly with some mature subject matters for their day – drunkenness and drug addiction (bromide) medical malpractice and violence against women – and it makes a hero of a bootlegger! Directed by William Wellman with a screenplay by Oliver H.P. Garrett and Charles Kenyon that was based on a novel by Dora Macy aka Grace Perkins it features Barbara Stanwyck in the title role Ben Lyon as the bootlegger Joan Blondell as Nurse Maloney Clark Gable (absent mustache filling in for James Cagney after the success of The Public Enemy (1931)) in a pre-stardom role as the chauffeur Nick and Charles Winninger (among others). After getting a helping hand from Dr. Bell (Winninger) Lora Hart (Stanwyck) meets Maloney (Blondell) while both are nurse trainees hounded by girl-hungry interns at a big city hospital; the two become friends while trying to keep from getting expelled by Miss Dillion (Vera Lewis) their supervisor. One day Hart helps Mortie (Lyon) patch up a gunshot wound without reporting it. After reciting the Florence Nightingale oath at their graduation Hart and Maloney get a job working at a private residence where they’re assigned to care for two young girls that are being starved to death on orders from Dr. Ranger (Ralf Harolde). It turns out that Ranger is in cahoots with Nick who keeps the girls’ mother drugged and continuously distracted partying with others while waiting for the children to die so that their trust fund can be raided. When Hart finally learns of the motivation behind these activities from an inebriated housekeeper (Blanche Frederici aka Friderici) she’s empowered to act and with help from Mortie (who deals with Nick) and Dr. Bell (who performs a blood transfusion) is able to save one of the little girl’s lives.