Lady Lou - La donna fatale

Mae West is certainly entertaining with her wisecracks and sexual innuendo. Unfortunately, she's the only entertaining thing about this whole film. The other actors, even a young Cary Grant, aren't given terribly interesting characters to inhabit. The whole thing is set-bound and the story is nonsense.

Okay, maybe not nonsense, but it is cluttered with too many subplots and one-note characters which fail to hold interest. The first ten minutes are a pain to sit through, mainly because West isn't there to enliven the proceedings. That should not be.

She Done Him Wrong (1933) is an interesting curio and a showcase for Mae West, but as entertainment, it is lacking.

It appears that some modern day critics have forgotten what a great period film is all about. This very authentic replica of the Gay Nineties (1890s) is accurate right down to the horse hair furniture, gas lamps, Brooklyn accents and costumes. It was adapted from Mae West's Broadway hit "Diamond Lil" and coupled with West's other 1933 hit (I'm No Angel), saved Paramount from bankruptcy. The film was so loved by audiences that midnight showings were needed to accommodate the crowds, and it was so lurid that seven countries banned the film altogether. It was nominated for the best picture of 1933 and was West's favorite of all her twelve films. The film introduced the famed line (although it's uttered slightly different in the movie) "Come up and see me sometime." Some of Mae's funniest work is here, and she sings three great tunes. Edith Head did all the costumes and Lowell Sherman directed. Modern times have dulled the bluntness of this film, but be assured, it was an eye-popper in 1933.

Set mostly in a bawdy saloon/dance hall in NYC during the 1890s, this film is a showcase for the talents of Mae West. She plays Lady Lou, a self-confident, sassy singer with a quick wit, who entertains customers with songs that have a Blues theme and were popular in vaudeville.

In this role, buxom Mae West is at her best. She struts her stuff, she wears tons of diamonds, she smiles in a slightly mischievous way, she rolls her eyes, and she speaks in a voice that is more than a little nasal. Her costumes are glamorous and flamboyant. In short, she presents an on-screen image that is wonderfully ... unique.

The film's story is thin and largely irrelevant. It involves the people around Lady Lou, some of whom are schemers and cheats. Implicit sexual references in the dialogue, and the character of Lady Lou, led the "National Legion of Decency" to push down our throats the Production Code, a wretched policy device that censored cinematic content for some thirty years thereafter.

If I have a complaint with this film it is that the story is too serious. Mae West is placed in scenes that allow her merely to recite dialogue. She is less an actress than a singer and on-stage performer. I would have preferred a more lighthearted musical theme, to play up her musical talents.

And so for me, the best parts of this film are the musical numbers few though they may be. Mae West sings "Frankie And Johnny" and a couple of other songs. One of my favorite sequences occurs about midway through the film. In what appears to be an authentically designed music hall set, an Irish tenor with a big mustache sings "Silver Threads Among The Gold", a musical tearjerker popular with barbershop quartets of that era. The song's sad theme prompts a man in the audience literally to "cry in his beer". Gas lights point upward to the stage. And behind the singing tenor, a curtain sways back and forth, with product signs that read "Old Whiskey", "Dijon Burgundy", among others. It's a sequence that is straight out of vaudeville. Marvelous!

"She Done Him Wrong" is a film whose story almost gets in the way of the main character, played by a legendary talent. The film is worth watching more than once, but only to see marvelous Mae West, and to listen to those wonderful songs from the bygone days of vaudeville.

Mae West was a veteran of burlesque, vaudeville and the Broadway stage by the time she made her first film in 1932 at the age of 39. `She Done Him Wrong' was her second film and her first starring role in an adaptation of her smash Broadway hit `Diamond Lil'. It was a play that West had written herself and it played to packed houses on Broadway for years. This film was nominated for an Academy Award for best picture and made Cary Grant into an instant star. Mae went on to write nine of the fourteen screenplays for films in which she was to star. Thus, all those great quotes we've heard that are attributed to her were not only said by her, but written by her as well. By 1935, she was the most highly paid woman in America. To this day, she remains one of the female stars most often imitated by female impersonators.

This film is among her best. It is full of the bawdy double entendre that became her trademark. She was the queen of sexual innuendo and suggestive dialogue and many of her lines have become part of Americana (e.g. `Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?' And, `A hard man is good to find.' And of course, `Come up and see me sometime.')

The plot of this film is simplistic and it is clearly a vehicle for her enormous talent, leading up to the now famous proposal by Cary Grant at the end of the film. Mae commands every frame of the film with her incomparable combination of sex appeal and ribald humor. Her sense of comic timing is impeccable making the funny lines she writes that much more hilarious by the snide way in which she delivers them.

Before this film, Cary Grant had appeared in half a dozen films and was building a reputation as a solid actor. However, none of his early films gave him the exposure that this film did due to its wild popularity at the time. West handpicked him for the part saying that he combined virility with the bearing of a gentleman. She wanted someone who would epitomize the now famous line, `Hello, warm, dark and handsome.' Though his role in this film is minor compared to West's, it made him a household name and a bankable star.

This classic film is a piece of film history that shouldn't be missed. I rated it a 10/10. It is among Mae West's best moments. I highly recommend it.

Mae West is another one of those actresses that played the same role time after time. She played Mae West. What distinguishes the movies are the lines and she was a masterful created of double entendre with a big load of sex. She would surround herself with the actors of the day, like Gilbert Roland and Wallace Beery. The one that benefited the most here was Cary Grant. It's hard to realize that he goes back so far. I have to admit that for mot of my life I found West's thing to be off handed and tiresome. But now I know that she had great timing and and interesting stage presence. She could deliver a "dirty" line like no other. This gave us the famous like, "Come up and see me sometime."