SIDE STREETS (1934)

Featured players at Depression Era Warner Bros., Aline MacMahon and Ann Dvorak had just co-starred in the classic Pre-Code proto-feminist HEAT LIGHTNING/’34 when they had this Post-Code proto-feminist rematch.  This time business moves from auto-garage & lodge in the desert to a ‘side street’ fur salon owned & operated by MacMahon in San Francisco.  That’s where she meets-cute (in the Zoo) with unemployed able seaman Paul Kelly.  He’s picking up spilled peanuts meant for the monkeys; she’s picking up him!  The film nothing if not frank & hardheaded.  Soon they’re partners at the store and in bed.  Now married, he's already two-timing the wife with sharp looker Dvorak.  (Film’s original title ‘A WOMAN IN HER THIRTIES’ says it all.*)  But a baby will change the equation as Kelly’s nuts for the little heir.  Too bad the kid with MacMahon ain’t the only infant in this story.  Yep, Dvorak also in the family way.  Worse, Kelly’s roving eye gets another target when MacMahon’s flirtatious niece comes to help in the shop.  Yikes!  Meanwhile, MacMahon displays psychological acumen & salesmanship in selling those fur coats, leveraging mistresses against wives for big sales using subtle suggestion & not so subtle blackmail.  All while being a good egg.  Super stuff, even when some hallowed tropes of Women’s Drama threaten to make things too far-fetched.  But jeez-o-pete, what an actress Aline MacMahon was.*  And though she was big-boned, even matronly, there was a sort of Madonna-like magnificence & beauty to her.  LIGHTNING certainly the finer flick (both films programmer short at an amazingly speedy 1'3"), which means perennially dull megger Alfred E. Green hasn’t the time to slow things down.  Lenser Byron Haskin & typically superb art direction from Anton Grot give this one a sense of place & side street atmosphere.  The film, long hiding in plain sight, overdue for an airing.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  As mentioned, HEAT LIGHTNING. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/07/heat-lightning-1934.html    

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Keep in mind Kelly and MacMahon exactly the same age: 35.

READ ALL ABOUT IT:  In Axel Nissen’s MOTHERS, MAMMIES AND OLD MAIDS (a fine rival on Hollywood actresses to go-to authority Jeanine Basinger), we learn MacMahon had a first professional theatrical experience as a ‘super’ to Sarah Bernhardt and shared the stage on her final B’way show (her 31st) with a debuting Meryl Streep.