Lady Gangster (1942)

Simply A Masterpiece

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

A budding actress helps a crew of bankrobbers, after which she's sent to prison, where she uses her wits to get a pardon.The 60-minutes comes across more like a Monogram production instead of the gangster experts at Warner Bros. The main problem lies with the flick's lack of grit. There's really no one to menace the audience as would be expected. As the lead player, Emerson lacks even a hint of fire, which leaves an affable blank where an igniting spark should be. The supporting players too-- with one notable exception-- are pretty bland, along with a sloppy script, as other reviewers point out. Then too, the hulking guy in drag is a hoot that should fool no one, especially canny prison guards. On the other hand, the prison's dayroom scenes are colorful and lively, and compensate somewhat. Director Florey also shows some flair with the staircase brawl, and especially with Dorothy Adams' lip-reading angles. However, to me, Ruth Ford (Lucy) absolutely steals the film. She injects real life and personality into her prison snitch role that provides a lift to the proceedings (and with a pony-tail, no less). I can see why she was an Orson Welles favorite. I'll look for her from now on.All in all, the movie's rather limp for Warner Bros. and its gangster theme specialty. Wisely, Emerson transitioned from movies to early TV where her low-cut gowns suddenly got men interested in panel shows. Too bad wardrobe missed the opportunity here. It would have been big compensation.

Lady Gangster was based on a play written by Dorothy Mackaye who did some time in prison for covering up a homicide of her husband Ray Raymond by actor Paul Kelly who also served in prison before resuming his career. All the principals in that affair are gone now and their lives and story would certainly be far more interesting than this film which had a previous incarnation by Warner Brothers in 1933. That film was Ladies They Talk About and starred Barbara Stanwyck. As it was before the Code, I'm betting that was a better version. It certainly sounded more interesting in the Stanwyck biography I read.Faye Emerson is no Stanwyck, but she's all right in the role of an actress fallen on bad times and now hooking up with bank robbers Roland Drew, Bill Phillips and Jackie Gleason. Yes the great one is in the cast as wheel man of the bank robbery that Emerson acts as a shill/decoy for and gets caught.In prison for her crime Faye makes friends with Julie Bishop and as she knows where the money is hid, she has that as a bargaining chip for her release. But the plot takes some strange turns and she's forced to escape.The male roles in this film are weak, Frank Wilcox is a bit of a doofus as your crusading crime busting radio commentator. Why Emerson falls for him is beyond me. The script is weak and meandering for Lady Gangster as well. For instance an element is introduced of a rivalry between District Attorney Herbert Rawlinson and Wilcox, with Wilcox intimating the DA is corrupt. But that doesn't go anywhere. Certainly the talents of Jackie Gleason are not used at all, but Warners never realized what they had under contract.On the plus side, the best supporting performance is clearly that of prison snitch Ruth Ford who really doesn't do it for material gain, she just likes the attention. Ford did quite a lot with a small role.A product of Warner Brothers B picture unit, Lady Gangster just doesn't make it.

This film, starring Faye Emerson, has inexplicably fallen into the public domain. I say inexplicably because it was made by Warner Brothers—a company that almost always was certain to renew copyrights on its work. Somehow this one slipped by and as a result it's available for viewing through a link on IMDb. This film is worth seeing if only to get a look at Jackie Gleason in one of his earliest screen roles—albeit a bit part.The film begins with Emerson working with a gang to rob a bank. She's the inside person whose job it is to get the guard to open the door after she gives him a sob story. The police suspect her but cannot prove she was with the gang—so they hold her for the time being in jail. An annoying radio personality takes on this case in order to discredit the District Attorney—and begins to whine on the air that she is being railroaded by an overzealous system. However, when she confesses to the radio man (who turns out to be an old friend of hers), he tells the D.A. and she is sent to prison. Inexplicably, he then continues talking about how this bad lady was mistreated by the system—yet HE was the one who was responsible for her going to state prison!! This is a MAJOR weakness in the film…it just didn't make much sense and you wonder how anyone smart enough to have a job as a broadcaster could be that much of an idiot. Nor does what happens next concerning her and the old friend—who is just too big a sap to be true! While this is not a terrible film, perhaps its being in the public domain may in part be because this is a weakly written film. Despite good acting, you just can't get past the dopey aspects of the plot that make this an obvious B-movie from Warner Brothers. It's entertaining and slickly produced but pretty silly…and is one of the few misfires the studio made during this otherwise golden era.By the way, if you do watch this film there are a couple things you may want to look out for in the movie. First, in a funny scene, one of the male gang members dresses in drag and visits Emerson in prison! Second, although most would not know this, the lip reading portion of the film is based on a myth. You CANNOT have a deaf person watch others at a distance and perfectly read the lips of both parties. It's truly a hit or miss proposition reading lips (also called 'speech reading' by the deaf)—and wild exaggerations like this film are common but just not possible. If only my deaf daughter could read lips this well!

What makes a "B" movie? Lack of stars and everything rather substandard? Sometimes they have their compensations. Rather as if the makers were compensating for the lack of quality ingredients they sometimes pack a lot into the short running times. And sometimes there are some interesting ideas, shots, characters which re-emerge years, decades later in far more illustrious productions when the B movie original was long forgotten.Kaye Emmerson was not a great actress but was good looking, smart and held the attention. This is a vehicle for her and one gets the impression that the makers intended it as a woman's picture - much of it is "Cell Block H" territory (but far better done) so that it would have a broader appeal than the harder and more realistic gangster movie customarily has.Much of the action takes place in a women's prison. There is a scene where a highly secret discussion takes place deliberately out of earshot. But not out of sight. Watching is an able lip-reader who thus is able to discover the biggest secret of the movie. The shot is framed so that the lip reader is out of focus in the centre of the frame and in close up is just the mouth and chin of one of the speakers to the right. I had certainly seen this before in another very very different movie only the lip reader was a TV camera and the brains behind it was a computer. The computer's name was HAL and the movie, 26 years later, was "2001".Coincidence? Who is to say?