Saleslady

The rich lady is pretty but her character is given less depth than a dishrag. She interacts with her grandfather and a streetwise dame at a boarding house and everything is going along fine, just some nice and digestible pre-war pabulum, but then the main dude arrives and he just pollutes the screen. I wanted to invent a time machine so I go back and kick his ass. He looks like if you tried to make a old time "handsome man" mask out of biscuit dough. His voice is nasally and his laugh lines made my pelvis hurt, as if I were bracing for a kick. And worst of all his character is a gross jerk. But the dumb rich woman falls for him and so he sticks around. Whenever he's not on screen the movie is completely tolerable but then he comes back and it's bad again.

Sound quality is pretty terrible... there's a high pitched noises and projector noises for most of the film, but we're probably just lucky to have this obscure film still around in any form. Anne Nagel is rich girl Mary Dakin. She's determined not to let anyone marry her for her family's money, so she gets a job working in a store. There, she meets and marries co-worker "Bob". The acting is "okay". No real surprises in this one...and I was kind of hoping for a twist or surprise. Her money and his lack of money or a career of his own is the conflict between them. SO similar to the plot of Columbia Picture's Holiday, which came out a couple months after this one. Wheldon Heyburn died young at 47, from numerous ailments. Nagel also died young at 50. Writer Kubec Glasmon was oscar-nominated for Public Enemy in 1931. HE died at age 40, just after this film was released. Seems to be a curse on the cast of this film! Director Arthur Collins only directed ten films, and this one was right in the middle of his career. This one is okay. Rated pretty low currently, but that's ony 64 votes so far. entertaining, if you can put up with the constant noise. Showing on the Epix channel.

For the most part, "Saleslady" is a bland and too-often trite romantic comedy. The premise is perhaps of mild interest: Mary is an heiress who wants to live a life of her own, and to be appreciated 'for herself', so she moves away from her rich grandfather, takes a job in a department store, and marries fellow employee Bob, who has no idea who she is. With the young couple in financial difficulty, Mary is then faced with the question of whether to ask her grandfather to bail them out.

The story that follows is only slightly satisfying, and is not very plausible. Most of the characters are likeable but dull, the dialogue is stale, and on numerous occasions Bob is annoyingly stupid. The one bright spot is Harry Davenport as the grandfather - the character is routine (as are his lines), but Davenport is a good character actor who knows how to give him a little life.

It's not unpleasant to watch, but it does not offer very many reasons to do so, either. Overall, there just is not enough here to recommend it.

How do you classify this film? Certainly not a 30s madcap comedy and hardly a searing look at the travails of depression era economics but a bland B film with second tier actors. Anne Nagel shows some heartfelt glimpses of talent but Weldon Heyburn is outperformed by the mattresses. Between the acting (Davenport excludes) and the terribly dated man-as-breadwinner plot this film does not merit the time for viewing either for perspective or merit

Anna Nagel plays Mary in this Monogram picture. When the story begins, Mary goes to work--even though she comes from a rich family. On this job, she meets and falls in love with Bob and they marry. He has no idea she's loaded....so she decides not to tell him. In the meantime, Bob makes a lot of dumb choices....buying too many things on credit and getting heavily in debt. Eventually, debt collectors begin repossessing their stuff.

When Mary gets hurt and goes to the hospital, it comes out that she's got money and her grandfather (Harry Davenport) can bail them out of their predicament by giving Bob a great job. But Bob is a proud man and refuses...and alienates his wife in the process. What's next for these two?

The film has a very strong old fashioned message that a man is THE breadwinner and should NEVER rely on his wife...ever. This is pretty stupid when you think about it....but Bob wanting to work his own way out of his financial mess is commendable. Overall, a decent film with the oddly old fashioned theme. Good acting but only fair writing consign this one to the time-passer category.