Professional Sweetheart

"Professional Sweetheart" was Ginger Rogers' first film for RKO studios after she left Warner Bros., and with Allen Jenkins and Frank McHugh in the supporting cast it almost seems like a Warners film in exile. It's a marvelous movie, smart and funny, with a script by "Chicago" author Maurine Watkins that, though it isn't a crime story, takes up another of Watkins' favorite themes: media manipulation and the gap between what we're told about celebrities and what they're really like. In "The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book," Arlene Croce wrote, "Almost any Ginger Rogers role is successful to the degree that it reflects the dualism in her personality (tough-vulnerable, ingenuous-calculating) or plays on her curious aptitude for mimickry or fantasy or imposture." Croce was writing about the major roles of her post-Astaire career — "Bachelor Mother," "Tom, Dick and Harry," "The Major and the Minor" — but it applies here just as well; by casting Rogers as a wise-cracking hard-bitten orphan girl forced to pose as the "Purity Girl," and having two radio sponsors and a husband (from an arranged marriage!) all with their own ideas of what they want from her, "Professional Sweetheart" gives Rogers an early showcase for the characteristics that would have made her an enormous star even if she'd never set foot on a dance floor with Fred Astaire. I can't understand why some of the other commentators on this film have criticized Watkins' script, since it seems to me to be well constructed and vividly satirical on celebrity and its discontents in a way that rings true even today.

Another thing I liked about "Professional Sweetheart" is that it's one of the Gayest movies Hollywood ever made — so much so that I can't understand why TCM isn't showing it in their current "Screened Out" festival of Gay and Lesbian films when some other titles with much more peripheral Gay content did make their list. The supporting actors seem to be competing as to who can be the queeniest, with Franklin Pangborn (not surprisingly) winning: his looks of horror and disgust when any of the other characters suggests that he date a woman are priceless. Also pretty astonishing, even for the relatively liberal "pre-Code" era in Hollywood history, is Sterling Holloway's obviously cruising Allen Jenkins at the reporters' reception — imagine a Gay scene involving Jenkins in which he's the butch one!

... and by that I mean that from its beginnings, radio was very strict about the public persona of its radio stars, regardless of what they did in private. The year this film was made - 1933 - was the last full year in Hollywood where anything goes, although these films look like family fare by today's standards.

In this environment, Ginger Rogers is given a dynamite role that really shows her flair for comedy. She plays Glory Eden, "The Purity Girl", the face - and voice - of the Ipsy-Wipsy Wash Cloth radio show. However, in private, the purity girl is the last thing she wants to be. Glory wants to go to Harlem night clubs, smoke, drink, eat rich food, and most of all have some male companionship. So the sponsors decide to appease her and meet her half way. They start a contest looking for the "ideal Anglo Saxon" - the film's words, not mine. They come up with a real naïve hayseed (Norman Foster as Jim Davey). He's a farmer from Kentucky who actually believes Glory's public image is real. He returns to New York with the show's sponsor and now Glory can go out to more public places since she has an "official" male escort.

The one drawback to the film is you never see any real relationship form between the two. It's just suddenly there. Jim just asks Glory to marry him, she agrees - obviously from the heart, because she gives him a passionate kiss. Ipsy Wipsy head Samuel 'Sam' Ipswich claims he'll wait until after the wedding and as a PR stunt have Glory sign her new contract.

But things run amok. After the wedding Jim sees Glory's true colors and they are scarlet not pure white. He decides to kidnap her and take her back to Kentucky to make a "good woman" out of her. There is an absolutely hilarious wedding night scene once Jim has her back in Kentucky that I will just let you watch. Let's just say that these two are absolutely perfect together in this scene that could have not been possible after the production code a year later.

So now two competitors are looking for Glory - they think she's been kidnapped - and both want her to sign with them. At first they don't know where she's gone. How does this work out? I'll let you watch and find out.

This film would have been good with just Norman Foster and Ginger Rogers. It is made great by all of the character actors running around busily in the background. Zasu Pitts is a dizzy reporter, Gregory Ratoff as Samuel Ipswich was born to play the over excited boss who is destined to die of a heart attack and loves firing people, Allen Jenkins and Frank McHugh are the assistants to their frantic bosses, and Edgar Kennedy is Ipswich's competition, trying to track down Glory so he can sign her to his own radio program.

Best line of the film goes to Jim - "Please God, don't let her die! She's wicked, but I love her." Questions never resolved - Will Glory's maid get her own radio career? And what DID happen between Franklin Pangborn's character and Zasu Pitts when she found him in the closet without his pants? Enjoy this little piece of RKO zaniness. I know I did.

The sponsors of a rowdy radio singer find a somber PROFESSIONAL SWEETHEART to keep her satisfied and out of trouble.

Ginger Rogers dominates this Pre-Code comedy with her saucy performance as the spoiled warbler. This was her first starring role and she makes the most of it, pouting and prancing across the screen (often in her lingerie) talking bold & brassy, but actually just longing for the right male to come along and knock her into submission. Disturbing implications aside, she is an eyeful and a great deal of fun to watch.

Norman Foster deftly underplays his role as a stolid Tennessee backwoodsman whose whole life is commandeered by Ms. Rogers and the avaricious makers of the Ippsie Wippsie wash cloth. His eventual break for freedom, with Rogers in tow, will elicit deep approval from at least one gender in the viewing audience.

A wonderful cast of character actors help support the stars: Gregory Ratoff as Ginger's scheming sponsor; Frank McHugh as his eager beaver press agent; ZaSu Pitts as a silly sob sister; Franklin Pangborn as a nervous decorator; Edgar Kennedy as owner of a rival wash rag company; Allen Jenkins as his factotum; and Sterling Holloway as a slow-talking reporter.

Movie mavens will recognize an unbilled Akim Tamiroff as a hotel room service waiter.

I saw this with another RKO Ginger Rogers film from the same year.

Even though these are targeted as light entertainment, I am amazed at how fresh they feel and how experimental the structure is.

That lightness is often attributed to the lack of the Hayes Code, which lowered its dark curtain the following year. Its clear in retrospect that this was a bad thing, that it wounded an entire society, and would have destroyed it altogether had we not encountered a similar more obvious evil. And went to war.

But how does one know what is right around the corner? How does one celebrate the freedoms that are about to be taken away? Its a haunting thing in the background of this, as part of the joke is that this perfect man is "the purest of Anglo-Saxons." Another part of the joke is that sweetness, goodness and happiness is contrasted with black jive, sex and Harlem, all of which are "fun."

The structure of the thing is pretty sophisticated. Many films from these four years 1930- 33 were similarly adventuresome in their structure.

Its a show about sex and domestic values within which is a show (a radio show) about sex and domestic values. (The domestic hook is literally a dishrag.) Around this show are a collection of nattering men trying to engineer romance and predictably failing. If you study the narrative structure of date movies, you'll be familiar with tricks about how to reflect the viewer in the story. Its rather novel and somewhat perfect here.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

This is a very early film in the career of Ginger Rogers. It is somewhat saucy and always goofy. It portays people in radio show business and the press that covers it as both overly ambitious and naive. There are several character actors such as Zazu Pitts that are totally hilarious. The plot is basicly girl wants fun and freedom rather than fame, and boy wants girl. After several very funny misadventures they both get what they want and each other. Sexuality is very frank in this movie even though the characters are very innocent. For the naughty in us there is even a spanking scene. Ginger Roger's voice is dubbed in a couple of songs because the producers did not think she was good enough. A very funny film worth repeated viewings. It can be seen occaisionly on the Turner Movie Channel. In the final scene there is a reference to television long before it would become available as if it was just around the corner.