User Reviews

Mary Astor gives a strong performance playing a gangster's girlfriend who works in his nightclub, but when the place gets raided a kindly cop asks her basically "What's a nice girl like you doing working in a place like this?". He gives her ten bucks to get her started on a new life and she decides to give it a go. Answering a want ad for waitresses ("good figure required") to work at a businessman's lunch place, she gets herself hired, serves a meal and spills water on good-looking businessman Stephen (John Boles), all the while going to night school studying shorthand and typing. Well, by coincidence, she ends up Stephen's new secretary, and before you know it - his new wife. But he has no idea about her sordid past!

This silent film is very fast-paced and entertaining, and while the quality of the print I saw was not the best, the story kept me completely interested. Ben Bard, as the gangster Mary Astor is hooked up with in the early parts of the film, is dapper, slick, and suitably despicable in his bad man role, John Boles is his usual self, kind of boring but adequate. Mary Astor is great and helps make this film a good one, and I love the performance given by Robert Elliott as the good-hearted cop who helps her. An excellent film.

What happen to the movie tone soundtrack? It originally had music and effects.This was the same strange situation when I saw a bad print of lonesome.It had a modern rock sound track to it.Then I read that it had talkie sequences.i though that version was lost .all of a sudden I discover it wasn't and finally it was put on d.v.d and Blu- ray.Is this movie in the same situation? the sound does exist? I read that an extant is in the New York Museum of fine arts.Well it still was a good melodrama.Mary Astor playing a host for a speak easy,she hates .It's run by Champagne Joe,played by Oscar Apfel.Her rotten boyfriend,Edwin ,played by Robert Elliot, is a crook and keeps taking her money she earns away from her.Well she get fed up with it and leaves,but a raid is in site.After Edwin pick pockets and old geezer and he discovers that his wallets gone.He gets kicked out.The officer Dan Manning ,played by Ben Bard,Sees what has been going on as he has the place raided.Asking the crooks at the bar,as they get arrested.It seems ,if I can remember,someone put the wallet in Ed's pocket.He end up going to prison too.Bard catchers Mary Astor leaving, but after explanation he lets her go and give her 10 dollars to star over again.She ends up working as a laundress ,until she sees her exp boyfriend taking his laundry in and she burns the sheet accidentally she Ironed.She ends up being a waitress and learns to be a secretary at night school.She meets Stephen a import export dealer ,at the eatery ,she works at.It isn't until she gets a job as a stenographer and discovers Steve again as her boss.They eventually fall in love with each other.But as they go to a judge friend of Steve to get married,it when Edwin is being sentenced of theft Two years.By the time she has a child s and lives a happy life .it's when Edwin has come out of prison and black male her.Helen Lynch plays one of the second hostesses of the speak easy, who now the girl friend of Edwin.Eventually Bard get champagne Joe to get rid of Edwin ,finally putting at peace for Astor's character.although it was average,It was still rare .But this print was poor. 03/06/13

Mary Astor may not have had the pulling power of other stars but even during this time when she had caught the eye of Fox, her acting in this very gritty gangster yarn was second to none. A programmer in length only, the lack of big names gave this movie an almost documentary look and all the players impress. With names like Derby Dan and Champagne Joe, not to mention gorgeous gals, you are instantly plunged into the smoky, sleazy world of speakeasies were thuggish racketeers pimp their down trodden hostesses onto drunken businessmen in an effort to get them to spend up a storm!! Judy Andrews (Astor) as well as looking out of place in that smoked filled atmosphere, is fed up with cheap crooks and cheap rackets - returning from her mother's funeral puts her life into focus.

Ben Bard, an unknown actor to me but his "Derby Dan" is an elegant but vicious thug who twists Mary's arm (literally) in an effort to get her to hand over her weekly salary. That is the straw that finally breaks the camel's back but the "jovial out of towner" also has his problems. He has been robbed and is bounced out of the club before he can make a fuss - right out in front of a police car and boy, is he ready to name names for Detective Edwin Burke (Robert Elliott, soon to be a fixture as a Hollywood cop). The evening ends with Champagne Joe (Oscar Apfel) looking at a lengthy stretch in the big house - and vowing to get the dirty so and so who stealthily slipped the wallet into his coat pocket (no prizes for guessing it was Derby Dan)!!

Meanwhile Burke has recognized the soulful girl he saw earlier that day, grieving her mother's death but even though he is shocked to see she works at the club, he believes her story of trying to go straight and turns a blind eye. With a little bit of help ($10) from Burke, Judy starts a new life as a laundress - until seeing Dan through a window rattles her and she loses her job!! Next up is a waitress in a gentleman's lunch room - "must have good figure". Quite a few innovative scenes - when she first starts applying for jobs - the camera pans away as she climbs the stairs, indicative of her climb out of the gutter and towards clean air!!

As well as waitressing, she also studies secretarial skills at night school - boy is this girl keen!! She soon catches the eye of her new boss, Stephen Ransome (John Boles) who after a few dates regrets the fact that he will soon be in need of a new secretary!! Judy tries to keep her past a secret but at the court where they stop off to get married she is just in time to see Derby Dan get sentenced to prison for larceny. He recognises her but fortunately her guardian angel in the shape of Detective Burke is there to protect her from Dan's menacing looks. Two years later Dan is out, tracks Judy down and to her frantic question "What do you want"? his response is "Plenty"!! He takes her jewels and demands $5,000 for their return or "I'll tell poppa" - but Judy has an ace up her sleeve, her good buddy Detective Burke!!

A discreet word in Champagne Joe's ear and "that's the greatest public improvement since the subway" according to one eager policeman.

Playing "Blondey Nell" a gorgeous hostess, was the beauteous Helen Lynch who had been a 1924 Wampas Baby Star. While she appeared in a couple of prestigious films ("The Singing Fool", "Underworld" and "In Old Arizona") her roles were small and she retired for marriage with Carroll Nye in the early thirties. Ben Bard, so convincing as Derby Dan, was initially signed by Fox as a leading man but the air of quiet menace he bought to his roles meant he was often typecast as a heavy.

Highly Recommended.