Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. -- second edition

This is to announce a new/old project.  Ten years ago, I published ANN BLYTH: ACTRESS. SINGER. STAR.  A lot of water has gone under the bridge in the last decade, but it remains a book close to my heart.  

In the past several weeks, I've been tinkering with the manuscript with the intention of publishing a second edition, one that will include a few more bits of info, a handful of additional photos from her stage appearances, an afterward about the book, and...an additional hardcover edition.

I'm also working to get the print paperback more widely available.  At the moment, the eBook is sold through a variety of online shops, including my own, here.  The print book currently is available only from Amazon.  In the coming weeks, I hope to make the print paperback book also available through Barnes & Noble online and as many other online shops as possible.

The new hardcover edition at first will be sold only through Amazon, but I hope in future to make the hardcover also available for purchase at other venues.

Massacre (1934)

Massacre (1934) is a bold standoff against treatment and societal views of the modern Native American, as well as the industry that brought us westerns with little appetite for treating Indians as nothing more than stereotypes…and targets.

It manages, however, to be more than just a message film, for the story involves a lot of action, a fast-moving story line, and cool deliberation on the part of Joe Thunderhorse, a man whose two-fisted approach to life brings him away from the reservation so long that Sioux culture and its modern problems mean little to him.  He’s out for himself and very successful at it.  What brings him back to his tribe is a shock, and he brings the audience with him.

Richard Barthelmess, one of my favorites, is very good in this strong role.  He manages, as does his character, to straddle the world of hardscrabble make-a-buck early 1930s and the ancient culture into which he was born but left at a young age to make his way in the world.  For him, it is not just the “white man’s world,” it is his world.  He walks with authority, like the son of a chief, like a guy who wears his self-confidence as if it were a bullet-proof vest. He generally has a great time, but he is not afraid to challenge anyone.

We first meet him in Indian garb riding a horse in a procession at a wild west show at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1933, and the theme of the fair, “Century of Progress” is only part of the irony facing the audience when, sinking into the story, we immediately begin to consider the plight of the Native American in twentieth-century America.  Where is their progress?  

Barthelmess is the star of the show, and his pictures on programs bring in a lot of money to the stock company, run by Robert Barratt, a kind of Wild Bill Hickok knockoff.  Barthelmess does trick riding, fancy shooting at targets, and makes the girls swoon, particularly Claire Dodd, a wealthy sophisticate who has designs on him. 

Barthelmess earns the princely sum of $300 per week, and demands for $400 and will get it.  He has a valet played by Clarence Muse.  No jovial Indian sidekick, his manservant is Black, but seems more a pal than a lackey.  He calls Barthelmess “Chief” like everyone else does, not “Boss.”   Our first surprise is when the monosyllabic “Chief” rides out of the stadium, goes to the manager’s tent where his valet removes the wig with the long braids, and reveals a modern Joe, who changes into a suit and speaks English fluently.  We see he has only been playing a part.  He is suddenly almost like a cross between Clark Gable’s masculine polish and James Cagney’s Bowery toughness.  He smokes, he chews gum (sometimes at the same time), and strides out to his own sporty automobile with his name and picture emblazoned on the doors.  The ten-gallon hat he wears is so large and ostentatious, it probably really does hold ten gallons.

I like the shot of Mr. Muse's face in the obverse side of the hand mirror he holds for Barthelmess.

Mr. Barthelmess amuses himself with the adoration of the females in the crowd, and has a shallow romantic relationship with Claire Dodd.  It is interesting that while Hollywood would not stoop to his having a white manservant, he is allowed to have a white lady friend.  Their kiss, a long and seductive encounter between two races in America at that time we might consider to be a daring image.  Was it allowed because the audience was already familiar with the long career of Richard Barthelmess and knew he was not really Sioux, or is it because Claire Dodd is playing a coolly unsympathetic woman who collects men and marries on a whim?  We have to question her emotional and mental stability when, as Barthelmess arrives for a cocktail party at her mansion, she brings him to a room that is filled with Indian regalia and artifacts.  He looks at the objects, interested, as if he is on a museum tour, and will later confess that he realized at that moment he has gotten so far afield from his native roots that the significance of the pieces were lost on him and needed to be explained to him.

