Best of the Rest: Mae West in 'She Done Him Wrong' (1933)

 

Plot Intro

The film displays the social, professional and amorous interactions between bawdy saloon singer Lady Lou (Mae West) and various proprietors, visitors, cops, criminals and friends- with plenty of feisty one-liners of course.

Paul says...

You may have heard some of her many famous lines. You may have heard her voice recordings. You may have only heard her name. You may have seen drag queen Alaska’s flawless impersonation of her on RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars. But I guarantee you’ve heard of Mae West.

It’s not a particular surprise that she never won an Oscar. In fact, she was never nominated. It would be like nominating one of the cast of Bridesmaids (I’m not against this at all, they’re all fab, but the Oscars snobbishly doesn’t tend to favour bawdy, daring humour). Mae’s trademarks were naughty, sometimes downright crude, one liners, and playing gutsy women empowered by their awareness and pride of their sexuality. She was lightyears ahead of her time. Even today, a sexually promiscuous woman (or even a woman who blazonly discusses sex) can be labelled all sorts of horrid names while men ar disproportionately praised for the same behaviour. I would go so far as to say that Mae walked so that WAP could run.

 

Interestingly, when Mae started her movie career, films were more liberal when it came to nudity and sexual references. The onset of the Hays Code in the early '30s put a spanner in the works, but she got around it by putting in even more filthy lines. The enforcers of the code would censor these lines, leaving in the ones Mae wanted to keep because they were comparatively chaste. As Mae herself said, “I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it”. 

Mae arrived at movies relatively late in her career. Spurred on by a proud and encouraging mother, Mae started in theatre in the 1910s and wrote many of her own risque plays. In the early 30s, aged 39, she finally entered Hollywood. She Done Him Wrong was her second movie, based on one of her own plays, and it was so successful it saved Paramount from bankruptcy. It also projected Mae’s co-star Cary Grant into stardom. 

Whilst it’s not the best film in the world (it’s awkwardly edited, haphazardly plotted and sits within that difficult early '30s era where film makers hadn’t worked out how to integrate sound into their productions), I was captivated by Mae West. She has one stance and one facial expression throughout but waiting for her quips and comebacks are all part of the pleasure. We see the past as socially conservative and entirely oppressive towards women and whilst this isn’t an inaccurate assessment, Mae is evidence that streaks of rebellion and audacity existed and paved the way for new waves of feminism when the '60s and '70s hit.

Mae’s film career continued throughout the '30s and early '40s. As mentioned before, she had endless battles with censors due to the raunchy dialogue she wrote herself. Over time, the censors became increasingly draconian and, as we have seen in our Best Actress project, Mae’s image of outspoken, feisty heroines was being replaced by stoic, virtuous survivors of disaster as World War II raged on. 

Her frustration with the censors is evident as she frequently turned down many roles that became iconic for other actresses. A major example is when she turned down the role of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, a performance that put Gloria Swanson back on the map. Mae, rather poignantly, said that the film’s style of humour wasn’t right for her - her brand of comedy was “about uplifting the audience”. 

Mae preferred the comparative freedom of expression in television, radio and, especially, music. In her 50s and 60s she was recording rock and roll albums and getting standing ovations for her live performances. Despite failing eyesight and health problems, Mae attempted to move back into movies in the '70s but with little success. Nonetheless colleagues commented on her determination and self-confidence even when she was working at over 80 years old. 

Mae never had children - she did get pregnant during one of her relationships and had an abortion which had dangerous consequences for her health and left her infertile. But she maintained romantic links right up until her relationship with a wrestler called Chester Rybinski with whom she remained for the last 26 years of her life. He said “I believe I was put on this Earth to take care of Mae West”. 

Mae died from a stroke in 1980 at the age of 87 and she is buried in a family mausoleum in New York City. She remains a cornerstone of female sexual liberation in cultural history. Her unashamed double entendres, her curvaceous costumes dripping in jewels and her disrespect for prudence on-screen remain quite surprising to watch today. 

It’s very poignant to me that someone with such voracious sexuality was also very determined to make entertainment that lifted her audiences rather than depressed them. This, combined with her closeness to her family and her open support for homosexuals as far back as the '20s, prove that just because someone is sexually liberated does not mean they are the axis of evil in society. Conservatives, take note.

Highlight

Put simply, Mae West herself. The film is generally uninvolving but, as I said, the drive is in waiting to see what she’ll say next. Her voice and style is so distinctive that she didn’t really need anything else in her repertoire.

Lowlight

Pretty much the rest of it. The early '30s is a difficult era to watch because storylines have such haphazard structures and the editing is so primitive that it’s hard to get emotionally involved or even work out what’s happening. 

