The Woman Condemned

A radio singing star suddenly takes a "vacation" without explanation, and cuts herself off from everybody. Her radio station hires a detective agency to find out what's going on, and the agency sends a female detective to work the case, but when the "star" is killed, the detective winds up being charged with her murder.

This is a very low-buck effort put out by very low-buck producer Willis Kent. Production values are chintzy in the extreme, with poor photography, tinny and unsteady sound and extremely choppy editing. The plot is overly complicated, the dialog is lame and the acting is just awful, although attractive Claudia Dell as the detective gives it her best shot and does have her moments. Director Dorothy Davenport didn't have much to work with in front of and behind the camera, and she didn't do much with them. Very poor effort all around. Don't bother with it.

This is about a woman who is killed (sort of). Other forces move in and people are set up. Now if the woman didn't die, what are the charges, or are there charges? Or are they trying to prove someone is up to no good for past acts. Let's see. People are being operated on. People look in windows. I don't know why? Who's on first? What's on second. There is a romance brewing. If I'd been that guy, I would have dropped that woman after the twelfth time she lied to him. I can't spoil the ending because I'm not sure what the ending was. Suffice it to say, there are lucid periods in the film, but the milieu is so cluttered and there are so many red herrings launched, it goes all over the place.

Radio singer Lola Lane goes on vacation, leaving ardent admirer and station manager Jason Robards Jr. In the dark as to her plans. A few days later, reporter Richard Hemingway spots Claudia Dell in night. She was trying to break into an apartment. He tells the judge she's his fiancee and it was her apartment...... she's a terrible practical joker. So the judge marries them. Soon enough, Miss Dell breaks into the apartment, spots Miss Lane dead, shrieks, and is apprehended and found guilty of murder.

Dorothy Davenport's last movie as director has some nice touches -- I was taken by the other defendants in night court, and cameraman James Diamond had worked her before -- but she struggles in vain with a lurid and stupid screenplay written by the always lurid and stupid Willis Kent. The entire series of events in the film, the set of disasters that overwhelm both women, is actuated and worsened by their unwillingness to tell anyone why they are doing what they do, despite their innocent intentions.

Editor Roy Luby does a fine job of keeping the pace up, despite the slow pace of dialogue, but the script sinks everyone. As William Wyler once noted, "It's 90% you get a good script, and 10% the actors. There's nothing else in it." I think that's because Wyler provided everything else; nonetheless.....

This isn't the clearest story ever plotted. I know what happens, but tying to explain it with out giving away too much is going to be rather difficult. Basically a woman takes a "vacation" from the radio program on which she is the star. Its not explained why, though her overly emoted good bye to her would be boyfriend suggests that there is an ominous reason. At some point she is killed and an innocent woman is blamed. Will the real killer ever be caught? What was the secret that forced the dead woman from the radio? Will we remain awake long enough to find out? Simple this is not. This is a complicated tale of murder thats interesting despite the fact its very talky, over emoted and just a tad loopy. Its the type of movie that keeps your interest simply because you want to know whats going on not because its very good. Actually it was so dull and talky that it was putting me to sleep, however I had to fight it because I had to know what was going on. If you want to see a movie that makes you stay with it to the end because you have to see whats going on give it a try. If you want to see a film that actually good try something else.

I won't even try to provide a synopsis of the story. This is one of those mystery thrillers in which everything is thrown into the pot to make the story as intriguingly attention-grabbing as possible. And then having propounded a successfully unusual and highly suspenseful set of situations, the writers throw creativity to the wind in the last five minutes by solving the mystery in some clichéd manner that leaves the most purblind audience breathless with anger and disappointment. At least the elaborately constructed plot doesn't all turn out to be a dream, but the device used here is almost as hackneyed and almost equally a letdown.

Nonetheless, by the extremely humble standard of Willis Kent bottom-of-the-rung-even-for-Poverty-Row productions, this movie is certainly a cut above the average "Z"-grader. It was the last film directed by Mrs Wallace Reid who has tried very hard (and very successfully) to create atmosphere and production values on an extremely meager budget. Given the sort of studio support and largess that Dorothy Arzner worked with, Mrs Reid would undoubtedly have done equally well, if not better. Yet feminists give all their attention to Arzner and none at all to Mrs Reid. Even the Arzner biography in IMDb claims that Arzner "was the only woman director during the Golden Age of Hollywood's studio system during the 1920s and 1930s." (Other Davenport films presently available are The Road to Ruin and Sucker Money).

A major virtue of The Woman Condemned must be the fine performances provided by every member of the cast from charmingly charismatic hero Richard C. Hemingway (who never got anywhere), poorly photographed Claudia Dell (who had the shortest career as a major star on record — less than a year) and one-song Lola Lane, through to Neal Pratt's nice cameo as a sarcastic judge