But it is her fascination with the objects and collecting them, the way she has collected men, that says a great deal about her.  She is not a historian, an anthropologist, or a scholar; she has created a fantasy revolving around Joe Thunderhorse that is more sexual desire than cultural interest.  She clings to him and murmurs her image of him as a wild, “red man” and she would like to be his “squaw.” 

This movie seems to straddle, perhaps knowingly, the conflicting images, tropes, of the Indian as a savage and as a noble and beautiful child of nature.  Joe Thunderhorse is neither, he’s a just guy. 

Massacre, like some of the previous movies covered (Heat Lightning, Employees’ Entrance), is a First National film, and we may reliably count on a frank, sometimes stark, socially conscious message.  The Vitaphone Orchestra and the opening credits with the cameo portraits of the principal players might momentarily distract us at the old moviehouse like a doily on a scratched tabletop, but we know what we’re getting underneath.  It’s wonderful, gritty honesty.

Spoilers at this point, naturally.

Barthelmess gets word that his father, still back on the reservation, is dying and is asking for him.  So he takes Clarence Muse with him and drives his outlandish auto out to the reservation, which he left when he was still a boy.  The government agent at the time he was there, played by Henry O’Neill, who is now working in Washington, D.C., sent him to the Haskell Institute, where he learned skills to make his way in the world.  But Barthelmess returns to a desolate landscape he had almost forgotten, and which seems to have gotten worse in the years since he’d left.  Even Clarence Muse notices and remarks, “White folks don’t give the Indian much of a break.”

The reservation is now run by unscrupulous managers.  There is Dudley Digges, the agent in charge, whose side hustle is graft and more graft.

Frank McGlynn, Sr., is the arrogant, posturing, bloviating missionary.  His funeral service for Joe’s father is all phony hype and brings no comfort to the family.  Joe will afterward insist on a Sioux ritual that is far more spiritual and sincere.  As Barthelmess looks to the night sky, he seems to truly mourn for his father, and perhaps for his people.

Sidney Toler, several years before his longtime gig as the kindly inspector Charlie Chan, plays the smarmy undertaker, whose crimes against the Sioux involve not only fraud and graft, but rape.

When Barthelmess arrives at the agent’s office on the reservation, he is all curiosity and impatience, and has no idea what corruption he has before him.  A poised, beautiful young officer worker, played by Ann Dvorak, catches his immediate attention.  She is Sioux also, and when she answers him in perfect English, he smiles in recognition and asks if she, too, had been sent to the Haskell Institute.  She was, but she came home to make a life on the reservation, and in her small way, to make a difference.  We don’t learn much about her character or her family, but she will prove invaluable to Barthelmess in helping him navigate this complicated world on the reservation.

The Haskell Institute, a real-life Indian school, was founded in 1884, and like many such boarding institutions, created an often harsh and even cruel environment for the Indian children who attended.  It grew into a land-grant college now known as Haskell Indian Native University, where some 140 Indian and native Alaskan nations are represented in its student body.  In February of this year, 2025, budget cuts as a result of the whims of the traitor felon currently residing in the White House have forced the lay-off of one-quarter of the staff.

Barthelmess renews acquaintance with his younger brother and sister, and cousins, but bristles at what he has observed in their miserable lives under the authority of the local agent.  He is not shy about complaining or throwing a punch or two, and Ann Dvorak warns him that he could be arrested and confined to the reservation and never be allowed to leave again.

He is enraged to discover that the unscrupulous undertaker, Sidney Toler, has raped his 15-year-old sister, Jennie, played by Agnes Narcha.  Lovely Miss Narcha plays the tragic role well, but has few lines and this was apparently one of only two movies she made.

Barthelmess hops in his car to go hunt down Toler, and we know he means business because he has bought the lariat off a cowboy on a horse in town.  Barthelmess speeds away, catches up to Toler’s car in one of a few car chases in this film, and lassos him from behind, yanking him out of the car and then dragging him along the dusty road, finally unleashing his inert, battered body.  He is unconscious and rolls to the side of the road, where Barthelmess leaves him.

