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A small-town Kansas girl encounters hard luck & happiness when she follows her true love to New York City.

Aided by an excellent cast, THEY CALL IT SIN is a superior soap opera which delivers just enough sentiment & humor to keep the attention of most viewers. While the heroine's change of affection in the final scene is never really explained, this doesn't detract from the overall enjoyment of the film. Particularly commendable are the sequences set in the Merton park, with the softly playing ukulele setting a gentle romantic mood.

Beautiful Loretta Young is radiant as the sweet young thing who follows her dreams to the Big City. Doe-eyed & innocent, her purity is nicely countered by brassy, sassy Una Merkel, cartwheeling through her role as a chorus girl who doesn't take nonsense from anyone. Suave doctor George Brent & earnest businessman David Manners are both very fine in their roles as the fellows who adore Miss Young.

Helen Vinson plays Manners' wealthy fiancée. Elizabeth Patterson scores in her small role as Miss Young's spiteful ‘mother.' Louis Calhern plays the proper scoundrel as a lecherous theatrical producer.

Movie mavens will recognize an uncredited Roscoe Karns as a sarcastic dance rehearsal director. Marion Byron delivers some funny moments as the Merton soda jerk.

They Call it Sin (1932)

*** (out of 4)

A New York business man (David Manners) goes to a small farm town to close on a deal and meets a young woman (Loretta Young). Even though he has a fiancé back in NY, the two quickly fall in love but when he has to go back the woman follows him, which just leads to more problems. This is a rather charming romantic drama, which features some fine performances as well as several nice romantic touches. Both Young and Manners are terrific together with Young bringing that beauty to the screen, which always works well with her tender touch as an actress. This is also the best I've ever seen Manners who manages to be very charming and sweet without going over the top. George Brent and Una Merkel add nice support. Being a Warner film, there's an added murder subplot added on towards the end, which really wasn't needed but the film ends in an unexpected way, which makes up for that silly turn.

They Call It Sin (1932)

One of many really good Loretta Young films from this era. She's young and energized and makes a great lead. This story of a sweet country girl being swept off her feet by a genuinely nice man must have struck to the core of women all over the country. Nothing extraordinary here, but all in all well done and compact.

There are parts of the film that feel like it's an early talkie—they are a bit stiff— but there are many more parts, especially with Young, that are so fresh and alive they feel almost contemporary. The other big name is George Brent, more famous for many low key roles next to Bette Davis, and it's fun to see him so young here. But it's actually the two other leading actors —there are four—who match Young for energy on the screen. One is the other man, a common kind of actor (David Manners) with believable energy. The second is a sassy woman who supports Young through her travails, Una Merkel.

So in all they make a fast and strangely interwoven group. You won't find the sexually suggestive layers of other pre-Code films here, even though some rules are seemingly broken. But you will find a freshness, if not intensity, that keeps this breezy drama going. They call it entertainment.

A startlingly mature teenage Loretta Young stars in this fast-moving melodrama as Marion Cullen, a songwriter who leaves her Kansas home for New York City to shape a career in show business and to follow the man she loves, Jimmy Decker (David Manners), a salesman whose business junket to her home town has tied their hearts together. Decker, however, is betrothed to another (Helen Vinson) and Marion discovers that success in her new profession benefits from a relationship with Ford Humphries (Louis Calhern), an influential producer but a libertine whose demands upon her include more than her ability to craft tuneful pieces for the stage. Decker, now married, continues to harbour his love for Marion, as does his best friend, medical doctor Tony Travers (George Brent) and it remains for the young musician to decide which of the three men she will choose and what sort of position she will prefer for herself, that as mistress, wife, or other woman. Graceful Loretta Young is asked to provide acting skill instead of solely her superb bone structure, and she does so to good result in mosaical scenes, displaying a full range of emotions while making them believable and, of course, is a perfect mannequin for the Orry-Kelly gowns with which she is raimented. David Manners must rely upon more than his profile here, and the stage-trained actor performs creditably, specially so in airy scenes, while silky George Brent and shrewd Louis Calhern execute their roles well; it is Una Merkel as Dixie Dare, Marion's Gotham companion, who nearly steals the show with her rendering of a salty-mouthed, high-stepping chorus girl. The entire production benefits from the extensive cinematic background of director Thornton Freeland who utilizes an interesting assortment of camera angles, is responsible for the crisp cutting and editing and handles his extras with sureness, with only the abrupt final minutes barring the work from achieving a higher aesthetic plane.

Merkel, Brent, Manners, and Young had JUST gotten into films at the tail end of the silents, but were even bigger hits in the talkies. Marion (Young) is the organist at a small town church, and meets Jimmy (David Manners). They hit it off, but when she shows up in New York, now there's explaining to be done. Fun scene where Dixie (Una Merkel) asks Marion for a cigarette, and when she says no, Dixie takes one of her own out anyway, and smokes it! Then they try to wiggle their way into show biz. Marion has real talent, and Dixie is full of energy and sass. Directed by Thornton Freeland, whose NEXT film would be the awesome "Flying Down to Rio..." check it out, if you haven't seen it. fun stuff. early Rogers and Astaire. Fun show about a show.