The Woman Racket

THE WOMAN RACKET (MGM, 1930), directed by Robert Ober and Albert Kelly, is a vintage melodrama that marked the feature talking debut of a silent screen actress named Blanche Sweet. Virtually forgotten today as is this movie, with title that gives an indication of being a crime drama about a female gang leader, the legend of Blanche Sweet rests upon the films she made starting as early as 1909, while the legend of Blanche Sweet ended with three 1930 talkies, including "The Silver Horde" (RKO), with "Show Girl in Hollywood" (Warners) starring Alice White, being the most acceptable and enjoyable of the trio.

The story opens one evening as The Blue Moon, a speakeasy, is being raided by the police. Tom Hayes (Tom Moore), a cop who goes by the book, meets up with Julia Barnes (Blanche Sweet), an employee attempting to make her escape. Instead of arresting her, he not only lets her go, but takes her out for evenings of fun, including Coney Island. Within a short time, the two marry. A year later, Julia finds that living in an apartment on Eighth Avenue and being a policeman's wife isn't all that's cracked up to be. She spends her evenings in total boredom while Tom is out all night doing his job by walking the beat. Against her husband's wishes, Julia, who had acquired a new dress gifted to her by Tom, decides to go out and visit the old gang at the Blue Moon. While there, for old time's sake, she gets to sing a song sitting on top of a piano (in the Helen Morgan tradition), thus, attracting the attention of Chris Miller (John Miljan), Ben's (Tenan Holtz) new partner and manager, and offers her a job. When Tom learns of this, Julia at first agrees to abide by his wishes, but finds she can't. She leaves Tom a farewell note, returns to the Blue Moon where she not only works and enjoys the night life, but becomes Miller's mistress, a decision she would live to regret.

Songs featured in this production include: "He's Good Enough for Me" (sung by Blanche Sweet), and the catchy tune, "Call Me to Arms" (sung and performed by Robert Agnew and Sally Starr). Choreography is credited to Sammy Lee while the songwriters go without credit. Agnew (who sings like "Broadway Melody" star Charles King and occasionally resembles MGM comedian actor William Haines) and Starr appear as the secondary couple singing and dancing as well as arguing amongst themselves regarding her future career.

Top-billing goes to a now obscure actor named Tom Moore, who appears to have spent much of his movie career playing Irish cops. Blanche Sweet's voice registers well in this early talkie, giving her an opportunity to sing a song, but of all the actors in the supporting cast, including Lew Kelly as Tish; Nita Martan as Rita and Richard Travers as Wardell; John Miljan comes off best. A resident MGM performer who specialized in playing villains, is really mean in this one, so mean that he arranges for the murder of Wardell (Richard Travers) and placing the blame on his mistress Julia, with an attempt to go away to Chicago with his star dancer (Sally Starr). On top of that, when Julia attempts to expose Miller, he knocks her out and places her in a trunk to dispose of her, and stops at nothing to get what he wants. Quite common in movies, one would wonder why anyone would tell what he or she attempts on doing to expose a villain's evil doings to the police, knowing full well that the villain in question is dangerous enough to do something drastic. As for Sweet, her character is off the screen for quite a long stretch (being locked up in a trunk), leaving reliable cop now promoted to detective Tom Moore to do some investigating.

In an after movie interview following a rare presentation of the Blanche Sweet silent version to "Anna Christie" (1923) which played on public television's 1978 weekly series, "Lost and Found" (WNET, Channel 13, New York City), as hosted by Richard Schickel, Blanche Sweet herself discussed her invitation to MGM where she was to star in the talkie remake of "Anna Christie", a role that eventually went to Greta Garbo. One wonders how far Sweet's career might have gone had she acted in "Anna Christie" instead of Garbo, but since the Anna Christie character is of Swedish decent, Sweet would have been all wrong in the role that rightfully belonged to Garbo, a natural born Swede. Since THE WOMAN RACKET is far from a prestigious movie project, in spite of it being distributed by a prestigious movie studio, Sweet's career in talkies was short-lived in spite of some promising results in the new medium.

The plot of THE WOMAN RACKET might have played well had it been produced at the Warner Brothers studio that specialized in dramas such as this, with the likes of its resident actors as Pat O'Brien, Ann Dvorak and Ricardo Cortez in the Moore, Sweet and Miljan parts, but such as it is, THE WOMAN RACKET is a rarely seen 70 minute drama as well as Blanche Sweet movie that was last seen during the after midnight hours on Turner Classic Movies. (**)

... but you can't take the speakeasy of the girl. At least not easily.