Barthelmess is put on trial on the reservation in a kangaroo court, with three illiterate and docile Indians as judges to convict him.  Ann Dvorak sneaks him the key to the jail cell, and he and Clarence Muse drive off, away from the reservation. Cleverly, when the cop cars begin to chase his unmistakable auto down the highway, it is Mr. Muse they catch, wearing the ten-gallon hat as a disguise.  Barthelmess has taken Muse’s flat cap and hops a freight. 

Finally, he makes it to Washington, D.C., where he hopes to bring his plight to his old mentor, the former agent on the reservation, played by Henry O’Neill.  As he leaves the freight yard, we see the Capitol Dome in the distance over the top of an old wooden fence, and the familiar Blue Eagle of the NRA poster plastered on it.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration was established the year before, in 1933, and was a popular start to the New Deal among distressed workers.  Participation in the NRA among businessowners was voluntary, and in part involved agreeing to establish a minimum wage between 20 and 45 cents per hour, to limit the work week from between 35 to 40 hours, and to abolish child labor.  In 1935, the U.S. Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional. However, some of its features remained and were carried forward in other progressive legislation in those years. 

Barthelmess makes contact with Henry O’Neill, who sympathizes and takes his side when he is accused of the murder of Sidney Toler.  O’Neill acknowledges his fight for the Sioux has always been an uphill battle.  “Every move I make is blocked by the same organized group that have been bleeding the Indians for years…water power, oil rights, cattle ranges…whatever the Indian happens to own, they manage to get away from them through control of public opinion and legislation….”

O’Neill invites him to state his case in a congressional committee meeting.  Barthelmess explains life on the reservation in strong language when one of the committee members notes that Indians were granted American citizenship in the 1920s during the Calvin Coolidge administration in return for their services during World War I. 

Yes, they weren’t citizens until…the 1920s.

Barthelmess responds, “The Indian a citizen?  That’s funny.  He hasn’t any constitutional rights.  He can’t even hire a lawyer without the agent’s consent.  Oh, he’s given the right to live…on a wasteland.  He’s allowed the right to worship, but if he remembers that the Indian once had a religion of his own, he gets a beating for it.  He’s given the right to love, but a white man can violate an Indian girl and get away with it…You used to shoot the Indian down.  Now you cheat him and starve him and kill him off by dirt and disease.  It’s a massacre any way you tell it.”

These are strong words that probably a lot in the movie audience had never heard before or considered.  He is rewarded with applause, but taken back to the reservation to stand trial for murder.  Wallis Clark plays his lawyer, and they garner massive attention with headlines and crowds when the train pulls into the nearest town to the reservation. 

But Jennie, his sister, is missing.  She has been kidnapped to keep her from testifying about her rape.  With his usual fearless and no-nonsense manner, Barthelmess tracks her down, not afraid to use his fists or tell off anybody.  There is a buildup of suspenseful twists and turns right through to the end of the movie, with mob violence, where Barthelmess must keep his own people in check before they burn down the courthouse. 

The quiet ending of him standing on a cliff, surveying the wide reservation lands is another surprise, for he was shot down in an earlier scene.  Ann Dvorak joins him with a telegram giving him the appointment, should he choose to accept, of being the reservation’s new agent.  He remarks, “Just think of all the time I wasted shooting glass balls and signing autographs.  This is a real job.”

He and Ann will have, we assume, a happier future together, but not an easy one.  It is a satisfying ending, seeing how they are satisfied.

There appear to have been at least a few actual Native Americans in the cast in very small roles.  It would be interesting to find out what people from the native tribal nations thought of this movie, if any of them had been able to see it at the time in 1934. 

You can see it now on YouTube.

  *******************************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

My new non-fiction book, CHILDREN'S WARTIME ADVENTURE NOVELS - The Silent Generation's Vicarious Experience of World War II -- is now available in eBook here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a wide variety of other online shops.

Or here from my Shopify store if you want to buy direct from me and avoid the big companies.

And it is here in eBook, paperback print, and hardcover, from Amazon.

It is also here in paperback from Ingram.

And here in hardcover from Ingram.

From Cherry Ames, to Meet the Malones, from Dave Dawson to Kitty Carter - Canteen Girl, the Silent Generation spent their childhood immersed in geopolitical events through the prism of their middle grade and young adult books.  From the home front to the battlefield, these books are a window on their world, and influenced their hard-working, conformity-loving generation. 

