Baby Face (1933)
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- Synopsis:
Lily Powers (Barbara Stanwyck) has led a difficult life working in her loutish father's speakeasy in Erie, Pennsylvania, he who coerced her into prostitution since she was 14. When she is given a chance to start a new life, she is advised by Adolf Cragg (Alphonse Ethier), her friend and a follower of the teachings of Friedrich Nietzsche, to use her power over men to get want she wants. Moving to New York City with her friend and conspirator Chico (Theresa Harris), Lily does exactly that. She decides to sleep her way up the corporate ladder at Gotham Trust, using men the way they have used her in the past. In her quest, she not only uses those men, but ruins them in the process. Her main goal is to find the man who can best afford to provide her a carefree lifestyle. Things for Lily and for Gotham Trust itself change when the bank's board appoints a new company president, playboy Courtland Trenholm. - Actors:
- Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent, Donald Cook, Alphonse Ethier, Henry Kolker, Margaret Lindsay, Arthur Hohl, John Wayne, Robert Barrat, Douglass Dumbrille, Theresa Harris, Joan Barclay, James Bush, Charles Coleman, Heinie Conklin, Jack Curtis, Frank Darien, Arthur De Kuh, John Elliott, Harry Gribbon
- Directors:
- Alfred E. Green
- Writers:
- Gene Markey, Kathryn Scola
- Genres:
- Classics, Drama, Romance
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Reviews (1) of Baby Face
Precode Melodrama. - Baby Face review by Steve
Notorious precode melodrama which borrows the plot from MGM's Red Headed Woman (1932) and refashions it in the hardboiled Warner Brothers style. Crucial to this is Barbara Stanwyck's corrosive performance as the girl from the slums who endeavours to screw her way from the gutter to the boardroom, all the way up a New York skyscraper.
Stanwyck came from absolute poverty and its easy to imagine she drew on experience. Some of her delivery is extraordinary, particularly her paint stripping put-down of her father. The best part of the film is the sexually abused girl escaping her background and getting a foot on the ladder of a big bank. 'Do you have experience?' asks the first of her seductions. "Plenty'.
One of those rungs is a pre-stardom John Wayne. As she reaches the summit, the film becomes more predictable and less interesting. There's a fascinating scene early on when an old man in her father's front room speakeasy tries to interest her in Nietzsche. Surely the studio was warning of the danger of fascism taking root among the poor of the depression?
Red Headed Woman played as a comedy, with Jean Harlow's glamour. This is more realistic. The excellent Theresa Harris gets one of the few roles for African Americans in the '30s which allows her some dignity. Of course, when the Production Code came in the following year, the transgressive stuff was edited out. Including Nietzsche.