L'avventuriera di San Francisco

"Allotment Wives" is a 1945 film from a poverty row studio, Monogram. And it looks like that's where it came from: a bad print that kept freezing and rotten sound.

But give Kay Francis credit. Even when she knew Warner Brothers was trying to get rid of her, she kept right on working as if the rotten parts didn't bother her at all.

By 1945, Francis was all but through, and she starred in this film. It's the story of a ring of women who married several servicemen at a time in order to get their pay as well as their life insurance if they were killed. The leader of the group runs a tight ship, but trouble begins when a government agent posing as a reporter starts snooping around.

I wasn't as impressed with this film as several others on this board. I thought it was routine. I always enjoy Kay Francis, very much a star in the early '30s. Here she's in a Joan Crawford type of role and handles it differently from the way Joan would have, much more subtly. Paul Kelly and Otto Kruger are featured and give good performances.

Kay Francis returned to her stage roots in the '40s and finally retired in 1952. When she died, she left one million dollars to train Seeing Eye Dogs.

There's an interesting story about her. Once when she had been retired for some time, she was recognized. "Aren't you Kay Francis?" someone asked. She answered, "I was."

Paul Kelly is put in charge of exposing and terminating the organization that is masterminding bigamy schemes that fraudulently get access to allotment benefit funds to provide for wives and children of servicemen. Kay Francis is the head of the notorious syndicate and Otto Kruger is her henchman. That would seem to be the main plot but competing with it is Kay Francis' concern for her wild college aged daughter who is running amok. Then there is Gertrude Michael trying to blackmail Kay based on some issue from their past. Not to mention the romantic situation between Kay and Kruger or Kelly's interest in Kay. An 80 minute movie leaves us unsatisfied in allowing enough time for developing the main plot let alone these subplots. The end result is a threadbare flick with a superficial expose of the allotment wife issue. This movie was part of a three movie package that Kay signed with Monogram that you'll note also gave her credit as Producer and essentially marked the end of Kay's fabulous career. While far from her best outing her movies are all worth viewing. Kruger and Kelly were excellent in support. Disappointing but still entertaining.

Interesting story with the smartest and toughest characters being women. Kay is in charge of a crime syndicate running a scam of pimping women out to marry multiple soldiers for their allotment money. Doing it so her daughter can have a better life, sorta like a crooked Mildred Pierce. Another tough, strong women tries to horn in on her business by blackmail. I loved the scenes between the two of them politely threatening each other and their final confrontation, reminiscent of many gangster scenes between male characters. Kay plays cold blooded and ruthless very well and is completely in charge of her gang. Very un 40's like that no one questions her authority or makes mention of the fact she's a woman running the show. Ahead of it's time feminist slant. Investigators seemed a bit dim witted and slow getting to the truth but I guess that's a testament to her abilities.

"Allotment Wives" was the second to last movie that Kay Francis made. She co-produced this and a couple other films at Monogram Studios after her falling out with the major Hollywood studios. She went into retirement the next year, and only made a couple appearance in TV series in 1950 and 1951. The one-time leading actress at MGM and Warner Brothers lived her last 15 years in seclusion and died of cancer in 1968 at 63 years of age.

In this film, Francis plays a tough as nails, hard-hearted head of a syndicate that swindles the U. S. government. Sheila Seymour's network has numerous women who marry several servicemen during World War II, to rake in their allotments and insurance payments for those who are killed. She has a front of an exclusive women's beauty salon, as well as a canteen she set up for GIs, sailors and Marines. She also has a daughter who has spent most of her life in an exclusive boarding school. Otto Kruger is Whitey Colton, who is Sheila's top aide and boyfriend, and his boys handle the dirty work when they need to rub somebody out.

The War Department's Office of Dependency Benefits (ODB) has been trying to catch and break up the organized crime network. They send Col. Peter Martin to head up the job. Paul Kelly plays Martin and operates from his former newspaper job on a Los Angeles paper. The feds aren't too sharp and Sheila's gang get wise to Kelly quickly. But a rebellious daughter, Connie (played by Teala Loring), and an old juvenile delinquent from Sheila's reformatory past - Gladys Smith (played by Gertrude Michael) lead to Sheila's downfall.

The acting is fair but nothing great. It's an interesting plot and unusual story about the ODB - the only movie I know of that ever even mentioned such a wartime agency and service for dependents. While there no doubt were many abuses of the ODB program - most of those would be quickie marriages of guys in uniform, so that women could receive benefits, and insurance payments for those men killed in the war, it's doubtful there was anything like the network in this picture. Each GI had his own serial number, and even without computers, the human work of records filing would have caught women who married more than one GI. Then, to have a ring coordinating and putting this all together would be quite far-fetched.

At the very least, this film has something about a little known wartime agency for dependent families of men in WW II service. And, it's a good, and quite different look at Kay Francis at the end of her acting career. Here's a good exchange of dialog between Sheila and Whitey when she finds out who Peter Martin is.

Sheila, "Maybe I better cultivate him. Might be amusing. And, might help our information file." Whitey, "Might help his too. You're a fool if you go sticking your pretty neck out." Sheila, "I'm never a fool. And only geese stick their necks out."

There is great cause for celebration among fans of obscure and esoteric films because ALLOTMENT WIVES (1945), a provocative and tremendously fascinating example of poverty row noir finally premieres on Turner Classic Movies on September 26. Produced as part of a three picture deal between star / producer Kay Francis and Monogram Pictures, this peculiar trilogy served as Miss Francis' Hollywood swan song. The other two films, DIVORCE (1945) and WIFE WANTED (1946) are both well-produced, better than average melodramas, but nowhere near as ambitious or entertaining as ALLOTMENT WIVES.

What this film might lack in customary Hollywood sophistication it more than makes up for in gnarly pulp energy. Francis plays Sheila Seymour, a sleek and stylish society gal who in reality is the head of a noxious crime syndicate that preys mercilessly on returning World War II servicemen. They zero in on impressionable and lonely vets and before long they're engaged to one of Sheila's "girls." After pocketing the GI's allotment pay, the gals are soon on their way to their next mark, leaving a trail of devastated saps strewn along the post-war landscape. Things become emotionally complicated when Sheila's beautiful young daughter Corrine (Teala Loring) arrives home from her swanky boarding school (she's been oblivious to Mom's business dealings) and slowly begins to unravel the sordid details of her mother's dreadful criminal activities. Also in the cast are the wonderfully creepy Otto Kruger as Francis' odious partner in crime, the equally creepy Paul Kelly as a military investigator and the always menacing Gertrude Michael as one of Francis' old racket rivals who's out for a little revenge.

In many ways this film bears more than a passing resemblance to the much tonier and more famous MILDRED PIERCE, released by Warner Bros the same year. But ALLOTMENT WIVES gets the nasty tone of noir's tawdrier aspects better than Michael Curtiz' glossy soap opera. In fact, the crucial showdown scene between mother and daughter at the climax of ALLOTMENT WIVES plays out much more dramatically and, more importantly, realistically than the overwrought scenes between Joan Crawford and Ann Blyth.

For those who enjoy their film noir a bit on the exotic side, ALLOTMENT WIVES is must viewing, especially for those with a predisposition for down and dirty, unpretentious poverty row entertainment.