 

 

 

 

 

Heat Lightning - 1934

Heat Lightning (1934) is a study of independence and need, remorse and recklessness, and a profound yet subtle quest for redemption.  It is both gritty and yet surprisingly lyrical.  Aline MacMahon has one of her best roles as the dour, protective older sister running a desert truck stop.  The movie is not all hers, but all the characters moving around her like satellites never detract and sometimes don’t even complement her life that much—she is a true loner in heart and mind.  She seems to brush most of them off like flies. We will learn she didn’t start out that way.

This is my entry in the Classic Movie Blog Association’s “Cry Me a River: Tearjerkers Blogathon.”  I hope you’ll have a look at the other great participatingblogs.

As with really great movies, the setting is as much a character in the story as the actors, and director Mervyn LeRoy certainly knows this.  Here we have a weather-beaten diner with a ramshackle car repair garage and a gas pump out front.  There are a few cabins that comprise a small “auto court” of the day.  We are in the Mojave Desert, and just as traveler Jane Darwell remarks when she and her hapless husband, Edgar Kennedy, suffer car trouble and see the roadside café up ahead, “It’ll probably turn out to be a mirage.”

We may well imagine that motorists (or those pushing their enormous cars like Edgar Kennedy), will see the run-down road stop as a welcome respite.  All around them under the big sky is vast, dusty, and with nothing but a long, hot ribbon of highway leading them away from trouble, they hope.

Jane Darwell is the audience proxy when she discovers with surprise that the auto mechanic in the rough clothes is a woman.  She proudly remarks to her bumbling husband, “Only goes to show a woman can do anything she puts her mind to,” as the movie flashes a brief feminist message, though movies of the 1930s, tearjerkers or not, tended to show strong women more than films did in later decades when they mostly seemed to be reduced to victims or vamps.  Life is more complicated than that, and women are more complicated than that, and this is a lesson Aline MacMahon would like to teach to her younger sister, played by Ann Dvorak, but Aline has too many scars to be a graceful teacher.

Another carload of comic characters are the two young ladies boldly off to Hollywood and the middle-aged stranger who gives them a ride.  Played by Muriel Evans and Joan Dennett, they mostly manage to keep Harry C. Bradley diverted from pawing them, but they suffer his dull if smarmy company because it is a free ride.

Another comic trio that pops in but stays overnight are two wealthy divorcees just having left Reno, played by Glenda Farrell and the wonderful Ruth Donnelly (with the silly tongue-twisting name “Mrs. Ashton-Ashley”).  They bicker, insult each other, and make their chauffeur’s life miserable.  He is played by the reliable regular guy Frank McHugh, who has had just about enough of them. 

But lest we mistake this moody film for a comedy, we see early on that the oasis in the desert is not all relief and restoration, where one can guzzle Cokes and eat barbecued sandwiches while Aline MacMahon fixes your car.

Aline’s kid sister, Ann Dvorak, is champing at the bit.  She’s ready for adventure and romance and she’s not going to get it tucked away in this remote desert.  Aline’s contented refuge is Ann’s prison, and there is tension between them when Aline refuses to allow Ann to go to a dance in town with a ne’er-do-well young man, played by Theodore Newton.  He is older than she is, moves in fast company, and Aline knows that Ann would be getting in over her head.

Ann makes plans to sneak out at night and meet the guy down the road.

“You never had any emotions, you never had any fun!” Ann tells her.  But there’s more to Aline than meets the eye.

Enter two strangers, stopping for lunch and a cold beer.  They are city fellows, in suits and Fedoras, and one of them, played by Preston Foster, is friendly, easygoing and searching the place with the keen eyes of someone who knows how to case a joint.  His partner, Lyle Talbot, is less interested and would prefer they got back on the road.

We will learn, drip-by-drip, that they escaped from prison, robbed a bank in Salt Lake City and in the process, Mr. Foster shot to death a couple of cashiers.  He is cool as a cucumber, but Mr. Talbot is increasingly nerve-racked over their deed and the suspense of escape.

Preston Foster sees Aline MacMahon emerge from the garage in her overalls, work shirt, and bandana.  She stops short, stunned to see him.

