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Une nymphe sauvé des eaux, as Renoir would say. Fresh out of prison, the prostitute (Constance Bennett) has no time for moralizing: "Save your wind, you might wanna go sailing sometime." Down the Mississippi with the tart pal (Pert Kelton), a sidekick so carnal that her indecent proposal to a steward has to be censored by the steamboat's whistle. Evading capture with a swan dive, the heroine finds refuge aboard the cotton barge of an earnest captain (Joel McCrea). "Holy smoke, a mermaid!" Gregory La Cava knows how to texture a scene—alone in the ship's cluttered cabin and torn between her attraction to the skipper and the need to purloin his savings, Bennett is serenaded by the crew's rendition of "Frankie and Johnnie" and the vessel's insistent chug-chug. She poses as a reporter to seduce the New Orleans publisher (John Halliday), the morning after in his penthouse she deftly slaps on a look of sham-hurt and is next seen stretching contentedly in a lush boudoir. Still, her heart belongs to the pauper in the river. "Any woman that can get me to shave more than twice a week must have something." The hustle of seduction or the seduction of hustle, from tricking soused businessmen to negotiating with sugar-daddies. On the other hand, stargazing romance and catfish diet: "I've had so much now that I'm about ready to meow." Teeming department store and Mardi Gras masquerade, Kelton's gravelly drawl and Halliday rather poignant in Napoleon costume, all grist to La Cava's brassy mill. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is an expansive study. With Samuel S. Hinds, Franklin Pangborn, Tom Herbert, Jane Darwell, Arthur Hoyt, and Robert Emmett O'Connor. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |