Search - TCM Archives - Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol. 1 (Waterloo Bridge [1931] / Baby Face / Red-Headed Woman) on DVD

A Fascinating Trio of Pre-Code Hollywood Films Highlighted b

Ed Uyeshima | San Francisco, CA USA | 12/07/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Before the Hays Code neutralized the sexually oriented behavior that could be shown in Hollywood movies for three decades, there was a crop of movies that reflected a more laissez-faire attitude toward risqué subjects like promiscuity, homosexuality and drug use. In what looks to be the first volume of an intriguing series, this two-disc DVD set from Turner Classic Movies contains three epochal works from that brief period that started with the talkie revolution and ended abruptly in 1934.



The oldest of the trio, 1931's "Waterloo Bridge", is fairly typical of the pre-code genre and has only a fleeting similarity to the glamorous 1940 MGM version with Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor. Directed by James Whale before he peaked with "Frankenstein" and "Showboat", this film is set in WWI London and stars the long-forgotten Mae Clarke, an actress best known for being the recipient of James Cagney's grapefruit attack in "The Public Enemy". She plays Myra, an American chorus girl who turns to prostitution when her show closes. Unlike Leigh's ethereal ballerina in the later film, Clarke's Myra is all bitterness with a shaft of hope in the form of an American soldier named Roy, whom she accidentally meets during an air raid. He comes from a wealthy family who find out about her profession, which leads to the inevitable consequences. Clarke is solid as Myra, though she does go overboard in her breakdown scene. Kent Douglass is rather wooden as Roy, though he certainly captures the soldier's callow nature. Done on the cheap by Universal and at only 81 minutes, it's an interesting and sometimes poignant curio thanks mostly to Whale's dexterity with melodrama. A freshly scrubbed, 23-year old Bette Davis shows up in the inconsequential role of Roy's sister.



In full hellcat mode even without her platinum blonde tresses, Jean Harlow has her breakthrough role starring in 1932's more comically oriented "Red-Headed Woman", an obvious MGM product given its high production values. She plays Lil Andrews, an unapologetic gold-digger who seduces her boss Bill Legendre and steals him away from his staid fiancée Irene. Bored and tried of being looked down upon once they are married, she moves on to an older, wealthier man to ensnare but not before she tries to shoot her husband. But Lil's amoral behavior finds her being further rejected, especially when she is caught with a French chauffeur, played by a very young Charles Boyer with his trademark continental flair already established. For all the pain Lil causes to the other characters in the story, she ends up happily unrepentant in Paris, a fact which really defines this as a pre-code movie. At only 21, Harlow is already confident and brassy, even though Anita Loos' script has her teetering precariously between comedy and melodrama. Chester Morris is rather stiff as Bill, but Una Merkel shines as Lil's best friend Sally. Take note of the forthright way the camera lingers on Lil and Sally as they change in and out of their negligees.



By far, the most interesting of the three films is 1933's "Baby Face", a hard-boiled Warner Brothers film starring a very young Barbara Stanwyck. A consummate master at portraying Machiavellian cool, a technique she perfected eleven years later in Billy Wilder's "Double Indemnity", Stanwyck plays Lily Powers, the well-worn daughter of a violent speakeasy owner in a suffocating steel-town. She has been rendered cynical and numb by years of being offered up as a sexual favor to her father's customers. Once her father dies in a distillery explosion, she hops a freight train to New York and literally sleeps her way up the corporate ladder of a bank. This would come across as preposterous were it not for Stanwyck's blazing work here. With her dead-eyed stare and amoral seduction methods, it is easy to see why men become addicted to her aggressive carnality. One of the young men she seduces along the way is a fresh-faced John Wayne as of all things, an accountant named Jimmy McCoy. The melodrama gets heavy-handed toward the last third of the film with a murder-suicide, a hush-hush job in Paris to keep Lily quiet and the new bank president who is so addicted to Lily that he embezzles company funds to keep her in luxury. A tacked-on ending is somewhat disappointing but not before Stanwyck sears the screen. The film has curious touches like Lily's bonding friendship with an African-American woman named Chico and the German immigrant who teaches Lily about Nietzsche philosophy regarding the importance of avoiding sentimentality.



The first disc contains "Waterloo Bridge and "Red Headed Woman" with an introduction by Turner Classic Movies' Robert Osborne. The second disc has two versions of "Baby Face" - the original theatrical release version and the newly found, uncensored version, which includes seemingly minor edits and scene extensions that really make this an even more fascinating movie."