Leave it to MGM to begin its dark Depression-Era pre-Code drama amid the top hat, silk gown & marble hall crowd. Talulah Bankhead is the wild heiress who loses her millions and then her self-respect; handsome Robert Montgomery is the pink-slipped ad man injured while driving a truck as a scab. Notorious stage personality Bankhead apparently didn’t click as a movie star — Variety said she had an ‘inability to command sympathetic response,’ even with a glamor quotient in the Garbo-Crawford-Dietrich range.

Faithless
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1932 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 77 min. / Available at MovieZyng / Street Date January 30, 2024 / 21.99
Starring: Talllulah Bankhead, Robert Montgomery, Hugh Herbert, Maurice Murphy, Anna Appel, Henry Kolker, Theresa Harris, Sterling Holloway, Virginia Howell, Ben Taggart.
Cinematography: Oliver T. Marsh
Art Director: Cedric Gibbons
Costumes: Adrian
Film Editor: Hugh Wynn
Written by Carey Wilson from the novel Tinfoil by Mildred Cram
Directed by Harry Beaumont

In the Fall of 1932, as MGM’s pre-Code potboiler  Faithless was being trade-shown, some of its competition was racy indeed: the gory jungle ordeal  The Most Dangerous Game and the sordid revenge tale with Walter Houston  Kongo. Oh yes, and a musical from Eddie Cantor. With a screenplay by Carey Wilson, Faithless asked Depression-era audiences to invest in the problems of well-to-do folk on the skids. Suddenly dead broke, a pampered Manhattan princess undergoes what a sociologist might call a ‘moral decline.’

We wonder how audiences accepted the movie. Variety’s reviewer was rather cynical in his assessment, while The New York Times’ critic Mordaunt Hall complained that Broadway star Tallulah Bankhead was yet again let down by Hollywood. Her films contracted to Paramount were not hits, not even Devil and the Deep, which co-starred Bankhead with Charles Laughton, Cary Grant and Gary Cooper.

Faithless is actually a nicely polished item, performance-wise; watching Ms. Bankhead go through her paces tells us she was willing to play edgy material … and also makes us wonder just how extreme a hell-raiser she really was. We don’t believe all the sex tales about the wild parties she threw, but even the conservative accounts I’ve read stress Bankhead’s bawdy ‘outspokenness’ regarding her sex life. After finishing this loan-out to MGM she returned to Broadway, had her biggest sucesses, and didn’t make another movie for 11 years. Her feature appearances are few and far between: one for  Alfred Hitchcock, one for  Otto Preminger, and much later, one for  Hammer Films.

“I love you so much. Bill, darling, I know you’re awfully busy, but couldn’t you just take 5 minutes off tomorrow and marry me?”

The story is structured like a Rom-Com, but the only laughs are the cynical asides given the leading lady. Irresponsible, flippant heiress Carol Morgan (Tallulah Bankhead) doesn’t listen when her business advisor warns that she’s spent almost all of her late father’s fortune. She instead gets herself half-engaged to advertising writer Bill Wade (Robert Montgomery). Wade only makes $20,000 a year but wants Carol to drop her socialite lifestyle and live on his salary, in an apartment like everyone else. The engagement is called off over her insistence that he ignore his job so they can honeymoon in Monte Carlo.

Both of them are soon plunged into financial chaos. Carol loses everything. With the financial downturn Bill loses his job, and takes another that pays only $70 a week. He proposes again, but Carol would rather run away to Palm Beach, to freeload as the guest of swells that don’t know she’s penniless. Denial of reality finally leave Carol with little choice but to become the mistress of a man who sickens her, casino owner Peter Blainey (Hugh Herbert). Then she hits the skids back up North, unable to find work and almost starving.

“Funny isn’t it, all the things we women do for our men. We can’t ever tell them about it.”

The story’s main gear changes all come from chance meetings. Bill bolted when he saw her living arrangement with Blainey, but an encounter in a Bowery beanery brings them together again. They finally marry, but worse things are yet to come. Bill tries to work as a scab truck driver and is injured in strike violence. To buy the medicine for him, Carol sells herself on the street. He begins to get better, but she’s convinced that the marriage is doomed.

Compared to the New Deal-friendly filmmakers at Warners, MGM’s film fare was less bothered by the rampant unemployment, bank closures and protests in the nation’s Capital. Faithless’s millionaire heroine lives in a lavish mansion surrounded by servants. The Depression didn’t take Carol Morgan’s fortune, she simply squandered it. Her idea of impossible economic degradation is what her fiancé wants them to live on — $20,000 a year. For anyone but a stockbroker in 1932, that was an extremely good income. Did audiences heckle the screen?

An opening montage is a series of newspaper headlines predicting a rosy economic recovery, each undercut by derisive razzing on the soundtrack. The movie says conditions are bad, but shows that Bill Wade will survive hard times because he’s got grit and a positive attitude. His morale doesn’t get nearly as dire as that of Warners’  Heroes for Sale and  Wild Boys of the Road, which suggest that America is desperate and on the verge of revolution.

