Lady Gangster (1942)

Excellent, a Must See

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

This is a remake of a much better pre-code drama that starred Barbara Stanwyck, "Ladies They Talk About". A better title of this would be "Lady Accomplice" because that is exactly what "B" actress Faye Emerson is playing here, a woman who calls the police (as Stanwyck did), diverts the police's attention by claiming witness to another crime, then getting a bank guard to open the bank early on the front of making a deposit. Of course, her part in the robbery which follows is revealed, and she is sentenced to a rather country-club like prison where the guards and the matron are certainly not as tough or ruthless as such others as Esther Dale ("Condemned Women"), Jane Darwell ("Girls in Prison"), Jeanne Cooper ("House of Women") or the most nefarious: Hope Emerson ("Caged") and Ida Lupino ("Women's Prison"). So this cleaned-up prison movie is a wimpy alternative to those others where it becomes very clear that the so-called "gentler sex" are getting just a tough of a time in rehabilitation as the men's prisons.But here, the real troublemakers are two stool pigeons (Dorothy Adams as a deaf inmate who can read lips, and Ruth Ford as the nastier one who reports everything to the matron) and discover that Emerson's intents to reveal the location of the money in the robbery is just a rouse to get revenge on the man (Frank Wilcox) who sent Emerson up the river as an attempt to reform her, an old childhood pal who is in love with her. The lack of racy dialog makes this a boring remake of a film that sizzled thanks to its pre-code innuendos of lesbianism and the delicious cut-downs between Stanwyck and the other inmates. Vera Lewis offers some amusing bits as the tough-talking old lady whom Emerson stashes the loot with, and a young Jackie Gleason is memorable as one of the gang members. Virginia Brissac plays the matron as if she was a high school principal, although the scene where Emerson gets one over on her is memorable. Fortunately short, this will never rank up there with other women's prison films, but makes an all right time filler.

It's the "Women in Cages" of the 40's starring the lean, wide-eyed, prominent cheek-boned, raven-maned beauty Faye Emerson as an aspiring actress who participates in a bank robbery, is caught and then incarcerated for her role but not before hiding the stash from her associates. Whilst in gaol she befriends fellow inmate (Bishop) and is misled in her attempts to get paroled by her jealous nemesis (Ford). Eventually she hatches a plot to escape and recover her share of the booty, but her former accomplices have other ideas.Emerson is a magnetic personality, arguably better than the B-standard plot, though it's her genuine charm and timing that make her the perfect fit as the slightly naive southern girl, able to improvise in order to make all ends meet. Frank Wilcox co-stars as her would-be suitor whose attempts to keep her out of gaol always seem to fail. Good to see William Hopper (the future "Perry Mason" detective) in a minor role as a radio announcer, and Jackie Gleason as a sympathetic crook.The momentum is ideal with no time wasted on long, pensive reaction shots or banal and obsolete melodrama - it's light, focused and frenetic and as a consequence, oddly compelling. Emerson, Bishop and Ford all play their roles with aplomb, turning an otherwise mediocre women's prison movie into an entertaining hour.

What makes a "B" movie? Lack of stars and everything rather substandard? Sometimes they have their compensations. Rather as if the makers were compensating for the lack of quality ingredients they sometimes pack a lot into the short running times. And sometimes there are some interesting ideas, shots, characters which re-emerge years, decades later in far more illustrious productions when the B movie original was long forgotten.Kaye Emmerson was not a great actress but was good looking, smart and held the attention. This is a vehicle for her and one gets the impression that the makers intended it as a woman's picture - much of it is "Cell Block H" territory (but far better done) so that it would have a broader appeal than the harder and more realistic gangster movie customarily has.Much of the action takes place in a women's prison. There is a scene where a highly secret discussion takes place deliberately out of earshot. But not out of sight. Watching is an able lip-reader who thus is able to discover the biggest secret of the movie. The shot is framed so that the lip reader is out of focus in the centre of the frame and in close up is just the mouth and chin of one of the speakers to the right. I had certainly seen this before in another very very different movie only the lip reader was a TV camera and the brains behind it was a computer. The computer's name was HAL and the movie, 26 years later, was "2001".Coincidence? Who is to say?

It's a peppy flick and in some ways better than the original 1933 movie titled Ladies They Talk About that starred Barbara Stanwyck.Fortunately, the Stanwyck movie was pre-Hays code so there is some snappy dialog and not so veiled references to prostitution that couldn't be filmed in Lady Gangster. The opening scene obviously shot in a real bank gives the film a realistic gritty feel that doesn't come off when a scene like this is shot on a set. Jackie Gleason in a small supporting role as one of Emerson's fellow bank robbers, provides a few glimpses of that "Poor Soul" face that he made famous years later on his TV show. Also, catching a very young dark-haired William Hopper (later of Perry Mason fame as Paul Drake)was also a pleasant surprise.