Pick-up

Working-class couple Sylvia Sidney and George Raft meet cute, get together after initial misunderstanding, then move in together and start a successful small business. Pretty standard fare so far, except they can't marry because she still has a no-good husband sitting in prison. Then a spoiled society dame sets her cap for Raft.

What's perhaps most interesting is Raft's character, a working-class guy who's happy with his job and his life and doesn't even try to "take advantage" of Sidney when they first meet and they're down and out. In fact his chief concern is that she not turn out to be a "pick-up" which in this film seems to mean "woman of easy virtue" or worse. "Lovable" does not often spring to mind in describing Raft but in this case it fits both stars.

Anyway things build to an exciting climax and a resolution, as is often the case with pre-coders, that is not quite what you expect.

Gary Cooper was supposed to do Pick-up with Sylvia Sidney, but Paramount had lent him to MGM for a film and shooting ran over. So George Raft got the part and I think it worked out better. Not sure if Coop's Montana accent would have worked as well as Raft's most urban persona.

Sidney and husband William Harrigan both went to jail after a badger game con cost the mark his life. Sidney got 2 years and is being released Harrigan has 3 more years to serve.

Sidney got a lot of notoriety and has trouble finding work and that's when she meets Raft who's a cabdriver with ambition. It's the usual boy meets girl stuff with Sidney not confessing she has a husband in stir and Raft gets picked up by spoiled society girl Lillian Bond.

This one is Sylvia's picture though Raft gets his innings in. The climax is in a courtroom and it's a wild one.

Pick-up still holds up well.

Just released from prison (her husband, to whom she is bitter for getting her involved in a badger game that had resulted in a suicide, still behind bars), a woman with no place to go and caught in the rain takes refuge in the back of a taxi. The cabbie, at first ordering her out of his hack, then relents and lets her come back to his place for the night. Things will slowly develop between them in this Paramount programmer.

Sylvia Sidney and George Raft star, and their presences are the chief distinctions of this fairly ordinary Depression era romance about a pair of people living on the edge. There's more involved in the story than that, of course. Sidney keeps her true identity and prison time a secret, though she eventually acknowledges to Raft that she is married. Getting a divorce would only cause undue publicity though she doesn't open up about exactly what that publicity would be. Raft, who loves her by this time, doesn't press the issue.

Complications arise from Raft meeting a free spirited society girl (Lillian Bond) who wants to use him as her play thing, and, even more so, Sidney's jealous, possessive former husband (she does manage a divorce, after all), played by William Harrigan, who gets released from prison and starts looking for her.

The film has a cute scene in which Raft is eating a meal prepared for him by Sidney. He only wants ketchup on his "he-man" food, he informs her, but she sprinkles some mushroom sauce on his steak. He tries it. "Well?" she asks. "It's great," he says, "Give me the ketchup."

I wondered about a few aspects of the film, though. In the next to opening scene when Sidney is in the warden's office for her final instructions before release there is a hard boiled newspaper reporter there talking to her, as well. The reporter gets on the warden's phone and calls in a report on Sidney's release right from that spot, his loud voice even interrupting the warden's conversation with the about-to-be-released inmate. What kind of media courting prison warden is this, I thought?

Later in the film, after Raft starts his own garage business and he and Sidney are doing a little better, they hire a maid (Lousie Beavers in an unbilled role) for their still modest apartment. A maid? They don't appear to be doing that well. Raft appears to be doing much of the garage work himself (still wearing a fedora, by the way, don't ask me why). Beavers, a likable actress, doesn't have much to do in her typical role as a domestic. She would soon, at least, get a better role and billing at the studio in Imitation of Life, one of the box office hits of 1934.

This was the first of three films that co-starred Sidney and Raft (the others being You and Me and Mr. Ace). Pick-up is watchable but there are no surprises. A party scene at Lillian Bond's house seems like unnecessary padding. The film does, at least, benefit from a sensitive performance by Sidney. Raft is still developing as an actor but he has screen presence.

I enjoyed 'Pick-Up', but there were quite a few obstacles along the way. Sylvia Sidney plays a woman who's just being released from prison after a two-year sentence, but in the opening scene (in the prison governor's office) she's wearing elaborate makeup and her eyebrows are tweezed. In a supporting role, Lilian Bond's cut-glass British accent is distracting; an American actress should have been cast. Speaking of accents: Sylvia Sidney's honking Bronx accent is even more unpleasant than usual in this movie. Louise Beavers is stuck in her usual chucklin' maid role (cried Magnolia, this time), and the minstrel-show dialogue she's given here is even worse than usual. Learning that Sidney has been using a false identity, Beavers asks George Raft: 'Is you knowed she ain't she? She ain't HER?' Yassum!

The biggest flaw in 'Pick-Up' is that the relationship between Sidney's and Raft's characters here anticipates their very similar relationship in a vastly better, later film: Fritz Lang's 'You and Me'. In both films, Sidney plays an ex-convict who is in love with Raft, but who lies to him about her past and her marital status.

The soundtrack keeps playing overly-orchestrated background music at inappropriate moments. And there's a really weird scene at a 'kid party' thrown by Lilian Bond's playgirl character, which the guests -- all of them white, of course -- attend while dressed as very young children or babies. (They're waited upon by black women dressed as nursemaids.) I found it damned strange to watch several shapely young women cavorting in skimpy baby-girl outfits, escorted by men in nappies and bibs ... and I also wondered how all these idle rich people just happened to possess baby costumes that fit them. (I also wondered how badly the black women needed the money, that they'd be willing to humiliate themselves by nannying a bunch of spoilt adults.) Elsewhere, Charles Middleton makes a brief appearance ... though Middleton's fans may be disappointed that he plays a pleasant guy who's actually helpful for once.

SPOILERS COMING. Raft, in patent-leather hair, plays a studly cab driver: several women in this movie make admiring comments about his manliness. He and Sidney 'meet cute' in circumstances which convince him she's a streetwalker. They develop a plausible but unusual relationship, eventually becoming flatmates and apparently lovers, though this pre-Code film is careful to establish that they sleep in separate beds. Raft offers to marry Sidney, but she tells him she's already got a husband. She doesn't let on that he's William Harrigan, doing time for aggravated manslaughter. Then Harrigan shows up, claiming he's out on parole but brandishing a handgun. The handgun is a revolver, but it's also an automatic ... an automatic parole violation. Except that Harrigan is on DIY parole: he broke out on the lam.

Intriguingly and atypically, Raft here plays a man with no ambition at all, who gradually betters himself only because Sidney -- the woman behind the man -- keeps pushing him to take chances. When Sidney gets arrested and put on trial for murder, Raft -- even though he no longer loves her -- unhesitatingly gives up all his possessions (which he accumulated only through Sidney's guidance) to buy her the best legal defence. The film ends with Sidney acquitted, and with Raft worse off than when Sidney first met him: he started out broke; now he's skint and in debt. But the last scene is deeply touching, with some of Raft's best acting ever, and I'll rate this movie 7 out of 10.

Pick up is a truly great Pre-Code movie. The actors make you care about the characters and the story keeps you interested and engaged. I'm presently collecting all of Sylvia Sidney's movies from the 1930's and in my opinion this is one of her finest. Sylvia Sidney's beautiful kind face will make you love her and care about what she is facing.Check it out if you love Pre-Code.