Ahh, they know each other.

“What are you doing out here?” he asks.

“Making an honest living.  Something you wouldn’t know anything about,” she replies.  They not only know each other, they have a romantic past and it is the reason Miss MacMahon has self-exiled to the Mojave Desert.  Back in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the old days, she was a party girl, and Preston’s girl, and he done her wrong.

Ann Dvorak knows nothing about those days, and Aline wants to keep it that way.  We see that Aline’s admirable self-reliance and rigid work ethic might be penance, as much as a do-over.

Preston Foster takes a sly, calculated interest in rekindling their relationship, but perhaps not so much for love as for what use she can be to him.

When it becomes known that the flighty Ruth Donnelly and Glenda Farrell are traveling with some pretty hefty jewels, Mr. Foster sees his chance to bankroll his and Lyle Talbot’s escape.

But Aline, thinking only that he is pursuing her for herself, brushes him off.  “I’m happy here.  I know what living is about here.  I wouldn’t leave for anything.”  Though Aline gets some strong dialogue, she really doesn’t need it.  With her soulful eyes and quiet intensity, she commands every scene she’s in.  She could attract our attention by just tying her shoes.  “I left you and that whole rotten life.  Don’t you think I’m the same woman who used to eat out of your hand, because I’m not.  I’m a whole lot wiser.” 

Maybe.

Ann Dvorak is curious about her big sister’s relationship with Foster, but Dvorak is more preoccupied with the coming nightfall and her date with the bounder.

Night falls, and the men delay leaving, to Talbot’s increasing anxiety, particularly when the sheriff pops in to see if anybody heard anything of the escaping criminals.  The desert may cool off a bit, but heat lightning flashes in the distance.  A happy Mexican family camps out, and when a rancher from nearby shows up, played by Willard Robertson, who would be Aline’s suitor if she let him, we see another side to Aline MacMahon. She dresses up for the first time in probably many months, and entertains the two men interested in her, sitting outside in the night breeze, while her sister is away.  She is not flirtatious, but she is womanly and letting her beaus see that they each have competition.

Late that evening, when all is quiet, Ann Dvorak’s date brings her back, drops her off down the road. She is clearly infatuated with him, and he appears bored with her, and we might assume that he has taken his pleasure and now wants nothing to do with her.

She sneaks back into the rooms she shares with her sister behind the diner and catches Preston Foster sneaking out of Aline MacMahon’s bedroom.  Aha!  Ann smirks slightly.  It is a revelation about her stern, puritanical older sister.  Reportedly, this scene also got the film bad marks from the National Legion of Decency.

Having left Aline, Foster now purposefully goes to work on the safe with Lyle Talbot.  The safe in the diner is where Donnelly’s and Farrell’s jewels were put for the night.

Aline goes to Ann’s room, knowing that she sneaked out, and the sisters fight, and Ann throws Aline’s tryst with Preston Foster in her face.  But Ann is not triumphant over her sister's apparent hypocrisy; she is devastated, for as Aline begins to surmise, Ann is now, also, “a whole lot wiser.”

Aline, knowing the torture of resisting a man she really wants, tenderly embraces her sister, strokes her hair, understanding that her sister has also been ill-used by a man this night.  As she puts her crying sister to bed, and kisses her shoulder, she hears noise from the diner. 

Foster and Talbot are having trouble with the safe, and Foster is having trouble with Talbot.  Lyle doesn’t want to stay any longer and doesn’t want to do any more harm, but Foster is adamant. 

“You get that safe open. I didn't spend all that time with the dame for nothing.”

Uh-oh.

Miss MacMahon enters, with a gun, and shoots Foster.  After he drops, after a moment, she goes to him, her hair loose and long out of the familiar bandana.  She is quiet, shocked, and his last words, “I had it coming.”

Talbot asks, “What about me?”

She lets him go.

When others come at the sound of the shot, she wearily brushes them off, telling them she shot at a rat.

In the morning, when the guests leave and Ann is back to work in the garage, rancher Willard Robertson returns, concerned for her.  She shows him the body and asks him to take care of it, to tell the sheriff.

He tenuously asks if Foster meant anything to her.  She is honest and says he did, once.

