Very disappointed :(

This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Just through being her usual feisty self and trying to fight for better pay and parts Ann Dvorak found she wasn't at the top for very long. But with her luminous, compelling talent she made sure whatever the movie (even the most unentertaining Perry Mason) - she was going to make her role stand out. "Girls of the Road" was her last American movie for a while - she went to Britain with her husband Leslie Fenton, enrolled in the Woman's Land Army and drove an ambulance during the war.Beautiful Kay Warren (Dvorak), the Governor's daughter decides to go undercover to try to help and expose what is a huge, topical problem - runaway girls, who become road hobos and face rape and worse through life on the road. She almost ends up as a statistic on her first ride with an over fresh salesman and eventually teams up with Mickey (Helen Mack) a tough veteran of the roads (but of course with a heart of gold)!!! Kay finds life grim on the road, constantly being forced to move on, being incarcerated where they have the indignity of being hosed, then ridden out of town on a rail. With women hungry hobos leering out of the freight cars, it is fraught with danger and Mickey, who may have had an unpleasant experience is fearful, and determined not to ride. Every girl has a story - Irene is hitching across country to marry her fiancée, she opted to buy a wedding dress rather than pay for a train ticket, another wants to be a beautician. There's always a head girl - in this case it's Ellie (Lola Lane sure looks and acts tough!!!). She runs the makeshift camp where they all end up and although she doesn't exactly say "I'm the boss of this jungle - and I'll smack any dame starting trouble" (like it says on the poster) you could imagine her saying it.The film reaches a climax with the death of one of the girls. Kay manages to alert her father with the help of a kindly lorry driver. I don't know about the comparisons with "Wild Boys of the Road" - that was a very confronting, early Warners "social problem" movie. You just know, in this movie that nothing too awful is going to happen to these girls - it might muss their hair or smudge their lipstick. In one scene involving a caring policeman (Bruce Bennett in a small part) Kay looks stunning in a turban and smart matching outfit, she wouldn't have looked out of place at the Ritz - considering the scene before had them jumping from a moving train.Helen Mack had had a productive career during the 30s, most of her movies carried a big emotional crying scene but "Girls of the Road" saw her almost at the end of her career. Lola Lane started out in early movie musicals ("Let's Go Places", "Good News") then become one of the Lane Sisters (she wasn't really) for the "Four Daughters" series. This movie may have given Ann Doran one of the few parts she could really do something with. She is so recognizable but was rarely a featured player. In this film she plays the girl who steals the wedding dress.Recommended.

In many ways, this film reminds me of the 1933 film "Wild Boys of the Road"--which is about homeless teens who wander about the country (often in vain) looking for work and a square meal. This film is about homeless ladies who are in similar circumstances. How serious this problem was is uncertain (it's not like they kept statistics on this), but the movie seems earnest--and amazingly naive.The film begins with a commission reporting to the Governor about the plight of wandering homeless ladies. The Governor is moved and wants to do something but is uncertain if anything can be done about the problem. However, his secretary (Ann Dvorak--who also happens to be his daughter in the film) decides to investigate herself by hitting the road and posing as a homeless woman. This is an insanely naive and rather offensive notion--especially when she could be raped or otherwise exploited and the idea of a rich girl "slumming it" is a tad silly. In fact, in one of the first scenes, this nearly happens (in a sanitized 1940 manner) as a man isn't about to take 'no' for an answer after he picks up Ann.Ultimately, after spending time getting arrested for vagrancy, being hassled by cops, jumping trains, getting robbed and the rest in this 'dog eat dog world', Ann returns home to report to Daddy about the life of girl hobos. My quote in the summary, while not exactly what she said isn't that far from it! And, naturally, it all had a happy ending.To me, this film seemed rather fake. All the ladies looked really ragged...like they'd forgotten to put on the morning makeup and had gone a whole week without going to the beauty parlor! The most egregious of these was Dvorak--who looked like she was dressed for publicity photos of "her life when she has a day off". The ladies' "down and out" looks just seemed like Hollywood's sanitized version of the life of a homeless woman--the type that wouldn't feel particularly threatening to most in the audience. Compare this sort of film with a REAL film about social ills of the 1930s (such as "I Was A Fugitive From A Chain Gang") and this one comes up wanting. Perhaps well-intentioned and the acting wasn't bad, but it was fake from start to finish.

The best thing about this highly sanitized expose is that its heart is in the right place. Importantly, the movie serves as a peek into how the uprooted, even women, were treated by local jurisdictions already burdened by their own Depression problems and unwilling to take on new ones. However, the contrast with the gritty, realistic Wild Boys of the Road (1933) could hardly be stronger, thanks mainly to the deadening hand of the Production Code of 1934. Note, for example, the general absence of men around these all-girl encampments, rather surprising given the opportunities. But then, including men in the camp mix would have complicated both the tone and the message. Thus, we're left with what looks like an all-girl touring group down on their luck. Note too, how nearly all the well-scrubbed girls are outfitted in the less vulnerable pants instead of dresses at a time when cheap cotton dresses were standard and affordable, (consider Barbara Hershey's cheap little print in the much more realistic Boxcar Bertha {1972}). But most revealing is when one of the girls explains why it's easier being a penniless man than a penniless woman. What she says is true, but, tellingly, she leaves out the one big advantage women-- especially the comely young women of this movie-- have when needing to earn a buck. In fact, as part of its streamlining and sanitizing, the screenplay suppresses altogether what should be the rather obvious topic of prostitution.All in all, I suspect the movie reveals more about the state of Hollywood politics, circa 1940, than it does about its subject matter. Nonetheless, I agree that TMC should be congratulated for reviving such obscurities. And though the movie is, I think, far from a classic, it is a provocative window into its time and into a topic many of us didn't know existed. Besides, I sense an underground fan club forming around the sorely neglected Ann Dvorak. With her large, expressive eyes, aquiline nose, and the courage to take on an ethnic stage name-- plus genuine talent-- she merits re-discovery in a big way.

You have the tough-talking dames, the innocent-victim girl, the crusading do-gooder, all on the Depression road, but indulging in personality dynamics much like those in "Caged." Columbia pretends that this is social commentary a la "Wild Boys of the Road," but it's untethered melodrama, wildly improbable and directed without distinction. Especially unconvincing is the framing device, where a governor's daughter (Ann Dvorak, always good, but playing such a virtuous character here that she has a hard time making her interesting) decides to impersonate a poor homeless girl, then at the end it turns out the state had the money to help these girls all the time, but the governor needed to be convinced that they really needed help. Still, it's nice pictorially, and Helen Mack, as Dvorak's sidekick (she was also terrific that year in "His Girl Friday"), is a great sarcastic broad.