Perfidia

This fast-moving film features Barbara Stanwyck in her early period when she usually played a tough, lower-class dame with a hot temper who stands fast to her principles. This character is virtually identical to the ones she played in NIGHT NURSE, LADIES THEY TALK ABOUT and BABY FACE. Here she is a waitress who falls in love with a rather bland medical student (Regis Toomey) whose nasty and snobbish mother (an excellent and truly scary Clara Blandick) schemes with a corrupt judge (Oscar Apfel) to separate the young lovers by sending Stanwyck to one of those reformatories that pop up so frequently in films of this era. The ever-fluttery Zasu Pitts is on hand as Stanwyck's aunt - what a comedown from GREED.

In one scene Stanwyck, trying to memorize the dictionary as a means of self improvement, shows her suitor a list of words beginning with the letter "e" which she has written down. He reads them aloud, stops after "ejaculate," looks at her with some curiosity and says that even he would never use such a word. That moment immediately pigeonholes this film as pre-Code. The scene continues artfully with one-word exchanges all starting with the letter "e." Later, while Lucien Littlefeld is conversing about the Stanwyck-Toomey relationship with Oscar Apfel, a couple of lines are very clumsily overdubbed by other actors. Makes one wonder what was actually said. Late in the film there is an imaginative banquet scene in which the camera carefully pans the length of a dining table highlighting the place cards (each a little paper doll inscribed with a guest's name) while the corresponding but off-screen voices converse on the soundtrack; then the camera moves back to reveal the whole table and all of the people we have been listening to. The yard between the diner where Stanwyck works and the house where the owners live is well depicted: tattered laundry hanging on a line, overflowing garbage cans and kittens playing.

The screenwriter Robert Riskin contributes some snappy and witty dialogue. He worked quite frequently with Frank Capra, penning the scripts for IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, MEET JOHN DOE, LADY FOR A DAY and MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN, among others. All of these films address the issue of "decency" – what truly constitutes decency? Saying you are decent or actually being decent?

Barbara Stanwyck stars in SHOPWORN (1932) as Kitty Lane, a young woman who has to move to the city when her father dies after a work accident. She is taken in by her aunt Dot (ZaSu Pitts) and works in a diner frequented by college students who are always hitting on her. Unfairly, she acquires a reputation as an "easy" girl, and this complicates things when she falls in love with David (Regis Toomey), a wealthy young man whose selfish mother (Clara Blandick) will stop at nothing to prevent the two from marrying.

The plot of SHOPWORN is standard melodrama – boy loves girl from "the wrong side of the tracks", the good girl with an undeserved bad reputation, the overly possessive mother, the uppity disapproving blue bloods, etc. As such, there are very few surprises here and the peripheral characters are very one-note. The ending is rather predictable. There is also a misunderstanding (based on a lie) between Kitty and David that causes them to separate for a long time, and Kitty finds success as an actress in an unlikely plot twist. It does have some pre-Code innuendos that I found rather surprising, especially when the college students at the diner hit on Kitty. There are some witty exchanges between Kitty and David that make the movie livelier in spots as well.

The film is redeemed somewhat by the caliber of the performances. Barbara Stanwyck is always worth watching, and her charm, fire, wit and charisma help to bring some life to the rather cookie-cutter plot. Regis Toomey is good as David, sometimes a little cloying during the love scenes but effective when he defends his love and stands up to his mother. Clara Blandick plays the mother about as well as her character could have been played, revealing an unhappy, self-centered woman whose "love" for her son is mostly obsessive fixation and a desire to control him. The cinematography and editing are professional, if not outstanding, except for the first part where Kitty's father is killed as the result of an explosion.

Overall, SHOPWORN isn't really a great movie, but fairly serviceable and not very long (1 hour 12 minutes). Worth seeing mostly for Barbara Stanwyck's performance. SCORE: 7/10

This is a pretty ordinary little film about a young waitress (Barbara Stanwyck) who falls in love with a wealthy college student (Regis Toomey) who will go on to become a doctor, and how his mother strives to break up their relationship. I rounded it up a bit because of Stanwyck's performance; she is such a natural and has a couple of great scenes. I also liked how she was such a strong woman - her character was toughened by her father's death, and she stands up to unwanted advances while waitressing, endures being sent away to a woman's reformatory on morality charges, and tells Toomey off when he returns to her after she's made it as a dancer. Being committed for trumped up morality reasons is outrageous today, but it was reality then, and the mother had also considered getting her committed to an asylum, a real practice stemming from the 19th century. If you don't like 'em or they're threatening in some way, lock 'em up. The ending is unfortunately a little dippy, but you could do worse than watch this one, and it's almost entirely due to Stanywck.

One of the great scenes has her throwing money in a guy's face after he tries to bribe her into leaving town to get her out of Toomey's life: "What are you trying to make of me - what you wish I was? Something cheap and common, something that money can buy? Well, you can't. Nobody can! You and the nice, decent people who sent you here are the real cheap ones, trying to put a price on something there isn't any price for! If that's being decent, I'm glad I'm common! If that's being rich, I'm glad I'm cheap, and I'm gonna stay cheap! Because no matter how cheap I am, I'm not for sale!"

Working class heroine Barbara Stanwyck is tough as nails as she spits in "decent society's" face rather than buckle to bribe or threat as a waitress in an other side of the tracks romance with a med student in Shopworn.

The son of an overly possessive mother, David Livingston falls hard for tip chaser Kitty Lane at a local greasy spoon. Clinging mom is not about to let this happen and she wastes no time in exercising her considerable pull in getting a big time judge relative to send her to the slammer for 90 days on morals charges. Upon release Kitty goes on stage and makes it big. Six years later she runs into David, now a doctor again along with his mother still intent on keeping a firm grip on him.

There is some very ugly abuse of power that takes place in Shopworn as the son obsessed mother badgers the judge to do her corrupt bidding in getting Kitty out of the way. There are also swipes at law enforcement, the penal system and polite society, with Kitty being an ideal lynch pin for such actions. As Kitty, Stanwyck does an excellent job of vociferously exposing hypocrisy, especially in the scene where she is bribed and threatened as she throws the money in the judge's face and berates the police. The ending is contrived however and the sickeningly sweet finale is hard to swallow. Babs is too good for the lot of 'em. Mom and son (a wincingly woosie performance by Regis Toomey) don't deserve to be in the same room as her.

Babs is a poor-but-honest small-town waitress in love with Regis Toomey (which in itself can't be easy), but she runs afoul of his mom, a pre-Auntie Em Clara Blandick, who is revealed to be snobbish, dishonest, unreasonable, and insufferably class-conscious. Even by the standards of the time, where lower-class gals always had a hard time of it crashing into society, Babs must endure endless humiliations, including ZaSu Pitts as an underwritten aunt. This Columbia potboiler, written and shot by folks who were also working on Capra early talkies at the time, is rather like Capra without Capra, and the anonymous direction doesn't allow for much style. But Stanwyck was always worth watching, and she gets to run through an impressive gamut of emotions before the hasty and unconvincing happy ending. And it's satisfyingly short.