Mannequin

The main interest points in seeing 'Mannequin' were that it was directed by Frank Borzage, a director who deserved and still does deserve more credit, and the great cast, with Joan Crawford and Spencer Tracy in their only collaboration together. That is perhaps the film's biggest draw, that they were great on their own is reason enough to see anything of theirs but seeing them together in a rare pairing is even more so.

With those things taken into account, 'Mannequin' had all the makings to be a charming film. Which it on the most part is. Not perfect or great, and Crawford, Tracy and Borzage have all done better, but 'Mannequin' is a nice undemanding film that doesn't feel too simplistic or too challenging and doesn't try to do or be more than necessary. While not a must see 'Mannequin' does have more than enough to warrant more exposure.

'Mannequin' may have corny and melodramatic parts and moments that don't quite ring true, do not expect reality here and that is including the ending (which admittedly does also strike a chord emotionally). A few of the early scenes are a bit static.

Alan Curtis does his best bringing smarmy charm to his role, but the character is too one-dimensional unpleasant for the charm to properly convince.

However, 'Mannequin' is beautifully filmed, clearly loving Crawford (looking radiantly photogenic) and those costumes are to die for. While not one that will stay long in the memory, the score fits and complements the film well and doesn't feel like it should have belonged somewhere else. The script has wit and emotion, much of the film is far from dull once it gets going and the story has a lovely poignancy and intimacy (the dance floor scene is a lovely moment and interesting from an interaction stand-point, pointed out already) on the most part,

Borzage directs with his usual sensitivity and he definitely seems at home here. What makes 'Mannequin' especially worth watching is the cast. Whether Crawford is believable as a young working class girl is debatable, but that doesn't matter when she gives a performance so charming and deeply felt. Tracy underplays sympathetically and more than appealingly, they make a lovely pairing. Shrewd Leo Gorcey and movingly sincere Elizabeth Risdon are particularly good in support.

On the whole, nice pretty good film. 7/10 Bethany Cox

The Joan Crawford Experience 23 / 59

Joan Does The Rags-To-Riches Thing Again

Jessie Cassidy (Joan Crawford) is a hard-working girl from the raggedy tenements on Hester Street in NYC. She slaves away in a textile factory to support her harried mother, her lazy out-of-work father, and her shiftless, smart-ass, out-of-work little brother. She dreams of getting out of that dump with her boyfriend, the boxer Eddie Miller (Alan Curtis). Eddie is obviously the lazy con-man type; he talks a big talk and makes lots of promises he can't keep ... but Jessie is in love!

Jessie convinces Eddie to marry her and while they celebrate with their wedding party at a Chinese restaurant, they run into John L. Hennessey (Spencer Tracy). He's originally from the tenements on Hester street but has made a fortune by becoming a shipping magnate. Hennessey is smitten with Jessie.

Jessie and Hennessey cross paths again when Jessie has a job in the chorus line as a Gebhart Girl at the "Gebhart Frolics", and the entire gang is invited to a cocktail party at Hennessey's penthouse suite. Hennessey makes a play for her but she is a married woman, so she slaps him!

The rest of the film involves Hennessey's pursuit of Jessie, Jessie's realization that Eddie is small time two bit hood looking for easy money, and Eddie's nasty little plan to get some of that money from Hennessey by using Jessie as bait.

This is a pretty darn good film. The story is engaging, the cast is great, and Adrian really went all out on some of the fashions at the fashion show (where Jessie is a model / mannequin). I wonder how many animals died for Joan's fabulous fur coats and wraps? Oh well. Doesn't matter. She looked fierce!

Recommended!

As I'm finding is usual with Frank Borzage films I've watched recently, there's more here than first meets the eye. At its heart is a love triangle of sorts initially involving Joan Crawford and Alan Curtis but later adding in Spencer Tracy.

Crawford is the beating heart of the movie. A hard-working dancer, she faithfully takes her unopened pay-packet home to her mum in the family apartment on the poor side of town. Her dad is unemployed and basically sits about the flat reading his paper expecting to be waited on hand and foot by his wife. Alongside him, fulfilling a similar function, is Crawford's feckless and cynical younger brother but worse yet is the guy with whom she's loved-up and engaged.

This is Curtis's unsteady Eddie, selfish and grasping, well-balanced as the saying goes, with a chip on both shoulders. He's going to take the quickest way to easy money and doesn't mind using Joanie any way he can to get there. Joan can't see this of course and despite her mother's "Don't do as I did" warnings, duly marries Eddie, but at their reception, Tracy's wealthy shipping magnate John L Hennessy also happens to be there, where he's immediately smitten by Crawford.

