Unashamed

Once again, if you don't know who Helen Twelvetrees is, then you had better get acquainted. She was a big star in the early thirties. With a name like "Twelvetrees", how is it I never heard of her before either?? I have now seen her in over 9 films, "State's Attorney" (1932), "A Woman of Experience" (1931), "Her Man" (1930), are just a few examples, with "A Woman of Experience" being excellent!

The reason I recommend this film is so you can experience the great acting job Helen Twelvetrees does in her transitioning between types of personalities in her life. It is almost as if she is playing four different characters.

First she plays a young innocent in love and blind to what she is getting into. Then she has to play cold and hard and a woman who would turn her own brother over to death row. Then she becomes crazed and frantic as she starts to see the error of her ways. And finally she does the best performance of all when she takes the witness stand and becomes a lady with no morals and brash.

The plot is "simple". She loves a man (Monroe Owsley) who is only after her for her money. Everyone sees it but Twelvetrees. Her father (played very well by Robert Warwick) forbids the marriage and so the Owsley takes her to a hotel over night, knowing it will ruin her reputation in society and her father will then force them to marry. Twelvetrees' brother (Robert Young) tries to help her out of the situation but she insists her lover is good and she loves him. Finally Young turns on Owsley and exposes him for the mercenary liar he is. The lover punches Young. Young returns with a gun and in a rage shoots the lover dead.

Twelvetrees, still in love, turns on her brother and says that she will see him go to the electric chair for what he has done. Lewis Stone plays the defense attorney for Young. But when Twelvetrees takes the stand and swears it was cold blooded murder, it looks dark for Young.

I won't spoil the end. Watching for the first time, I truly did not know if Twelvetrees was going to come through and do the right thing. You will have to see for yourself. It makes a good ending!

As a footnote, I have also been seeing a lot of Louise Beavers too in recent films. She makes an appearance in the court. It is a small part and almost unnecessary, but the studios seemed to like putting her in films wherever they could. They even had a publicity photo done with her behind Young that is not in the film. But it is good to see them promoting her either way.

So attend the intense court room drama and watch the Classy Classic called "Unashamed". You will LOVE Twelvetrees!

Harry Swift (Monroe Owsley) is an awful young man...and without an ounce of character. He's been spoiled his entire life by his idiot father (Jean Hersholt) and he's been wooing Joan Ogden (Helen Twelvetrees). His interest isn't strictly honorable, as his interest really is in her money as she comes from a wealthy family. When his father learns of their relationship, he approaches Joan's father and tells him that his son is just no good. Not surprisingly, Joan's father forbids her from marrying Harry. As for Joan's brother, Dick (Robert Young) he knows Harry and thinks he's a cad. So to try to force them to allow the marriage, Harry spends the night with Joan...in a hotel room (after all, this is a Pre-Code picture)! Despite that, the family still won't budge...they won't condone this awful marriage. In fact, the brother is so against the marriage that he kills Harry! Soon Dick is on trial for his life...and Joan seems oddly indifferent to his fate.

This is a very strange movie in that you see Dick murder Harry. Sure, Harry was a terrible person but the film seems to imply that Dick and his lawyer lying in court was okay and that Joan SHOULD have lied for Dick! That's all very weird...as is Dick's almost incestuous feelings towards his sister. What's weirder? Joan doing a 180 late in the film...and not conceivable reason for this. Overall, a strange, muddled plot...though the film is oddly entertaining despite the writing and overly dramatic moments. In essence, it's watchable and enjoyable crap.

By the way, it's odd that Robert Young's character was referred to as a boy! In one scene, someone even says "...the boy is a minor"...and yet Young was 25 when he made this film.

Helen Twelvetrees is a spoiled rich girl who falls for an obvious cad. He wants her money. She wants him. Her father doesn't approve. His hardworking father, Jean Hersholt, doesn't either.

Most of all, her brother doesn't approve. The brother is played by Robert Young. He gives an excellent performance that is not at all perky or cute. His character seems dazed but also driven.

Indeed, there is a strong hint of more than brotherly love in the feelings he shows for her. Notging like those in "Scraface," still shocking over seventy years later. But it's there.

The movie is very good and never gives in to sentimentality.

I like Twelvestrees. She was attractive and acted well. She ought not to have been shot from behind, which she is often in his movie. Her face, not her derrière, was her strong point.

