"Frisco Jenny" Review

 

by Daniel White

Happy Belated Birthday to Miss Ruth Chatterton (December 24, 1892 - November 24, 1961). Largely forgotten today, Ruth Chatterton was one of Hollywood's biggest female stars during it's Pre-Code era (in a 1930 poll she placed second, behind Norma Shearer). Probably best known for her role in Dodsworth (1936), she retired from filmmaking two years later, though she certainly didn't retire from life. Aviator, author, Chatterton also raised French poodles, and continued to act on the stage and television (her last role was as Gertrude to Maurice Evans' Hamlet on television in 1953).

In First National Pictures, Frisco Jenny (1932), directed by William Wellman, she plays the title character, Jenny Sandoval. Sounding a bit like Jimmy Cagney ("This is Jenny see, Jenny Sandoval" "I've been brought up with coppers!"), Jenny is a tough broad, a madam who manages a call girl service in San Francisco's Tenderloin district.

The film begins in 1906 (you know what THAT means), where a blonde Jenny with a ponytail works in her father's bar, keeping the books, keeping the peace, and keeping a watchful eye over the girls who ply their trade there. In love with the bar's piano player, Dan (Donald Cook), who her father disapproves of ("I'd rather see her married to a Hottentot!"), both are conveniently disposed of in the famous earthquake. Realistically rendered and every bit as effective (if on a smaller scale) than MGM'S more famous one in 1936, the special effects are top-notch.

I liked this movie and am surprised it isn't more well known. It's a Pre-Code gem that is fairly implicit in its treatment of pre-marital sex, prostitution, and unwed pregnancy. There is one scene with Jenny and the other madams of the city that is jaw-dropping. Sitting in Jenny's home, drinking coffee, discussing business, they are successful women paying deference to Jenny, their leader. There's even a Queer reference when one of the madams tells the others that two of her girls are living in Shanghai, and "they're inseparable."!

I like Ruth Chatterton too, who does a great job as the tough-as-nails with a heart of gold, Jenny. In her big hats with enough plumage to cover a Macy's Thanksgiving Day float, she reminded me of Mae West, but a Westian character who isn't a cartoon or a caricature. It's obvious why Depression-era audiences (especially women) would like Jenny. Resourceful, self-sufficient, resilient, yet sensitive and kind, she is the perfect heroine for the times.

Of course, even a prosperous woman like Jenny can't have it all. Involved in a murder she helps to cover up (in one of my favorite scenes, she hides the murder weapon, a gun, in a cake!), Jenny loses the son she had by the ivory tickler, but continues to thrive as an astute business woman. Eventually, Jenny finds herself on trial for her life, guilty of a crime she committed to protect the reputation of her son, who is now grown up. The story slides into pure sudsy soap opera as her son, now district attorney, prosecutes Jenny, unaware she is his mother!

It may be silly cornball hokum, but there's a feminist message here as well. All of Jenny's woes come from her associations with men. From a brutal, unsavory father (he slaps her to the ground when he realizes she has become intimate with Dan), to her partnership with unscrupulous lawyer Steve Dutton (the excellent Louis Calhern), Jenny is never allowed to extricate herself from the power men exert over her. It is only through death- both theirs and her own- that can Jenny be free.

Finally, I want to applaud the film for being relatively free of racism and Asian prejudice. Yes, the role of Amah, Jenny's loyal friend is played by a white woman (Helen Jerome Eddy), but she isn't caked in yellow makeup or forced to speak in demeaning chop chop pidgin English.

Also there is a beautiful scene that takes place after the quake with the wonderful Clarence Muse singing "My Gal Sal" to a group of white men and women around a piano. Equals, they are drawn together by the tragedy of the quake. Most of the time Hollywood in the Golden Age got this stuff wrong, but once in a great while it managed to do it correctly, and Frisco Jenny is one of those times.

With James Murray, Berton Churchill, and Robert Emmett O'Connor as her domineering father, Frisco Jenny is available on YouTube in a pristine print with English subtitles.