I barely recognized Bette Davis because her character didn’t do anything unhinged, out-of-pocket or camp. That’s the power of studio typecasting, I guess.
Humphrey Bogart also has an early role in this and he’s comically young, a real baby boy if I ever saw one. I looked it up and he was actually 32, but he might as well have been a nine-year-old in a gangster getup the way he amused me. That little hand motion he did to make fun of Ann Dvorak’s coke habit is pre-code antics and its finest.
“Before they were stars” whimsy aside, this film seemed to be making itself up as it went along before abruptly giving up at the 63 minute mark. That brisk runtime is somehow still heavily padded with newspaper montages to let us know exactly what month of what year we’re in.
Was this entertaining as a complimentary part of my Max subscription? Sure. Would this be worth driving to a movie theater and paying for a ticket during the Great Depression? Absolutely not.
I barely recognized Bette Davis because her character didn’t do anything unhinged, out-of-pocket or camp. That’s the power of studio typecasting, I guess.
Humphrey Bogart also has an early role in this and he’s comically young, a real baby boy if I ever saw one. I looked it up and he was actually 32, but he might as well have been a nine-year-old in a gangster getup the way he amused me. That little hand motion he did to make fun of Ann Dvorak’s coke habit is pre-code antics and its finest.
“Before they were stars” whimsy aside, this film seemed to be making itself up as it went along before abruptly giving up at the 63 minute mark. That brisk runtime is somehow still heavily padded with newspaper montages to let us know exactly what month of what year we’re in.
Was this entertaining as a complimentary part of my Max subscription? Sure. Would this be worth driving to a movie theater and paying for a ticket during the Great Depression? Absolutely not.
