Beauty for Sale

This fast, fizzy, deft comedy skirts the Code so nimbly that I couldn't tell just by watching (on TCM this morning, thanks for the thousandth time TCM) whether it's pre- or post-Code. I appreciated so many unsung, supporting, and subtextual things about this ur-romcom that I can't mention them all here. In order of surprise/urgency, the top 5 are:

1. Otto Kruger! Here is the man who clearly should gotten all those roles wasted on Warren Williams - what were producers thinking? (Were they thinking?) They look about the same age, yet Otto's handsomer, less tedious, and possessed of actual romantic and comic acting chops.

2. The writing! Cattiness among beauticians, and the delectable Alice Brady brand of un-self-awareness: "I'm very intuitive." Her literal kiss-off scene with Kruger has never been done better in a comedy, not even by Meryl Streep and *insert leading man here*.

3. The bad boyfriend! An almost complex portrait of a goofball who clearly doesn't deserve the leading lady, but not because he's a bad guy. He's not all good, either. He's just not grown up. It's a forgiving, shaded character, played by Eddie Nugent with a subtlety usually missing from lame runner-up lover roles.

4. The slapstick! I don't care how many takes they went through to print the change-of-driver-in-real-estate-agent's-car scene. The result is totally worth it. I'm actually surprised I've never seen this bit in a TCM montage of silly scenes.

5. Madge Evens! Una Merkel! Listed low, but only for the surprise factor. Both are at or near their very best here. Miss Merkel never gets enough credit for delivering both sides of a double-entendre grilled to smoking hot perfection. Miss Evans does more-or-less blameless ingenue so well it's not boring - this is Carole Lombard territory, and she nails it, sweetly and demurely (well, mostly demurely, see no. 4).

This is a superb dramatic film, one of the best of this type. It gives one of the best insights into how the attitudes of the early 30s were so different from those of today. It's also exceptionally well made with excellent direction, acting and writing making it thoroughly engaging and entertaining.

There were a few films made about this time with very similar themes: THREE ON A MATCH, THREE WISE GIRLS for example showing how three young women could survive in the big nasty city. The only way many of them could survive was to get themselves a man, a husband or someone else's husband - for so many there just wasn't a choice. To us, the 1930s might seem a magical and exciting time to visit for an hour and a half but it would be unimaginably horrible if we had to live there.

This picture would look good on the big screen, it's such a beautifully made and imaginatively photographed picture. You can see how much care and effort went into making every scene perfect. The lighting, the framing, the sets are just right. Also, you'll notice that it's not just the actors doing their lines who are acting (one flaw apparent in many early 30s movies) the facial expressions and reactions from everyone in frame are all perfect. This is film-making way ahead of its time. One thing which makes this a little bit special is its director Richard Boleslawski. He had run the first acting school in America teaching Stanislavski's technique which evolved into what became known as "method acting" as beloved by Brando and co. Many years later. The naturalism and realistic performances make this film feel a more modern than so many early talkies but even so, it actually manages to capture and convey to us the feel of the 1930s even stronger. It's a shame Boleslawski died young or he would have been much more well known today.

Besides benefiting from a director ahead of his time, top cinematographer James Wong Howe and high production standards courtesy of MGM, the cast and also top notch - even Philips Holmes! Madge Evans, who'd been in movies since childhood is outstanding - she gives such an authentic, relatable and believable performance. She's one of those people whose acting is so good, it's not acting.

Of those similar films tracing the lives of three different types of girl struggling to survive in the city, this picture isn't quite as engrossing as THREE ON A MATCH but still packs a punch. It's a hundred times better than THREE WISE GIRLS but that's mainly because this doesn't have Jean Harlow in it! SHE HAD TO SAY YES however, although about one rather than three girls is the most shocking, jaw-dropping insight into how alien to us the times were back then.

The subjects of "Beauty for Sale" are three employees of a fashionable Manhattan beauty salon run by the haughty Hedda Hopper. There is Una Merkel, the hardworking but cynical daughter of a rooming house proprietress (May Robson), Madge Evans, a boarder fresh from Paducah, Kentucky hoping to make it in the Big City and Florine McKinney who falls for the charms of Hopper's rakish son (Phillips Holmes).

At various moments the main characters' faces are arranged at sharp angles in close-up as they converse about the hard choices in their lives; or off-kilter flashes of one beauty parlor customer after another engaged in varieties of gossip and small talk; we get glimpses of carefully choreographed throbbing studio-shot street life as we follow characters from plot point to plot point: Eddie Nugent (Robson's loquacious son) on a crowded Brooklyn street as he makes his way home; the minutiae of daily home life: Robson preparing a gargantuan lunch basket feast for a departing tenant; a beauty parlor client (Alice Brady at her ditzy best) fussing with her pillows, her dog, her tea as she chatters away as her long-suffering, patient husband (the elegant Otto Kruger) attends to her every whim. Every scene is filled with little bits of vibrancy and every featured player contributes something solid.

The Madge Evans character gets the most screen time as she struggles to figure out whether to pursue her relationship with the older, married Kruger who is taken with her. This could be Evans's most substantial screen role. Merkel provides her customary sassy humor as she stakes out an even older admirer, hoping to marry into riches. McKinney's romance is another story entirely.

Despite its rather hackneyed story (young women navigating the perils of romance) "Beauty for Sale" is well worth viewing for its details of character, perspective and environment.

Beauty For Sale stars a radiant Madge Evans as a good girl trying to make it as a beautician in Manhattan. The film is a little more than a multiplot soap opera but benefits from Evans, the unlikely romantic lead (Otto Kruger), solid direction by Richard Boleslawski, and most of all, superb photography by James Wong Howe (here credited simply as James Howe). The film is sublime when Howe's camera is most active, with superb lighting and set-ups and some scenes that look like they could be from films shot 20 or 30 years in the future. His sense of depth is particularly impressive, especially in a brilliant scene involving a slowly swinging bathroom door! The film feels like a classic at about the two thirds mark, but sadly cycles down to merely enjoyable by the final reel, as comedy and romance take over from tragedy and drama. Nonetheless, this is strongly recommended.

Another delectable sweet-and-sour pre-Code entry of the early 1930s, nimbly skirting the edges of that era's morality with prodding grown-up material, satirizing the comedic and dramatic possibilities therein. Story concerns three gals who work in a New York City beauty parlor: one is dating a married man, another is pregnant by a no-goodnik, and the third spends her nights with a rich sugar daddy. Society cattiness at its most cynical; colorful performances by Madge Evans, Una Merkel and Alice Brady adds to the fun. Director Richard Boleslawski allows the bracing narrative to degenerate once or twice into slapstick, but if you can overlook that there's a great deal of sharp, salty wit here. Fine supporting turns by Otto Kruger, Hedda Hopper and May Robson. **1/2 from ****