He offers, somewhat cruelly, “Must be a big help sometimes being like you, Olga, not having any feeling.”

“I wouldn’t know, Everett.”

A newcomer arrives, like so many others, pleased at finding the diner and garage and auto court and says, “This place is sure a lifesaver, lady.”

She agrees it’s a pretty quiet life.

The Hollywood studio system of the day gave us plenty of froth and fluff, but was extraordinary in its ability to turn out so many quiet stories of powerful substance, and describing what life was like during the Great Depression in so many, many ways.

Please have a look at the other blogs posting in the Classic Movie Blog Association’s “Cry Me a River: Tearjerkers Blogathon” here.

  *******************************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

My new non-fiction book, CHILDREN'S WARTIME ADVENTURE NOVELS - The Silent Generation's Vicarious Experience of World War II -- is now available in eBook here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a wide variety of other online shops.

Or here from my Shopify store if you want to buy direct from me and avoid the big companies.

And it is here in eBook, paperback print, and hardcover, from Amazon.

From Cherry Ames, to Meet the Malones, from Dave Dawson to Kitty Carter - Canteen Girl, the Silent Generation spent their childhood immersed in geopolitical events through the prism of their middle grade and young adult books.  From the home front to the battlefield, these books are a window on their world, and influenced their hard-working, conformity-loving generation. 

 

Publishers Weekly review of CHILDREN'S WARTIME ADVENTURE NOVELS

This year, 2025, we mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.  There are many stories of the war and that era, and some of them were meant for children.

My recently published book, Children's Wartime Adventure Novels: The Silent Generation's Vicarious Experience of World War II, has received the following review from BookLife and will be published in Publishers Weekly magazine on Monday the 12th.

"Lynch illuminates a fascinating, little-studied chapter of publishing history in this study of exactly what the title suggests: World War II adventure novels for young American readers, printed during—and in a few cases before—U.S. involvement in the war itself, in which protagonists in their late teens and early 20s set aside the anxieties of youth to do their part to stomp out fascism. In title after title, pilots and soldiers (the men, mostly) and nurses, reporters, WACs, WASPS, WAVES, and more (the women) evince courage, endurance, dedication to the cause, and a savvy sense for identifying fifth columnists. Lynch celebrates the novels’ sense of “spirited adventure” and ethos of “patriotic self-sacrifice” while digging into thorny questions of propaganda and indoctrination, including racial and ethnic stereotyping. Declares a radioman in Gregory Duncan’s Dick Donnelly of the Paratroops, judiciously quoted by Lynch, “When I shoot at the enemy, I’m not shootin’ at any one person. I’m just shootin’ at an idea I hate, an idea that will ruin the whole world if it isn’t stopped.”

Lynch writes with infectious enthusiasm for the subject, soaring through detailed summaries of the stories of dozens of books like Red Randall at Pearl Harbor, Nancy Blake, Copywriter, and the surprisingly grim nurse adventure Ann Bartlett at Bataan, which is frank about wartime surgery: “a tattered mass of flesh and bone.” Especially engaging are Lynch’s considerations of the differences between the novels with girl heroes—these stories of the “protectors of the homefront” sometimes boasted career advice and a “surprisingly feminist spark of independence and derring-do”—and the high-flying, battle-oriented novels starring boys.

While Lynch is always engaging, the many summaries can get repetitive, and readers wish for more insight into these books’ creation, sales, and cultural impact. Late chapters surveying questions of patriotism and stereotypes across a host of books, though, offer continual revelations and insights, a rich contribution to the study of American literature and propaganda. These books deserve serious study.

Takeaway: Fascinating study of WWII teen adventure novels and the American character."

You can get your copy in eBook, paperback, or hardcover from Amazon here.

Or paperback from Ingram here.  Or hardcover from Ingram here.

Or eBook and paperback from Barnes & Noble, or eBook from a variety of online shops including Apple and Kobo here.

Or eBook from my own shop here.

I'd love to hear your review.

Employee's Entrance (1933)

Employees’ Entrance (1933) is a study of cutthroat capitalism and the depravity that can sometimes exude from a ruthless employer.  If the Great Depression was no time to be out of a job, it could also be a stressful time to actually have one. So many hoops to jump through for the boss, and not one of them safe.

