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46 Pre-Code Sex Illicit,฀Ten฀Cents฀a฀Dance,฀Shopworn,฀ Ladies฀They฀Talk฀About,฀Baby฀Face There’s been a lot written about movies made before the censorious Production Code cracked down on Hollywood in 1934—probably too much, so that the talkies made from 1930–34 are now endlessly packaged at New York’s Film Forum repertory theater and on DVD as “dirty” old movies, quaint novelties that hint about the more relaxed sexual mores of the time, a relaxation that really began in the twenties, with the first flappers, women like Colleen Moore and Clara Bow. In her early years on screen, Stanwyck found herself in several of these so-called preCode items, one of which, Baby฀Face, is practically synonymous with this whole quasi-genre. Right after she filmed Ladies฀of฀Leisure฀for Columbia, Stanwyck made Illicit (1931) for Warner Bros., testing the waters for the kind of independent hopscotch between studios that let her have more control over her career. Ann, the girl she plays in Illicit (which is based on another perilously outspoken play co-written by Robert Riskin), is the independent type. In the first scene, we see her relaxing in a loose robe with her hair down and picking up a love song from rich boy Dick (James Rennie ). Ann is in the kitchen preparing what is clearly a post-coital meal; it’s nighttime, but she’s whipping up some breakfast. Stanwyck works up a nice natural chemistry with Rennie, and then he drops the other shoe: “We really ought to be married,” he says, a cue for the 1931 audience to gasp happily. They’re living in sin, though they keep separate apartments. Ann is afraid of marriage. She briefly describes how divorce ruined her mother’s life, but this explanation feels like just a sketchy cover, a p r e - C o d e s e x 47 “reason” that doesn’t begin to impinge on this girl’s highly sensible ideas about keeping a romance alive. Sprawled on a couch, she playfully runs down her list of lovers for Dick (a technique that Stanwyck will perfect in The฀Lady฀Eve [1941]), and keeps him alert with some trash talk. A discussion about early morning habits leads Ann to conclude that “we’re a riot in our underwear!” and when Dick wanders into a conventional complaint about having to pussyfoot around, Ann takes the bait and cries, “Don’t say you don’t like the pussyfooting—I love it!” Stanwyck is fresh and open here, and she makes this girl’s modern ideas about freedom in love seem right-on, even when the script keeps trying to nudge us about the supposed immaturity of Ann’s theories. When Ann marries Dick, they find out fairly quickly that she was right; they get bored with one another. In one radical scene, Ann deplores her own jealousy after seeing Dick squiring an old flame. She wants to be his playmate again, not a petty spouse. Why shouldn’t they see other people, as long as their primary interest is in each other? “I’m not through playing yet,” she says, “I don’t want to get through.” Dick suggests they try to have a child, but Ann immediately vetoes this desperate measure. If only Stanwyck herself had been so pragmatic before deciding to adopt a boy, Dion, in 1932, to try to save her marriage to Fay. The theme of Illicit is unusual, but its pacing is meandering and amorphous . It concludes with a stagy telephone scene where Ann realizes, momentarily at least, that she really wants what everybody supposedly wants, the security of marriage. We’ve seen enough of her to know, however , that she’ll be out playing around again in a few months, maybe on the sly. In 1933, Warner Bros. threw Bette Davis back into this property in Ex-Lady, a far more interesting film because Davis plays the role challengingly , like a firebrand. Stanwyck is too tentative and vulnerable in her version to really make a big noise about her bohemian convictions. Movies from 1931 generally don’t have theme songs, but Ten Cents a฀Dance claims that it’s “based on the popular song by Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers,” so we get Ruth Etting’s soft, torchy version of the tune under the credits. In our first glimpse of Stanwyck, playing a dimea -dance drudge named Barbara, she’s leaning against a railing, waiting for...

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