The Lady Refuses

Gilbert Emery, as a patrician English peer, Sir Gerald Courtney, dominates this film as he tries to bring his rakehell son Russell (John Darrow) closer to him through a secret strategem involving June (Betty Compson), an economically distressed young woman. To regain Russell's affection, Sir Gerald offers June, whom he has rescued from incipient prostitution, one thousand pounds in this London-based work, for her efforts in dissuading his wayward son from an alliance with a golddigger played by Margaret Livingston. Compson, an accomplished actress during the silent era, does her best to portray a worldly woman given an unexpected beneficence by fate, but she is hampered by a script which is clumsily written with a good deal of dialogue bordering upon gaucherie. After escaping from a pair of zealous bobbies, with assistance from Sir Gerald, June is established by him into an apartment building shared with the unwitting Russell, and is graced as well with a lavish wardrobe at a couturiere's, this latter being probably the picture's most defined moment. June's good works for the salving of Russell are dealt with in some detail, and are obviously largely appreciated by Sir Gerald, but her relationships with both father and son are skimpily sketched and emotional liaisons appear to be rather abruptly developed and severed. Veteran director George Archainbaud seems to have scant vision for whatever niceties the weak scenario might bring, and his handling of the cast and storyline are perfunctory with too many scenes marked by absence of sense; fortunately, the editing is very efficient. Although this affair begins and ends with a tendency towards placing atmosphere above plot, the last unfortunately mars the work; some fine acting turns are somewhat redemptive, particularly those by the always polished Emery and by Halliwell Hobbes as the Courtney family barrister.

If romantic triangles or quadrangles are your thing, you might enjoy this drawing-room flick. Out of the goodness of his heart, upper class Sir Gerald rescues winsome June from life as a streetwalker. Thus she gains entry into his ritzy mansion. Trouble is he then hires her to win his wastrel son Russell from clutches of gold-digger Berthine. This results in a tangle of conflicting relationships that have no obvious solution.

In days past, this would have been called a woman's picture. Certainly the flick's dominated by talk-talk, interior decor, and thwarted desires. The plot, however, picks up in the last ten-minutes, with a rather surprise ending. Note too how the script shies away from using any synonym for "prostitute", rather surprising for a pre-Code production.

Anyway, as the spunky young June, Compson carries the show, though pairing her with the aging and zombified Sir Gerald remains a stretch. And get a load of Edgar Norton as the officious man-servant Dobbs; he's enough to re-think the whole idea of household help. Except for the memorable last shot, there's nothing special here, especially for impatient guys waiting for Tom Mix and his six-guns.

We can't really expect low-budget pre-code melodramas to be 'great films'. They're automatically of historical interest because of the themes they dare to explore and which were banished from the screen in 1934. If you have decent actors, and interesting enough plot and some "daring" dialog many of these films can be enjoyable, if ultimately disposable. THE LADY REFUSES is a dead serious entry and thanks to Gilbert Emery and star Betty Compson it works in its own terms. Compson does well as a "woman of the street" who happens upon a sympathetic, lonely, older rich man who takes her under his wing. She's smart and perceptive about his situation: a beloved son has no time for his father. When Emery enlists attractive Compson to help lure the son away from a "bad woman", things get complicated. It doesn't all go as you'd expect. Among the better of the lesser-known pre-code movies now back in circulation, it's no masterpiece but Emery and Compson raise it a bit above the average.

This is another Compson story that does not avoid the scandalous. While the Code would not want supposedly middle class moral families exposed to a lower class prostitution story, there is nothing in the plot that strays from praising wealth and condemning immorality. Veblen's conspicuous consumption is the reason to watch. In the absence of strict censorship, high fashion provides cover for quasi-nudity. This not so early talkie has inconveniences like camera noise, bad dialog and incoherent acting. But concerning the looks of apartments, night clubs, the sounds of jazz, fashions, beauty, dark lighting, noisy editing, a blurry camera this is fairly inimitable. To show prostitution as an economic choice was still normal in 1931.

Betty Compson shines in this woman's story of a prim British Lord who rescues a poor woman from the cops, and hires her to save his son, who has drifted away from a career in architecture and into the arms of a scheming gold-digger with a violent Lithuanian pimp. Complications ensue. The "Britishness" of the setting is a bit off, as some of the actors fail to achieve the proper accents, but the rooms in the home of the landed gentry are magnificently over-the-top, as are the apartments of the wealthy, and the glimpse inside a fancy couture shop. These sets present a smashingly florid mash-up of English Manor, Frenchified beaux-arts, and geometric art deco that would fall out of favour shortly, but was the height of luxury at the time.

This film flirts with ideas it never names, and although Compson flings herself between virtuous and tough-as-nails, the actual defining moment comes when diminutive Daphne Pollard, as a landlady, bursts into song while scrubbing the floors. The song she sings in her warbling Australian-Cockney voice is the chorus to "She Was Poor But She Was Honest," a British musical hall favourite that may have begun life as a genuinely tragic Victorian lament, but which by World War I had become a burlesque filled with outrageous verses declaimed with mock portentousness.

It's the same the whole world over It's the poor what gets the blame It's the rich what get the pleasure Ain't it all a blooming shame?

Look up Elsa Lanchester's version on You Tube and listen closely to the lyrics.

There are countless verses, but these two, which appear in many versions, form an actual gloss on the plot:

She was poor but she was honest, Victim of the squire's whim; First 'e loved 'er, then 'e left 'er And she lost 'er name through 'im.

Then she ran away to London For to 'ide 'er grief and shame; But she met another squire And she lost 'er name again.

I wonder if Daphne Pollard improvised the singing of that song or if it was really in the script. Either way, it certainly fits.