Sadie McKee

This is often forgotten in Joan Crawford's filmography. It has lots of the ingredients of precode Hollywood, released a couple of month before the inception of the Production Code. It also has lots of the components of the films that Crawford made for MGM of the 1930s, but this one came relatively early in her career and thus seems fresh compared to later similar entries.

Sadie is the daughter of the cook in the home of the wealthy Alderson family. One night when helping out with the serving at dinner, she listens to the son and lawyer of the family (Franchot Tone as Michael) talking about how her boyfriend, Tommy Wallace, is a thief and should get no second chance from the community now that he's been fired from his job. Sadie tells them off and takes off with Tommy (Gene Raymond) to New York City. They have about twenty dollars between them, and pretend to be married to the landlady, planning to be married the next day. Sadie has a job interview, so she and Tommy agree to meet at city hall at noon and be married. He never shows. But this is not an Affair to Remember. Instead, it's exactly what you'd suspect. Brassy nightclub singer Dolly Merrick hears Tommy singing in the boarding house bathroom and offers him a job singing in her act. But the audition would conflict with his wedding. Tommy picks the audition over the wedding, clears out his clothes, and doesn't even leave a note behind.

Sadie, now a hardened jaded woman, gets a job dancing in a night club act where she meets the very wealthy Jack Brennan ( Edward Arnold). He's drunk when he meets her, drunk when he marries her, in fact the guy is perpetually drunk to the point I get tired of him, and it is so hard to get tired of the talented Edward Arnold. The complicating factor is that Michael Alderson is Brennan's lawyer, thinks the worst of Sadie, and is still a pompous glass bowl, although he was right about Tommy having no character. Sadie can't forgive him for that either.

Then comes the day when Sadie is told Brennan will die if he doesn't quit drinking, Sadie sees Tommy again and the old feelings surface, and Michael AND all of the servants think she is just a scheming tramp trying to let Brennan die drinking so she can become the rich widow. Complications ensue.

This film had lots of precode moments. There is the insinuation that Tommy and Sadie, in spite of their promises to each other to wait, do share a bed that one night they are in the rooming house. And there is the delightful Jean Dixon as Sadie's hard boiled friend who looks at the bedroom arrangements after Sadie marries Brennan and says "I've done a lot more for a lot less".

Recommended if it ever comes your way. It packs a lot of plot into its running time.

"Sadie McKee" was made just before Hollywood got serious about sanitizing its content, and the movie is set squarely in what we now call the pre-Code world. In this world, men are on the make, cops are on the take, rich people do pretty much as they please and prostitution is just another job option.

But while many other pre-Code film can leave you with a bleak feeling about human nature, this one is stocked with basically decent characters. Bribe-takers are just ordinary folks trying to get by. A clever seducer can't silence his own conscience. And when an aging, drunken millionaire orders up a young girl and takes her home for the night, the relationship quickly blossoms from exploitation into an odd kind of love.

Joan Crawford plays the title role, a plucky survivor whose ups and downs would have broken a lesser person. Gene Raymond, Franchot Tone and Edward Arnold play the three very different men in her life. The story is improbable at times, moving from flophouse to sleazy nightclub to mansion. But it's never gets so unrealistic that you stop caring. The ending is somewhat enigmatic, at least to me. I'm still wondering exactly where everyone stood at the end, and where things were headed. That's OK. I like a movie that leaves a little something nagging at you.

If the story is improbable, there's nothing unbelievable about how Joan Crawford's character turns men's heads. A lot of people still view Crawford through a "campy" lens, remembering her long years as a fading star with a lot of personal baggage (real and reputed). Forget all that stuff. In 1934 she was young and lithe and simply gorgeous. She carries this movie, and she carries it well.

Clarence Brown was an above average director and his pictures with Joan Crawford in the early and mid '30s are better than those she did with others. Brown had an eye and a sense of detail and he favors long takes with two or more performers interacting, which creates a certain tension where there might otherwise be none. Certainly this improbable script is not noticeably better than others Joan did around that time, but everything about this picture works perfectly.

