Her Man

This outstanding pre-code melodrama cinched Phillips Holmes as a matinée idol. It's one of the earliest and certainly the best rendition of the Frankie and Johnny story...Frankie (Helen Twelvetrees) is the young prostitute on the Havana waterfront who is exploited by her nasty pimp (Cortez)and befriended, then beloved by an innocently angelic, poor young sailor (Phillips Holmes)(He even sings for her!) The Cuban government of the time protested the sleazy portrayal of its major port and the film was withdrawn after it's initial release. Thanks to the Hays code,it was never seen again and languished in film vaults. Holmes later starred in many more films in his tragically short career; "Broken Lullaby","Stolen Heaven", and "An American Tragedy" notably among them, but it was this film that raised him to luminary status. The gallant quality of the two young leads to rise above their tawdry environment and depressing circumstances is somehow still very touching and the film is an exceptional example 1930 film-making.

It's a variation of the Frankie and Johnny story with the same cast names and even a Nelly thrown into the mix courtesy of Thelma Todd. Bad guy Ricardo Cortez (Johnny) pimps out Helen Twelvetrees (Frankie) to steal from drunken visitors in a seedy dive on the waterfront in somewhere like Cuba. It's a rough bar that is frequented by sailors and people generally looking for a fight. Occasionally, if a customer gets too friendly with Helen, then that's the end for him - knife in the back.

As in the song - "He was her man and he was doing her wrong" - Cortez has a friendship with Todd. He doesn't seem too nice a person when he's around Twelvetrees. Into the bar strolls a new crop of sailors headed by Phillips Holmes (Dan) and it's love at first sight on his part leading him to dangerously pursue this 'taken' woman.

This film has a gritty, seedy setting which holds an interest with realistic characters. However, the film has to lose marks on 2 counts especially. The first is Phillips Holmes and his attempt to portray a tough sailor. He really doesn't need to puff out his chest when he walks. It's the blueprint for Popeye. Secondly, there was way too much attempted comedy with drunken sailors that just got tiresome. The women, in particular, in this film are good so it's a special mention for Twelvetrees, Todd and drunken lush Marjorie Rambeau (Annie).

A surprisingly fluid talkie that blows the theory that

widespread primitive filmmaking returned after the coming of

sound. The long opening tracking shot down a street populated

with colorful characters ending within the interior of a saloon

is a real jawdropper when one realizes that this gutsy melodrama

is from 1930. It also boasts superb camerawork and is a sheer

joy to watch. This film is NOT easy to see as of this writing (I

viewed a rare print in a private collection) and I fear is in

desperate need of preservation.

This pre code film is from the early days of cinema. Yet its production values are not creaky. This spruced up version of the movie has a rather stylish credit sequence of waves washing over the sand.

The story begins with a woman who tries to disembark in America but she is sent back presumably labelled as an undesirable because of her criminal record, she is a prostitute.

The tropical island she is returned to is in the Caribbean, maybe Cuba. Set in the raucous, sleazy harbour area.

Frankie (Helen Twelvetrees) is a good time girl. She get the sailors in the bar drunk, pop in a Mickey Finn so they can lose their wallets. Maybe a little bit more is given if the price is right

Johnnie (Ricardo Cortez) controls the girls and he can turn nasty when provoked.

Dan (Phillips Holmes) is a sailor who understands Frankie and the path she has taken is not by choice. He has fallen in love with her and wants both of them to run away together.

Frankie knows that leaving Johnnie will not be easy. He will set his thugs on Dan. Maybe Dan's two drunken sailor friends will help him out.

The story is so-so and over the years become cliched being copied by other movies. Being set before the Hays Code, the sleaziness works well but a lot of it is implied such as the prostitutes in the harbour.

There is a lot of slapstick with Dan's drunken friends over the ownership of a bowler hat that has been stolen. There is a running gag as they play a slot machine where one wins money and the other does not.

Actually the slapstick becomes tiresome. There is a lot of visual flair by director Tay Garnett who has given a lot of thought to planning his shots.

I did think the look of Dan would now be regarded as camp. He looks like something dreamt up by Jean Paul Gaultier.

This isn't the safe, sanitised Cuba we see in HAVANA WIDOWS. No, this is a much darker, dirtier and dangerous place. Hugely underrated director Tay Garnett has gone for gritty, grimy realism here - this is certainly not the sort of place you'd find Joan Blondell! It's surprising therefore to find Helen Twelvetrees, the epitome of purity and sweetness here as one of the seasoned prostitutes servicing and fleecing the sailors on shore leave.

She might not have been as great an actress as some of her contemporaries but in this she is absolutely magnificent. Her dissolute character is so believably real and yet her face is so impossibly pretty and innocent that your brain explodes with the cognitive dichotomy of it all. If you've only ever seen her playing stereotypically mistreated young women constantly crying, this will be a revelation for you. Had she not got pigeonholed she might have been a great actress - who knows!

Interestingly this is one of those rare talkies made by Pathe before it was taken over by RKO. It's a superbly well made film and had the Depression not happened just as they were getting going, Pathe might have been one of the great studios - who knows!

Besides Helen Twelvetrees' remarkable acting masterclass, Ricardo Cortez is also great as her semi-psychopathic pimp. You can see why Garnett used him a year later to play the crazy, evil mob boss in his impressive gangster picture, BAD COMPANY. Overall, this is a surprisingly exciting and quite riveting drama. Some commentators have said that there's an annoying amount of irritating comedy - I disagree, I think the blend is just right making this a very entertaining film.