Ten Cents a Dance

Fans of pre-Code films will forgive this 1931 Columbia Pictures feature directed by Lionel Barrymore (his last directorial effort) if only because it stars Barbara Stanwyck in an early role. As is the case with all stars, she is even then true in every moment, entirely believable, and far surpasses the wooden script and the rest of the cast. Most embarrassing is Monroe Owsley as her no-good husband; he is particularly bad, totally false, overacting. Ricardo Cortez has a thankless role and does his best. This is a perfect example of how a star can make something out of nothing by the sheer power of her personality.

This relic from before the days of the Production Code and the Hays Office is good fun, not great but entertaining.

Based on a song by Rogers & Hart that was an enormous hit at the time, the story revolves around dance hall girl Barbara Stanwyck who is romanced by wealthy businessman Ricardo Cortez (who was indecently handsome), but whose heart belongs to her bookish neighbor Monroe Owsley. She and Owsley marry, but keep it a secret, while she dismisses Cortez, who still holds out hope. She helps hubby get a job in Cortez's company, but married bliss quickly turns sour as Owsley develops a taste for the high life and steps out with a college sweetheart and gambles in high-stakes bridge (Yup! I know, it's pretty funny....). Finally he embezzles $5,000 from Cortez, and is about to go on the lam, when his devoted wife goes to Cortez....and I won't reveal anything else, although the ending was certainly a surprise.

Stanwyck is the best thing about this movie; in one of her earliest roles she's quite accomplished. Owsley is the weak point; he's unattractive and sniveling, while Cortez is amazingly suave and sexy, while his performance is earnest but unremarkable.

While ostensibly a drama, it's filled with laughs, many inadvertant as some elements of this movie have aged very poorly. But there are a lot of good witty lines; at one point Stanwyck says to Cortez, "My brains are in my feet, while yours are in...." That's pretty darn suggestive for 1931! There's a lot of bawdy and suggestive stuff in this flick, in the last days before the Code clamped down and whitewashed everything. An amusing antique, a good reminder of how far we haven't come in 70 years....this story could very easily be changed to fit 2003 but could keep the basic plot, with the original ending, in place.

Back in the day when couples actually held each other while dancing the kind of place Barbara Stanwyck works in Ten Cents A Dance was fairly popular. Ten cents went a lot farther in those days. Today even given inflation you would pay a whole lot more and the dance would be on your lap.

One of Barbara's special customers is Ricardo Cortez, a man who's kept his business during the Depression and successfully, no easy task. She asks him to give one of her fellow boarders at her rooming house, Monroe Owsley a job in the firm. It seems to work out all around and she and Owsley get married.

But Owsley is a weak character and a poor gambler, losing money in penny ante card games and of all things playing the market in 1931, not a very sound idea. He embezzles $5000.00 from Cortez's firm. This is where Barbara has to make some critical choices, separate the men from the boys so to speak.

Lionel Barrymore who did some directing before the Oscar he won for A Free Soul brought him a contract with MGM to exclusively act directed this pre-Code potboiler. He does get good performances out of the three principal players. Another you won't forget is Sally Blane as the underage dime a dance girl and Blanche Frederici as the morals custodian of the dime a dance girls in her establishment.

Owsley who made a specialty of playing bad or weak characters died much too young. As for Barbara the role was definitely a boost for her young career at the time.

Columbia programmer "inspired by the song by Rodgers and Hart," and in fact it's sung over the credits, including the "pansy" line, which got censored in future film renditions. But all it really inspires is the setting, a dime-a-dance hall, where Stanwyck, in an early, prototypical role, is pursued by a rich (Cortez) and poor (Owsley) guy, and in a clever reversal, the nice-seeming poor guy turns out to be a cad and the rich guy is genuine and caring. Stanwyck's facial expressions alone are touching and assured, and she even cries convincingly, unlike many more actressy actresses of the period. Owsley is callow and unlikable, but then that's what he's playing, and Cortez underplays well, with liquid eyes that are indeed the mirrors to this character's soul. It's indifferently directed by Lionel Barrymore and has little in production value, but Jo Swerling's screenplay isn't bad, and the pre-Code candor is a treat.

Soon after this effort, Lionel Barrymore went back to acting full-time. I wouldn't blame him. Although Stanwyck is excellent as usual, this is a slight tale, typical of the time, that she alone makes worth watching—one time only. There's something frustrating, moreover, about how her character remains faithfully committed to the lout played by Monroe Owsley for so long. I suppose we have to accept that behavior which in our day would seem masochistic was the cultural norm in 1931 for most women. On the Pre-Code front, there's a gum-chewing scene stealer, foxy Sally Blane as Molly, a newbie who can't wait to dive into the sleazy dance hall world, although Stanwyck tries to advise her (and immediately says she knows that Molly is underage).

What brings everything down is the low budget. Columbia could mount a good-looking feature from time to time, but in 1931, I suppose they weren't doing it very much. The art director does suggest the opulence of Ricardo Cortez's apartment effectively without showing its interior; we get the idea from the lobby, hallway leading up to his door and vestibule, with its snazzy Spanish California motif. But the rest of the picture is pretty threadbare, and Barrymore's direction seems perfunctory and hurried, as if pressured by budget and schedule constraints (I hasten to add that budget is not necessarily everything; take a look at the excellent, absorbing Five Star Final, which basically takes place in two newspaper offices and an apartment living room, to see how resourcefully such conditions can be handled).

As for the story itself, it looks like it was dreamed up by somebody and sketched out on the back of an envelope all in the space of one afternoon. If Barrymore felt dispirited, he sure showed 'em, going into "A Free Soul" this very year, where his performance blew everybody's minds and won him a lifetime MGM contract. The song of the title is pretty good; we hear but do not see it performed by a torchy vocalist.