Havana Widows

Two hard-luck but crafty ladies decide to act like HAVANA WIDOWS by sailing to Cuba to meet & blackmail rich gentlemen...

This was the sort of ephemeral comic frippery which the studios produced quite effortlessly during the 1930's. Well made & highly enjoyable, Depression audiences couldn't seem to get enough of these popular, funny photo dramas.

Joan Blondell & Glenda Farrell are perfectly cast as the frantic, fast-talking females who will go to great lengths to make a little dishonest dough. Although Joan gets both top billing and the romantic scenes, both gals are as talented & watchable as they are gorgeous.

Handsome Lyle Talbot plays Joan's persistent suitor, but he's given relatively little to do. Chubby, cherubic Guy Kibbee appears as the girls' intended target. Whether awakening to find himself in the wrong bed or being chased across the roof of a Cuban hacienda in his long johns, he is equally hilarious. Behind him comes a rank of character actors - Allen Jenkins, Frank McHugh, Ruth Donnelly, Hobart Cavanaugh, Maude Eburne, Dewey Robinson - all equally adept at pleasing the toughest crowd.

Movie mavens will recognize an uncredited James Murray as the suspicious bank teller with the forged check. This very talented actor was pulled out of complete obscurity to star in King Vidor's THE CROWD (1928), one of the silent era's most prestigious films. Hopes were high for a great career, but his celebrity faded quickly with sound pictures. After a long string of tiny roles & bit parts, broke & destitute, his life ended in the waters of a New York river in 1936. He was only 35 years old.

While never stars of the first rank, Joan Blondell (1906-1979) & Glenda Farrell (1904-1971) enlivened scores of films at Warner Bros. throughout the 1930's, especially the eight in which they appeared together. Whether playing gold diggers or working girls, reporters or secretaries, these blonde & brassy ladies were very nearly always a match for whatever leading man was lucky enough to share equal billing alongside them. With a wisecrack or a glance, their characters showed they were ready to take on the world - and any man in it. Never as wickedly brazen as Paramount's Mae West, you always had the feeling that, tough as they were, Blondell & Farrell used their toughness to defend vulnerable hearts ready to break over the right guy. While many performances from seven decades ago can look campy or contrived today, these two lovely ladies are still spirited & sassy.

Two of the screen's best wisecracking blonds, Mae and Sadie (Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell), star as gold digging showgirls in "Havana Widows," a 1933 comedy also starring Lyle Talbot, Guy Kibbee, Allen Jenkins and Frank McHugh.

After being visited by an old friend who made her fortune in Cuba, thanks to a compromising situation and a sharp attorney (McHugh), two showgirls borrow $1500 from a friend, Herman (Jenkins).

In order to get the money, Herman buys into a complicated scheme involving an insurance policy and a check, which later blows up in his face. Meanwhile, the girls head for Havana.

There, they meet a rich, married mark (Guy Kibbee) and his broke son (Talbot) - who of course falls for Mae. The sharp attorney turns out to be a roaring drunk 24/7, and soon, Herman appears, trying to get his money back and running from his creditor. It makes for good fun.

This is a very light comedy with the fastest dialogue ever spoken, coming out Blondell's and Farrell's mouths like a machine gun. I'm sure the amount of speaking in "Havana Widows" would equal two of today's scripts.

The roles they play are common ones for them - streetwise, hard-working young women with dry wit and a desire for some of life's comforts. They're both very good, Blondell with her adorable Kewpie-doll face and curvy body, and Farrell with that unmistakable voice and delivery. They made a good team.

Frank McHugh is very funny as the attorney - in thirty years, he never changed, and in his last film, Easy Come, Easy Go, he is instantly recognizable. Allen Jenkins as the harried friend gives good support.

All in all, an enjoyable film, nothing groundbreaking.

The intended humor is broad, rather than clever; familiar, rather than original; flat, rather than funny. All the ingredients of classic farce are here, except the wit that makes such farce classic. Allen Jenkins offers his usual dumb-dumb character. Frank McHugh does the supposedly comical screen drunkard - swaying, staggering, falling. Guy Kibbee...well. suffice to say that he plays the same role he did in practically every other picture. That leaves our leading ladies: chorus girls on the make Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell. A promising duo, but comedy teams work best when the performers are opposites, and here the girls play virtually identical characters. Their wisecracks don't have much snap, but then neither does the picture overall. Joan radiates her cheerful charm, as usual, despite being called upon to chew gum throughout. I think she removed it to eat, and during her wedding scene.

So who's right, Variety ("rapid fire laughs, all legitimately gained and inescapable") or Hirschhorn's Warner Brothers book ("a computerized comedy... formula film-making at its manufactured worst")? The opening shot of a burlesque marquee featuring "Iwanna Shakitoff, direct from Russia" might portend well, but shouldn't that be Ivanna? The scene where the burlesque manager tells Joan Blondell to do a stag show in Passaic, "and give 'em something to stare at" has a certain realism, but that's the last you see of anything that could go by that name. Even as the chorus girls swap wisecracks while they're dancing, one can tell there's a problem. The lines are flat and aren't delivered off-the-cuff, but more like a series of Laugh-In blackouts. Soon, the Warner regulars are walking through scenes that somehow arrive at the denouement by way of an obvious structure that reminds one of a matinée-western, and with clever or perceptive dialogue notably absent. It is from Warners, and before the Code, but there's not a moment that could be called "legitimately gained," nor is there an unexpected one. Very disappointing, especially considering the cast.

If the Carry On films of the 60s and 70s were made in America and were made in the early 30s they wouldn't be that different from this. It's got that same feel of amiable silliness with absurd characters whom you know exactly how they're going to behave - because they do the same role in each film. It's sort of rubbish but actually really fun and entertaining to watch. Being from the early 30s however there's more of a 'cheer up everybody' theme going on which of course would have gone down well back then.

The plot is a little lame but that doesn't matter. What you're watching isn't to tax your brain or reveal any great secret of life - it's just an hour of fun. The story, about a couple of burlesque girls trying to chisel money out of rich men would be outrageous these days but back then when opportunities for girls like this to get a bit of money and in many ways, simply to survive in the Great Depression were incredibly hard, it was seen as quite acceptable. Indeed these girls are the heroes, the ones we're rooting for. That's made easier by them being Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell. That they find it so easy to lure these men from their wives is made unquestionably believable by the outfits Joan Blondell is just about wearing!

If you don't expect a memorable or deep film but just want a taste of early 30s fast-talking, frothy light entertainment with Joan Blondell looking amazing, this will definitely tickle your fancy.