Her Man

This outstanding pre-code melodrama cinched Phillips Holmes as a matinée idol. It's one of the earliest and certainly the best rendition of the Frankie and Johnny story...Frankie (Helen Twelvetrees) is the young prostitute on the Havana waterfront who is exploited by her nasty pimp (Cortez)and befriended, then beloved by an innocently angelic, poor young sailor (Phillips Holmes)(He even sings for her!) The Cuban government of the time protested the sleazy portrayal of its major port and the film was withdrawn after it's initial release. Thanks to the Hays code,it was never seen again and languished in film vaults. Holmes later starred in many more films in his tragically short career; "Broken Lullaby","Stolen Heaven", and "An American Tragedy" notably among them, but it was this film that raised him to luminary status. The gallant quality of the two young leads to rise above their tawdry environment and depressing circumstances is somehow still very touching and the film is an exceptional example 1930 film-making.

"Her Man" is a very enjoyable old film. However, as I watched, I couldn't help but think that it was a bit like a Popeye cartoon--a very sleazy and adult Popeye cartoon at that!

The film is set somewhere where there is a port--perhaps on a Caribbean island. The summary on IMDb says that the leading lady, Frankie (Helen Twelvetrees) is a Parisian but the location is definitely NOT Paris (there is no large port there and very few palm trees). Plus, neither Twelvetrees nor any of the other actors have any sort of French accent or make any mention of France. Regardless, this 'lady' works at a clip joint--a bar where they cheat sailors and the women are definitely NOT ladies! The place is run by a scum-bag named Johnnie (Ricardo Cortez) and he oozes with sleazy and menacing charm. In many ways, he seems like a homicidal pimp---promising HIS women the world but forcing them into lives of quiet desperation.

One day, a nice sailor named Dan (Phillips Holmes) enters the place and Frankie is expected to do her routine--steer him to alcohol while drinking water disguised as gin. In other words, she gets him to buy her these expensive drinks and who knows how much, if anything, he'll be left with at the end of the evening. However, Frankie feels sorry for the guy since he seems pretty decent and she rescues him from the place. Despite her cold outer shell, he sees her as a decent woman--stuck in a hellish life. So, he offers to take her away from this dump. The problem is that the last guy who tried that was killed by Johnnie. What's next?

This is an amazingly gritty and sleazy sort of film. Oddly, however, they also threw in some comic relief that really distracted from the plot. Perhaps they thought the film would be too gritty and too depressing otherwise. Regardless, the film has some fine acting and is far less stilted than most early talkies. In particular, I loved the opening scene with Marjorie Rambeau walking through the streets as the camera moved with her. It was a difficult shot technically and it really impressed me as I watched this camera-work. Worth seeing and available for free at the internet archive website.

It is probably notable - although this is a side story -for showing what happened older prostitutes as they began to trade on rapidly diminishing assets. The very first scenes are Annie (Marjorie Rambeau) leaving the Havana bar where she has probably been for decades and leaving a ship with the cops recognizing her and telling her to go back onboard. That with her criminal history she cannot come into the US. Then you just see her feet and legs from the knee down, walking wearily along the street, back to the Havana bar that is her home.

The central story is about a young prostitute, Frankie (Helen Twelvetrees), her pimp, Johnnie (Ricardo Cortez), and a young sailor, Dan (Phillips Holmes) who sees the good in Frankie and wants to take her away from all of this. The film portrays Frankie as a pickpocket, but nobody dresses in such a ridiculous gaudy fashion just to empty the pockets of drunks, so her true profession is merely implied. What Frankie doesn't know is that Johnnie is a killer and will do anything to keep her in the bar and working for him.

There is some comedy thrown in that actually works. I say that because during Prohibition it seemed that filmmakers thought that just having someone publicly drunk was supposed to be funny when today it is tiresome. But the duo of Harry Sweet and James Gleason as Dan's two continuously drunk sailor companions is truly funny. So is Franklin Pangborn as a rather distinguished fellow with a bowler hat that the two drunk sailors want to steal. It's odd seeing Pangborn depart from the snooty effete fellows that he usually played. Slim Summerville is a drunk who continuously tries to knock hats off of people's heads. What is this obsession with hats?