Having finally found her best 'look,' Crawford is undeniably gorgeous, the ravishing epitome of glamor. And Adrian does some of his best work for her in this, putting her in one stunning and flattering gown after another. She is also given a talented and varied supporting cast and all of the big set pieces work, though Edward Arnold's drunk scenes go on for too long.

And there are a couple of fantastic sets, one of Arnold's mansion and the other of a glass sanitarium in the snow. Though the whole cast is more than adequate, a few players stand out: Jean Dixon is delightfully world weary in a leopard coat, Esther Ralston makes a perfect amoral siren, and it's a bit of a revelation to see how much Leo G. Carroll accomplishes by doing very little in his role as a nasty butler. There's also a fantastic jazz version of "After You've Gone" performed by Gene Austin, Candy Candido and Otto Heimel. As for the main players, Crawford, Franchot Tone and Gene Raymond don't dig very deep in their performances, but with a plucky, luscious Crawford at full tilt and with everything else about this movie clicking so well, it doesn't matter. It works.

Joan Crawford is "Sadie McKee" in this 1934 film also starring Gene Raymond, Edward Arnold, Franchot Tone, and Jean Dixon.

Crawford is the daughter of the cook for the wealthy Alderson family. The young man of the family, Michael (Tone) has obviously fallen for Sadie, but her heart belongs to loser Tommy Wallace (Raymond), who has just been fired for a malfeasance.

Sadie runs off to New York with Tommy, and the two wind up in the rooming house of Mrs. Craney. The next day, they are to be married at City Hall at noon.

However, showgirl Dolly Merrick (Esther Ralston) who also lives at the rooming house, hears Tommy's dulcet tones and convinces him to forget marriage, leave town, and take a job in her traveling show.

Another women rooming at Mrs. Craney's is Opal, who gets Sadie a job at her club. There Sadie meets the filthy rich, drunken Jack Brennan, whom she marries.

It turns out that Jack's drinking has all but destroyed his health. Though Sadie can't stop thinking about Tommy, she is determined to help Jack quit drinking and regain his health.

Pretty good melodrama, with Crawford wearing some fabulous outfits. Esther Ralston was a gorgeous blonde and is a lively Dolly Merrick, and Jean Dixon gives a good performance as Opal.

The debonair Franchot Tone gives a smooth performance as Michael, and Gene Raymond sings and acts pleasantly enough as Tommy, who manages to be likable though he walked out on Sadie.

Crawford made a lot of this type of film -- the working girl who moves up in class -- and they were very popular. She gives an appealing performance, and she was one actress who could look and act like a hard-working girl who came from a slum and also pull off being glamorous and wealthy.

Worth seeing.

I'd have to describe Sadie McKee as both the typical Joan Crawford vehicle and the typical Franchot Tone vehicle. The two of them who were husband and wife when the film was made are perfectly cast in roles that typified their images in the Thirties.

Crawford is the daughter of a cook on the sumptuous palatial Long Island estate where Tone is the young heir and a lawyer by trade. To earn a few extra bucks Crawford occasionally helps mom out serving at formal meals.

At one of those meals she hears Tone disparaging her sweetheart Gene Raymond who was caught in a petty theft. Tone makes a big point in saying we can't give people like these help because they're no good. Crawford throws a fit and runs to Raymond.

She almost marries Raymond, but he runs out on her for Esther Ralston. In New York working as a nightclub cigarette girl she runs into Edward Arnold who is a millionaire with a severe drinking problem. No doubt caused by drinking a lot of rotgut liquor during recently repealed Prohibition. And wouldn't you know it, Tone is his lawyer.

So Sadie has her three men, give you one guess who she winds up with in the end. You'd probably guess right, but let's say it's a character altering experience for all.

Sadie McKee is probably a good example of the Joan Crawford shop girl before she became a hardened creature like Crystal Allen in The Women. As for Franchot Tone, MGM just loved casting him as rich men in a tuxedo, probably because he looked so darn good in them. The only way either of them escaped type casting was as they got older they varied their parts due to age. Crawford was ever the film star, even in some of the horror flicks she did in the sixties. Tone went right into television and worked steady right up to his death.

Sadie McKee however is a good opportunity to see them both young and at the height of their fame. Also note the Nacio Herb Brown-Arthur Freed ballad All I Do Is Dream Of You comes from Sadie McKee.