Helen Twelvetrees loves Monroe Owlsley, who adores her, or at least the three million dollars she stands to inherit. He inveigles her to go to a hotel with him; her brother, Robert Young, finds out about it, tries to prevent her, and winds up shooting Owlsley. He is placed on trial for murder.

I think there are some fine performances here, in what is essentially a stage play. Miss Twelvetress plays the nitwit very well, expressing her spoiled character well. Monroe Owlsey plays his cut-rate Lowell Sherman rotter very well; his scenes with father Jean Hersholt are heart-breaking in his manipulation of the sentimental old man. Robert Young, as the murderer is appropriately callow.

The value of this movie, ninety years later, is showing people trapped in their own little society, secure in the mistaken belief that they are invulnerable. Not a one of them can conceive of any bad consequences to their selfish, thoughtless actions. I doubt that a modern audience would take that message away from the film. Many pre-codes seem to concern a society so alien to modern thoughts that one has to dig to get any instruction from them. Still, under the direction of the highly capable Harry Beaumont, every actor inhabits his character fully.

Anyone interested in early 1930s American society should watch this. Whilst the story is mind blowing, the execution of this picture is well below par for an MGM production. It's got quite a cheap feel to it so it's nothing like as good as it could have been. Nevertheless it throws such disturbing social inequality and hypocrisy at you that you'll still be shouting angrily at your screen.

Veteran director Harry Beaumont was still well respected in 1932 but by now not the most innovative or imaginative guy on the lot. Apart from the bubbling fountain at the start, this suffers from rather stagey direction and some of the bit parts are surely cardboard cut outs aren't they? Bayard Veiller wrote some absolutely superb films in the early thirties. His script for this however lacks his usual flair for realism - it's based on his own play and he didn't seem to make too much of an effort to convert this into a movie. This coupled with Beaumont's old fashioned style results in a slightly theatrical feel. So we've got dull direction, some poor acting, unrealistic dialogue but these aren't the main problem with this - what's wrong with this film is it's a fascinating glimpse into the hypocritical morals and attitudes of the early thirties but it doesn't criticise them or try to explain or even comment on them, it just says what was happening without saying why. But maybe I've seen to many "campaigning" Warner Brothers pictures which went in for that sort of thing........and indeed they also made a film inspired by this same "honour" murder case TWO AGAINST THE WORLD in the same year but they completely squandered their opportunity by making a mushy romantic melodrama out of it. This version is not a mushy romantic melodrama!

You've read what this is about and as I've said, this isn't the greatest example of filmmaking but it's OK. What makes this fascinating viewing is its take on the morality of the age.

Bearing in mind the relaxed approach to what constituted decent behaviour in the years following The Great War in many strands of society, it would be nice to think that this is highlighting the hypocrisy of that era's morality. In reality however it just seems to be reinforcing those puritanical attitudes, the fake facade of decency which society pretended existed. This film should have a message but it doesn't - it's just reporting the situation.

What you pick up from watching films from this period is the "unwritten law" that if a girl slept with a man she would without any hesitation have to marry him. That was just the way things were.....apparently? The crux of this film is that Helen Twelvetrees' character professes to have had sex with someone but didn't want to marry him! Shock horror! We're expected to think that this was utterly unbelievable, that the population would be outraged by this proof of how wanton and disgraceful women could be! But this was at the end of the roaring twenties......yet this film is based on actual real events....it hardly seems like planet Earth does it! The title of this refers to the fact that she unashamedly admits to sleeping with a man, out of wedlock. This makes her so utterly loathsome and despised by all decent people you'd think she was a child murderer. But all she's done is said that marriage is old fashioned and she doesn't see that having unmarried sex is a big deal. It is beyond bizarre to us these days that this would cause such unmitigated disgust and sheer hatred.

Nobody however seem to bat an eyelid that Joan and her brother Dick are clearly having an incestuous relationship (well the critics certainly did at the time). Veiller and Beaumont make this very obvious right from the start with the "amusing confusion" of the opening scene. That goes some way to explain Dick's incendiary jealousy of his sister's lover. When you re-watch this - and yes, you will because there's so much going on, you'll begin to think that I underestimated these filmmakers: there's just so much going and although it's from the pre-code era there are certain things which still must remain unspoken - maybe they're allowing you to fill in the gaps yourself. It's certainly multi-layered!