I'm not spoiling anything, because the movie doesn't say this or even imply it, but because Frankie says she doesn't even know her birthday or her folks and has been living a life of cheating and stealing as long as she can remember, I rather wonder if Annie was her mother? Annie seems to focus on Frankie's welfare more than on the other girls in the bar, and if Annie grew up knowing nothing more than what Frankie knew -stealing and prostitution since childhood - maybe she thought that what little she did was what motherhood looked like. The sins of the fathers being visited on the third and fourth generation may not be God being vindictive as much as it is the statement of an unpleasant truth.

I'd recommend this one. It has good camera work and natural performances for it to be an early sound film.

A good start: the credits are written in the sand and washed away by waves, with only the sound of the surf. The story starts with Rambeau being met at the bottom of the gangplank in New York by the law, and told to return directly to Havana, do not pass go. When we get back to Havana we find that the film's not about Rambeau, but about 12trees, who is under the thumb of Cortez. In an early scene, Cortez's henchmen stage a fight to draw attention while he surreptitiously kills an enemy by throwing a knife; a well managed, cold blooded murder. Holmes, in one of his best performances, is a sailor on leave who is taken with 12trees, even though she plays her best B-girl routine on him. That's the set-up, and it's really well played out all the way to the end. The plot structure is good, with Cortez getting poetic justice, and with no false moves. The atmosphere is great, particularly in a bravura street set, which a moving camera travels down twice, through crowds of drunks, whores and assorted riffraff. One of these tracking shots has 12trees bouncing along behind Cortez, the perfect image of a floozie following her pimp. The camera is fluid throughout the film, prowling around the huge bar set as well as the streets. And 12trees shows that she can deliver a performance that's a bit different from the put-upon wives of MY WOMAN and NOW I'LL TELL. Although some of the dialogue is a bit primitive, one can well see why this film "has its adherents" (per Halliwell). Unfortunately, all this great stuff is interspersed with a series of simple repeating burlesque blackouts: Gleason losing--and his pal winning--at the one-armed bandit; Summerville and drunks bashing (or not bashing) a hat; Pangborn challenging others to a fight, etc. The mechanical nature of the gags, and their constant reiteration, tends to defeat the suspension of disbelief needed for the serious drama in the foreground. Even so, this one is a pre-Code era must-see.

This pre code film is from the early days of cinema. Yet its production values are not creaky. This spruced up version of the movie has a rather stylish credit sequence of waves washing over the sand.

The story begins with a woman who tries to disembark in America but she is sent back presumably labelled as an undesirable because of her criminal record, she is a prostitute.

The tropical island she is returned to is in the Caribbean, maybe Cuba. Set in the raucous, sleazy harbour area.

Frankie (Helen Twelvetrees) is a good time girl. She get the sailors in the bar drunk, pop in a Mickey Finn so they can lose their wallets. Maybe a little bit more is given if the price is right

Johnnie (Ricardo Cortez) controls the girls and he can turn nasty when provoked.

Dan (Phillips Holmes) is a sailor who understands Frankie and the path she has taken is not by choice. He has fallen in love with her and wants both of them to run away together.

Frankie knows that leaving Johnnie will not be easy. He will set his thugs on Dan. Maybe Dan's two drunken sailor friends will help him out.

The story is so-so and over the years become cliched being copied by other movies. Being set before the Hays Code, the sleaziness works well but a lot of it is implied such as the prostitutes in the harbour.

There is a lot of slapstick with Dan's drunken friends over the ownership of a bowler hat that has been stolen. There is a running gag as they play a slot machine where one wins money and the other does not.

Actually the slapstick becomes tiresome. There is a lot of visual flair by director Tay Garnett who has given a lot of thought to planning his shots.

I did think the look of Dan would now be regarded as camp. He looks like something dreamt up by Jean Paul Gaultier.