The boss is Warren William, who we last saw as the villainous employer in Skyscraper Souls (1932) here, made the previous year.  The two roles are not exactly the same, however, Mr. William might be headed for typecasting by this point.  In Employee’s Entrance, he is the manager of a large New York City department store, and his character, despite the vigor of his scenes, is less interesting than in the previous movie.  The banker of Skyscraper Souls was smooth, seductive, and devious in a psychological way.  In Employee’s Entrance, the department store manager is just a mean guy.  He takes delight in pushing up the sales numbers any way he can, including removing the deadwood in the office by firing longtime employees at whim.  His sexual pursuit of female employees is more a game of conquest than desire—he dislikes women and distrusts them.

Movies that take place in department stores are always fun, they give us a world unto themselves, a world that, in large measure, no longer exists in many towns.  But this story presents the store with less a sense of showcasing the marvel of American commerce and more a sense of dread for the corruption we do not see when we shop.

The movie begins with a montage of sales figures, always climbing through the 1920s, that decade of wonderful nonsense and consumerism, under the helm of Warren William’s successful regime, but then falling during the early years of the 1930s.  It is now 1933 and we are at rock bottom, and he has to work hard to pull a rabbit out of a hat.  We don’t feel sorry for him; he feels no compassion for his workers.  He tells his board of directors, who dislike him and want to replace him, that “There’s no room for sympathy,” and that to be successful, one must, “smash or be smashed.”

He does that immediately with a vendor, a manufacturer of menswear played by Frank Reicher.  Mr. Reicher tells him the order for coats will be delayed because he is having labor issues, but Warren William walks all over him, canceling the order to punish him. It will ruin Mr. Reicher and put him out of business.

Later on, Mr. William will toss out longtime employee Charles Sellon, a man who, probably like the actor, is in his mid-60s and will not be able to find employment anywhere else.  He will leap to his death from store’s fifth floor.  Waren William will remark, “When a man outlives his usefulness, he ought to jump out of a window.”

Another older employee getting the ax is Edward McWade, whom you may remember as Joe the linotype operator who gets the ax, along with most of the newspaper staff, in Meet John Doe (1941). There’s something more unbearably tragic about an older worker left without any hope of self-support, and it is this reason that Social Security was established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935.  The first recipient was sent a check in 1940, for $22.54, which was enough to rent a cheap room for a month.  Mr. McWade and Mr. Sellon, in the movie, were seven years away from any such benefit, and with little hope of finding a job when there were so many younger people, unless they had family to take care of them or a local or state almshouse had a cot for them, would be living under bridges until they died.

Ruth Donnelly plays Warren William’s secretary, who always enters with a stricken expression as if embarrassed and horrified at the behavior of her boss, and seems particularly sorrowful at the firing of Mr. Sellon.  She knows the cruel odds.  Miss Donnelly had been in films since the silents of the ‘teens, and had no such worries about work herself in the Depression.  A dependable character actress, she appeared in 15 films and shorts just in 1933 alone.

We have Alice White in a flashy role as hard-bitten yet kittenish Polly, a woman who works in the store and has been trying for some time to turn Warren William into her sugar daddy, but Warren is too smart for her.  He brutishly puts her down, and directs her, quite seriously, to turn her attentions to the ineffectual and somewhat befuddled member of the board left in charge in the owner’s absence to monitor Warren William’s cutthroat operation.  He wants Miss White to divert the old gent to get him out of his hair, she, getting well paid for this mission, turns her little girl flirtations onto Albert Gran, who is reticent at first as if he doesn’t know what to do with her, but then succumbs to her charms.  Scene-stealing Alice is a delight to watch.  The Depression-era tune, “Million Dollar Baby” is heard in the background.

One employee that Warren William can count on is our favorite, Wallace Ford, who also had a minor role in Skyscraper Souls.  Here his role is much larger as the up-and-coming assistant who comes up with clever marketing ideas.  He is given an office next to Warren William, and his fortunes are looking up.

We don’t know if Wallace Ford would, in the course of his burgeoning career, turn into another Warren William.  He may be headed that way, if not for a young woman who’s looking for a job.

