Havana Widows

So who's right, Variety ("rapid fire laughs, all legitimately gained and inescapable") or Hirschhorn's Warner Brothers book ("a computerized comedy... formula film-making at its manufactured worst")? The opening shot of a burlesque marquee featuring "Iwanna Shakitoff, direct from Russia" might portend well, but shouldn't that be Ivanna? The scene where the burlesque manager tells Joan Blondell to do a stag show in Passaic, "and give 'em something to stare at" has a certain realism, but that's the last you see of anything that could go by that name. Even as the chorus girls swap wisecracks while they're dancing, one can tell there's a problem. The lines are flat and aren't delivered off-the-cuff, but more like a series of Laugh-In blackouts. Soon, the Warner regulars are walking through scenes that somehow arrive at the denouement by way of an obvious structure that reminds one of a matinée-western, and with clever or perceptive dialogue notably absent. It is from Warners, and before the Code, but there's not a moment that could be called "legitimately gained," nor is there an unexpected one. Very disappointing, especially considering the cast.

A cast of Warner's brightest farceurs work overtime in this frantic, sporadically funny gold-digger farce. In the first of several pairings, Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell play gum-chomping burlesque chorines looking to strike it rich in Havana. Though pains are made to show Blondell as a tootsie of morals (early on, she refuses her boss's request to dance at a stag party), she apparently has no qualms about trapping vacationing millionaires into breach of promise settlements.

True to form, Blondell has a last minute change of heart when she falls for the son (Lyle Talbot) of her intended mark. Luckily for the viewer the sucker happens to be Guy Kibbee, whose rooftop escape from a Cuban Turkish bath is a low comedy hoot.

Hyperthyroid Allen Jenkins provides amusing support as (what else?) a gangster's lamebrained flunky, and the wonderful Ruth Donnelly appears all too briefly as Kibbee's carnivorous wife. Only Frank McHugh is a repetitious drag; he plays a constantly inebriated lawyer in the obvious speech-slurring style common to the thirsty days of Prohibition. You have to wonder whether such witless drunk acts contributed to the repeal.

SO many fun things going on here... Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell had already made Three on a Match together, so they already had the gal-pal chemistry. Guy Kibbee is the fall guy in this one, the rich old guy they try to take to the cleaners. co-stars Allen Jenkins (the mug) and Frank McHugh (the drunk). The story itself is ALMOST a bit convoluted, with insurance fraud, forgery, "breach of promise", when women could sue if the groom backed out. or at least make some easy money if they could trick the guy into hushing up any scandal. So they are all off to Havana, where this all takes place. It's a ton of fun, and is directed by Ray Enright, who had made EIGHT films with Joan. almost like watching Lucy and Ethel get in and out of jams. good stuff.

...from First National and director Ray Enright. Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell star as a couple of show girls who decide to head for Havana to try and put some unsuspecting rich guys into compromising positions which will result in a big payday for them. They hone in on befuddled older man Guy Kibbee, but Blondell falls for his handsome (but poor) son Lyle Talbot. Also featuring Frank McHugh, Allen Jenkins, Ruth Donnelly, Hobart Cavanaugh, Ralph Ince, Luis Alberni, J. Carrol Naish, and Paul Porcasi.

Blondell and Farrell are two of my favorite ladies from this period of film, and I loved seeing them together. McHugh does his perpetual drunk shtick but I still found it funny. The gleefully amoral plot is a definitive example of pre-code inhibition.

What is odd here is that this seems to be a remake of sorts of 1930's The Life of the Party. Both were made in the precode era. The only thing I can figure is that the two female leads of that earlier film - Winnie Lightner and Irene Delroy were no longer headliners, and the new Warner Brothers stars were hardly even on the lot if at all just three years earlier. Thus the attempt at another bawdy version of the story, just with better sound technology and more current stars.

Two hard-luck but crafty ladies decide to act like HAVANA WIDOWS by sailing to Cuba to meet & blackmail rich gentlemen...

This was the sort of ephemeral comic frippery which the studios produced quite effortlessly during the 1930's. Well made & highly enjoyable, Depression audiences couldn't seem to get enough of these popular, funny photo dramas.

Joan Blondell & Glenda Farrell are perfectly cast as the frantic, fast-talking females who will go to great lengths to make a little dishonest dough. Although Joan gets both top billing and the romantic scenes, both gals are as talented & watchable as they are gorgeous.

Handsome Lyle Talbot plays Joan's persistent suitor, but he's given relatively little to do. Chubby, cherubic Guy Kibbee appears as the girls' intended target. Whether awakening to find himself in the wrong bed or being chased across the roof of a Cuban hacienda in his long johns, he is equally hilarious. Behind him comes a rank of character actors - Allen Jenkins, Frank McHugh, Ruth Donnelly, Hobart Cavanaugh, Maude Eburne, Dewey Robinson - all equally adept at pleasing the toughest crowd.

Movie mavens will recognize an uncredited James Murray as the suspicious bank teller with the forged check. This very talented actor was pulled out of complete obscurity to star in King Vidor's THE CROWD (1928), one of the silent era's most prestigious films. Hopes were high for a great career, but his celebrity faded quickly with sound pictures. After a long string of tiny roles & bit parts, broke & destitute, his life ended in the waters of a New York river in 1936. He was only 35 years old.

While never stars of the first rank, Joan Blondell (1906-1979) & Glenda Farrell (1904-1971) enlivened scores of films at Warner Bros. throughout the 1930's, especially the eight in which they appeared together. Whether playing gold diggers or working girls, reporters or secretaries, these blonde & brassy ladies were very nearly always a match for whatever leading man was lucky enough to share equal billing alongside them. With a wisecrack or a glance, their characters showed they were ready to take on the world - and any man in it. Never as wickedly brazen as Paramount's Mae West, you always had the feeling that, tough as they were, Blondell & Farrell used their toughness to defend vulnerable hearts ready to break over the right guy. While many performances from seven decades ago can look campy or contrived today, these two lovely ladies are still spirited & sassy.