I tried my best to dislike this, to see it for what it is: a cheap, quickly made B movie with hackneyed poorly written stereotypes....but I actually enjoyed it.
Sick and tired of being forced to play the same old role over and over again, Joan Blondell finally resigned from Warner Brothers but Jack Warner insisted she fulfil her contractual obligation by making one last film, this one. She'd complained that she was never given any proper dramatic roles but was told that she wasn't employed as an actress but just for her big eyes and big boobs. Everyone believed that this film was going to be dross so Jack Warner insisted that his deserting star would feature in this. If being associated with this wouldn't damage any future prospects of employment for her nothing would! Additionally, out of spite, her role was minimised, a younger female actress was put into the story and to cap it all, she was only given third billing.
It makes me angry that the studio treated this loveliest of all the 1930s actress so badly. That's what made me determined that I'd hate this - I only watched it to see if it was as bad as they said. I was annoyed with myself for actually enjoying this - almost disloyal to the memory of my 1930s crush!
It's hardly a great picture but you quickly begin to like the crassly conceived characters so have to keep watching. You might not want it to be but it's annoyingly engaging. The story (from the pen of a young Dalton Trumbull) is quite different if a little cruel. It's an unedifying endoscopy into the world of boxing promotion. Pat O'Brien and Joan Blondell cynically trick a feeble minded, orphaned country bumpkin into becoming a prize fighter by getting an old alcoholic ex-con to pretend to be his doting long-lost mother.
That old woman is the brilliant 80-year old May Robson (amazingly when she was born Disraeli was PM, Charles Dickens was still writing novels and Abraham Lincoln had yet to become president of America!) Although her performance is less impressive than in the fabulous LADY FOR A DAY, she is the real star of this - she imbues class and genuine humour to what otherwise be just another slightly shabby B feature. Poor Joan may have hated this but she'd been in many much worse pictures.
Sick and tired of being forced to play the same old role over and over again, Joan Blondell finally resigned from Warner Brothers but Jack Warner insisted she fulfil her contractual obligation by making one last film, this one. She'd complained that she was never given any proper dramatic roles but was told that she wasn't employed as an actress but just for her big eyes and big boobs. Everyone believed that this film was going to be dross so Jack Warner insisted that his deserting star would feature in this. If being associated with this wouldn't damage any future prospects of employment for her nothing would! Additionally, out of spite, her role was minimised, a younger female actress was put into the story and to cap it all, she was only given third billing.
It makes me angry that the studio treated this loveliest of all the 1930s actress so badly. That's what made me determined that I'd hate this - I only watched it to see if it was as bad as they said. I was annoyed with myself for actually enjoying this - almost disloyal to the memory of my 1930s crush!
It's hardly a great picture but you quickly begin to like the crassly conceived characters so have to keep watching. You might not want it to be but it's annoyingly engaging. The story (from the pen of a young Dalton Trumbull) is quite different if a little cruel. It's an unedifying endoscopy into the world of boxing promotion. Pat O'Brien and Joan Blondell cynically trick a feeble minded, orphaned country bumpkin into becoming a prize fighter by getting an old alcoholic ex-con to pretend to be his doting long-lost mother.
That old woman is the brilliant 80-year old May Robson (amazingly when she was born Disraeli was PM, Charles Dickens was still writing novels and Abraham Lincoln had yet to become president of America!) Although her performance is less impressive than in the fabulous LADY FOR A DAY, she is the real star of this - she imbues class and genuine humour to what otherwise be just another slightly shabby B feature. Poor Joan may have hated this but she'd been in many much worse pictures.