HOUSEWIFE (1934)

Unheralded home vs work love triangle (interloper Bette Davis said of this one: Dear God!  What a horror!) sees over-burdened housewife Ann Dvorak making do on George Brent’s puny salary while fortifying him with ambition to break out of his office manager position at a mid-sized Chicago advertising agency.  At home, she gets the worst of it, while at work entitled husband Brent catches it from his demanding, do-nothing boss.  But all changes when former high school pal Bette Davis reenters his life after eight years in New York becoming a big time ad copywriter.  She’s just joined his firm with a salary that dwarfs his.  Humiliating.  Taking a chance on himself (but only upon Dvorak’s encouragement and secret savings), his new company turns the corner just in time, soon big enough for him to hire Davis!  And while he’s openly pulled from his new lux home by an emboldened Davis, Dvorak also has a new admirer in older top client John Halliday.  None of this played out in the usual hand-wringing manner, but met head-on with both women knowing their strengths and weaknesses.  Quite an interesting angle, and retaining a Pre-Code attitude in spite of coming in (just) Post-Code.  It freshens a lot of the clichés.  (Well, not all of them, there’s a kid in the pic to catalyze a happy ending.  Boo!)  If only director Alfred E. Green weren’t such a stick-in-the-mud, the proto-feminist elements might be more celebrated.   With Davis displaying a great slouch, but still in her brief platinum blonde period.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  One moment holding this back demands a BlackFace ALERT!  It comes during one of the film’s highlights, an hilariously awful radio program for Halliday’s classy cosmetics company which hits rock bottom when a pair of lousy BlackFace comedians come on.  But then something fascinating happens.  None of the four principals had advance notice (they’re watching a final rehearsal) and, plainly disgusted by the act, immediately demand a complete rewrite.  (Ironically, director Green’s last big hiit?  THE BlackFace friendly JOLSON STORY/’46.)  It may be the first rejection of the still highly popular practice in film.  Indeed, last year’s Al Jolson starrer, WONDER BAR/’33, also from Warner Bros., features what may be the most infuriating BlackFace ‘Numbo’ ever filmed as its showiest musical sequence.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/01/wonder-bar-1933.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Attention to meat prices in 1934.  Listen as Brent bemoans yet another leg of lamb dinner as beef and chicken are too expensive on the budget Dvorak is so careful to hold to.   (Just bear in mind, lamb in the ‘30s likely to be closer to mutton than what we’d get today.)