Director: John Francis Dillon
Billie Dove enjoyed a meteoric rise in the late 1920s before her career came to an end shortly after a highly publicized affair with Howard Hughes. Although One Night at Susie’s allows audiences to see her in one of her last films, the woman the picture takes its name from is actually played by Helen Ware, memorably bringing to life a tough, no-nonsense boarding house owner. In an early scene, she has a group of gangsters at her service, demanding that they put their arms in her possession. Why she has such power over these men remains a mystery, but the dynamic is a compelling one. Interestingly enough, Susie is gobsmacked to find out that her foster son (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) wishes to marry a chorus girl (Dove), suggesting an immorality that sinks below even her usual crowd! Those interested in women’s pictures of the pre-Code era will delight in both Ware’s performance and the remarkable scene in which Fairbanks Jr. discovers that Dove has murdered a producer who attempted to rape her. Much of what follows are the familiar, creaky proceedings of a 1930 melodrama, although director of photography Ernest Haller contributes some striking images. In one advanced special effects scene, Haller employs a clever use of rear projection to make it look like the camera tracks from an elevator shaft and onto the destination floor.
Director: John Francis Dillon
The first shot of The Reckless Hour is a medium shot of star Dorothy Mackaill lounging on a couch and filing her nails. It instantly communicates her apparent wealth and status, which is only further accentuated when she announces to what appears to be her maid that she’s getting prepared to, “join the ladies.” A las, it is revealed that it was a game of misdirection, and that Mackaill is actually a department store model who lives with her family in poverty. The Reckless Hour plays like a morality tale for young women who are susceptible to the charms of shameless womanizers, but it has the benefit of a star whose great talent was in giving her victimized characters a certain grace and dignity. She delivers one of her more affecting performances of her sound career, even if she is hampered by the fairly limp material. As an added handicap, Joan Blondell is there to steal the show as her brazen sister (as she also did when they shared the screen in The Office Wife). Whereas Mackaill is wrought as humorless and naive, Blondell brings the expected sass to a small role. Fans of Blondell’s will instantly be won over by a scene in which she crudely answers a phone by barking, “Well, come in! It’s your nickel!”
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