Girls of the Road (1940)

Excellent, a Must See

Dreadfully Boring

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Just through being her usual feisty self and trying to fight for better pay and parts Ann Dvorak found she wasn't at the top for very long. But with her luminous, compelling talent she made sure whatever the movie (even the most unentertaining Perry Mason) - she was going to make her role stand out. "Girls of the Road" was her last American movie for a while - she went to Britain with her husband Leslie Fenton, enrolled in the Woman's Land Army and drove an ambulance during the war.Beautiful Kay Warren (Dvorak), the Governor's daughter decides to go undercover to try to help and expose what is a huge, topical problem - runaway girls, who become road hobos and face rape and worse through life on the road. She almost ends up as a statistic on her first ride with an over fresh salesman and eventually teams up with Mickey (Helen Mack) a tough veteran of the roads (but of course with a heart of gold)!!! Kay finds life grim on the road, constantly being forced to move on, being incarcerated where they have the indignity of being hosed, then ridden out of town on a rail. With women hungry hobos leering out of the freight cars, it is fraught with danger and Mickey, who may have had an unpleasant experience is fearful, and determined not to ride. Every girl has a story - Irene is hitching across country to marry her fiancée, she opted to buy a wedding dress rather than pay for a train ticket, another wants to be a beautician. There's always a head girl - in this case it's Ellie (Lola Lane sure looks and acts tough!!!). She runs the makeshift camp where they all end up and although she doesn't exactly say "I'm the boss of this jungle - and I'll smack any dame starting trouble" (like it says on the poster) you could imagine her saying it.The film reaches a climax with the death of one of the girls. Kay manages to alert her father with the help of a kindly lorry driver. I don't know about the comparisons with "Wild Boys of the Road" - that was a very confronting, early Warners "social problem" movie. You just know, in this movie that nothing too awful is going to happen to these girls - it might muss their hair or smudge their lipstick. In one scene involving a caring policeman (Bruce Bennett in a small part) Kay looks stunning in a turban and smart matching outfit, she wouldn't have looked out of place at the Ritz - considering the scene before had them jumping from a moving train.Helen Mack had had a productive career during the 30s, most of her movies carried a big emotional crying scene but "Girls of the Road" saw her almost at the end of her career. Lola Lane started out in early movie musicals ("Let's Go Places", "Good News") then become one of the Lane Sisters (she wasn't really) for the "Four Daughters" series. This movie may have given Ann Doran one of the few parts she could really do something with. She is so recognizable but was rarely a featured player. In this film she plays the girl who steals the wedding dress.Recommended.

Girls Of The Road finds Ann Dvorak as the daughter of the governor of some unnamed state going on the road incognito to get a look at conditions for women who are homeless. Dvorak takes an interest in her father's work and Governor Howard Hickman has just received a confidential investigative report about conditions for women in that situation. What Dvorak does, almost on impulse, is to hit the road herself and see first hand.She falls in with Helen Mack and in turn with others, in the end in a sort of makeshift camp that's run by tough girl Lola Lane. Dvorak sees the problems the women have, the varied situations they come from that have led them to this vagabond existence.Not the least of the problem is that the male of species is looked upon as a predator in many situations shown here. The unspoken lesbianism of the women is also quite clear, especially in Lola Lane's character.There is one death among the women in the film and I won't say which of the characters dies, but the scene is quite moving. I think if you see the film you'll be able to pick out which character it is.The obvious comparisons to make with this is with Warner Brothers Wild Boys Of The Road made seven years earlier. This one doesn't quite have the productions values that the Warner Brothers product did. This was strictly a product of Columbia's B picture unit and this kind of socially significant film had been passé for some time in Hollywood.Still Girls Of The Road does have its merits and is a most curious product of the times.

The best thing about this highly sanitized expose is that its heart is in the right place. Importantly, the movie serves as a peek into how the uprooted, even women, were treated by local jurisdictions already burdened by their own Depression problems and unwilling to take on new ones. However, the contrast with the gritty, realistic Wild Boys of the Road (1933) could hardly be stronger, thanks mainly to the deadening hand of the Production Code of 1934. Note, for example, the general absence of men around these all-girl encampments, rather surprising given the opportunities. But then, including men in the camp mix would have complicated both the tone and the message. Thus, we're left with what looks like an all-girl touring group down on their luck. Note too, how nearly all the well-scrubbed girls are outfitted in the less vulnerable pants instead of dresses at a time when cheap cotton dresses were standard and affordable, (consider Barbara Hershey's cheap little print in the much more realistic Boxcar Bertha {1972}). But most revealing is when one of the girls explains why it's easier being a penniless man than a penniless woman. What she says is true, but, tellingly, she leaves out the one big advantage women-- especially the comely young women of this movie-- have when needing to earn a buck. In fact, as part of its streamlining and sanitizing, the screenplay suppresses altogether what should be the rather obvious topic of prostitution.All in all, I suspect the movie reveals more about the state of Hollywood politics, circa 1940, than it does about its subject matter. Nonetheless, I agree that TMC should be congratulated for reviving such obscurities. And though the movie is, I think, far from a classic, it is a provocative window into its time and into a topic many of us didn't know existed. Besides, I sense an underground fan club forming around the sorely neglected Ann Dvorak. With her large, expressive eyes, aquiline nose, and the courage to take on an ethnic stage name-- plus genuine talent-- she merits re-discovery in a big way.

Once again, Turner Classic Movies has rescued another rough-cut gem from obscurity in the musty vaults of Hollywood! TCM has changed my life by showing the classics that most of us never even knew existed. And "Girls of the Road" is definitely in that category.Okay, so it's not "Gone With the Wind," but it's a classic even so. I've never seen anything quite like it. It's about female hobos from the Depression, running from the cops, fighting each other, living the vida loca al camino! Only in this subculture, all the women are young, beautiful and "good on the inside." Closest thing to this story I've seen is the "women in prison" movie genre of the period. There's a social-reform angle to it, as there was in many of the women in prison films. Remember, this was 1940--the Production Code ruled Hollywood. It was not possible to depict any vagrants or criminals in a positive light, at least not until they received a moral makeover.Watch it for entertainment, though, not for any particular message. Such as it was, the message was about as substantive as a mouthful of cotton candy. The stars had some funny lines, almost all were good looking, and life didn't look so bad at the end. What more can you ask for?