A distinctly Depression-era cocktail of comedy and tragedy in a bustling night club. Life is unfair and only the most lucky among us ever get what we want–and that’s just a simple fact in this film’s world. Even the fun opening montage of night life in the city, full of rapid-fire jokes and pre-Code hints of seedy sex, has a curious pall over it. It all feels like the good times of unhappy people. Everyone’s laughing and screwing and drinking their way to Hell.
Don’t call it a morality tale, though. It’s not. This film LOVES to throw this sensational stuff at us.
No, it’s just an expression of the day’s cynicism. It’s a sad world out there. Even glamorous places are full of pain, this film says.
This is one of those movies where everything happens in one night in one setting, a place called Happy’s owned by Boris Karloff. He’s a jerk of a boss and has some shady deals going on the side, but he’s charming to his upper crust clientle, festooned in tuxedos, furs and jewels. These people are also prone to alcoholism and troubled marriages. Karloff works the room every night and has a good idea of who’s cheating on who and he helps them keep their secrets.
Then there are the workers, particularly the chorus girls, who volley wisecracks back-and-forth with each other about the job, about being broke and about their hard luck love lives (there’s a 42nd Street sort of snap to all of that, but a year earlier; incidently, Busby Berkeley worked on one dance number in this film and you can instantly tell that it’s his work). Then, there’s the friendly doorman (Clarence Muse) whose job requires him to stand out in the snow, but he takes everything in stride and with humor even if he can’t get the night off to see his wife who’s in the hospital.
It’s a panorma of characters and storylines here–and all in a mere fifty-seven minutes (yep, this is not even an hour long). We’re not sure who the main characters are until maybe twenty minutes in when it zeroes in on Lew Ayres as a rich guy who drinks his nights away grieving his father’s death (it’s a whole soap opera in which Lew’s mother shot his father) and Mae Clarke as the sensitive chorus girl who sincerely feels for him, when she’s not being hounded by George Raft as a threatening orbiter who wants one thing from her–and it’s not her tuna casserole recipe.
At this film’s quick pace, romance blooms fast, violence happens suddenly and everything can (and does) change in mere seconds. If, like me, you’re into these 1930s antiques, this is a curiosity worth seeing.
The director was Hobart Henley. He both acted and directed through the silent era, starting in 1914 and then saw his career sputter during the sound era. This was his next to last film.