Mark

3/10 (all 3 points are for Mae).

Doug says...

Mae West, what a treat. 

She’s by no means a great actress, and frankly giving her an Oscar for Best Actress would be just silly. But Mae West - what an absolute treat. 

From the moment she arrives in a carriage - many long camera shots with many angles making you aware that here is the important person - West dominates this rather thin story with her sheer charisma and relishment of lines that aren’t so much double entendre as they are flat out sexual commands.

In this, a reworking of West’s own play ‘Diamond Lil’, she’s a singer who clearly shags the men she fancies, demands expensive diamonds from anyone she can, and in one frankly hilarious scene accidentally impales an enemy on their own weapon and then pretends to be brushing the dead enemy’s hair to avoid being discovered. It’s a romp in which West storms centre stage, is lit the best of any actor on screen and with her hands on her hips says something outrageous at any given moment. 

I think it’s utterly breathtaking to be watching - in the ‘40s - a movie that so clearly dictates that women should be allowed to enjoy and pursue sex. West famously wrote ‘Sex’ - a play for which she was jailed - and spent a long time wavering over the line of publicly acceptable. But in this - an otherwise unremarkable film - Lady Lou wins out despite pursuing and getting the shags she wants - right down to the final line when a handsome policeman embraces her and says ‘you bad girl’ - and West closes the film with a deeply knowing ‘you’ll see’. It’s extraordinary that this was allowed to be made and spoken about just before the Hays Code would come into action, forbidding so much as married couples sharing a bed onscreen.

It’s worth a watch just to see West in action. And she never gave up. Even in her final film Sextette, at 84 years old, she played a sexually uninhibited siren - despite having her lines fed to her through an earpiece and her failing eyesight making it difficult to move around the set. Sextette also starred a young Alice Cooper who - on his Desert Island Discs recalled how West insisted he escort her to her trailer before making a pass at him. Three years later, extraordinary to the end, West would die at the age of 87. An icon. 

Highlight

Pretty much any one-liner that West gets to chew up and spit out. 

Lowlight

The rest of the film is so thin that I can’t even remember what happens? Someone dies. I think. 

Mark

Mae West, for her passion, refusal to be diminished, and unbridled sexuality deserves a 10 out of 10. Sadly this film is a solid 2/10 

21. Jane Wyman in 'Johnny Belinda' (1948)

 

Plot Intro

Dr Robert Richardson (Lew Ayres) is new to a small fishing town in Nova Scotia. On a visit to a farm just outside the town owned by Black MacDonald (Charles Bickford) and his sister Aggie (Agnes Moorhead), Robert meets Black’s deaf-mute daughter Belinda (Jane Wyman). Belinda is considered stupid and useless by her family and the townsfolk but Ralph discovers that she is actually very intelligent and teaches her to lip read and sign. Her father is delighted with her new-found communication and Ralph and Belinda become increasingly besotted with each other. But then one of the towns folk, a bully named Lock McCormick (Stephen McNally), rapes Belinda which results in her pregnancy, leading to huge controversy in the prudish town…

Paul says...

Jane Wyman’s childhood was not the happiest. Her biological parents divorced in 1921 when she was 4. Her father then died the year after and her mother moved away and left Jane (born Sarah Jane Mayfield) in the care of foster parents. Remarkably, however, she started her showbiz career singing on radio when she was 13, but she claimed for many years to have been born in 1914 so that employers and audiences didn’t know she was underage. 

This effectively means that Jane has one of the longest careers of all the Best Actress winners, and certainly one of the most consistent. She acted in a multitude of “B Movies” throughout the 30s and most of the 40s. Her movement into “A Movies” and therefore bigger stardom came in 1945 when she was in the Best Picture winner of that year, The Lost Weekend. The year after saw her gain her first Best Actress nomination which she lost to Olivia de Havilland, and two years later her second nomination led to her only win.

She became the first performer in the sound era to win without having said any words on screen (interestingly, there are more), and defeated movie titans Bergman, de Havilland, Stanwyck and Irene Dunne to the crown. Her performance is yet another classic addition to stoic '40s women. To say that poor old Belinda has a raw deal in the story is a gross understatement. She starts off underestimated and disregarded by everyone including her loving father and acerbic Aunt. Even when she does find a way to communicate, she is raped, impregnated, then rejected and insulted by the towns people, then endures her father’s murder, and is finally put on trial for murder (admittedly, she’s guilty but the guy had it coming). She bears all of this with inner strength, impassive determination and a steadfast dedication to virtue, love and kindness, just like Greer Garson, Jennifer Jones, Olivia de Havilland and Loretta Young did in their own winning performances. It’s actually quite sickening but at least she gets some very satisfying vengeance on her rapist.