We see Tracy in place as a benevolent boss, playing fair with his employees but in a sign of the times, there are hints of discontent especially as the labour is unionised. Thoughts of Joan distract him from his work and of course she's unattainable, given that she's married and apparently in love with Curtis, but it's not long before hubby starts to show his true colours and concocts a seedy plan to use her to entrap Tracy in a get-Eddie-rich ruse.

Things don't go according to plan however, as he doesn't count either on the scales finally falling from Crawford's eyes where he himself is concerned or her developing feelings for the blindly adoring Tracy. At the same time though, things aren't going so well for Tracy's business leading to a multi-faceted ending where the true price of love is learned by the principals.

The love story aspect isn't without cliché, reflective as it is of the Depression-era backdrop. It's interesting and diverting enough but certainly somewhat fantastical. There are some nicely humorous touches, one scene in particular when Crawford, by now working as a clothes-store mannequin, models a number of day-wear outfits at a fashion show as an ever-more interested Tracy looks on, especially keen to see what she wears to bed. However I was probably more interested in the back story of Tracy and his relationship with his workers. At the climactic scene where he confronts them at a mass meeting after they've come out on a sympathy strike, he doesn't threaten or bully them but instead respects their position no matter the personal consequences to him.

I am finding Borzage to be an interesting Hollywood Golden Age director. Sure, there's a love story at the heart of all the movies of his that I've seen, but it's the serious stuff in the background which really gets my attention. Tracy and Crawford are both excellent in their parts, while Curtis too registers strongly as Eddie the Heel.

All in all, an entertaining and in its own modest way, educational movie with its depictions of working class life and industrial relations of the time.

I hate to be a spoil sport, but I must disagree with the other reviewers who are un-restrained in their enthusiasm for the only Joan Crawford/Spencer Tracy co-starring vehicle. The movie often feels as though it had been re-heated and, while it has many admirable moments, just as many ring false. Crawford herself remains remote and aloof for much of the running time and, while Spencer Tracy probably couldn't give a false performance if he tried, his heart doesn't seem to be in it either.

The early scenes, in which Joan plays a poor, restless girl who lives in a tenement with her ne'er do well father and brother, as well as with her overworked, tired mother are so stilted and obvious they are an embarrassment. These scenes play almost like parodies of the previous Crawford vehicles POSSESSED (1931), DANCING LADY (1933) and SADIE McKEE (1934). Crawford has played this "noble girl whose ambitions will lift her out of her miserable station in life" part before, and she has played it better. Here she seems tired, like she's not even believing it herself and, although it may sound un-gallant to mention, she's a little long in the tooth to play this type of role convincingly (God forgive me).

Things brighten considerably when Tracy and Crawford begin to spark and it is the middle section of the movie that is the most enjoyable. A lot of this may stem from the fact that the middle section contains the least amount of screen time for Alan Curtis, who plays Joan's "so bad he's hissable" louse of a husband. Curtis is so one dimensional and so "obviously" rotten that you wonder what Crawford's character could EVER have seen in him.

Complaints aside, there are good and memorable moments to be found in MANNEQUIN. When Tracy and Crawford are alone on-screen, they both seem to be off of their game, but together, they have a haunting chemistry that transcends explanation. They both manage to convey that they truly understand and accept what the other is thinking, a rarity in film. It makes MANNEQUIN all the more frustrating when we get glimpses of what made these two the magnificent stars they were. It disappoints me that they never worked together again in a project more worthy of their combined talents.

Standing in dramatic counterpoint to Crawford's 1938 "box office poison" label, MANNEQUIN was a big hit with audiences early that year. Other, more ambitious (and in my opinion, more interesting) Crawford vehicles such as THE BRIDE WORE RED (1937) and THE SHINING HOUR (1938), however, were not.

One of Frank Borzage's very best films is also one of his least known. He made "Mannequin" in 1937 with Joan Crawford as the working-class girl who marries her childhood sweetheart, Alan Curtis, but he's a heel. Then she meets sweet self-made millionaire Spencer Tracy who's got a soft spot for her, so her heel of a husband comes up with a plan for her to divorce him and marry Tracy so they can split the money. It's a surprisingly tough little movie, (the title doesn't really do it justice), beautifully written by Lawrence Hazard from Katharine Brush's story and both Tracy and Crawford are superb.

This was Crawford when she was a real actress and at her least self-conscious and the movie came out in the same year that Tracy won his first Oscar for "Captain's Courageous", but he's so much better here. It's a lovely, naturalistic performance, very simple and direct, and it showed what a great romantic actor he was. Indeed, Borzage even managed to get a good performance out of Curtis as the heel. This is one Borzage picture that cries out for a revival.