Enter Loretta Young.  Warren William, inspecting his store, discovers Miss Young spending the night like a squatter in the store’s “model home.”  She does not know Mr. William is the big boss when she flippantly invites him to her “home” and confesses she has sneaked in to camp out and apply for a job in the morning.  He seems interested in her, amused at her ingenuity, much as he seemed interested in Wallace Ford for his marketing ideas, and knowing she has not eaten, invites her to dine.

Warren William has his way with her, gives her a job as a model in the women’s clothing department, and apparently has no further interest.  As he tells Wallace Ford, “This is no job for a married man,” and “Love ‘em and leave ‘em.”

But Wallace Ford meets Loretta Young and they date in secret, and then marry in secret.

Frank Reicher, the menswear manufacturer whom Warren William ruined is back, working in the store’s shipping department, but he is not bowed.  He openly hates Warren and is learning to be hard and ruthless, which impresses Mr. William, who hands him a $5,000 check to start his own business to partner with him, but Mr. Reicher rips it up in his face.  Spite is preferable to any business dealings with Warren William.

Interestingly, a stock of new toys crosses Mr. William’s desk and he examines them, noting that the “made in Germany” stickers might not sell well and he suggests putting on “made in Japan” instead.  “They’ll sell better.”  While it’s true Germany had moved over to the dark side in 1933, Japan’s imperialist machinations were not yet bold enough for Warren William to predict the future.

The climax of the story hits during an annual employees’’ welfare association ball held in the store after closing.  Warren William has no interest in partying with employees or their welfare, but he notes Loretta Young, a little tipsy after a fight with her husband, Wallace Ford, and helps her to get drunk, encourages her to go to his apartment in an upper floor and lie down.  Stupidly, she does.  He follows, and rapes her.

We do not see the crime, of course, but it is implicit since she has stated she hates him after her first encounter with him (which she never told Wallace Ford about), and she is in no condition to consent, and we already know he is not one for charm, only taking what he wants.

Wallace Ford has had too much to drink at the party as well, and wakes up literally under a table the next day, feeling terrible about his fight with his wife and wanting to make up with her. 

She leaves him a note that she is leaving but does not explain why.  She is shamed.  Warren William wants her to come to him and offers her a promotion, but is blunt that he will not marry her.  He wants a mistress.  She blurts out that she is already married to Wallace Ford.

Cue Warren William to tell Alice White to shift her attentions from Albert Gran to Wallace Ford to get him away from Loretta Young, but Miss White, a good egg, refuses.  He offers her $150 per week, and she turns him down.  Disgruntled, he asks her where she got her principles.

“I saved a couple out of the Crash.”

Great line.  Alice White has moxie. “Why don’t you go keep your nose out of other people’s lives before somebody smacks you down.”

He fires her, but she remarks that Albert Gran will not fire her “not as long as I can play chess.”

Eventually, Wallace Ford will stand up to Warren William, too, though Loretta Young will take poison to attempt suicide.  She’ll recover, and they will start over.

Frank Reicher, meanwhile, after Wallace Ford quits, has become Warren William’s new assistant, but will never kowtow to him.  “If I get the chance, I’m going to break you,” he tells Mr. William.  Success in business seems to be a Faustian endeavor.

The movies of the 1930s seem sometimes astonishingly frank about this, perhaps because the business world let so many people down, but the class war that seems ever on the brink never really materializes beyond guerrilla ridiculing of their betters by the working stiffs.  At least they were working.

   *******************************

Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism and Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

My new non-fiction book, CHILDREN'S WARTIME ADVENTURE NOVELS - The Silent Generation's Vicarious Experience of World War II -- is now available in eBook here at Barnes & Noble, Apple, Kobo, and a wide variety of other online shops.

Or here from my Shopify store if you want to buy direct from me and avoid the big companies.

And it is here in eBook, paperback print, and hardcover, from Amazon.

From Cherry Ames, to Meet the Malones, from Dave Dawson to Kitty Carter - Canteen Girl, the Silent Generation spent their childhood immersed in geopolitical events through the prism of their middle grade and young adult books.  From the home front to the battlefield, these books are a window on their world, and influenced their hard-working, conformity-loving generation.