This seems to be the ultimate Hollywood image of '40s women. The feisty, fiery tempers of Claudette Colbert, Marie Dressler and Bette Davis in the '30s have gone. After a decade and a half of economic devastation, fascism and warfare, audiences wanted to see idealised icons of fortitude and tenacity that they could look up to as the world rebuilt itself. 

However, Johnny Belinda probably isn’t the most enduring example of this. I was never bored and I was certainly on Belinda’s side throughout. But it tackles rape in an extremely clumsy manner. It does well to point out the hypocrisy of society’s attitudes exemplified by three gossipy old women who were akin to Ena Sharples, Minnie Caldwell and Martha Longhurst from the early days of Coronation Street. Even though Belinda is raped, it is she who is the sinner because she conceived a child out of wedlock, while her male rapist is considered an upstanding citizen and suffers no consequences at all until Belinda finally grabs the gun. The last half hour of the film descends into insane melodrama. The murder of Belinda’s father wasn’t needed and was probably added just to increase her vulnerability by removing her main source of male protection. And the final court room scene is one of those hilarious sketches where the key witness has a sudden crisis of conscience, shouts out “No! No!” and concludes the story conveniently. Gaslight, which also covered abuse of women, was far more realistic and hard-hitting even if it did lose its way in the last five minutes. 

But I can see why Jane was a popular and reliable actress (even if she doesn’t have the same esteem as Bergman, Hepburn, Davis or Crawford). She went on to garner two more nominations for Best Actress. Fun fact, Johnny Belinda became the fourth of, so far, fifteen films to gain nominations in all acting categories. Other examples include Sunset Boulevard, Mrs Miniver, From Here to Eternity and Silver Linings Playbook. It’s theme of rape was also very controversial and it is considered one of the first films to address the issue as the Hays Code (which put restrictions on such content) was slowly relaxed.

The '60s and '70s were quieter for her as she went into semi-retirement. But she came out of that when she gained the lead role in Falcon Crest, an '80s melodrama similar to Dallas, Dynasty and Knots Landing, which lasted for a solid nine years and reintroduced her to a new generation of audience. Her health deteriorated, however, and she barely appeared in the ninth and final season. Dedicated to the end, however, she went against her doctor’s advice to appear in the final episodes, even writing and performing her own soliloquy for the closing scenes.

She married five times in her life, her most famous being to fellow actor and later President of the United States, Ronald Reagan. They had a daughter, adopted a son, and then lost a baby due to a premature birth. Interestingly, they divorced due to the political differences. Wyman was a lifelong Republican and Reagan, at the time, was a Democrat. She stayed relatively silent about him during his time as President but she apparently voted for him in both of his successful election campaigns. She eventually died in 2007 aged 90. 

Highlight

Agnes Moorhead as Belinda’s snarky Aunt gives a magnificent performance. Unlikeable and hotheaded to begin with, she heroically pulls herself together on discovering Belinda’s pregnancy and becomes her ultimate ally. It’s a convincing and lovely performance that deserved its Best Supporting Actress nomination. 

Lowlight

The final court room scene is not needed and detracts from the deeper themes of the film. They should have really focussed on Belinda finding ways to communicate her victimhood and strife to the townsfolk and gaining their support, but the writers evidently favoured the soap opera option.

Mark

6/10

Doug says...

Jane Wyman, who is not deaf-mute but it was the ‘40s so I’m not that surprised, plays a deaf-mute woman in this promising but ultimately silly film. 

It’s a shame because it starts interestingly, with hints of Helen Keller’s deaf-blind story (which itself becomes an award winning film with The Miracle Worker some years later) - a young woman isolated by her inability to fully communicate with the outside world and a kind stranger intent on helping her through modern thinking and practices. 

Wyman is effective, playing her as a naturally clever person who has just been curtailed by life’s circumstances. She’s subtler than you might expect and we see the pride she takes in being useful alongside the irritation of not being able to take part fully in life. It’s why she quickly acquiesces to working with Doctor Robert and I enjoyed the fact that her surrounding family weren’t stubborn and against it, but embraced her becoming able to partake in life. 

Where the film takes a curve for the worse is when they decide to chuck in a rape storyline. It’s totally unnecessary as the film was already interesting regarding the struggles of a disabled person trying to be present in a world not disposed to them. It feels a bit like Hollywood writers felt it needed something grisly and sensational in what was turning out to be a subtle, quiet but powerful piece on the importance of inclusion. 

