Employees' Entrance

I spoke about Loretta Young's early film Big Business Girl, noting it was of some interest but not that good. This film is a superior work but less of a platform for Young, who is just a primary background figure here. She is a new employee dealing with forces of light and dark (see also, a similar character in Skyscraper Souls) as seen by two men in her life.  The video provided focuses on the tart of the film, who had a similar reputation at the time in real life, to her detriment.

The focus is the seemingly amoral manager of a large department store, struggling to deal with the early years of the Great Depression (1933).  Being "pre-code," the film provides a chance to suggest just how amoral, early on clearly hinting of Loretta Young (and I thought she was a good Catholic girl! well, other than with Clark Gable) sleeping with him to get a job and having a ready made office tart to do his dirty work.  That and (see also, Skyscraper Souls) a scene with the boss getting a young thing drunk with champagne is really the only "risque" parts of film. 

Being pre-Code, he doesn't really get his in the end either though the good girl does get the good guy (a rather weak character; the flaw in the film being no real satisfactory antagonist, Young's character in fact seems a bit better off with the manager -- as she says, it is not like she "hates him" or anything). As one review over at IMDB notes, in fact, the character is rather sympathetic.  He challenges the oh so proper and often moronic banker or socialite directors of the company, since he is the one who actually makes the tough decisions and does all the work.

In fact, as he tries to separate Young from his new assistant (they secretly married) and she tries to commit suicide after a confrontation, there is a race against time to get a proxy so that he can retain control and not lead to "retrenchment" (involving firing a lot of people).  We learn about his poor upbringing and all, and like another executive, many viewers (as things went crazy around them) could appreciate his man eat man mentality, even if there was some ugly results.  This underlines the need for a balance to such people and a check is lacking in this film.

It is a rather impressive view of the period, a fairly quick 1:15, that has that charm of a different sort of hero or anti-hero.  In Skyscraper Souls, the big man is killed by his mistress, who is shunted off for a younger model, saving the model in the process to marry the (now poorer, after an ill advised stock purchase by the misinformed mistress)  good guy.  Here, the film ends with him retaining control and making someone he earlier chewed up (in the process, the guy hardened and became a tougher businessman). Young's character wordlessly looks on while her wan hubby*  goes to her hospital room and promises to take her away.

The viewer might just take even the office trollop to that fate.  One is left to believe this must have been young Ayn Rand's favorite film of '33. 

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* A rather funny scene underlined the point. After the manager lets the husband overhear him confront Young, including letting it out that she spent the night with him after she was married, Young takes poison (she earlier was going to commit suicide out of guilt but finds out the husband was out drunk on the floor while she spend the night with the manager).

The husband finally has it!  He confronts the manager with the vial of poison.  In response, the manager hands him a gun!  Point blank, the hubby only wings his arm.  The manager shoos everyone away after they heard the shot and calmly wraps a bandage around his bleeding arm.  How in the heck can the viewer respect such a drip who can't even shoot the guy right, the guy who slept with his wife and led her to poison herself?!