Havana Widows

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.

"Havana Widows" is a film about a couple of chorus girls (Glenda Farrell and Joan Blondell) who have trouble making ends meet. However, when an old acquaintance tells them about a scheme to trick rich millionaires into breech of promise lawsuits, the pair head to Havana...the vacation hangout of the rich and fancy back in the day. Once there, they plan on trapping some poor sap and making him pay! Not exactly a decent or honorable couple of dames, huh?!

Considering how dishonorable and larcenous the women are in this film, you do wonder if Warner Brothers would have made this movie only a year later after the toughened Production Code was adopted. Probably NOT is what I think. But it is high energy as well as entertaining! Plus, having Allen Jenkins, Frank McHugh and Guy Kibbee on hand as supporting actors definitely elevates the quality and fun of this movie.

...from First National and director Ray Enright. Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell star as a couple of show girls who decide to head for Havana to try and put some unsuspecting rich guys into compromising positions which will result in a big payday for them. They hone in on befuddled older man Guy Kibbee, but Blondell falls for his handsome (but poor) son Lyle Talbot. Also featuring Frank McHugh, Allen Jenkins, Ruth Donnelly, Hobart Cavanaugh, Ralph Ince, Luis Alberni, J. Carrol Naish, and Paul Porcasi.

Blondell and Farrell are two of my favorite ladies from this period of film, and I loved seeing them together. McHugh does his perpetual drunk shtick but I still found it funny. The gleefully amoral plot is a definitive example of pre-code inhibition.

What is odd here is that this seems to be a remake of sorts of 1930's The Life of the Party. Both were made in the precode era. The only thing I can figure is that the two female leads of that earlier film - Winnie Lightner and Irene Delroy were no longer headliners, and the new Warner Brothers stars were hardly even on the lot if at all just three years earlier. Thus the attempt at another bawdy version of the story, just with better sound technology and more current stars.

Blondell & Farrell are excellent. Blondell was edible. This was very funny and I laughed often throughout it. Great dialogue and its loaded with wisecracks. I could've watched it for hours. Tremendous fun to watch.

A cast of Warner's brightest farceurs work overtime in this frantic, sporadically funny gold-digger farce. In the first of several pairings, Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell play gum-chomping burlesque chorines looking to strike it rich in Havana. Though pains are made to show Blondell as a tootsie of morals (early on, she refuses her boss's request to dance at a stag party), she apparently has no qualms about trapping vacationing millionaires into breach of promise settlements.

True to form, Blondell has a last minute change of heart when she falls for the son (Lyle Talbot) of her intended mark. Luckily for the viewer the sucker happens to be Guy Kibbee, whose rooftop escape from a Cuban Turkish bath is a low comedy hoot.

Hyperthyroid Allen Jenkins provides amusing support as (what else?) a gangster's lamebrained flunky, and the wonderful Ruth Donnelly appears all too briefly as Kibbee's carnivorous wife. Only Frank McHugh is a repetitious drag; he plays a constantly inebriated lawyer in the obvious speech-slurring style common to the thirsty days of Prohibition. You have to wonder whether such witless drunk acts contributed to the repeal.