Blood Money

One of the most interesting of the Fox pre-code talkies, for several reasons: 1) It has nice girl Frances Dee as a perverse and masochistic society miss, snarling and hip-shaking and shocking the elite. 2) It has Judith Anderson, in a swell backless evening gown, playing a moll, against-the-grain casting of the most inspired sort, even if the movie never explains her high-tone Brit accent vs. her brother's American Midwest elongated vowels. (She also played a gangster years later in "Lady Scarface," but it's a much less interesting film.) 3) You get to see Blossom Seeley, the great vaudevillian, sob a couple of torch songs, and she's the real thing. 4), and most fascinatingly: George Bancroft plays a no- better-than-he-should-be bail bondsman who works both sides of the street and is terribly corrupt, yet the movie likes him, we like him, and he doesn't have to repent for it. It's lively and violent and funny, and, unlike so many Fox early talkies, it has the fast pace of a good Paramount or Warners flick from the same period.

"Blood Money" is a fascinating precode - what else can you say about a film that has Judith Anderson in a glamor role? And an ingénue who longs for S&M to boot.

This 1933 film concerns a bail bondsman named Bill Bailey (George Bancroft) who's been helping out the mob for years. He falls for a pretty shoplifter named Elaine (Frances Dee) - she's actually slumming, as she's from a wealthy family.

This leaves Bailey's girlfriend, club owner Ruby (Anderson) in the lurch. She's the woman responsible for his success, helping him out when he was thrown off of the police force.

However, Elaine (who would follow any man who thrashed her around like a dog, says she) steals some bonds instead of delivering them to the appropriate place, thereby setting up Bailey as a mob target and getting his brother-in-law in deep trouble with the law. Ruby believes he's responsible for her brother's problems, and has a hit put out on him.

The acting is over the top, the dialogue is rough and filled with sexual innuendos, the atmosphere is sleazy - it's pre-code all right. I read a transcript of an interview with Joel McCrea (intended to be for a biography that wasn't written) and he kept referring to "Mother" - I finally realized that he didn't call his wife, Frances Dee, "mother" - he was referring to her that way while talking to one of his sons, who was conducting the interview. As the promiscuous, dying to be hit ingénue, she wasn't very motherly in this.

This is a no-miss if only to see Judith Anderson in a gown and jewels hanging out with mobsters and Frances Dee as something other than a pretty goody-two-shoes.

Wow! Were do you start with this one?

Director Rowland Brown (soon blackballed in Hollywood for striking a producer) certainly confirms his reputation for style with this racy little pre-Code gem, in which an impossibly youthful Judith Anderson and Frances Dee are both revelations: the former as a supple, sleepy-eyed, smoky-voiced dame draped in a succession of slinky backless thirties evening gowns; the latter as a spoilt little minx who in Miss Dee's own words is a "a kleptomaniac, a nymphomaniac, and anything in between".

Great fun.

Blood Money (1933)

** (out of 4)

Early Pre-Code from Fox has George Bancroft playing a dirty bail bondsman who gets caught up with a rich girl (Frances Dee) who can't seem to stay out of trouble. I had read several good reviews of this film, which compared it to the fast Pre-Codes of Warner but I found this 65-minute drama pretty boring from start to finish. Bancroft gives his best Cagney impersonation but doesn't add anything to the character. He's neither cool, stylish or tough. The most interesting aspect is seeing Dee play a bad girl, which I guess we'd compare to Paris Hilton today. Dee usually played the good girl so it's nice seeing her doing something different. The film has some pretty rough dialogue, which includes two different times where Bancroft is called homosexual terms including a "fag". The ending also rips off Keaton's Sherlock Jr. with an explosive cue ball, which is just downright stupid here.

When I looked at Nina Mae McKinney's filmography list on this site, it listed this movie as among her credits as "Rebecca, Ruby's maid". But the black woman playing such a maid-ID'd as Jessica, by the way-didn't look like her. So I looked at the TCM site link on Wikipedia for this movie and TCM ID'd Theresa Harris as playing in the movie as simply "maid". Since there's no other domestic servant in the film, I'm guessing that's indeed Ms. Harris. Anyway, this was quite a dramatically thrilling movie starring George Bancroft as bail bondsman Bill Bailey. He's mixed with thrill-seeking Frances Dee as Elaine Talbart, Judith Anderson's Ruby Darling, and Chick Chandler as her brother, Drury. This movie lacks a movie score which is probably to the pic's benefit. So that's a recommendation of Blood Money.