Herbert Brenon | Wine, Women and Song / 1933 [Not available]

signed and delivered

by Douglas Messerli

 

Leon D’Usseau (screenwriter, based on his play), Herbert Brenon (director) Wine, Women and Song / 1933 [Not available]

 

This film has evidently not made it into any major film library. Rumor has it that UCLA has a nitrate copy, but has no plans to restore it.

     It made it onto my list simply because of the comments of Richard Barrios regarding the appearance of pansy character actor Bobby Watson who plays the figure of Lawrence, apparently a lisping dancing assistant.

    But one can imagine that this work, directed the Herbert Brenon who also helmed Peter Pan (1925) and Beau Geste (1926), might also be of gay interest if for no other reason that the notorious lesbian Lilyan Tashman plays a washed-up chorus girl, Frankie Arnette, now performing in a risqué dance number in New York City who, a bit like the actor herself, is not at all afraid of any kind of publicity, good or bad.

      Moreover, the male lead, Lew Cody—although married twice, both times for very brief periods, to Dorothy Dalton, and who later married the already tubercular Mabel Normand “on a lark,” the two living apart—held Malibu Beach House parties, according to gay director Charles Walters, that were extremely popular with gay men in the early 1930s. Even the press, after his second breakup with Dalton, seemed to be winking in their description of him as living the life of a “man’s man,” code in this case, presumably, for a male that men of a certain kind particularly appreciated.

      I wish the film was available for viewing, but fortunately TCM has posted a full synopsis, which, along with other briefer descriptions of the plot provided me with the information for the summary below.

      As the film begins, in fact, she has invited her daughter, Marilyn Arnette (Marjorie Reynolds) to leave the refined St. Cecilia School for Girls to finally meet her. Marilyn finds her in a New York burlesque house which on the night of her attendance is raided by the police. When Marilyn finally catches up with her mother whom she finds in jail, Frankie explains to her that she herself has arranged the police raid to cash in on the publicity that is bound to follow.

     Good girl Marilyn is about to hightail it back to her proper Catholic school, but Frankie, knowing that her daughter has been studying tap dance, asks her to accompany her comedienne friend Loretta Oliver Potts, better known as Lolly (Esther Muir), to rehearsals for a new show.

     Marilyn hesitantly agrees, and suddenly finds herself trying out for the show. Dance director Ray Joyce (Matty Kemp) is highly impressed with her dancing while the show’s producer, playboy Morgan Andrews (Lew Cody), is equally dazzled by her legs and other body parts.

 

     Andrews arranges with newspaper columnist Jennie Tilson (Gertrude Astor) to interview their new “discovery,” during which Jennie pretends to be called back to her office so that Andrews can invite the disappointed Marilyn to lunch in his theater-front office.

     In passing, Ray spots Marilyn drinking with Andrews, and grows angry that the new girl he so admired has already been seemingly corrupted, leaving the theater with his star Imogene in a manner that Marilyn can’t miss noticing.

     The producer, meanwhile, awards the new girl with a bracelet of diamonds and emeralds, kissing her as his reward. Startled by the act, Marilyn faints as Jennie enters to undress her, while Andrews sends the rest of his party off to a nightclub so he can give his full attention to the distressed innocent.

      Just freed from jail, Frankie enters at that very moment, demanding Lolly take her daughter home, while she stays to viciously scratch her nails across Andrew’s face. In response he tosses her to the floor. But when she doesn’t get up, he’s forced to call a doctor, who revives her with a powerful capsule which he breaks open, demanding she inhale it.

      Frankie has a heart condition, and well knows that the pill the doctor has just used can be fatal to those with normal hearts. On his orders, however, she is forced to stay in bed in Andrews’ apartment for at least ten days, the perfect set-up for a man trying to get his hands on a mother’s daughter.

     Meanwhile, the chorus girls can do nothing but gossip about the fact that Marilyn has seemingly stayed the night in Andrews’ apartment. And Ray greets her icily. But when the young neophyte explains what really happened all, including Ray, welcome her back to their own circle of friendship, with Ray actually apologizing and ready to tell her how he’s already fallen in love—only to be interrupted by the rehearsal of a new number.

     Back in his lair, Andrews threatens Frankie, suggesting that it will now be difficult to make her beloved daughter a star since he’s been so rudely interrupted in his love-making. And with pure pre-code license, Frankie agrees to sign a contract that assures Marilyn’s sexual compliance if Andrews comes through with his part of the bargain in helping to promote the girl’s career—but with one important caveat: that he promise not to bother her until after opening night.

 

    Agreeing with her logic that the girl needs to keep her mind on her work, he agrees. And on the night of the big opening, Frankie sits at a nearby table watching her daughter performer, making it one of the happiest moments of her life. At that very same moment she breaks open one of her heart capsules and pours the powder surreptitiously into Andrews’ gin. Together they toast to the future, Andrews almost immediately collapsing, hand to his heart, with the realization that Frankie has killed him. Frankie sheds a tear or two and herself dies, having consumed the powder as well.

     As the audience applauds Marilyn’s dance she hugs Lolly to her and kisses Ray behind the curtain.   

    Both of the villains of the piece, Lew Cody and Lilyan Tashman, died within a year of completing the film, Tashman on March 21, 1934 of tumular cancer and Cody two months later on May 31, 1934 of a heart attack. It is doubtful that either of their careers would have lasted on screen once the code was enforced that same year since Cody had long been known as a “male vamp” and Tashman was famous for her naughty women’s bathroom sex behavior.

 

Los Angeles, April 27, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (April 2024).