Housewife

George Brent, Ann Dvorak, and Bette Davis star in "Housewife," a 1934 film done at Warner Brothers before they knew what they had in Bette Davis. Davis was pretty enough, with her blond hair and blue eyes, to be cast as an ingénue when she first got to Warners. When Warners realized she had some personality, they put her in films like this where she played stronger, ambitious women.

In "Housewife," she plays Pat, who has always had a mad crush on Bill (Brent), but Brent is married to Nan (Dvorak), and they have a son. Apparently this doesn't matter to her or Brent, as he starts working late at the office and enters into an affair with her. In one party scene, it's pretty obvious that they're a couple - and that's in front of his wife. His wife, well played by Ann Dvorak, refuses to give him a divorce. He doesn't know what the big deal is, apparently forgetting they have a child. All very odd - or is it the script.

This is a pretty typical and not very good B movie enlivened by the cast. I like Brent better without his mustache. Wonder why he grew one.

Pure soap opera and not of the highest quality, with a silly ending. But no Bette Davis fan will want to skip her earlier efforts; it makes one appreciate what came later.

Housewife is the kind of film that drive feminists absolutely mad in presenting the woman as fit to be nothing more than the one who keeps home and hearth for the husband. It must have been especially galling for Bette Davis who definitely did not fit the mold of the message of this film.

Bette's not in the title role, she's the infamous 'other woman' of this Warner Brothers soap opera. The title role is played by Ann Dvorak, wife of George Brent, mother of Ronnie Cosbey. She tells Brent that he's not exactly showing a certain amount of get up and go needed to succeed in the world. That sends Brent off in the direction of Davis who is a career woman who just started working at Brent's advertising agency.

In the meantime Dvorak ain't taking this philandering lying down, she shows she's got some worldly ways after all and even gets an admirer in the person of John Halliday sniffing around.

But this is 1934 so films like this can only follow certain specific formula guidelines. All these people are so terribly civilized about all this infidelity.

1934 was the year Bette Davis finally got a breakthrough part in Of Human Bondage. Yet Warner Brothers would still cast her in fluff like Housewife. No wonder she took off for Great Britain.

While the premise sounded pretty old-hat and familiar and the title not particularly appetising (not to mention trusted reviewers not caring for it), 'Housewife' did have enough to make me want to see it. The main reasons being Bette Davis, an acting legend, and Ann Dvorak, always a pleasure to watch. But also because of my appreciation of the genre 'Housewife' fits under and of my love for classic, pre-1970s film (though my film taste is made up of all decades and genres).

'Housewife' though could have been so much better. It is watchable and does have its good things, including Davis and Dvorak. There is also though nothing much special in 'Housewife' and has a lot of major drawbacks, with the story almost single-handedly bringing the film down. All did much better work, performances and films, despite coming off quite well this is lesser early Davis in terms of films and even a lot of her previous films are better.

As said, Davis commands the screen without over-doing it, though to me it wasn't a going through the motions type of performance. The best performance as others have said belongs to Dvorak, a sheer delight and perhaps the best and only real exceptional thing about 'Housewife'. The film looks good and is amiably scored.

It does pick up in momentum a little in the middle act where things got more eventful. There are moments where the dialogue isn't too corny or overwrought.

The story sadly badly undoes 'Housewife'. It is a slow-starter and takes far too long to find its footing. For so much of the length, the story is very flimsy in content and what there is is so been there done that that there are so few surprises. Then the film gets very rushed and cramped towards the end, culminating in an "out of the blue", very silly and tacked on ending that doesn't ring true for a second.

George Brent is very take or leave for me generally as an actor, and here he came over as very bland as a character impossible to feel anything for. The direction is very routine at best, which is a good way to sum up too much of the pace too. The characters are sketchy and only Dvorak's has much likeability. The script was in sore need of a tightening up and wit.

All in all, watchable but a big disappointment. 5/10

HOUSEWIFE (Warner Brothers, 1934), directed by Alfred E. Green, is a domestic story known basically as a Bette Davis movie. Though Davis appears in it, star billing actually goes to her frequent co-star, George Brent, in their third movie together, while the title character goes to third-billed Ann Dvorak as Brent's housewife. Taking second billing under Brent, Davis' role, as the other woman, might have benefited better and favorably for type-cast vamps as Helen Vinson or Claire Dodd, considering the fact that the Davis role is actually secondary and lesser to Dvorak's major co-starring performance.

