Runtime: 75 minutes
Directed by: Roy Del Ruth
Starring: Warren William, Loretta Young, Wallace Ford, Alice White, Hale Hamilton
From: Warner Bros.
It is quite the alpha move to pull a gun from your desk, give it to the guy pissed as you and dare him to shoot you.
Last night Turner Classic Movies showed several Pre-Code movies; as I had seen two of them already I went with this one, which I had heard of before. Turns out, this was a ruthless look at the perils of capitalism. Warren William plays a real tyrant of a boss, a jerk who heads a large NYC department store. He doesn't care to modify expectations just because The Great Depression is going on, he is happy to fire people for a single mistake, and is rather unpleasant. Admittedly, he is not ALL bad... he takes a pay cut alongside the various managers for not meeting expectations the previous year and berates bankers for chiding him when it was the bankers that played a role in causing the Depression in the first place.
Be that as it may, he is still not a dude you want to support once you see that he treats women rather deplorably. Besides sleeping around with other peoples' wives, he asks one of his female employees (a delightful Alice White) to use her wily ways in order to spy on male employees, tries to break up marriages between his employees, and worst of all forces himself upon poor Loretta Young while she's intoxicated at a company party... and unbeknownst to him, is married to his de facto understudy Wallace Ford. What a fascinating character.
The film may sound miserable considering the lead but it is breezy well-made entertainment instead. Of course William was the highlight, but that's no slight to White, Young or Ford. Believe it or not there are also comedic moments and those were usually fun. Even with a cynical ending, the film is a gripping look at the horrors of being obsessed w/ avarice without being drudgery to get through.
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