La mujer triunfa

A TRAVELING SALESLADY & a drugstore queen vie for the affection of a handsome toothpaste salesman.

This was the sort of ephemeral comic frippery which the studios produced almost effortlessly during the 1930's. Well made & highly enjoyable, Depression audiences couldn't seem to get enough of these popular, funny photo dramas.

Sassy & sweet, Joan Blondell & Glenda Farrell make perfect romantic rivals. This is really Blondell's picture - Farrell's part gets off to a slow start - but they are great together or apart and make the film zing.

William Gargan gives a good performance as the fellow in the enviable position of being desired by both Blondell & Farrell. Wonderful, wacky Hugh Herbert, as the inventor of cocktail flavored toothpaste, leads a parade of character actors - Grant Mitchell, Al Shean, Ruth Donnelly, Johnny Arthur, Bert Roach, Mary Treen & Harry Holman - who all excel at milking laughs from every line.

Movie mavens will recognize the marvelous Hattie McDaniel, uncredited in a tiny, hilarious, scene.

While never stars of the first rank, Joan Blondell (1906-1979) & Glenda Farrell (1904-1971) enlivened scores of films at Warner Bros. throughout the 1930's, especially the eight in which they appeared together. Whether playing gold diggers or working girls, reporters or secretaries, these blonde & brassy ladies were very nearly always a match for whatever leading man was lucky enough to share equal billing alongside them. With a wisecrack or a glance, their characters showed they were ready to take on the world - and any man in it. Never as wickedly brazen as Paramount's Mae West, you always had the feeling that, tough as they were, Blondell & Farrell used their toughness to defend vulnerable hearts ready to break over the right guy. While many performances from seven decades ago can look campy or contrived today, these two lovely ladies are still spirited & sassy.

The character played by Joan Blondell wants to make it in a man's world and boy, does she! Her pompous father tells her women don't belong in business when she asks for a job -- any job. So she goes to work for his rival. And work she does! Her father is a stuffy toothpaste manufacturer. She hooks up with dizzy inventor Hugh Herbert and comes up with a plan to revolutionize the world of toothpaste. And she leases her and Herbert's services to her father's rival for a year. And then she goes to work in the title capacity.

William Gargan is likable as the salesman who is both her romantic interest and her rival. (He works for her father's company. Needless to say, she is not using her real name; so to him, she is The Enemy.) It is far from a masterpiece. But Blondell is always a delight and it's a brassy, entertaining story.

When her father refuses to give her a job in his toothpaste company, Angela Twitchell sets out on her own in "Traveling Saleslady." She's going to prove him wrong, that the business world is not place for a woman. And does she ever in this film.

Joan Blondell plays Angela and Grant Mitchell plays her dad, Rufus. While billed as a comedy romance, this film hardly has any of the latter, and very little of the former. Angela teams up with Elmer, played by Hugh Herbert, who has invented unique flavored toothpastes. She then offers the product to her dad's competitor, with the proviso that she still owns the product and gets to go on the road to sell it.

That she does, much to the consternation of her dad's top salesman, Pat O'Connor (played by William Gargan), for whom Angela has eyes. A very good supporting cast of various characters contribute to this film. It was a glowing tribute to "women's lib" long before that movement of the late 1960s. Indeed, Hollywood made any number of movies ahead of that time in which women were cast in business and professional roles. Some were comedies - much better than this one, and others were dramas, mysteries and other genres.

As a comedy, "Traveling Saleslady" just isn't very funny. It has very little humorous dialog. And the funny situations are light at best. Part of the problem may be with Blondell herself. She was a favorite for lead roles at Warner Brothers during the Golden Era, especially comedy. But in this genre she always seemed to have one face - a wide-eyed, perky, smiling, agreeable, go get-em persona. So, when the dialog, action or scene doesn't mesh with that persona, what otherwise would be funny is a thud or just a pass over.

Here are a couple of the few good lines in this film.

Harry, "Is that you, Claudette?" Claudette, "Errr, ya got me. How are ya, Harry?" Harry, "Oh, me, I'm pretty OK, uh, except I caught cold last Tuesday. No, maybe it was Wednesday." Claudette, "Well, try to remember. I must know." Harry, "Let me see. My birthday was on Tuesday..." Claudette, "You sure?" Harry, "No.... no, when did I catch cold?" Claudette, "Listen, Harry, when you do remember, telephone me."

Martha, "Pat, pat!" Pat, "What do you want?" Martha, "I wanna go to Niagara Falls." Pat, "Can you swim?" Martha, "No, but I can cook."

Joan Blondell stars as the daughter of a tooth paste baron (Grant Mitchell) who doesn't believe in women in the workplace or in embracing modern advertising. Blondell is bored and wants a job but daddy says NO! So she goes to a competitor with a new idea from a nutty professor (Hugh Herbert) with the proviso that she gets to be the traveling saleslady.

Blondell immediately runs into competition from daddy's crack salesman (William Gargan) and the two spend the rest of the film sparring and falling in love. Glenda Farrell also stars as the head of a drug store chain, also in love with Gargan.

Lots of fun, fast pacing, and many snappy lines make this a top B comedy of the 30s.Very modern in its view of women, big business, etc.

Ruth Donnelly is the mother, Al Shean is the competitor, Bert Roach (very funny) as the male wallflower, Mary Treen is a secretary, and Johnny Arthur is also a secretary.

Good roles for Blondell, Farrell, and Gargan---and all three underused by Warners.

... among the usual constrained unfunny comedies of the early production code era. Angela Twitchell (Joan Blondell) is the only child and go-getter daughter of toothpaste tycoon Rufus Twitchell (Grant Mitchell). The problem is, Mr. Twitchell won't let Angela go get anything. He has prehistoric ideas about women being too emotionally unstable and just not smart enough to be involved in business of any kind.

Angela meets up with an ex-bootlegger who has discovered how to get the flavor of his various bootleg formulas into toothpaste, but has been futile at his efforts to get Mr. Twitchell to talk to him - Elmer, played by Hugh Herbert. So Angela decides to get back at dad and take Elmer to dad's competitor. She tells the competitor that she will "rent" Elmer's formulas and labor to him for one year, providing she is allowed to be on the sales staff and get a percentage of her sales as income. The competitor agrees.

So Angela is out on the road, in competition with Pat O'Connor (William Gargan), representing Twitchell, who seemed like a big sleaze bag to me at first. For example, Angela gets no consideration from the first sales call she makes, which is on Glenda Farrell playing Claudette the buyer for a drugstore concern. O'Connor is leading Claudette on and thus Claudette only deals in Twitchell products. O'Connor is there when Angela strikes out, and is condescending and arrogant to her, amused by the idea of a saleslady. But he is not amused long. The rest of the picture is basically a battle of wits between Angela as a figurative Bugs Bunny and O'Connor as a figurative Daffy Duck. And we all know how cartoons go that have those two in them. A rare feminist situation in 1935 American films, compounded by the fact that O'Connor does not know Angela's true identity.

Hugh Herbert is portioned out in small doses, and that makes him work in this film as too much of his typical confused and inane act can get old fast. The double entendres don't come fast and furious as they would have in the precode era, but a few do get through if you listen carefully enough. Even our two feminist characters in this film show a bit of prejudice. Before their first meeting - Angela as saleslady and Claudette as the head of buying for her drugstore - both women assume the other is a man and are putting on their face assuming that will help them with the man they are assuming they will be dealing with.

And who can't help like a film that shows the sales route of the two rival toothpaste salespersons as lines of toothpaste meandering across a map of the U.S? Highly recommended.