As soon as they go into the rape storyline, the film and the performances pretty much collapse. Wyman is made to look haunted, her attacker is just Evil, her father gets thrown off a cliff (I know) and it ends in a hurried court case scene which feels purely tacked on. As Paul says, it’s soap opera, and it’s a real shame. But as with all these earlier films that tackle things we still consider today, it’s impressive to see them look at issues like disability this early. Even if they got an entirely able-bodied actor to play the disabled characters. 

Highlight

The first third of the film, where Belinda begins to open up and her character blooms is done in a lovely and honest way. Particularly the scene when she experiences music through vibration is gorgeous - and reminded me of the extraordinary deaf Dame Evelyn Glennie who plays drums and percussion barefoot, using the vibrations of the floor to lead whole orchestras.

Lowlight

 I’d say the last two thirds of the film for the reasons stated above, but actually it’s the title. Why is it [son’s name / woman’s name] ? Just call it Belinda, and leave the patriarchy out of it. 

Mark

4/10

20. Loretta Young in 'The Farmer's Daughter' (1947)

   

Plot Intro

Katie Holstrom (Loretta Young) is an American-Swedish girl who grew up on a farm and heads into the city to study to become a nurse. In order to afford this, she takes a job as a maid in the household of wealthy US representative Glenn Morley (Joseph Cotton) and his politically-powerful mother, Agatha (Ethel Barrymore). The two take an instant liking to Katie, but Katie’s political awareness, pragmatism and desire to help those in need endears her their political friends and she inadvertently becomes embroiled in election season…

Paul says...

After a lengthy string of immensely well-known names (Rogers, Fontaine, Bergman, Crawford and de Havilland), we hit one that you may not have heard of. Loretta Young’s win was, however, one of the biggest Oscar upsets in history as many thought her long-time friend, Rosalind Russell would win. In fact, rumours are that Russell herself thought she would win and was halfway out of her seat before Loretta’s name was announced. Thankfully no bad blood seems to have existed between the two as they worked together on humanitarian endeavours in their older years. But Russell would never win an Oscar unfortunately so she may well appear on our Best of the Rest posts very soon…

It’s hard to compare the two as we haven’t seen Russell’s esteemed performance in Mourning Becomes Electra but we’re pretty relieved that Loretta won over a three hour adaptation of a Eugene O’Neill play. We’re also relieved because The Farmer’s Daughter is, quite frankly, one of the most charming, fun-filled and involving movies we’ve seen on both this project and our Best Pictures one. In fact, I’d call it the best one of the Best Actress movies so far, surpassing even It Happened One Night and Gaslight. 

I was immediately endeared towards Loretta’s character. Her Swedish accent borders on stereotypical but the film goes to great lengths to emphasise her tenacity, her intelligence and her courage hidden beneath a veneer of innocent Scandinavian practicality. Her fascination with city life provoked huge laughs and we were completely on her side as she stood up against the male-dominated corruption of real-life politics.

In fact, this is a film that remains relevant today, as Loretta as Katie represents total idealism. Whilst she states that she loves libertarian American values, she also believes that powerful people have a duty to help the less powerful, a belief that goes against anything the current Republican party candidate stands for (which is ironic seeing as Loretta herself was a dedicated Republican). The ease with which she gets into politics and subverts any attempts to discredit her don’t feel very believable and never would have worked in an age where misled opinions on Twitter and Facebook take precedence. But it’s heartwarming and funny, and that’s good enough for me.

Joseph Cotton is also a delight as the main love interest and it’s refreshing to see a male lead not be perfectly suave and to be repeatedly flummoxed by the female lead’s brightness. But it is Ethel Barrymore who also nearly steals the show as his mother and it is disgraceful that she wasn’t even nominated for this. She’s the insightful, “seen it all before” older woman who calls out everyone’s shortcomings when she sees them- a 1940s Olenna Tyrell, and Barrymore (Drew Barrymore’s great aunt) nails every line she gets. It’s easy to see why she was considered one of the most important and influential actresses to have ever lived. 

In terms of her life, Loretta Young was, for many years, comparatively dull compared to the various dramas of her contemporaries such as Dietrich, Crawford and Swanson. The height of Hollywood fame was in the '40s and afterwards had a substantial career in television and in voluntary work with fellow actresses Jane Wyman, Rosalind Russell, Irene Dunne and Ginger Rogers. She eventually died of ovarian cancer at the age of 87 in 2000.

