Very Cool!!!

Let's be realistic.

A Disappointing Continuation

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Lady Gangster was based on a play written by Dorothy Mackaye who did some time in prison for covering up a homicide of her husband Ray Raymond by actor Paul Kelly who also served in prison before resuming his career. All the principals in that affair are gone now and their lives and story would certainly be far more interesting than this film which had a previous incarnation by Warner Brothers in 1933. That film was Ladies They Talk About and starred Barbara Stanwyck. As it was before the Code, I'm betting that was a better version. It certainly sounded more interesting in the Stanwyck biography I read.Faye Emerson is no Stanwyck, but she's all right in the role of an actress fallen on bad times and now hooking up with bank robbers Roland Drew, Bill Phillips and Jackie Gleason. Yes the great one is in the cast as wheel man of the bank robbery that Emerson acts as a shill/decoy for and gets caught.In prison for her crime Faye makes friends with Julie Bishop and as she knows where the money is hid, she has that as a bargaining chip for her release. But the plot takes some strange turns and she's forced to escape.The male roles in this film are weak, Frank Wilcox is a bit of a doofus as your crusading crime busting radio commentator. Why Emerson falls for him is beyond me. The script is weak and meandering for Lady Gangster as well. For instance an element is introduced of a rivalry between District Attorney Herbert Rawlinson and Wilcox, with Wilcox intimating the DA is corrupt. But that doesn't go anywhere. Certainly the talents of Jackie Gleason are not used at all, but Warners never realized what they had under contract.On the plus side, the best supporting performance is clearly that of prison snitch Ruth Ford who really doesn't do it for material gain, she just likes the attention. Ford did quite a lot with a small role.A product of Warner Brothers B picture unit, Lady Gangster just doesn't make it.

What makes a "B" movie? Lack of stars and everything rather substandard? Sometimes they have their compensations. Rather as if the makers were compensating for the lack of quality ingredients they sometimes pack a lot into the short running times. And sometimes there are some interesting ideas, shots, characters which re-emerge years, decades later in far more illustrious productions when the B movie original was long forgotten.Kaye Emmerson was not a great actress but was good looking, smart and held the attention. This is a vehicle for her and one gets the impression that the makers intended it as a woman's picture - much of it is "Cell Block H" territory (but far better done) so that it would have a broader appeal than the harder and more realistic gangster movie customarily has.Much of the action takes place in a women's prison. There is a scene where a highly secret discussion takes place deliberately out of earshot. But not out of sight. Watching is an able lip-reader who thus is able to discover the biggest secret of the movie. The shot is framed so that the lip reader is out of focus in the centre of the frame and in close up is just the mouth and chin of one of the speakers to the right. I had certainly seen this before in another very very different movie only the lip reader was a TV camera and the brains behind it was a computer. The computer's name was HAL and the movie, 26 years later, was "2001".Coincidence? Who is to say?

It's a peppy flick and in some ways better than the original 1933 movie titled Ladies They Talk About that starred Barbara Stanwyck.Fortunately, the Stanwyck movie was pre-Hays code so there is some snappy dialog and not so veiled references to prostitution that couldn't be filmed in Lady Gangster. The opening scene obviously shot in a real bank gives the film a realistic gritty feel that doesn't come off when a scene like this is shot on a set. Jackie Gleason in a small supporting role as one of Emerson's fellow bank robbers, provides a few glimpses of that "Poor Soul" face that he made famous years later on his TV show. Also, catching a very young dark-haired William Hopper (later of Perry Mason fame as Paul Drake)was also a pleasant surprise.

I'm a huge Jackie Gleason fan. Seeing the young Gleason in this movie was a sheer delight. I found it ironic that he played the "get-away" driver, because I remember hearing that Jackie Gleason never learned how to drive in real life. (I'll have to re-watch the three "Smokey and the Bandit" movies and see if he actually drives in them.) Thanks Platinum for putting this film on DVD. For 1942, this was a good movie.Another 1942 movie, being released on DVD this month (Nov.- 2005)with Jackie Gleason, is "Orchestra Wives". He plays one of the band members.To all you Baby Boomers like myself, look for Frank Wilcox in "Lady Gangster". Ya'll should recognize Mr. Wilcox from several TV shows, making small appearances, including the "Beverly Hillbillies" and the "Munsters" (very first TV episode). Wilcox has an uncredited role in one of my favorite movies of all-time, "Sergeant York" - 1941. Can anyone tell me ... why in the world is this Gary Cooper classic not released on DVD yet ?