City Without Men (1943)

Director:

Sidney Salkow

Writers:

Martin Berkeley (story)
Donald Davis (additional dialogue)

Release Date:

14 January 1943 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

Women fighting for their men, and their right to love them!

Plot:

A young woman's husband has been imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. In order to be near him to try to help him get his sentence overturned, she moves into a boardinghouse near the prison whose residents are the wives of inmates. |

Plot Keywords:

Prison | Beautiful Woman

Cast

Linda Darnell	...	Nancy Johnson
Edgar Buchanan	...	Michael T. Mallory
Michael Duane	...	Tom Adams
Sara Allgood	...	Maria Barton
Glenda Farrell	...	Billie LaRue
Leslie Brooks	...	Gwen
Doris Dudley	...	Winnie
Margaret Hamilton	...	Dora
Constance Worth	...	Elsie
Rosemary DeCamp	...	Mrs. Slade
Sheldon Leonard	...	Monk LaRue
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Arthur Loft	...	Lawyer (scenes deleted)

Also Known As:

Prison Farm (USA) (reissue title)

Runtime:

75 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Sweden:15

Company:

Columbia Pictures Corporation

For lip-readers only

Picture quality on Alpha DVD release is terrible but garbled soundtrack is even worse. Almost like watching a primitive foreign-language talkie in a language not yet recognized. Basic situation--a boarding house full of girlfriends, wives, and mothers of convicts living across the street from a prison where their men are impounded--has possibilities (think "Stage Door" on visitor's' day) but it's impossible to understand what Linda Darnell, Glenda Farrell, Margaret Hamilton (in change-of-pace role as a sassy beer-swilling card cheat), etc. are saying 80 percent of the time. (And what was Darnell doing in a Poverty Row clinker like this at this point in her career?) Odd little film with early David Raksin score, light years away from his "Laura" panache just a few years later.