But there was a secret in Loretta Young’s life that finally came to public attention in 2015 when Linda Lewis, wife of Loretta son Christopher, revealed that Christopher’s adopted sister Judy was not, in fact, adopted but rather a biological daughter of Loretta and Clark Gable. In 1935, Loretta and Gable conceived Judy but Loretta kept her in an orphanage to avoid public scandal. At 19 months old, Judy was “adopted” by Loretta and took Loretta’s second husband’s name of Lewis when she was 4. Due to Judy’s striking resemblance to Gable, Loretta pinned her ears back surgically when she was 7. The only time Judy met Gable was when she was 15 but he did not tell her that he was her father. It was not until she was 31 that Loretta revealed all to her although she had heard rumours beforehand. Judy’s autobiography in 1994 revealed all but Loretta refused to speak to her for 3 years. It was not until Loretta’s death and her autobiography was published posthumously that the story was confirmed.

When Linda Lewis (Loretta’s daughter-in-law) came forward in 2015, it was because she wanted to talk publicly about the fact that Loretta’s liaison with Gable was, in fact, date rape. This was something that Loretta apparently found difficult to understand. She was brought up in a world where women were taught to protect themselves from the sexual predation of men and any woman who falls victim to it was careless. In more modern and (generally) enlightened times, this sort of victim-blaming would not be allowed. 

Judy died in 2011 from cancer and is survived by her daughter, Maria. 

Highlight

There’s a very amusing scene in which Loretta tries out Ethel Barrymore’s stairlift. A small highlight, but a delightful one nonetheless.

Lowlight

There’s a scene in which Loretta and Joseph Cotton go ice skating and it is immensely obvious that they are stunt doubles. But this is so minor is barely deserves mentioning.

Mark

10/10

Doug says...

On first glance, The Farmer’s Daughter did not look like it would amount to much. It starts with a Swedish family all being vaguely comical on a farm in a place which could be any rural area in the world. She then has misadventures with a painter/layabout who tries to clumsily seduce her but fails, and then falls into a maid job at a Congressman Glenn Morley’s house in the city. 

What happens then is extraordinary for a film that takes place in 1947. Firstly she openly gives her opinion - the writing plays on her Swedish frankness and uses gentle comedy around her abruptness to let this happen for a ‘40s audience - and then she actively begins influencing Glenn Morley, who despite being of the rival party to her, is charmed and interested by her accurate, passionate views. 

When the film leads her into participating herself in politics, I saw the ending coming a mile away. She would run for Congress, fail, but be supported by Glenn and become a Happy Wife. In fact, seeing this coming from a mile away was rather depressing, considering the story it was beginning to tell. Oh well, I thought, at least a ‘40s film about a woman wanting to be in politics is pretty forthcoming. 

Reader, I was wrong. The writers take another step of bravery, and do not err from their story of a good, true woman wanting to be part of the political system, helping to shape the country’s governance. They place obstacles in her way, including the resurgence of the unpleasant painter/layabout who starts spreading false scandals, and even Glenn himself who thinks that Katie can’t possibly survive the scandal. It’s only thanks to Katie’s dad who shows extraordinary disappointment in her for not continuing to try, and Glenn’s mother (the frankly over-talented Ethel Barrymore who takes what could be a wet limpet of a part, and turns it into a scene-stealing, cheer-rousing Strong Woman role) that Katie does not give up. 

The final scene, which I won’t reveal, is heartening in the extreme, marrying the gentle love story and Katie’s political journey in one, very sweet and cheering image. 

They do not put a foot wrong - the writers, the actors or the directors. Katie is loveable and unusual yes, but her funny extreme practicality (tucking in guests’ napkins for them at a posh cocktail party) is born of hard work and constant graft - whenever she might be about to become a figure of fun, an event or moment occurs to remind you of her humanity and of her truthfulness. Loretta Young deserves her Oscar for making it a sweetly humorous role while never failing to convince you that as a politician, she would fight for what is right and decent. She’s backed up by a sterling cast including the afore-mentioned Barrymore and Joseph Cotten as the Congressman. 

Yes it’s entirely idealised. But in a world where an orange-tanned brute has seized control of the Presidency by convincing swathes of under-educated Americans that he will protect their interests, all the while undermining them with glee, a film like this that protests that there could be fairness and justice in the world feels like a lantern in the fog. I found myself emotional by the end, hoping that maybe - just maybe - there could be a return politically to a world like this. 

Highlight

Loretta Young does sterling work throughout, but my highlight really has to go to Ethel Barrymore who turns her scenes into rabble-rousing cheer-inducing triumphs. I found myself cheering as she turns on the men around her trying to bring down her female opponent, and standing up for justice constantly. 

Lowlight

The other female character (a reporter) seems only there as a foil to Katie and Glenn’s love story and didn’t really feel necessary. A tiny gripe. 

Mark

10/10