Transient Lady

Very difficult to see, this is a 1935 Universal feature whose title refers to lovely Dale Cameron (Frances Drake, "The Invisible Ray"), opening a roller skating rink with her two companions in a rural community lorded over by local senator Hamp Baxter (Henry Hull). The senator's brothers are rabble rousers, with Fred (Clifford Jones) leading the charge from the pool hall to the rink when he is rebuffed by Dale, but things get out of hand when the Baxters break in on Nick Kiley (Edward Ellis), who kills Fred in self defense. It's Dale's other partner, the innocent Chris Blake (Clark Williams), who gets arrested and must stand trial, with Hamp appointing himself prosecutor. Things bog down between the murder and the trial, and the vigilante finale lacks conviction, but the characters are well drawn, with several sharp lines. Douglas Fowley steals his scenes as Matt Baxter, while Ren Baxter is played by the young John Carradine, about a minute or two of screen time bracketing his Universal roles opposite Karloff in "The Black Cat" and "Bride of Frankenstein" (he does not reappear after the death of Fred Baxter 20 minutes in). Carradine did other lesser known films for the studio such as "Heaven on Earth," "Alias Mary Dow," and "She Gets Her Man," and by the end of this year he would be cast by John Ford in "The Prisoner of Shark Island," which put him on the map as a star character actor. Good work from Henry Hull prior to his most famous starring role in "Werewolf of London," always more effective in blustery roles such as the newspaper editor in "Jesse James" and its sequel "The Return of Frank James" (he died in 1977 at the age of 87).