Good Dame

A fabulous character driven, superbly acted and atmospheric romance set in the gutter of society struggling through The Depression. Despite this picture's (unjustified) relative obscurity, it's amongst the most evocative depictions of America during the early thirties.

This isn't your typical Warner Brothers Depression movie.... although it looks like one, surprisingly it isn't! It's a Paramount picture. B P Schulberg at Paramount could, when he put his mind to it, make movies just as seedy and gritty as anything Zanuck at Warners could do. Whilst I loved what WB did, this is much more character driven rather than action driven which gives it an added captivating dimension. Rapid machine gun fire is replaced with rapid dialogue but it's just as fast moving.

We have two well written characters played by two of the best actors of that era directed by one of the very best directors. Whilst Marion Gering never displayed any particular innovative style or achieved the recognition of say Mamoulian or deMille, everything, yes everything he made in the early thirties was superb. Even with this very simple story he draws out of his cast's depths of personalities which brings them to life.

Sylvia Sidney isn't the stereotypical one dimensional 'good girl' the title of the film suggests. She's confused and uncertain who she is, she doesn't really know what she wants, she thinks she's a good girl but knows she isn't. She makes her Lillie so much more complex than you often find in most pre-code movies and is fascinating to watch.

Fredric March received a lot of criticism for not being Fredric March in this. He wasn't playing his usual matinee idol role. His fans didn't appreciate him playing the sort of loveable rogue Cagey was doing 'better' at Warners. But his character is not meant to be like the cheeky chappie Mr Cagney specialised in. Although lacking the internal conflict of Sydney's Lillie, March's Mace is just as real. Whereas Cagney would have been a loveable rough diamond right from the start, Mace is just an ignorant, unscrupulous yob. What this film is about is how his horrible character develops, how he becomes, perhaps not loveable but at least likeable enough for Lillie. It's a very unsentimental, unromantic romance about real people who could only exist in a long-gone era.

If you want a grown-up, well made, thoroughly entertaining and realistic snapshot of early thirties America, check this out.

When exactly did the Production Code take full force? I know it was in 1934, the year this movie was released, but this hit the theaters in March, and it seems pretty much pre-code to me.

Sylvia Sidney is a chorus girl stranded in a small town, with $62 and her ticket back to Chicago. She's walking to the train station when a carnival pickpocket steals her purse, tears up the ticket and splits the money with his partner, 3-card Monte hustler Fredric March. He then runs into Miss Sidney, hears her tale of woe, and gets her a job in the show. She balks, when it turns out to be as a cootch dancer, but she gets snatched in a police raid, and March bails her out.

But they're both broke now, they can't go with the carny, so they stay in town and work a gag wherein she distracts the manager of upscale apartment houses by pretending to want to rent, while he uses the distraction to sneak in and peddle junk door to door. In between times, she drives him crazy, pulling off his loose buttons and sewing them back on, darning his socks, and refusing to play.

This is as close as Miss Sidney got to comedy in this period. There is a lot of low-class weepiness going on, of course, as she falls in love with him and his exasperated kindness, but March is slightly miscast, talking out of the side of his mouth and overacting. True, he slings carny lingo fast enough, but he moves wrong, and wears his clothes too well. He's not physically in the part. Compare this with the way he moves in Nothing Sacred; it's clearly a role meant to showcase his versatility, even if Miss Sidney is top billed.

GOOD DAME (Paramount, 1934) directed by Marion Gering, stars Sylvia Sidney and Fredric March (the only cast names listed for the opening credits) in what would be their second and final collaboration together. Initially teamed in MERRILY WE GO TO HELL (Paramount, 1932), and excluding their separate cameo appearances in MAKE ME A STAR (Paramount, 1932), Sidney and March don't merrily go to hell here but merrily unite as a couple who have nothing in common to constantly become a twosome just by chance. Reportedly not the best for either star, it's mainly an assignment produced by the studio as either a theatrical time filler or something different for its leading players. As much as Sidney and March work well together, their paths or any future screen team movie assignments would end here.

