Gigolette

Adrienne Ames was a debutante, but her father died broke. She can't get a job in New York, save working for Ralph Bellamy in his clip joint. It's clear he's lovestruck, and she's grateful, but feels no sparks. While there, she meets wealthy and well connected Donald Cook. Bellamy stops speaking out of the side of his mouth and upgrades to a legitimate night club. Miss Ames continues working there as a dancer for unaccompanied men.

Miss Ames is beautiful, well dressed, and speaks her lines well enough, but director Charles Lamont, moving out of Gower Gulch, can't pull anything from her to make her a star, despite her top billing. By the end of the decade she was out of the movies.

It does raise the question in my mind: was this the movie in which Bellamy first played the man who loses the girl? HANDS ACROSS THE TABLE came out later that year and cemented that role for him in A pictures; the story is that when he read a script with a role marked for "A Ralph Bellamy type", he abandoned Hollywood and went back on the stage. With Robert Armstrong and Dewey Robinson.