First National/Warner Bros., 1932. Director: Thornton Freeland. Screenplay: Lillie Hayward and Howard J. Green, based on the novel by Alberta Stedman Eagan. Camera: James Van Trees. Film editor: James Gibbon. Cast: Loretta Young, George Brent, Una Merkel, David Manners, Helen Vinson, Louis Calhern, Joe Cawthorne.
Over the years, it’s become a sort of New Years’ tradition for me to feature a Warner Bros. pre-Code film in the first installment of this column. This practice has two big benefits: it gets the year off to a rousing start, and there’s a practically unlimited pool of titles to choose from! During the early 1930s the Warner studio was functioning at high capacity, averaging a new feature release more than once a week. In such a crowded field, some pre-Codes have become widely celebrated while many others, inevitably, are overlooked. One film that I think has received relatively little attention is They Call It Sin, released (as a First National production) in November 1932.
I’ve observed elsewhere, as have other historians, that the “pre-Code” label is often misunderstood. These films were not simply a constant parade of salacious, “shocking” scenes; what they did offer was an honest, sometimes gritty view of everyday American life—and in those hard-bitten Depression years, everyday life was often challenging. They Call It Sin is a case in point, for there’s nothing particularly scandalous about it. Behind that lurid title is an engaging, thoughtful story of ordinary people simply trying to get along in the world. The opening of the picture is orthodox enough: ambitious young executive David Manners, on a cross-country business trip, meets small-town Kansas girl Loretta Young and is instantly smitten. Their brief acquaintance sets the stage for her to leave her roots and travel to New York. What will happen to her there? Regular moviegoers in 1932 had seen similar plots before and had been conditioned to expect certain conventions as the story went on.
But as this story continues, it follows a path of its own, setting up expectations and then quietly upending those expectations. Manners first encounters Loretta as the organist in the small-town church, and it’s no surprise when the story introduces us to some mean-spirited, judgmental churchgoers—but the congregation at large are not depicted as caricatures; instead both Manners and the film itself treat them with a measure of respect. Loretta, the young innocent set adrift in the big city, encounters the expected roués and sophisticates—but this is no helpless damsel in distress, but a strong, self-assured young woman who is fully capable of taking care of herself. The story plays out in a series of small unexpected twists, which I will not give away here; and, to be sure, it does erupt in a burst of melodrama in the last reel. But by and large, this is a subtle, intimate story that draws us into its characters’ lives and never insults the audience’s intelligence.
It also offers a striking historical concurrence that would not have been evident to audiences in 1932. Three or four years earlier, during the talking-picture revolution, Hollywood had bombarded movie screens with a barrage of musical films—many of them so tepid and uninspired that they quickly earned a bad reputation with moviegoers, who showed their displeasure by actively avoiding musicals altogether. Warner Bros. had been as responsible as any other studio for that musical glut, and when the tide turned against such films, Warners joined the other studios in calling a moratorium on musical production.
But film enthusiasts know that it was also Warner Bros. who would bring musicals roaring back with a vengeance in 1933 with the release of the classic 42nd Street. And, in fact, 42nd Street was already in production in the autumn of 1932. Although it would not be released until the following spring, this soon-to-be-milestone production was taking significant shape on the Warners sound stages by the time They Call It Sin was released to theaters in November 1932.
Is it only a coincidence that Louis Calhern appears in They Call It Sin as a lecherous producer of Broadway musicals? Today’s viewer can scarcely watch the rehearsal scenes—here with an unbilled Roscoe Karns as the dance director relentlessly drilling the chorus girls in their routines—without thinking of the similar scenes that would appear so shortly afterward in 42nd Street.
As if to underline the connection, the cast of this film includes two major players who would also appear prominently in 42nd Street: George Brent and Una Merkel. Warners had recently signed Brent to a contract and was busily promoting him as a romantic lead. As for Una Merkel, in 1932 she was enjoying a rush of fame in her own right, her distinctive, quirky charm putting her in high demand at several studios. To see her performance in this film, providing solid support (in the plot and on the screen) to Loretta Young, is to understand her offbeat appeal to audiences in the early ’30s; it’s also like watching a dry run for the performance she will give later in 42nd Street.
And this unexpected historical nugget is just a bonus, added to the other pleasures to be derived from a fresh screening of They Call It Sin. The classic film enthusiast, looking for a change of pace, can enjoy a refreshing start to the new year by revisiting this often-overlooked little film.
