Ladies of Leisure (1930)

Good start, but then it gets ruined

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

" . . . don't they raise the bars (to her leading a normal life) for her?" Gold-digging hooker Kay Arnold plaintively asks her latest "sap's" Mommy. By Kay's logic, Mrs. Strong should welcome her into the Railroad Mogul Family with open arms upon Kay's assertion that she's no longer a Walking Venereal Disease. IT'S A WONDERFUL SEX LIFE, director Frank Capra contends during LADIES OF LEISURE. Capra seems to be preaching that the Robber Barons and the Barin' Bobbers should all be friends (to anachronistically paraphrase OKLAHOMA!). Speaking of Barin' Bobbers, most of Kay's infamous nude silhouette strip scene beginning at 42:32 midway through her first sleep-over at Sap Jerry Strong's Bachelor Pad has gone missing from the surviving print of this 1930 Anything Goes Era flick, thanks to the Pope's over-zealous Scissormen who began snipping the "Good Bits" (or "Pinkies") from America's cinematic output, both retrospectively and Forward even until Today, back in 1934. Though some have complained about this method of "filling the Stacks" of the Secret Vatican Library, can you imagine how many Altar Boys and First Communion Girls have been saved from Total Debauchery by this trove of FORBIDDEN H0LLYWOOD?

A pretty good film of its kind, with Barbara Stanwyck giving her usual high level of performance. I find Ralph Graves, who plays her artist/lover, to be a stiff and totally miscast as an artist. He seems more like an undertaker and the worst part of the movie is trying to figure out why Barbara's character was ever attracted to him in the first place. Otherwise, acting is good and the plot is one that we've seen before; poor, "working" girl in love with son of a rich, important family. Of course they object.The only time Barbara does not ring true is in the emotional scene when his mother comes to ask her to give him up. It is a bit over the top. Again, the problem is Ralph Graves. He is not worth all of that drama and sobbing. And what an odd-looking man he was, with an unusually shaped head.Kind of a ridiculous ending, but so many of the movies of the day had that in common. At least she was allowed to live.

Considering that movies only began to talk in 1928, this early sound film starring BARBARA STANWYCK as a girl of ill repute (she calls herself a party girl), and RALPH GRAVES as an artist who wants to use her as a model, is not bad at all. It's certainly one of the better jobs in sound recording for a film made in the early '30s. As usual with films of this period, there is almost no music on the soundtrack except for the moment when "The End" is flashed on the screen. In the TCM print I watched, the screen then fades to black while some "exit" music is played against a dark screen.Stanwyck is the prostitute with a heart of gold who finds a good man and doesn't want to let him go, even when his family objects to their union when he proposes marriage. She is convinced by the mother to give him up--but circumstances change after she makes a rash decision.Stanwyck is excellent at conveying the brassy qualities of the character, but then reveals the softer nature of the girl as she falls in love with the man who only wants to paint her portrait. The tenderness of the romance that develops is full of nuances that one wouldn't expect from a Frank Capra film. The sentimental ending is more in keeping with his usual style.RALPH GRAVES gives a quiet, assured performance as the man who finds that he does really love Stanwyck. LOWELL SHERMAN does his usual schtick as an inebriated friend who flounces around making wisecracks. MARIE PREVOST has some good moments as Stanwyck's roommate and NANCE O'NEIL does a good job as Grave's well-meaning mother.Stanwyck fans will appreciate her well modulated performance.

This movie is one of the legendary Barbara Stanwyck's earliest starring roles. The title of the movie actually refers to prostitutes and that is what Stanwyck plays in this one, though it is, of course, only suggested. The set-up is that Stanwyck, a prostitute, is hired by a painter to be a model for one of his paintings. Through the course of the movie, Stanwyck's character, who has never know real love, is touched by the young painter's caring gestures (though to him, he is only being polite). As always, the beautiful Stanwyck carries the movie in the palm of her hand, and when the film is serious, it's pretty decent. Some problems arise in the humorous scenes with her chubby co-star (who died later in the decade because of self-starvation), a stereotypical, high-pitched, talkative New York girl who has too much of a silly vaudevillian personality to generate many laughs (remember, this is early 1930 and vaudeville was just beginning to wind down). Like a lot of early talkies, this movie is roughly edited, and the acting by the male lead is somewhat wooden. The story is okay, perhaps a bit too sentimental, but the movie is an interesting glance into the 1930s and the early stages of a screen Goddess' career.