...as she did in Bolero during a dance audition, and maybe the production code is part of the reason for the success of the very similar "Bolero" in the precode era the year before, and the lack of success of this film.
Another problem is that I understood Raft's character in Bolero - he was a selfish guy who didn't care who he hurt on the way to fame until a war injury taught him what was important just a little too late.
Here Raft plays Joe Martin, a New York gangster in self imposed exile in Cuba. At the beginning of the film he is sold a counterfeit raffle ticket. Socialite Diana Harrison (Carole Lombard) has the genuine article, with a number identical to Martin's and it is also a five thousand dollar winner. She sees him later and tries to make it right with him, she wants to "pretend" he had the winning ticket since she is rich and 5000 dollars can't mean to her what it would mean to Martin. But Martin is insulted. He later finds the guy who sold him the counterfeit and punches him out in the club in which he works and gets fired.
On top of this, even though Diana has shown that she is a generous person, and even though he now knows she had nothing to do with him being scammed, he wants to humiliate her by pretending to have feelings for her and then laugh in her face as retaliation for the raffle ticket mess. That plan backfires and has Diana sailing back to Manhattan.
In the meantime, unemployed Martin discovers the Rumba, and decides to open his own club and perform the dance. Here is another problem with the film. In Bolero we got plenty of full body shots of Raft dancing. Here, in the production code era, the camera will not show Raft's hips when they are wiggling during the dance number. This is probably the same prudishness that kept audiences from seeing all of Elvis' body on TV when he first began performing there.
Martin wants a chance to see Diana again and explain and apologize, but it turns out he is more stir than gang as he really never did anything wrong at all in New York but witness a murder and the plotting behind it, and thus his old gang wants him dead to keep him from talking. So returning to New York could have deadly consequences.
So how does this all turn out? I'll let you watch and find out. Just don't expect the sparks to fly in the romance or the dance department in this one. It would be awhile before the movies learned how to work within the limitations of the production code to make movies with completely authentic characters again.
Another problem is that I understood Raft's character in Bolero - he was a selfish guy who didn't care who he hurt on the way to fame until a war injury taught him what was important just a little too late.
Here Raft plays Joe Martin, a New York gangster in self imposed exile in Cuba. At the beginning of the film he is sold a counterfeit raffle ticket. Socialite Diana Harrison (Carole Lombard) has the genuine article, with a number identical to Martin's and it is also a five thousand dollar winner. She sees him later and tries to make it right with him, she wants to "pretend" he had the winning ticket since she is rich and 5000 dollars can't mean to her what it would mean to Martin. But Martin is insulted. He later finds the guy who sold him the counterfeit and punches him out in the club in which he works and gets fired.
On top of this, even though Diana has shown that she is a generous person, and even though he now knows she had nothing to do with him being scammed, he wants to humiliate her by pretending to have feelings for her and then laugh in her face as retaliation for the raffle ticket mess. That plan backfires and has Diana sailing back to Manhattan.
In the meantime, unemployed Martin discovers the Rumba, and decides to open his own club and perform the dance. Here is another problem with the film. In Bolero we got plenty of full body shots of Raft dancing. Here, in the production code era, the camera will not show Raft's hips when they are wiggling during the dance number. This is probably the same prudishness that kept audiences from seeing all of Elvis' body on TV when he first began performing there.
Martin wants a chance to see Diana again and explain and apologize, but it turns out he is more stir than gang as he really never did anything wrong at all in New York but witness a murder and the plotting behind it, and thus his old gang wants him dead to keep him from talking. So returning to New York could have deadly consequences.
So how does this all turn out? I'll let you watch and find out. Just don't expect the sparks to fly in the romance or the dance department in this one. It would be awhile before the movies learned how to work within the limitations of the production code to make movies with completely authentic characters again.