Marked Woman (1937)

A few friends and I are doing a Bette Davis retrospective, slowly working our way through all of Davis's films from the 1930s and 1940s. The biggest surprise so far is two relatively unknown films she did in 1937: "Marked Woman" and "Kid Galahad." Both are available from Netflix in pristine DVD pressings. They are an absolute delight and come highly recommended. They aren't great works of art, but they're two of the best traditional melodramas you'll ever see. The films have some similarity. In both, Davis plays a young woman from a lower-class background struggling to make a living in the criminal underground. "Marked Woman" is particularly daring, in that she plays a prostitute battling the mob kingpin for whom she works. It's a stark and tough work, conveying the sense that if one is born on the wrong side of the tracks, one is probably doomed to stay there the rest of one's life. The director was Lloyd Bacon, who also directed "42nd Street" a few years earlier. "Kid Galahad" is class-conscious but not quite so darkly. Davis plays sidekick to a crooked boxing promoter (Edward G. Robinson), and both are lower-class young people trying to survive as best they can. Robinson's character is presented forthrightly as the child of immigrants. There is one long scene where he talks to his mother in fluent Italian, and there aren't any subtitles. This was a joy to see in a mainstream Hollywood movie. I can't imagine how much it must have meant to Italian audiences of that era. Davis's character falls in love with the new boxer they are promoting, whom she dubs Kid Galahad. Twenty-three-year-old Wayne Morris positively melts the screen as the boxer. In one of the most touching and non-actorly performances I've ever seen, the largely untrained Morris plays the character from his heart. His physical beauty (Rudy Valentino good looks and an Olympian body) is matched by his homespun kindness. You can feel Bette Davis falling in love with Morris in every scene they have together. Michael Curtiz, who would in later years bring us "Casablanca" and "Mildred Pierce," among many other films, directed "Kid Galahad." Coincidentally, Humphrey Bogart has a supporting role in both "Marked Woman" and "Kid Galahad," as does Jane Bryan. If you haven't seen a movie from Hollywood's golden era in a while, these are two titles that will surely not disappoint. Note on Davis: Nineteen thirty-seven was the year Bette Davis hit her stride. She first caught attention in 1934 for her Oscar-nominated tour de force in "Of Human Bondage" opposite Leslie Howard. She followed that up by winning the first of her two Oscars in 1935 for "Dangerous." By 1937, she was soaring, becoming a major box-office attraction. In 1938, she won her second and final Oscar for "Jezebel." It's hard to believe that an actor of her stature would only win two Oscars (out of 11 total nominations). But then again, Meryl Streep has only won two (out of a total 16 nominations).