Taken from a story by William R, Lipman, the plot summary starts off with train advertisement of Honest John Slocum Carnival Show coming to town. Next scene finds Mace Townsley (Fredric March), a carnival card-sharp playing his game of skill so to impress his crowd of onlookers. As one man (Walter Brennan) wins $50 and Mace not wanting to pay off, his pal "Spats" Edwards (Russell Hopton) disrupts the crowd gathering by snatching a purse of a stranded showgirl. Identified as Lillie Taylor (Sylvia Sidney) who is out $62 and a train ticket back to Chicago where she is to stay with her Aunt Kate, she soon finds her empty purse on the ground. Lillie meets up with Mace after hiding himself from the disruptive crowd to unwittingly buy her lunch with the winnings intended for the winner. With Mace being a ladies' man with dame types as Puff Warner (Noel Francis) and Zandra (Kathleen Burke), he passes himself off as a big shot insurance man to impress Lillie by buying her dinner. Even though he finds her not to be his type of "dame," there's something about Lillie that attracts him to her. Offered a job by Regan (Bradley Page) to earn back her stolen money coochie dancer, before she can go on stage, the carnival gets raided leading to arrest of the dancing girls. Mace pays her bail in court with her own money acquired from Spats intended for mobster, Blush Brown (Jack LaRue) on the promise to the judge that she will leave town as ordered. Rather than breaking away from this "good dame," Mace and Lillie find themselves going down the path of uncertainties ahead. Other members listed in the closing cast credits include William Farnum (Night Court Judge), Guy Usher (Inspector Fallon); Joseph Frazer (Inspector Scanlon); and Miami Alvarez (Cara).

As much as the writers for the screenplay couldn't seem to make up their minds whether this is to be a light comedy or a romantic drama, GOOD DAME falls a little short on both. Sidney and March do what they can to rise above material given them but cannot overcome some mediocre sequences to make the situations believable.

Because GOOD DAME is one of those movies that has been long unseen on television (namely New York City's WPIX, Channel 11 since 1971), and never distributed on video cassette or shown on cable television makes this rarity more of a curiosity as to why this has been obscured for so long. Even though March may not be the right fit in his role for some, the sweet face of "good dame" Sylvia Sidney could make anything worth viewing regardless of how good or bad the movie might have turned out initially. (**1/2)

Right away in the opening credits you can get a pretty good idea of what's going to be right and what's going to be wrong with this movie. It has two things going for it: the adorable kitten-faced Sylvia Sidney, and Fredric "Total Pro" March. But then the credits let slip the film's weak point: five writers. For a 70 minute film with basically only two characters? Five writers. And it shows.

Well, Lillie (Sylvia Sidney) is a young runaway who has been fired from her first job, chorus-girling, and then gets her purse snatched by Mace (Fredric March)'s sidekick, Spats, at a carnival. Mace is one of those card-mixer-upper guys you used to see in New York subway stations. Apparently this used to be a legitimate career, because later he is offered a job in another carnival.

Mace feels bad because he accepted half of Lillie's money from Spats before he met her and heard her sad story. So when she and the other "cooch dancers" at the carnival are arrested, Mace has Spats rob their boss Bluch to get the $50 to bail Lillie out. The other cooch dancers are mercilessly left behind, to sit in a small town jail for six months.

Bluch beats the facts out of Spats (who then mysteriously disappears from the movie) and pretty soon Mace and Lillie are marooned in a nameless and non-descript town, while the very shady carnival moves on. They take adjoining hotel rooms, and although Mace professes a wish that Lillie would keep away from him, she soon finds ways to monopolize him out from under the blonde across the hall, "accidentally" ruining his only two shirts when he wants to go dancing, etc.

The dialogue is never cute, it is frequently nonsensical, and in some wince-worthy moments it is totally undeliverable. The characters are motiveless. The plot is snarled and fails to hold audience interest. The sets and costumes are unexceptional. The camera work and cinematography just sort of lay there. Basically I'm saying don't seek this movie out. Let it come to you, if that's your fate, but even then don't feel obliged to watch it unless you're a Fredric March completist. If you are, it's a bit of a curio, because he seems to be doing some sort of a Cagney impression.

Four stars out of ten.

This Paramount Picture, a tough girl/tough boy romance acted expertly by Fredrick March and Sylvia Sydney was made in 1934, the final year before the code came into effect. Typical of many a Pre-Code picture of the time, it is packed with sleazy unglamorous characters who go unpunished. Not much else to recommend it other than the occasional snappy dialogue, the chemistry between the two handsome leads, and some early Carnival scenes photogaphed by Leon Shamroy before his glossier Twentieth Century Fox days. March, usually the debonair leaving man is cast against type here, playing the sort of role that was to make Jimmy Cagney famous, and Sydney is lovely, vulnerable, and adorable. Once the Code was imposed, stories like this about the seamier side of life stopped being made. This minor film is a document then of how some people survived during Depression days. For that alone, it's worth watching.