Morals for Women

When it comes to those early talkie (a.k.a. Pre-Code) films, some are really good, others are disasters (too many actors couldn't get the hand of speaking on camera) and most are - like this one - okay, fine to pass the time but nothing special.

Bessie love was okay as Helen, a small-town girl who moves to the big city to help support her family (dad's not known for holding a job and would rather partake of prohibited alcohol) and ends up being supported by her boss (Conway Teale), earning herself a swanky apartment and lots of spending money for her work both as mistress and "matchmaker", as she sets up "dates" for his business cohorts. When her hometown beau, Paul (John Holland) proposes when his career prospects look good, she returns home to try and put city life behind her, only to find it won't be so easy.

This film doesn't go all moralistic and neither does it glamorize loose morals. Rather, it has some amusing moments, like Mom and Pop paying a surprise visit and joining the "party", and Mom serves her special lemonade that really IS lemonade, while Pop gets stoned on the real stuff with a couple of party girls!

Like I said, it's okay.

It is one of the peculiar dichotomies of the early sound era that while some pretty racy stuff got into films the plots were at times downright Victorian. Such is the case of Morals For Women which holds aloft the double standard that women have.

Bessie Love trying to spread her wings in talkies stars here as a good time flapper girl who has to save her brother David Rollins when he clunks someone with a bottle in a nightclub brawl. The bottle containing some then illegal booze.

In any event for a $1000.00 Rollins's legal troubles will go away, but to raise the money Love has to turn her pleasures into business.

This is the time of film rest assured will not be remade. I think it was old fashioned even in 1931 despite the current music and fashions of the day on display.

Besides Rollins just needed a good lawyer and his good name would be cleared.

Cheapo production from Tiffany boasts a solid cast in story about a small-town girl (Bessie Love) who goes to New York City and sleeps her way into a good job and snazzy apartment. Everything is fine until a hometown boy looks her up with ideas of marriage.

She goes back home and tries to reform but gossip about her starts a fight in a club and her brother injures another man in the brawl. To pay for damages, she heads back to the city and her old lifestyle.

Things come to a head when her parents (Emma Dunn, Edmund Breese) pay a surprise visit on a night when she is giving a boozy party. To top things off, her boss (Conway Tearle) brings along the naive boy friend (John Holland).

As always, Bessie Love is warm and natural and very good in an offbeat role (for her). Dunn is solid as the mother. Natalie Moorhead and Lina Basquette are fun as two catty friends, and Virginia Lee Corbin has a small role as a dumb blonde. June Clyde and David Rollins are less successful as the siblings. The film is also known by an alternate title: BIG CITY INTERLUDE.

Even though surviving copies have been savagely edited by an over zealous gorilla censor with a bread knife, fans of early talkies will enjoy this. It's intelligent, well acted with the perfect balance of drama, comedy and emotion - and it's made by Tiffany!

Don't be put off by the atrocious butchering the so-called censors made. Eleven minutes have been cut, often from half way through a sentence. Don't be put off by the shabby, degraded state of the surviving copies. Don't be put off by the fact this was made by Tiffany. Phil Goldstone's Tiffany was similar to England's Twickenham Films: mainly churning out cheap rubbish but occasionally producing a diamond like this. Don't be put off by the hackneyed old story of a girl who becomes 'a kept woman' then tries to change her ways - this is handled with an original and refreshing perspective.

It was written by Frances Hyland who also wrote possibly the best poverty row film of the decade, THE SIN OF NORA MORAN (the one with that poster!) Like that , this has an almost feminist point of view. Unlike in so many 1930s films, Helen's life choices are viewed sympathetically. She's not painted as a sinful, wanton bad, bad person. She's painted as a nice, normal girl who just happens to do what works for her. No condemnation, no moralistic judgment.

The production does suffer a little from its poor budget but the acting is ten times better than you'd see in lots of pictures from the big studios of the time. Bessie Love is superb - she's sensitive and subtle when she needs to be, sensational and sensual at other times. She makes her character real, you can believe in her and you like her.

Her face when she finds her mum and dad and her fiancé turn up at her 'love nest' is a picture! You really feel for her. And when she realises her secret life is revealed, you want to crawl under the carpet with cringing embarrassment. You can hardly watch, you've grown to love her so much you can't bear this! What a great actress she was - such a shame her career didn't survive in the new Hollywood.

This isn't as emotionally enraging or melodramatic as some similar films made in the early thirties but as an authentic reflection of 1930s attitudes, specifically its morals for women, this is excellent.