The Purchase Price

Sometimes I think you just have to be in the mood for certain films. This may have been one of those times. "The Purchase Price" from 1932, largely thanks to Barbara Stanwyck, is actually a very sweet film.

Stanwyck plays Joan, a torch singer, unhappy with her present life and the racketeer, Eddie Fields (Lyle Talbot) with whom she's involved. When she finds out that someone has used her photo and sent it off to be a mail-order bride, Joan decides to show up in person and takes off.

She ends up in farm country with Jim Gilson (George Brent) who's in debt up to his eyebrows. However, over the years, he has developed an excellent grain seed - if he can stave off the creditors until the next planting season, he'll be okay.

To Joan's credit, she settles in, determined to make him a good wife and to be a good neighbor, and she falls in love with Jim. When her ex-beau shows up, Jim jumps to some wrong conclusions.

Barbara Stanwyck is great in this, giving a warm, sincere performance. She is glamorous in the first few scenes (though boy, she can't sing), and she remains sexy and pretty even plainly dressed on the farm, causing a lot of men to notice her and make dumb old Jim jealous.

This is a different kind of role for George Brent, who soon would be well-dressed, mustached, and sophisticated as he played opposite Bette Davis. Here he's an oaf.

The movie is short and moves quickly. Stanwyck's performance helps give a freshness to a story that was old even back in 1932.

This is sold as "pre-Code," as if there will something risqué or shocking, but certainly by today's standards -- or lack thereof -- and even by those of the era, there is nothing to bother your grandma or even your (reasonable) preacher.

There is something, though, to excite the movie-lover: Barbara Stanwyck's performance.

Apparently in real life she was a pretty tough cookie, and certainly she played some hard women in many of her films.

In "The Purchase Price" her character refers to herself as having maintained some sort of a reputation and in fact she comes across as a very nice, even admirable person.

She certainly looked good, with a gentle strength, or strong gentleness, poking out of the chorus girl/mistress persona.

The story, though, never does make much sense, and why the people did what they did, except for the character played by Lyle Talbot -- in a great role for him, and excellently played -- is not clear.

One more glaring error: North (brrrr) Dakota doesn't have any hills, and the shots of snow-capped peaks showed that wherever this film was shot, it sure wasn't North (brrrr) Dakota, you betcha.

One scene of plowing showed the genuine agoraphobic look of that state, where neither hills nor even trees are native. Except for cottonwoods along the creeks and rivers, what trees there are in North (brrrr) Dakota have had to be brought in from the real world.

Plus North (brrrrr) Dakota drunks and brawlers are not Irish and Scots, as this movie implies, but Poles and Czechs and Germans, sometimes even Norwegians, unless they are Lutherans then, of course, they don't drink or brawl. And if you don't believe me, ask their preachers.

Anyway, watch this for Stanwyck and suspend your disbelief about all the rest. She is worth spending your time.

Of course this delicious tour-de-force is totally incredible... but WOW! You can't take your eyes off the screen in case Wellman gives his heroine whiplash as she moves from plushly-kept woman in Manhattan to mail-order farmer's bride in North Dakota. From take-out at Tiffany's to hauling coal nuggets 20 miles through a blizzard. From igniting the lust in men with her daring chanteusing to putting out the fire villains set to her and hubby George Brent's last-hope crop of wheat. All in just over 60 minutes!

The appeal of this somewhat run-of-the-mill film is Barbara Stanwyck in an early display of her mega-watt star power and her ability to turn mediocre material into something special.

Her character doesn't make much sense: a nightclub singer from the city who wants to get away from the bootlegger boyfriend hounding her and so agrees to an arranged marriage with a farmer up in the wilds of North Dakota! The bootlegger (played by Lyle Talbot) isn't threatening or abusive, so one wonders why Stanwyck needs to go to such great lengths to avoid him -- keep wondering, because the movie never explains it. But if you can swallow that, then you can easily swallow the fact that this urban good-time gal seems to know all about how to run a farm.

Which brings me back to Stanwyck. The movie's premise isn't remotely plausible, but Stanwyck somehow makes it so through the confidence of her performance. I really think she could make anything worth sitting through just for the pleasure of watching her.

The film does provide an interesting look at what farm life in the early days of the 1930s was like, a lifestyle I've only seen recreated in more modern-day movies.

Grade: B-

This peculiar but interesting drama has Barbara Stanwyck as a weary nightclub torch singer with a "who cares?" attitude. To escape her underworld boyfriend, she decides to hide out in the bleak plains of North Dakota as a mail-order bride. As her shy farmer husband, the normally debonair George Brent is almost unrecognizable in a pair of overalls, but gives a sensitive characterization. The bulk of the plot follows the growing feeling between the reserved ‘country mouse' and the tough ‘city mouse', complicated by several villains. Tough guy director William Wellman keeps things moving at a clip, and uses his low budget wisely to stage several good set-pieces, including a drunken shivaree for the happy couple. In the supporting cast, Leila Bennett stands out as a plain-talking maid.