Esposas Errantes

"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."

Allotment Wives (1945)

You might moan when you hear the official voice-over talking about the War Department's benefits program and such. But hang in there. The intro is brief, and it's kind interesting, and it sets up the main movie, which has a great hook: women marrying several absentee G.I. men at once so they can collect multiple benefits. Including big death benefits if the men never returned..

This isn't a brilliant affair, but it's better than you'd expect. It has some mediocre acting and routine filming, but it also some some really good parts. The key is the story, and the way the investigator (one main man, a curious, underplayed part by an underused, quirky actor, Paul Kelly) does his job.

The leading female is played by Kay Francis. Never heard of her? She was Warner Bros. number one actress for several years in the early 1930s. Yes, and yet has really no single film to point to that has held up as great (she did do an interesting George Cukor movie early in both of their careers). But she's terrific with this middling material, and feels like an undiscovered leading lady. There's a scene between her and her saucy daughter that ends in a slap that will remind you of a similar scene in "Mildred Pierce" a year later. But Francis is usually just likable, even as she runs a lucrative scheme right in front of the U.S. Gov't's nose.

There are straight, great noir films with lesser plots, to tell the truth, but this one is filmed in a bright, flat way, with the camera often just sitting there as the actors go through their lines in the lights. Not that you need shadowy drama all the time, but drama, and a physical presence, and a higher sense of style and art. Director William Nigh has a whole slew of these B-movies to his name, and he is often too functional for his own good.

I love movies made in the 1940's esp. Noir type movies. This particular movie, Allotment Wives, was being shown years ago at an extremely limited engagement at the Roxie Theatre in San Francisco, California. I had to miss going to see the show, and I've regretted it ever since. I'd love to see this film. I love movies like The Best Years of Our Lives, So Proudly We Hail, Stage Door Canteen, The Red House, Detour, Mildred Pierce, Air Force, Citizen Kane, White Heat, High Sierra, Dark Passage, 30 Seconds Over Tokyo, etc. I hate to think I would go to my grave without seeing Allotment Wives. Do they show it on late night TV? How can I see this? If you have any ideas, I would be grateful to you, fellow Noir aficionados.

This was an enjoyable, yet unremarkable, film that deals with a racket of women who marry multiple servicemen in order to collect their allotment benefit checks. It all seems like a rather elaborate way to earn a buck, and easily traceable. Playing the leader of the syndicate is actress Kay Francis in her final role. In the mid '30s she was under a Warner contract and was reportedly the highest paid actress in the world. But unfortunately by the end of that decade she had gotten the reputation of 'box office poison' and she had to finish her career in poverty row b movies like this one. The film also features Otto Kruger who plays his usual suave gentleman villain part, he is number 2 behind Francis at the top of the scheme. Walk, don't run to this one.

Kay Francis is stylish Sheila, who owns a salon. But the real money is in an organized money scam. Her girls marry (multiple) soldiers, pocketing their pay, money, and insurance payouts, and then move on to find another husband. The picture quality is a little rough... many of the faces and scenes are washed out, but it's so old, we're lucky to have it at all. The cops are onto the money scheme, and we follow that along. Sheila's daughter Connie (Teala Loring) is away at school, but when she comes home, she stirs things up pretty quickly. This one is okay.... runs almost like an episode of dragnet; we watch as the cops close in on the wrong activity. It also has some things in common with mildred pierce... when mom needs money, she comes up with a "sideline", and she smacks Connie to show her boundaries. At least the writers treat the cops respectfully in this one... in so many of those old films, either the cops are getting insulted, or bumbling and stumbling over their own feet. Directed by Bill Nigh, who had been directing silents right from the beginning. Story by sidney sutherland. I guess this one didn't go over too well... Francis only made one more film after this one.