“Let’s get drunk!”

By 1932, Carol’s downward spiral was familiar subject matter. Loretta Young, Carole Lombard, Barbara Stanwyck, Jean Harlow and many others played women faced with hard times. Not too many flirted with actual prostitution, but quite a few were compromised by predatory males. Carol Morgan finds that drinking herself into a stupor is the only way to force herself to have sex with Hugh Herbert’s sugar daddy.

MGM’s young leading man Robert Montgomery projected integrity on screen. His Bill Wade has enough principles not to love Carol for her money, and proves his worth by understanding her through events that few men would accept. There’s also nothing wrong with Tallulah Bankhead’s performance. Her Carol starts spoiled, sassy and mildly abusive, proceeds to shell-shocked disillusion, and is soon accepting sordid company to maintain a jewels-plus-maid lifestyle. Yet Carol never looks foolish — Ms. Bankhead succeeds in projecting an air of knowing sophistication.

MGM and Warners used the same tune to indicate sleazy immorality — W.C. Handy’s St. Louis Blues. The main story turns aren’t exactly original either: it’s serious cliché time when the dishonored woman resigns herself to make ‘the ultimate sacrifice’ for love, knowing she’ll be damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t. Yes, the dialogue, staging and theatrical mannerisms peg Faithless firmly in Old Movie territory, but the actors perform the material well.

The show counters its darker tone with some pleasing characterizations. Unbilled but bright-faced is a very young Sterling Holloway, as a goofy news photographer. Carol’s maid is Theresa Harris, whose voice and personality have been easy to spot ever since seeing her pleasant appearance in Out of the Past. Anna Appel is the kindly Jewish landlady who lets Carol cook in her room, and then all-but-approves of Carol hitting the sidewalk, to save her man. Reviewers pointed out Appel’s warm contribution, as well as that of an unbilled Ben Taggart as Officer Clancy, an Irish street cop who could toss Carol into jail for six months, but turns out to be a blessing in disguise. As part of her promise to be good, Clancy makes Carol kiss a cross.

” I know you’re up against it. But, you’re a swell. A real lady. Why, if it weren’t for this Depression, I wouldn’t have a chance with a high class dame like you.”

We know Hugh Herbert as a comedian, but he’s not bad at all in this relatively straight role. With only the slightest hint of Woo-Hoo business, Herbert makes his male predator loathsome in an ordinary, unglamorous way. Not as convincing is Maurice Murphy as Bill’s obnoxious brother, whose ill-timed chance encounter with Carol could spell doom for the Carol-Bill marriage. The movie ends with a reconciliation, and good economic news for the couple … a job for $70 a week. We wonder if Carol immediately quits her shift as a café waitress. The average post– Code melodrama would likely insist on it, to enforce the male prerogative and get that woman back in a kitchen where she belongs.

The Warner Archive Collection Blu-ray of Faithless is yet another smooth-as-silk restoration of an interesting pre-Code title from the Turner-WB corral. Tallulah Bankhead is still our focus of interest. Fans of vintage film revel in stories of her wild woman antics, and look to see if any of that outrageousness reaches the screen. Bankhead can certainly sell the glamour, as her first four or five close-ups demonstrate. A series of gowns and dresses by Adrian chart a path from pampered international playgirl to penniless desperation on the street. Carol’s clothing dims in gloss, but never looks worn or unfashionable. Hey, it’s MGM after all.

Pre-code or not, no actual prostitution activity is shown beyond Carol snapping the wrong proposition to the wrong man on the sidewalk. Carol’s wardrobe isn’t as provocative as what was cooked up for Jean Harlow, but the direction shows off Bankhead’s bare legs in a mirror, and a couple of undressing shots flirt with near-reveals, cutting away at the last moment. But the movie doesn’t firmly imply Carol and Bill are having premarital sex.

Warners gives the disc three extras. I believe the two mini-murder mystery short subjects, both starring character actor Donald Meek, have been seen on previous discs — The Trans-Atlantic Mystery is definitely on the escapist noir Step by Step. The lead-off extra featurette is a 1934 musical-comedy short subject with George Jessel and others. The opening is a must see: it features the cute-as-heck Bonnie Poe, one of five vocalists who voiced the animated character Betty Boop. She sings Puddin’ Head Jones using the cute Boop vocal inflections.

It’s also always good to check in to see what Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings has to say — I wrote my review after reading Laura’s take, honest.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Faithless
Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Good
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Three featurette supplements:
Rambling Round Radio Row #1B  or #9 (1934) with George Jessel, Vera Van & Bonnie Poe
The Trans-Atlantic Mystery (1932)
The Symphonic Murder Mystery.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: March 13, 2024
(7096fait)

Final product for this review was provided free by The Warner Archive Collection.

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