Plot development begins with the introduction of characters starting off their new day at the breakfast table. William H. Reynolds (George Brent) is happily married to Nan (Ann Dvorak), with a son, Buddy (Ronnie Cosbey), who collects stray dogs, and a housekeeper named Jennie (Leila Bennett). Though Bill has worked as an office manager for Sam Blake (Robert Barratt) agency for five years without a raise in salary, his brother-in-law, George Wilson (Hobart Cavanaugh), who works with Bill, comes in late mainly to improve himself looking for a new and better job. After acquiring a job that pays $10 more than his present salary, Nan feels Bill can do the same, but he lacks confidence in himself in spite of some great ideas that can advance himself with the firm. Entering the establishment is Patricia Berkeley (Bette Davis), formerly Ruth Smith, a successful copyrighter who has known both Bill and Nan during their high school days. Seeing how he's not fully appreciated by Blake, Bill quits. Under his wife's advise and extra savings, he forms an agency of his own called the William H. Reynolds Company. Though he gets Mr. Krueger (Joseph Cawthorne) as his first client, it's not enough for him to survive until Bill becomes more aggressive enough to get one of Blake's most prospective clients, Paul Dupree (John Halliday), a cosmetics manufacturer, to advertise with him instead, taking Patricia along with him. Through the passage of time, Bill's business prospers, with he and his family now living in a luxurious new home with servants, and Buddy being sent to military school. All goes well until Nan notices Bill is spending more time away from home and business in favor of Patricia. Others in the cast include Ruth Donnelly (Dora Wilson, George's wife); Willard Robertson (Judge Edwin A. Matthews); Jonathan Hale (The Doctor) and Charles Coleman (Bolton, the Butler). One song, "Costumes by Dupree" by Mort Dixon and Allie Wrubel, gets vocalized by Phil Regan as Mike Hathaway during a radio broadcast.

A mediocre assignment for future major lead actress, Bette Davis, who might have thought of this assignment as both formula and forgettable. Yet her smoking trademark is evident here but little else except a rare opportunity finding Davis playing the other woman. For this 69 minute production, the film overall moves swiftly more in favor of its featured players of Brent and Dvorak. HOUSEWIFE does offer Davis her second and final collaboration opposite Ann Dvorak, following THREE ON A MATCH (1932), starring Joan Blondell, which Dvorak's role was a lot more meatier than Davis' secondary and smaller performance. John Halliday, playing a rich bachelor business tycoon who finds out what he's been missing after witnessing the Reynolds family life with child, is believably done. Ruth Donnelly as Dvorak's sister-in-law seems a little miscast here, but her role in general is not large enough to hurt the story in any way. Ronnie Cosbey, whom the Dvorak character claims him to be "all boy," is likable as the little son. In spite some similar features, he's not the same little actor from THREE ON A MATCH, actually played by Buster Phelps, minus the curly hair. For the teaming of George Brent and Bette Davis, better roles, particularly DARK VICTORY (1939) were ahead of them. HOUSEWIFE'S sole purpose today is getting a glimpse of its three major actors early in their careers, particularly career woman Davis, better off playing the other woman than just a housewife.

Never distributed on video cassette, HOUSEWIFE often turns up on Turner Classic Movies as either tributes to either Brent, Davis or Dvorak, or broadcast in general showing the now many forgotten films of the 1930s worthy of rediscovery. (** dishes)

especially from Ann Dvorak (Nan Reynolds), who is in the title role as the housewife. It's basically a story that's been told time and time again, but with a few twists - a man (Bill Reynolds) rises up from obscurity to riches largely due to not only hard work, but the inspiration and ingenuity of a good woman, and then that man loses his head when he gets to the top. Brent plays the man forgetting where he came from and how he got there, and he does a more sympathetic job of it than actors in similar films, mainly because George Brent usually plays his roles with such sensitivity. Thus is the case here, and he therefore looks somewhat conscience-stricken even when he's behaving unconscionably.

John Halliday plays Paul Duprey, a major client in Bill's advertising firm as well as a man who sees the value in what Bill is tossing aside in the person of Bill's wife, Nan. Finally there is Bette Davis as Pat Berkeley, a creative genius in the advertising world and an old friend of Bill and supposedly of Nan too, although that doesn't prevent her from going after Bill. Warner Brothers has Ms. Davis' acting abilities packed in cotton here, as her sharp delivery and style of the late 30's and onward is on Valium in this particular film. She isn't given much more to do here than wander around looking fabulous in what seems to be a copy of Kay Francis' wardrobe. No wonder she fled to England in 1936.

There are a few touches that are pure Warners. Particularly humorous is a radio show - "The Duprey Hour" - designed by Bill's office manager rather than by Bill when Bill begins chasing after the charms of Pat and allows his business to be neglected. The show is supposed to build up Duprey Cosmetics. The final result is a disaster and consists of all kinds of bad humor that is so tasteless it's funny. It's topped off by a crooner singing lines like "...if the circles under your eyes look like apple pies...". You get the idea.

I'd recommend this one for the fine acting of Ann Dvorak and George Brent, for the unbelievable underutilization of Bette Davis, and the little touches and comic turns here and there that only seemed to pop up at Warner Brothers, especially in the 1930's. Do note that I think this might have been a better and meatier film if it had been made a year earlier and not just as the production code was coming into full effect. The director and writers just might have been afraid, under the circumstances, to take this film some of the places that could have made it more interesting.