The film opens with a raid on a speakeasy, and the cops are posted at all of the exits just to make sure that the middle class customers and the people just trying to eke out a living are embarrassed, arrested, and financially damaged over doing something that everybody did during prohibition - drink. Tom - one of the cops - sees a pair of comely legs hiding in the bushes. He pulls her out and sees the rest of her is just as comely (Blanche Sweet as Julia). So he helps her escape (the fruits of "pretty privilege"), dates her, and marries her. But before long Julia is tired of living on Tom's paltry salary and craves the excitement of the nightlife again. One night when Tom is working, she dresses up, goes back to the "Blue Moon" speakeasy where she used to work, agrees to get her old job back that pays more than Tom's salary, and returns home just to be caught by Tom as he is coming in. They argue about what she has done, and during the day while Tom is gone, Julia leaves him, and goes back to the speakeasy to work and live.

But the guy she thought was so chivalrous and charming -John Miljan as Chris, coowner of the speakeasy - turns out to be just a cheap gangster and womanizing cad. Chris should know better than to steal a cop's wife and then bite off more than he can chew as far as criminal activity. Julia should know better than to mouth off to a cheap gangster about just what all she can pin on him. Complications ensue.

The only really confusing issue about this whole thing is that initially the cops raided this establishment. Now Tom comes and goes and seems to know the place and the owners, yet does nothing and arrests nobody. This is not explained at all. This was obviously a B effort by MGM since it has none of their big stars in it, plus the thing is completely mistitled. There is nothing of females or forced errors in this film, and the title insinuates it might be about prostitution. Instead it really is not salacious at all.

I enjoyed it because it gave the talented and unfairly forgotten Miljan a bigger role than usual, I just love looking at the art deco styles of the time, and Sally Starr and Robert Agnew have some adorable musical numbers together. Starr was going to be MGM's answer to Clara Bow, but that never really worked out.

Recommended for fans of the precode era.

Blanche Sweet is tired of living on cop Tom Moore's salary. So she leaves him and goes back to John Miljan's night club. But she is expected to do more than wear pretty clothes and sing for her supper.

It's a holdover from the previous year, and shows the problems that MGM had in moving into the sound era. The pacing is slow, and the blocking is static. It also shows the sort of language diversity that Metro used in the changeover to talkies, with far more natural lower-class accents and a general lack of polish...which did not, alas, translate into naturalism. With Sally Starr, Robert Agnew, and Lew Kelly.

Blanche Sweet plays a singer at a speakeasy who is caught by a cop during a raid, but instead of arresting her, he lets her go and eventually winds up marrying her. However, life as a cop's wife turns out to be not quite what she expected, and she longs for the excitement and fun of her former career. One day, after a particular trying day at home, she goes back to her old nightclub and meets up with the good-hearted owner (Tenen Holtz) and his slimy new business partner (John Miljan, terrific as usual). She leaves her husband to become the club's singer and, eventually, Miljan's mistress, and before she knows it she finds herself involved in a murder.

This is an interesting little crime drama, more suited to Warner Bros. than MGM, but even though the pacing tends to be a little choppy and the camera-work is a bit shaky at times, it's eminently watchable. Blanche Sweet is pert, cute and charming and a pretty good singer, and few villains were slicker or more sophisticated than Miljan. Tom Moore as Sweet's cop husband leaves a bit to be desired; he's actually too old for her, pours on the Irish charm (and brogue) a bit too thick and comes across as a bit naive for a tough New York City cop. Nevertheless, it's a pretty good little picture overall, helped along greatly by Sweet (it's a shame her career never really took off during the talkie era).

The direction is credited to two men, Robert Ober and Albert H. Kelley. This was Ober's only directorial effort--he was an actor--and Kelley was a "full-time" director. My best guess is that Kelley was brought in when the task proved to be too much for Ober. If so, he actually did a pretty good job. Kelley spent his career mired in the lower depths of Poverty Row, churning out shorts, low-rent crime dramas and cheap jungle pictures for the likes of PRC, Monogram and Republic. This looks like it was his shot at big-time features, and for some reason he didn't--or couldn't--capitalize on it. It's too bad, because he shows potential here that was absent in most of his subsequent pictures.

Overall this is definitely a picture to watch. Although it was made in 1930, I've seen plenty of films that came out several years after this that weren't as well-made, fluidly paced, well-shot or entertaining as this is. Give it a shot.

THE WOMAN RACKET is an early MGM talkie filmed in 1929 and released in January 1930. It's a crime drama notable as the feature-film talkie debut of Blanche Sweet, who had returned from England, where she filmed her final silent film (THE WOMAN IN WHITE). She had made one Vitaphone short at Warners before tackling this feature at MGM. Interestingly, Photoplay magazine had run a squib about MGM's interest in shooting ANNA CHRISTIE as a talkie and Blanche Sweet was rumored to be in line to star in the remake of her 1923 silent film.

In this talkie, Sweet is very very good as Julia and pulls out all the stops as the speakeasy hostess who gets in over her head. She even sings "He's Good Enough for Me" atop a piano. The film is sunk, however by only so-so performances by Tom Moore as her cop husband and John Miljan as the snarky club owner. The film was apparently also released as a silent. There are also a couple of obvious sound issues.

In any case, the film apparently didn't do much at the box office and Sweet obviously didn't get another crack as playing Anna Christie.