Society lady Kay Francis (Mrs Seymour) runs a canteen for servicemen during WW2 as well as a beauty parlour. Both these businesses are a front for her real money-maker which is marrying off women to servicemen to then collect their allocated pay as a war wife and also to cash in on the insurance if the servicemen die. Women are encouraged to marry several men at a time. One victim of this scam is the friend of Colonel Paul Kelly (Pete Martin) so Kelly agrees to go undercover to smash this organized criminal gang.
This film is OK with a good performance by Kay at the centre of things and her sidekick Otto Kruger (Whitey) also does well as the chief heavy. The syndicate leader from Texas Matty Fain (Moranto) also plays his gangster role well. However, the film slips into sentimentality with Kay's teenage daughter Teala Loring (Connie) and the film slows in these sections and gets a bit boring. Another downfall is casting Paul Kelly as the man to crack the case. He can't act.
The sound quality isn't too good but you can live with it – there's a background hissing. Allotment wives has nothing to do with gardening as the title suggests – it could have been a film about women meeting at their allotments and engaging in gossip. I'm grateful that it's not about that and I feel I've learnt something about the times depicted. Never crossed my mind that this sort of thing went on.
This film is OK with a good performance by Kay at the centre of things and her sidekick Otto Kruger (Whitey) also does well as the chief heavy. The syndicate leader from Texas Matty Fain (Moranto) also plays his gangster role well. However, the film slips into sentimentality with Kay's teenage daughter Teala Loring (Connie) and the film slows in these sections and gets a bit boring. Another downfall is casting Paul Kelly as the man to crack the case. He can't act.
The sound quality isn't too good but you can live with it – there's a background hissing. Allotment wives has nothing to do with gardening as the title suggests – it could have been a film about women meeting at their allotments and engaging in gossip. I'm grateful that it's not about that and I feel I've learnt something about the times depicted. Never crossed my mind that this sort of thing went on.