DrScore This early talkie (so early I understand there was a silent version shot simultaneously) introduced me to the actor Lowell Sherman. Sherman plays drunken cad/best friend to leading man Ralph Graves, who portrays a rich artist. Barbara Stanwyck plays a roaring twenties-esque party girl who ends up modeling for Graves.Stanwyck is excellent and captivating. This was early in her career, and it must've been clear that she was destined to become a star after this film came out. Ralph Graves, on the other hand, turns in one of the worst performances I've ever seen. Stiff, wooden, he almost sinks the picture. He doesn't connect emotionally with his own character or anyone else's. His career seemed to tank after this film. No surprise there. Lloyd Sherman plays your proto-typical cad, and he's the best thing in the movie. He's a scoundrel, overtly trying to get down Stanwyck's pants while still maintaining his charm. Though you're supposed to root against him, you kind of like this ne'er do well. He fully embodies the role, and as far as talkies are concerned, I'd say he invented the drunken cad, the inebriated sophisticate. Actors as disparate as William Powell (think Thin Man) to Dudley Moore (think Arthur) owe Sherman a debt of gratitude. Like Ralph Graves, Sherman is kind of forgotten today. It's not because, like Graves, he didn't have the goods to last and make his mark. It's because Sherman died a few years later, of pneumonia. At the time of his death, he was just starting to direct as well. If you love charming movie scoundrels, raise a glass in Mr. Sherman's honor. He would approve.

CitizenCaine Frank Capra produced, co-wrote, and directed this Barbara Stanwyck performance, her fourth film. It's a star-making performance for her as her character runs the gamut of emotions from A to Z. She plays a mistress with a heart of gold for all it's worth. Ralph Graves plays a rich boy/artist who runs into Stanwyck one night when both are escaping glitzy parties. It's revealed Stanwyck and her room mate, Marie Prevost, are probably not the type of girl you bring home to mother. Lowell Sherman is the would be sugar daddy Stanwyck keeps in the wings while working on Graves. In the hands of a lesser director, Ladies Of Leisure would have become simply another in a long line of boy meets girl from the wrong side of the tracks melodramas. Frank Capra provides just the right touches and fosters a winning Stanwyck performance that elevates the picture above most of its kind. Almost every Capra film focused on romance, like this one, offers an enchantingly unique experience regarding how its counterparts fall in love. This film is no exception. Stanwyck spends the night with Graves one rainy night, and Graves puts her up in his artist's studio while he goes to his bedroom. A girl with Stanwyck's background sees it as refreshing because she's used to guys making passes every chance they get. Watching Stanwyck try to get breakfast ready the next morning will break your heart as she watches Graves go about his business without readily acknowledging her efforts or falling for her as she wants. Graves' parents are played by George Fawcett and Nance O'Neil who are simply trying to look out for what's best for their son's future in rejecting the romance. O'Neil and Stanwyck have a terrific scene together near the end as Stanwyck returns to her rented room with Marie Prevost when O'Neil arrives to have it out with her. Both women display the nuances of mixed emotions in trying to see the opposite point of view. Capra provides nice touches like stop/start motion transitions fixated on the same objects and then pulling the camera back to reveal a different location. Another trademark in Capra's films is the use of motifs repeated throughout the film like the references to Arizona and the stars. Jo Swerling adapted the film based on the play by David Belasco and Milton Herbert Gropper. If one could yield some criticism of the film, aside from its creaky plot, it would be Ralph Graves' acting. Graves is simply a poor match for Stanwyck; there's not a lot of chemistry between them, and he doesn't have the acting chops compared to her. In a few years, like so many other actors and actresses of the silent era, Graves' acting would be reduced to smaller and smaller parts. This is only an inkling of what was to come from a Capra directed film. *** of 4 stars.

dougdoepke Slow-moving, over-long hundred minutes that a few years ago would have been dubbed a "woman's" picture. Though directed by the legendary Frank Capra, too many scenes labor at getting the point across-- the overnight episode, the many scenes of Kay {Stanwyck} "pining" for her man. Frankly, I found myself hitting "fast forward" to eliminate some of the redundancies. Now, I'm not opposed to love stories; I'm just opposed to the needless stretching of a point, and this film has too many over-worked scenes. Too bad that the sparkling opening scene proves misleading. My guess is that movie makers in 1929 were still feeling their way through the new sound technology, even the talented Capra. Certainly, his later films show both the economy and pacing generally absent from this early effort.At least the young Stanwyck gets to show her acting chops as she runs the emotional gamut from great joy to deep sadness. It's quite a performance in an especially demanding role. The trouble is her co-star Ralph Graves has all the charm and appeal of dried cement. Next to Stanwyck, he's a deadening presence and makes drawn-out scenes seem endless. As a supposed artist, he's simply miscast. Unfortunately, he also sounds like one of those silent screen stars unable to deliver the new technology in convincing fashion. Too bad that the enlivening Prevost and the amusing Sherman don't have more scenes to boost the energy level.Nonetheless, there is one scene that almost redeems the rest. Mrs. Strong (Nance O'Neill) visits Kay to break off the disreputable Kay's engagement to her son Jerry (Graves). In an ace performance, Strong enters as a proud, assured woman of wealth and breeding, convinced that son Jerry is about to make a huge mistake marrying a floozie. However, as Kay's noble nature emerges under a common concern for Jerry's wellbeing, Mom begins to see past Kay's dubious reputation just as Jerry has. The emotional stages each moves through toward a mutual respect proves quite compelling. It's a marvelously written and performed sequence, full of nuance and conflicting emotion, and in my view the film's real centerpiece. Anyway, for those interested, the movie now stands mainly as an early look (before her teeth were fixed) at one of the screen's outstanding personalities.

st-shot Frank Capra's pre-code early talkie involving class consciousness and loose flappers is a rather slow going, sloppy melodrama that is salvaged by the fresh performances of Barbara Stanwyck, Marie Prevost and Lowell Sherman. Poor little rich boy Ralph Strong aspires to be a great painter but feels lost and empty amid his roaring twenties hanger ons bent on pleasure. He escapes them one night to clear his head and meets Kay Arnold, a professional escort, rowing a boat to escape the same madness from a yacht party. She agrees to model for Strong who eventually falls for her but is rejected by his family due to her past and station. After a visit from his mother Kay sacrifices her future happiness by agreeing to run off with one of Strong's party animal buddies.There's plenty of racy double entendre dialog in Ladies, convincingly uttered by the perfectly dissipated Lowell Sherman and low rent good time girls Stanwyck and the tragic Marie Prevost who all but steals the film in a supporting role. Ralph Graves as Strong on the other hand is wimpy and washed out, behaving at times like a sulking child.Capra and his regular cameraman Joseph Walker offer some beautiful tableaux that evoke the jazz age as well as beautifully lit atmospheric scenes of sensual tension. He allows these scenes to lag however and it doesn't help matters that Stanwyck and Graves lack chemistry. Other Capra tropes like the mawkishly sentimental scenes involving the parents and the lovers and the requisite redemption at film's end take whatever life Ladies of Leisure has and drowns it in a tearjerker ocean.