Gambling Lady

So I'm actually averaging a 5/10 story with 9/10 performances to give this one a 7. Barbara Stanwyck (Lady Lee) is well cast as the daughter of an honest gambler who has been raised to be an honest gambler. When her dad, Mike Lee (Paul Barrat) is being pressured by the syndicate to join their dishonest rackets, he kills himself rather than give in.

So Lady Lee is on her own, using what her dad taught her and the motto of "honesty,always" in gambling to make money for herself and her backers. She cleans up in every game using honest methods. Along the way she meets a rich young man, Garry Madison (Joel McCrea) who falls for her and wants to marry her. So far this is the stuff of any mundane 30's programmer.

What makes it unique are the performances. This film is still technically a precode, released just a few months before the code, and I had to look it up to see. It rides both sides of the fence. It makes gambling look like an honorable pursuit, as long as you are honest about it. Heck, by the end of the film you even don't look badly at the criminal gambling syndicate that drove Mike Lee to suicide and likely killed one other person besides that. The person you want to hiss at is Claire Dodd as one of Gary's rich ex girlfriends. She really makes some underhanded moves.

An oddball performance comes from C. Aubrey Smith as Garry Madison's dad, Peter. He gambles, he knew Lee's dad, and he likes Lee, yet he is willing to pay her off to not marry Garry. He has the audacity to want to cut cards over whether they marry or not, AND ask Lady "isn't that how Mike would have handled it"? OK, you rub the suicide of a girl's father in her face AND you think that your son would be better off in the clutches of some underhanded hussy like Clair Dodd's character? Color me bewildered by Garry's dad. It's just weird to see such unlikable words and attitudes coming from a character who is largely playing someone cuddly and paternal.

I'd give this film a shot. At 66 minutes it moves at a very brisk pace with good performances by everybody involved. Just be prepared to scratch your head a great deal and ask "Why did THAT person just do THAT???".

Daughter of a professional gambler, Lady Lee (barbara Stanwyck) is a popular card player among the swells. She catches the eye of Garry Maddison (Joel McCrea )who falls head over heels for her and his father and gambling buddy (C. Aubrey Smith) makes a halfhearted attempt to buy her off more as a test than anything else. Other interested parties, Garry's elitist beau (Claire Dodd) and a fellow card sharp ( Pat O'Brien) whose carrying a torch for Lady are not so happy with the union however. Murder intercedes and Lady's lap of luxury lifestyle may be short lived.

Lady Lee is tailored made for Stanwyck and she dominates the picture with her self assured yet vulnerable style. McCrea and O'Brien bring a touch more complexity to their standard 30s character roles to stave off predictability and Director Archie Mayo provides a few interesting montages and compositions to give Gambling Lady a decent enough look that by the time it reaches it's somewhat contrived finish will not have you feeling cheated.

D: Archie Mayo. Barbara Stanwyck, Joel McCrea, Pat O'Brien, Claire Dodd, C. Aubrey Smith.

Not a bad romp through every cliche in the mid-depression era: tough dame from the wrong side of the tracks, kind, sympathetic crooks, useless rich people, true love between unlikely lovers, a couple of romantic triangles, tacked-on murder mystery episode, etc. Also, Stanwyck starting to show big doses of the tough-as-nails but soft-hearted street-smart operator she perfected by the time of "The Lady Eve". As always, Barbara Stanwyck is utterly fascinating to watch, talented & lovely, Stanwyck's great forte was her utter believably in any role she undertook.

Directed by Archie Mayo, Gambling Lady was, by Pre-Code standards, a tame romp into the zone where gambling syndicates and high society intersect. When an honest card sharp commits suicide rather than go crooked, his daughter Lady Lee (Stanwyck) steps into his place, winning great sums for herself (and her bosses) while keeping the game fair and square. But when handsome high society swain Garry (McCrea, looking about as good in a tuxedo as is humanly possible) steps into a game, she's smitten - not realizing that their ill-matched pairing between high and low society might be a sucker bet.

Stanwyck didn't think much of Mayo, "a rude, fat man" prone to pinching actresses' bottoms (she grabbed his arm the first - and presumably last - time he tried pinching hers). But the actress liked McCrea. He, in turn, marveled at her professionalism, and how, if a take was blown it was always because of his stumble, not hers. But she also gave him a frank lesson in professionalism the day he was absent from shooting stills of the cast. (It wasn't McCrea's fault - nobody told him about the shoot, especially the publicist who figured no one would miss an RKO actor on loan.) At lunch Stanwyck cornered McCrea. "Where the h e l l were you for stills?" When McCrea shrugged and said they didn't need him, Stanwyck gave him a tongue lashing. "I was in burlesque. We used to have to change our clothes on the train, and our makeup, and we couldn't take a bath and we lived out of a suitcase. You've grown up in California where you go to the beach on your days off and ride the waves, and you're a happy Southern Californian kid. Just get off your big fat a s s and get to work."

McCrea took her candid advice to heart, and he and Stanwyck became great friends during the filming of Gambling Lady.

Gambling Lady(1934) is definitely Art Deco in the decor and you also find Egyptian artifacts on the mantel and other places in the film These types of bric-a-brac were the rage in Hollywood at that time because of the opening of King Tut's tomb in the 1920s. You see many pieces of jewelry and statues, etc. In these 1930s films that link to the Egyptian craze back then. The clean lines of the Art Deco era are also evident in these films. Beautiful! Another excellent flick from one of the most UNcelebrated actresses of the golden age of Hollywood.

Stanwyck plays an honest gambler and she steals the movie. After she ("Lady" Lee) realizes she can't rely on her gambling father, she meets wealthy Joel McCrea, who is, well, young and smitten. Find acting by all, including Pat O'Brien as Stanwyck's buddy and Sir C. Aubrey Smith as a father figure.

I just saw this movie shortly after seeing "But the Flesh Is Weak" on Turner Classic Movies. Sir C. Aubrey Smith is also in that movie, in which he plays the gambling father of young Robert Montgomery, who is smitten by wealthy Nora Gregor and is buddies with wealthy Heather Thatcher. Both movies have a similar parent-child duo wanting to strike it rich, and the start of each movie is similar. But from there on, they are two very different movies, "Gambling Lady" being a more thoughtful, dramatic film, and "But the Flesh Is Weak" being a romantic romp.

Gambling Lady was the first of seven films that Joel McCrea and Barbara Stanwyck would team together in. But the fact that it's the first of them is the only distinguishing feature about this rather routine film that skips from a gangster story to a romance without missing a beat.

Stanwyck is the daughter of professional, but honest gambler Robert Barrat who commits suicide because he's broke and won't tie in with the gambling syndicate. But he's taught his daughter all he knows about various games of chance. She's so good that Kevin Spacey would definitely have picked her for his team in the current 21.

She's got two guys on the hook for her, rich playboy Joel McCrea and bookie Pat O'Brien. Claire Dodd is in her usual role as the other woman, in this case McCrea's other woman. Best in the film though is C. Aubrey Smith, McCrea's father who's the wisest rich guy around.

A murder, an alibi, a divorce, all figure in this film which when it started I thought would be one of Warner Brothers gangster flicks. Turned into a romantic melodrama which I wasn't expecting.

Joel McCrea was under contract to RKO at the time and this was one of those loan out deals. Neither he or Stanwyck thought much of the film, but they formed a lifelong friendship out of this and went on to such better films as Union Pacific, The Great Man's Lady, and Trooper Hook.

See all of those before you see this one.