Sensation Hunters

Because it was Charles Vidor's first credited feature, and because it was a pre-Code flick, I was hoping to see something astonishing. I didn't, but I found it a fine pre-Code.

Marion Burns is on her first steps in what she imagines to be a career in the performing arts -- all she has been in before is college shows. She has gotten a job as a singer in Juanita Hansen's troupe, on their way to Panama, where she quickly makes friends with her room mate, cynical old hand Arline Judge, and begins a budding romance with upright Preston Foster, whose mine is somewhere around there. She soon discovers that the troupe is not called on just to entertain on stage; they're there to get the customers to buy drinks, and Hansen is an old buzzard. Gradually things go downhill...

Although Burns is the central character, it's Arline Judge who has the standout role: pugnacious, profane, liable to marry anything with tattoos, and waiting for her first husband to show up again, she's a three-ring circus on her own. It's a lively movie and a lot of fun.