Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20136 in VHS
• Released on: 1998-09-01
• Rating: Unrated
• Formats: Black & White, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 60 minutes

Customer Reviews

A FUNNY PRE-CODER
A funny, fascinating role-reversal yarn. Ruth Chatterton, once known as one of the finest actresses of the early talkie era, plays Alison Drake, who runs a major automobile company with an iron hand - and tries to conduct her love life the same way....Then independent-minded George Brent (her real-life spouse at the time) comes along. Ruth falls for the guy so hard, that she promotes him to being the boss of the company, admitting that it's a man's job, after all. The set design is incredibly lavish: watch for the organist perched in Chatterton's entrance foyer! According to modern sources, the shots of the heroine's house were filmed at the Ennis House in the Hollywood Hills - which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Included in the cast are some familiar faces: Sterling Holloway, Laura Hope Crews, Rafaela Ottiano, Jean Muir & Irving Bacon. A fine early example of chauvinistic filmmaking.

Love these early '30s Pre-Codes
Ruth Chatterton, an actress which I had only seen in one of my very, very favorite films of all time, William Wyler's masterpiece, "Dosworth" (her best-known movie), carries this picture, which stands remarkably well the "test of time", in a different kind of role and not only that: in "Dodsworth" she was the wife of a small-town automobile tycoon, here she is the ruthless, sexually liberated, Automobile Company Tycoon, herself.

In this flick, she manages her company, with no holds-barred, with a hand of steel, surrounded by handsome young men, who are discarded, one after the other, when they have served "her leisure purposes". A refreshing role-reversal (an very daring then), with a woman "on top". She has all the POWER.

But then comes (then-husband in real life) George Brent, who impersonates an independent-minded executive, who changes Chatterton's life...as she were expecting such dominant male?.

Nice support by Johnny Mack Brown, Gavin Gordon and Philip Reed (a "very naive" young man or something "else"? (as stated in Vieira's book "Sin in Soft Focus", a must read for Pre-Code Fans), as some of the men, who are invited to "have dinner with her", at her lavish, very luxurious house. Ravishing clothes by Orry-Kelly.

In all, a compelling, entertaining film, with fast-talking entrepreneur Chatterton in top form.

You won't regret buying this great Pre-Code.

P.S. Look for Ferdinand Gottschalk as her (Chatterton's) elder assistant, who gives a very funny performance and delivers some highly-amusing lines.

Powerful female part
I enjoyed this very much. It is interesting what went on in these pre-production code films. This is a powerful woman who knows how to get what she wants, and even has amazing gadgetry to help her! Life in the thirties was very different, but we humans may be very much the same in how our minds work. Enjoy.