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I watched PAROLE GIRL (1933) last night, which finds Mae Clark assaying a decent gal who takes part in a scam at a department store, only to get caught. Mind you, Clarke only takes part because her partner, Tony (Hale Hamilton), was decent to her ailing father some years back, covering his medical bills and paying for his funeral expenses, so she finds it hard to say no when he pressures her to return the favor.
The scam involves Tony loudly accusing Clarke of stealing his wallet in a crowded department store, allowing her to turn on the water works when it turns out she doesn't, in fact, have the wallet in her possession. Her subsequent threat to sue the store for doing irreparable damage to her reputation convinces the store manager to write her a check on the spot, and she splits the proceeds with Tony.
It's a tidy grift, and it works once, but the pair get greedy and try it a second time in another store. They almost get away with it there, too, but that store's manager receives a phone call just in time from his insurance company, alerting him that there's a pair of scam artists on the loose.
Caught redhanded (Tony's already scrammed), Clarke throws herself on the manager's mercy and has him convinced that she's not a bad sort and should be given a second chance, but the big boss, played by Ralph Bellamy, says it's out of his hands, that the store's insurance company requires them to presecute all such misdeeds.
So Clarke is, of course, found guilty and has to serve time, blaming Bellamy all the while.
Upon her early release, awarded after some faux heroics on her part during a prison fire that she intentionally started, she sets out to make Bellamy pay by getting him drunk and wedding him (or, rather, convincing him that they're married -- the "justice of the peace" who performs the ceremony is actually Tony, her old partner in crime, so the knot is not legally tied), which makes Bellamy a bigamist, since he married a gal back in college that he's not seen in years. (That his first bride turns out to be Clarke's prison cellmate [Marie Prevost] stretches credulity a bit, but one doesn't watch a picture like this expecting verisimilitude).
Can you guess how it all pans out? I trust that you can -- I certainly did as I watched -- but it doesn't matter. The picture's still plenty entertaining.
One thing to watch for, should you ever catch this snappy little Pre-Code programmer: When Bellamy wakes up, groggy and hungover the morning after, with no idea yet that he's "married," he's surprised to find Clarke sitting in his breakfast nook, enjoying a light repast of -- wait for it -- grapefruit. (Many of you will here recall Ms. Clarke's most famous on-screen moment, filmed two years earlier, that saw Jimmy Cagney shoving a grapefruit in her face during a memorable scene in THE PUBLIC ENEMY, so it's amusing here to see her savoring a bit of citrus enjoyment in the more conventional fashion.)
Posted by brett at 12:16 PM