Hot Saturday (1932)

User Rating:

6.5/10   

Director:

William A. Seiter

Writers:

Harvey Fergusson (novel)
Josephine Lovett (writer)

Release Date:

28 October 1932 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

...when her cheating found her out...she sought to make marriage cover her sins! (original ad)

Plot:

Bank employee Ruth Brock has a reputation around town for being fast-and-easy but none of the panting suitors has made her yet...

Plot Keywords:

Based On Novel

Cast

Nancy Carroll	...	Ruth Brock
Cary Grant	...	Romer Sheffield
Randolph Scott	...	Bill Fadden
Edward Woods	...	Conny Billop
Lilian Bond	...	Eva Randolph
William Collier Sr.	...	Harry Brock
Jane Darwell	...	Mrs. Ida Brock
Stanley Smith	...	Joe
Rita La Roy	...	Camille
Rose Coghlan	...	Annie Brock
Oscar Apfel	...	Ed W. Randolph
Jessie Arnold	...	Aunt Minnie
Grady Sutton	...	Archie

Runtime:

73 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Noiseless Recording)

Filming Locations:

Lake Arrowhead, San Bernardino National Forest, California, USA

Company:

Paramount Pictures

Trivia:

One of over 700 Paramount Productions, filmed between 1929 and 1949, which were sold to MCA/Universal in 1958 for television distribution, and have been owned and controlled by Universal ever since.

Goofs:

Continuity: When Ruth takes off her shoes at Romer's house, they're are covered with mud. But when he hands them to her in the car a moment later, they're mud-free and highly polished.

Quotes:

Ruth Brock: What do you expect for a boat ride? Marlene Dietrich?

Soundtrack:

Isn't It Romantic

Excellent cast, interesting story, and undershorts

Aside from the silly and gratuitous underwear scene, this movie does a good job of telling the story of poor Ruth Brock, a hard-working, put-upon small town girl who is judged and persecuted by her neighbors and so-called friends following a day of fun on an eponymous 'Hot Saturday' in the summer of 1932.

Subsequent events show how much women had staked on maintaining their reputations at that time, a topic that didn't go away with the enforcement of the production code though it lost a lot of its nuance. The expression on Ruth's face in the last frame of this film is so uncertain...she doesn't know if she's doing the right thing, doesn't know quite what she's getting into. I grieve for the loss of that ambiguity in films made in the years to come.

Nancy Carroll is brilliant in the role of Ruth, sparing the audience tedious hysterics and instead portraying the bitterness and frustration of living in a town of petty fools with nothing better to do than tear each other apart. I sort of wish there were two versions of this movie, one starring Carroll and one starring Barbara Stanwyck so I could do a side-by-side comparison. Stanwyck did such a good job with offended righteousness in 'Night Nurse'. But I'd keep Cary Grant in both...young and perfectly cast in the role of the local "disreputable cad" (that's how he's described (aptly) on the label).

But even a disreputable cad can have good points...and keen-eyed, truthful, pre-production code Ruth won't fail to notice them...