CFSNEWSLETTER Cincinnati Film Society P.O

CFSNEWSLETTER Cincinnati Film Society P.O. Box 14182 Cincinnati, Ohio 45214 Hay 1983 Volume 4 Number 3 most evident in the Gold Diggers films The Warner Brothers Sisterhood (GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933, GOLD DIGGERS OF 1935, GOLD DIGGERS OF 1937). The spec tacular production numbers for which these Women Harking at Warners' in the 30s films are often remembered are circum and 40s scribed by stories of chorines struggling to make ends meet or finance a show that Despite a widely held belief that Holly will literally or figuratively keep them off wood has ahvays been a dream factory, pro the streets. Feminist critics have pointed ducing celluloid fantasy rather than any out that the objectification of women as image of reality, Hollywood has not always parts of a Berkeley decorat·ive pattern con shared this belief about itself. During tradicts their presentation outside of the the Depression years, associated with the production numbers as individual women with lavish Busby Berkely musicals labeled es distinguishable personalities, backgrounds, capist by many critics, Warner Brothers, and problems. The films condemn the most mer the studio that produced those musicals, cenary of the gold diggers (Ginger Rogers in claimed a commitment to social realism. 1933, for example) while taking a realistic Indeed, Warners' became known for such view of women's economic films as I M1 A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG (1932) and CABIN IN THE COTTON (1932), social commentaries on the harsh realities of life in the 30s. But what of women's lives? The movie industry has rarely been credited with perceptiveness and accuracy in its por trayal of women, but the emphasis on social realism did have an impact on films about women. The central reality in many women's lives, especially during the Depression years, was that they worked for a living. Thus many of the talented ac tresses at Warner Brothers, including Bette Davis, Ruby Keeler, Barbara Stanwyck, Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper star Kay Francis, Joan Blondell, and Glenda in MEET JOHN DOE Farrell, found themselves increasingly called upon to play working women. In Such a view also led to films about more her essay, "Woemn at Work: Warners in the overt exchanges of sex for money. In BABY 1930s," the essay that inspired this fes FACE (1933 ; no longer in distribution) tival, Elizabeth Dalton summarized these Barbara Stanwyck, left destitute by her fa portrayals of working women: ~'These films ther's death, works as a stripper before were remarkable in analyzing the dynamics sleeping her way to financial security; Darryl of male-female relationships; and they F. Zanuck resigned as production head at WB exposed the struggle and prejudice that in protest of the unwholesome subject matter women really faced. But in the conceptions of the film. Warners' went on to make the re of women they put forth, and in the plot markable MARKED WOHAN (1937, shown by the CFS resolutions they offered, they revealed last summer), a film about a group of pros a traditional male bias: a woman is made titutes who finally agree to testify against for love, not work." the racketeer who "owns" them. The uneasiness of the marriage of As Dalton suggests, the realism of these social realism and Hollywood fantasy is .

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