Coeurs impatients

Enjoyed this 1930's film starring Joan Crawford, (Gerry March) who lives with several girls who all work for a department store, some girls sell perfume and most of them are fashion models. All the girls are looking for the right man to marry who has money and they also want to throw away their alarm clocks and stop working and have babies. Gerry March has been around the block a few times and is always on guard against men who try to hit on her mainly because they have hurt her very badly in the past. Gerry tries to caution all the girls and stays pretty much to herself until Tony Jardine, (Robert Montgomery) enters her life and she really falls for him in a big way until he brings her to his secret tree house which looks like a penthouse suite and stairs that fold up. Tony is her boss at the department store and after the tree house scene, Gerry writes him off her list as a typical male trying to score. Great entertaining film, and if you like to see what women wore in the 1930's this is the film for you.

Joan Crawford in another of the alliterative early talkie series she did (others were "Our Dancing Daughters" and "Our Modern Maidens; one shudders to think what they would have done with the letter "C", and perhaps that's why they skipped it!) Jerry (Crawford), Frankie (Sebastian) and Connie (Page) are three NY department store shopgirls who live in a cramped apartment and use a hammer and a nail to open their canned dinner while listening to jazz on the phonograph and conserving the hot water so they can take a bath. Jerry's pals long for rescue by a rich man, but practical Jerry knows better; she's been there, done that, and knows that beaus with bucks only want one thing with a shopgirl, and it's not marriage. Still, though, there is that dreamy Tony Jardine (Montgomery, at the height of his boyish sexiness), son of the store owner, who seems to take a shine to Jerry and vice versa. A telling scene comes when Jerry has to model some lingerie for a store customer in Tony's presence, opening her robe to display herself to his eyes, making her totally vulnerable. While Jerry's pals find the men they think they want, Jerry won't give in to Tony's rather caddish overtures. And there is that nice Joe from the store with the flivver and gin flask. He's not dreamy, but he is solid and upstanding, and that's what Jerry wants. She has second thoughts when both her friends seem to have found love AND riches. But she can't forget Tony's kisses. Maybe she should abandon up her ideals and stop suffering and give in to Tony already.

The cast is wonderful here and Joan has lost her stagy silent mannerisms and you can just see a glimmer of the Crawford that was to come. The Depression was on, but you wouldn't know it by Joan (or this character), who persevered in spite of everything. Joan was the most ambitious actress ever to step tootsie in Hollywood and seems to have been propelled along by sheer force of will, but she did have real acting talent, and this movie displays it. Bob Montgomery plays another of his dependable rich-boy roles and looks great in a tuxedo, chatting idly about Oyster Bay. At one point, Jerry won't make out with him, so he says "Let's have a cigarette," like he just invented it. (Don't you miss smoking? I do). What a great line.

Will Jerry and her pals triumph or will they be crushed by love that was just an illusion? Watch and find out!

Our Blushing Brides - another in the early black/white ensemble films with Joan Crawford and Anita Page- this one came along just in time for talkies. Joan is Geraldine March, Anita is Connie Blair, and Dorothy Sebastian is Francine Daniels, all chasing their various men. This one also has Hedda Hopper as Mrs. Ross-Weaver, and a dashing 26 year old Robert Montgomery as Tony Jardine. Crawford would work with Hedda Hopper in "The Women" in 1939, which also featured fashion shows that take place in a store where they work.... Also present is an 18 year old Ann Dvorak as one of the models, and Louise Beavers, from Imitation of Life, as the dresser. Geraldine and Francine prance around in tight dresses and slips, a sure sign that the movie code wasn't being enforced yet. Way too much time is spent on the fashion shows, in a Busby Berkeley-like synchronized dance around the pool. Later, Geraldine wears a blond wig, and speaks with a stilted, proper accent that wasn't there before, I guess to impress her rich new suitor, Tony (Montgomery). As the girls have their ups and downs, they all lean on Geraldine. Good performances by all, except that near the end, Joan starts doing her big, overdone facial expressions that were so necessary in all her silent films.

About three working girls/roommates/gal pals and their relationships with three men/millionaires/heels. The girls all work at Jardine's department store where virtuous Jerry (played by Joan Crawford) models dresses and ladies lingerie, blonde and innocent Connie (Anita Page) works the perfume counter, and wisecracking, sarcastic Franky (Dorothy Sebastian) is stuck in blankets (where there's "not a male customer in a carload"). Franky finally does meet a man in the blanket department - he's loaded with free-flowing wads of cash, so she immediately agrees to go out with him. Meanwhile pretty Connie is having a love affair with the owner's son, David Jardine (played by Raymond Hackett, who looked to me like a cross between David and Ricky Nelson), and Jerry has a fancy for the other son, Tony Jardine (Robert Montgomery). Jerry thinks Tony is "different" from the other cads/men she meets - but she soon finds out he's not as she ends up in his lair - a tree house complete with sunken couch, dim lights, mood music, and disappearing staircase. Oh brother!

This film is quite enjoyable, I like the interrelationships between the three girls - there's plenty of chemistry and camaraderie there. Robert Montgomery is a doll, his slim self handsomely decked out in tuxedo, white tie, and tails (ooh la la) - he plays his playboy-like part expertly. Joan Crawford acts up a storm in this, with a full range of emotions - and gets to show herself off in slinky outfits and barely-there lingerie as well (which she REALLY seems to enjoy doing!). The film includes a fun fashion show, complete with foppish Parisian dress designers, and lots of capes, drapes, ruffles, and deco look hats.

This was the third film in the Joan Crawford flapper trilogy - (Our Dancing Daughters (1928)/Our Modern Maidens (1929)/Our Blushing Brides (1930)). The first two were silent, the third was a talking picture. This was not Joan Crawford's first talking picture nor her first film with costar Robert Montgomery - both those honors go to 1929's "Untamed".

You can really see the onset of the Great Depression having an effect in this final film of the trilogy. The first two films involve lots of melodrama, but there is also widespread prosperity and a focus on living it up with partying that reflects the excesses of the 1920's. This final film really isn't about living it up at all. It's more about three shop girls just getting by and how the men in the lives of two of them (Anita Page and Dorothy Sebastian) promise the good life but end up raining down tragedy upon them, while the third shop girl, Gerry (Joan Crawford), has her own cynical attitude towards men reinforced by watching the fates of her two friends. That makes the ending seem a little tacked on and even unbelievable to some degree, but it's still a good film.

Unfortunately this film is neither on DVD or VHS. "Our Dancing Daughters" and "Our Modern Maidens" can be found on used VHS copies, but the transfer is pretty blurry. None of the three is on DVD, and considering their place in Joan Crawford's filmography, I find that to be a shame.