Woman Unafraid (1934) User Reviews

Lucille Gleason, Policewoman

[boblipton · 4/10 · 16 August 2019]

Lucille Gleason is the police woman who supervises the local dance hall. She's friendly and approachable, and she helps out some fallen women by letting them stay at her house. She's out to get gangster Jason Robards, and has been letting his ex-girlfriend stay at her house, after escaping arrest. When Rpobards calls in a complaint about a noisy party, the police show up, the girl olts, and is taken for a ride by Robards. Plus Gleason loses her badge.

It's a decent story, and Mrs. Gleason is fine in the role, but director William J. Cowen can't raise a good performance out of Robards, and the pacing of the dialogue slows down abominably for skilled actors like Laura Treadwell, Dick Elliott and Henry Hall. The result is a 1-hour second feature that seems interminable.

"A port in every girl" has quite a different meaning than what our unafraid woman really meant.

[mark.waltz · 4/10 · 7 December 2019]

It's obvious that poverty row studios weren't quite as scrutinized as the major studios when it came to shocking dialog or racy subject matter. This feisty pre-code drama features a memorable performance by Lucille Gleason, wife of the more famous James Gleason, playing a police woman who takes more than just a friendly interest in troubled girls in her beat, taking them in while trying to take down mobster Jason Robards (Sr.) who takes matters into his own hands to stop her in her tracks. When one of the girls on parole (Barbara Weeks) is supposedly murdered, Gleason's determination increases even though through the interference of Robards and local moral society leader (Laura Treadwell), she is suspended.

It's Gleason's strong performance that aides this programmer from being a complete misfire that pointlessly includes then popular personality Richard "Skeets" Gallagher whose character is written with major inconsistencies, as is his on-screen aunt (Treadwell). Interestingly enough, her real name was utilized as Gene Tierney's character in the film noir classic "Laura". Robards Sr. is no threat to his more famous son, as bland on-screen as Robards Jr. was passionate.

In researching the life of Lucille Gleason, I was not really surprised that like her character here, she was involved in social causes, even running for public office. She makes up for the weakness of the script that switches uncomfortably between earthy comedy, social relevance and pathos. Based upon her performance here, stage veteran Gleason could have had a career in the type of roles that Marie Dressler had played but stood in the shadow of husband James Gleason who was having a success at the time with Edna May Oliver in the "Hildegarde Withers" series at RKO and later played the boxing coach in "Here Comes Mr. Jordan".