Saleslady

Saleslady is not a bad picture from Monogram, but this same story had it been done at a place like MGM would have been done so much better. The premise of the plot isn't bad, but the execution shows the lack of production values that so typified these B films from Poverty Row studios.

Anne Nagel is concerned and rightfully so that she as the rich heiress of mattress king Harry Davenport will be courted by men who will be interested in her money. So she gets an apartment and a job in Chicago as a Saleslady and meets earnest Weldon Heyburn who is determined to get ahead. They fall in love and marry and live on his salary.

But unexpected things do happen and eventually she has to reveal that she's an heiress. I think one can figure out where this is going.

If this had been done at MGM with someone like Robert Montgomery in the lead and Carole Lombard as the heiress, given their production values and the talent and charisma of performers that I mentioned it would have been a winner. But Heyburn is earnest and oh so dull. Nagel does all right, but she isn't close to a Carole Lombard.

Best in the cast is Harry Davenport playing foxy grandpa, a part he played a couple dozen times or so. Be it MGM or be it Monogram, Davenport always gives it his best.

Saleslady could probably use a restoration, but that's not likely to happen.

All in all, it's a bland Monogram programmer. There's no real plot or suspense; instead the screenplay simply unwinds. The main aspect amounts to whether newly weds Nagel and Heyburn can make enough money to afford his free spending for her sake. After a persistent courtship, they marry. What Heyburn doesn't know is that Nagel's an heiress with a wealthy grandpa, but she's bored by the wealthy lifestyle. So, incognito, she gets a job in a new city, meets Heyburn, and embarks on a more routine lifestyle they can't really afford. So, will the struggling couple somehow manage or will Nagel finally seek help from wealthy grandpa.

Fortunately, the two leads inject personality into their roles that helps compensate the lack of their under-dramatized plight. Then too, I wonder how much Depression Era audiences sympathized with Nagel's rejection of a wealthy lifestyle they could only dream about. But then I guess her true love is supposed to compensate. As an old movie buff, I'd never seen or heard of Heyburn. He seems to have had an "uncredited" career. From here it looks like he deserved better. Anyway, look for cowboy star Don (Red) Barry in a bit part as a salesman of all things. All in all, the leads are better than the material or the flat direction. Otherwise it's an utterly forgettable sixty minutes.

How do you classify this film? Certainly not a 30s madcap comedy and hardly a searing look at the travails of depression era economics but a bland B film with second tier actors. Anne Nagel shows some heartfelt glimpses of talent but Weldon Heyburn is outperformed by the mattresses. Between the acting (Davenport excludes) and the terribly dated man-as-breadwinner plot this film does not merit the time for viewing either for perspective or merit

Anne Nagel tells her grandfather, Harry Davenport, that it's time she gets married, but she wants a husband who wants to marry her, not her grandfather's mattress business. So she moves to Chicago and gets a job. Soon she meets on-the-make Weldon Heyburn, who proposes, but before she can tell him about the family fortune, he starts the usual guff about the man of the family making the money. Soon they are living fairly well, with everything bought on credit, until the crunch comes, and then....

It's a cheap but mildly ambitious effort from Monogram, and pretty good in the acting department, as you might expert with Miss Nagel and Mr. Davenport. Unhappily, while Mr. Heyburn is good looking, he's one of those actors who substitutes an emphatic delivery for emotion, and it grows tiresome after a bit. The result remains watchable through the end, thanks to a fine supporting cast, but rarely more than that.

The rich lady is pretty but her character is given less depth than a dishrag. She interacts with her grandfather and a streetwise dame at a boarding house and everything is going along fine, just some nice and digestible pre-war pabulum, but then the main dude arrives and he just pollutes the screen. I wanted to invent a time machine so I go back and kick his ass. He looks like if you tried to make a old time "handsome man" mask out of biscuit dough. His voice is nasally and his laugh lines made my pelvis hurt, as if I were bracing for a kick. And worst of all his character is a gross jerk. But the dumb rich woman falls for him and so he sticks around. Whenever he's not on screen the movie is completely tolerable but then he comes back and it's bad again.