Street of Women

Back in the early thirties, when Warners rolled out a couple of these schedule fillers a week, Kay Francis was briefly the star you played in theaters in nice neighborhood where cowboys and gangsters were thought to be too working class. This is not the best of the vehicles she adorned elegantly but it's become an attractive period piece.

Kay is the "indecently successful" business woman, making life bearable for unhappily (of course) married Alan Dinehart, on the BACK STREET model. "We've had our happiness. Now we have to pay for it."

Dinehart's company is building the sky scraper, visible in the process view through round windows characteristic of designer Grot, in her high fashion apartment. They want us to believe that these structures are all inspired by the women in their proprietors' lives - hence the title.

The idea of architecture as an expression of the personalities of its creators was still hanging round Warners when they made THE FOUNTAINHEAD and the two films make an interesting comparison.

Production is good and it's always nice to see Roland Young even in a straight part.

Kay Francis (Natalie) would make two films with Roland Young (Link Gibson) in the 1930s, and Director Archie Mayo. They also paired her with Alan Dinehart (Larry Baldwin) twice, also for two pre-code movies. And it was produced by Hal Wallis, who did all the Elvis movies! Also look for Louise Beavers, who would have a starring role in Imitation of Life with Claudette Colbert two years later. In Street of Women, Natalie is a successful designer, whose brother Clarke (Allen Vincent) is coming to visit, but he's not as young and innocent as she thinks he is. Vincent was only in films for ten years, and appears to have stopped acting around 1939. Natalie has been seeing Larry, who is still married to someone else. This has several elements that will be used in "The Women" in 1939 - there's a showdown in a dress shop, between the wife and "the other woman". Natalie must figure out how to work things out without losing her family and friends, and she's got to do it all in 59 minutes. No wasted words in this shortie from Warner Brothers. Gloria Stuart, still alive as of October 2008, (plays Doris Baldwin) holds the record as the oldest actress to be nominated for an Oscar for the 1997 version of "Titanic", AND was a founding member of the S.A.G. acc to IMDb. The minister in this film, Edward LeSaint, had been acting and directing since 1912, and worked right up to his death in 1940. Interesting group of actors.

A married architect is stuck in a loveless marriage, but then find love again when he starts an affair with a dress designer. However, melodrama ensures when his daughter falls in love with his mistress' brother. The drama isn't all that interesting, but the pre-production code elements of sex outside of marriage and martial infidelity make the tepid drama a bit more entertaining. Kay Francis was the only actor in the film I was familiar with.

It's just a pathetic mushy melodrama with a script that sounds like it was written by a 12 year old girl from the eighteenth century. It's so staggeringly unspecial that you might start to think that AI generated pictures have been around a lot longer than you thought.

When I find a film made by Archie Mayo that's good - and there are a few: PETRIFIED FOREST, BLACK LEGION are fantastic, I'm really surprised because most of his output is bland, lazily directed rubbish like this.

He clearly could be a great director when he needed to be but usually he didn't need to. For most of his career, his job wasn't to be a good director because he was just part of the Warner Brothers factory. His function was to turn up, get a bunch of people to dress up and read their lines then his product would be used to fill some screen time in the Warner cinemas for a few days then it would get thrown in the bin. Throw-away films like this didn't need to stand the test of time, they weren't meant to be watched afterwards. If the story was any good it might get remade a few years later. Nobody would ever think of rooting around in the archives to dig out something like this even if it was only a year later. If Mr Mayo is looking down on us now watching this he'd be completely dumbfounded....and possibly embarrassed.

Once you realise that it's Kay Francis who gives the best performance in this you need to be worried. She just does what she always does but the rest of them seem like they've simply turned up for the paycheque.

... but in fact it's quite tame for the precode era. The title comes from a line that Kay's lover Larry Baldwin (Alan Dinehart) says about a helpful encouraging woman being behind every accomplishment on the street. The story revolves around the affair of wealthy married Larry Baldwin and fashion designer Natalie Upton (Kay Francis). They've been in love for several years, keeping it a secret from even their closest friends. Larry has basically been waiting for daughter Doris (Gloria Stuart) to grow up so he can ask his wife for a divorce. Larry's wife Lois has her calendar filled with the New York City social life and has no time for Larry. In fact she's somewhat put out with him because he doesn't need to work yet he continues to do so and his working is putting a kink in their joint social appearances at important parties. It seems she thinks that a man's place is in a tuxedo. Now that Doris is of age, Larry is about to ask his wife for a divorce, but there's one complicating factor of which nobody is aware. Natalie's kid brother Clarke and Larry's daughter Lois have fallen in love and plan to marry.

This movie is worth watching for several reasons. For one, you get to see Roland Young and Alan Dinehart play really nice guys. Usually these two played cads or outright villains. That's particularly true of Dinehart. Plus Kay Francis gives a very heart warming performance as a woman who is desperately trying to do what's right for everyone else and forgets to do what's right for herself as well. It's one of her more subtle roles, and she manages to breathe life into what looks like a pretty ordinary script. Finally, I really liked the relationship Larry had with his grown daughter - it struck all the right chords for portraying a dynamic that is transitioning from parent-child to adult-adult. The two had quite a friendship going.

Just don't judge all Kay Francis movies by this one. In 1932 Kay made three major motion pictures - "Trouble in Paradise", "Jewel Robbery", and "One Way Passage". This was just one of several B pictures that stars had to make back in the day in addition to their A list pictures.