Beauty for Sale

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.

The story opens with Letty (Madge Evans) sending her mother back to their hometown of Paducah after her father has died. In a front porch step conversation with her landlady's daughter (Una Merkel as Carol), we learn that Letty's "rich dad" died with nothing but debts and after paying them all off there was only 600 dollars, which Letty credited to her mother. A recent beauty school graduate, Letty now has to earn a living given that she has no money. This one little conversation tells you all you need to know about our main characters. Letty - hopeful despite her family's bad luck, courageous, full of class. Carol - protective of her friend, sassy, wise in the ways of the world and unapologetically a mercenary when it comes to men, and Carol's brother, Bill, not bad looking at all, but as grating on the nerves as Pee Wee Herman and just as appealing, and worse, he's in love with Letty -it s not mutual - and he's the moralizing kind. We also understand from this conversation that Madame Sonia's Salon is not for girls of the faint of heart - girls like Letty who were raised "like a Persian Kitten". Letty says she can take it, so Carol promises to get her a job there.

During the next prolonged scene, at Madame Sonia's exclusive salon, we get the lay of the land there - girls glad to be employed in the depression, but with wealthy bored beefy customers, these girls want a piece of the high life for themselves. If the salon's customers can afford to lie around half the day gossiping with mud on their faces, why can't they? During the first half of the film, whenever any of the beauticians are photographed together, they are usually in profile, oddly smiling and at an odd angle, like those "happy workers unite" posters in Old Soviet Russia. Later, as things do not work out quite so well, the photography becomes more individualistic and conventional as the focus is on what is, not what might have been.

Hedda Hopper is inspired as Madame Sonia who will do anything to protect her precious son, played by Philips Holmes. She considers the girls she employs so far beneath her she doesn't see the obvious relationship forming between her son and one of the beauticians. Alice Brady is hilarious as Mrs. Henrietta Sherwood, a rather housebound woman who has the beauticians come to her house, substitutes her dog for a child, and is obsessed with numerology. Her executive husband (Otto Kruger as Mr. Sherwood) falls for Letty, and we can sympathize with him, since he comes across as a guy who is just lonely for the wife he married but who transformed into this silly creature after he became wealthy and to whom he is now bound purely out of obligation and habit. He actually has a conversation with his wife talking about the "wife he remembers" when they were struggling. She shrugs it off and goes on chattering about her numerologist. Even Carol has a back-story that makes you realize that behind that adding machine exterior there beats a heart that was once badly broken and made her the mercenary she is today.

This film has a little bit of everything for the precode fan, and it's worth watching more than once to get all of the one liners and undercurrents going on. Highly recommended.

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).

A story like this in the 30s even with its relative mildness to today's movies could've only been made because it belonged to the pre-code era. It does have its share of problems with some outdated views but at the same time, there are a lot of things in it that are progressive even by today's standards. The story itself can be seen as a classic rom-com trope now but the film treats the subject quite bleakly while having enough stuff for levity. It is not much more than a studio movie from the 20s but it has moments of brilliance in the script that make it really interesting. Madge Evans and Una Merkel are charming and powerful on-screen, the two biggest reasons the film works so well. In most of the romantic movies, I've seen till the 50s and 60s the male lead is almost never really convincing enough for me. Maybe it's because of different sensibilities but I feel like it has to do more with how men looked upon themselves than how women chose them at the time. This is one of the rare times where I thought Otto Kruger's character was nearly convincing enough for me to not cringe while watching the romantic scenes.

Richard Boleslavski directs this pre-Code drama for MGM about three women in the beauty trade who are there to find husbands, richer the better. All of them have a tale to tell why they want marriage and security in the same male package. Madge Evans, Una Merkel, and Florine McKinney are the three women.

Nothing here in language or really in sexual innuendo that would make the censors frown. I think that what got some tailfeathers ruffled was Beauty For Sale's showing that gold digging was the way to go. The only one who falls hard and has a real romance is McKinney with Phillips Holmes, the son of the women's employer Hedda Hopper. He's idealistic, but weak in the end and it's a formula for tragedy.

Merkel is the comic relief as she usually is and has some really great lines. The girls all live at Merkel's mom's boardinghouse. Mom is tart tongued May Robson and there's a brother Eddie Nugent they'd both like to see out their house and their hair.

The main story line is Madge Evans who falls for married Otto Kruger. He's married to society girl Alice Brady an empty head who likes the money and position Kruger gives her, no way she wants to divorce him. Looks for a while like Evans will to settle if she can't select.

The three girls flesh their characters out fine and there's some snappy dialog especially for Una Merkel. Two years from now, no way this ending would have approved by The Code.