"Hot Saturday" Movie Review

 

by Daniel White

"Nancy Carroll - Forgotten Star," that is the title of my imaginary book about this little-known actress that will never be written. However, my beloved readers, in lieu of that pie-in-the-sky opus, I have penned this favorable review of Hot Saturday.

Released in November of 1932 by Paramount, Miss Carroll has been relieved of her usual spot of top billing to relative newcomer, Cary Grant. I imagine this was the studio's way of telling their temperamental star to save her histrionics for the camera. She was developing a reputation for being difficult, which would lead to her leaving Hollywood in 1938, and the end of her film career.

In Hot Saturday, despite her demotion to second-place, Nancy Carroll is very much the main protagonist and gives an effective, well-balanced performance in this racy comedy/drama. In it, she plays Ruth Brock, a vivacious, comely bank worker in Marysville, a smallish conservative town. A representation of middle-class values in Middle America during the Depression, Hot Saturday is a very perceptive flick.

Ruth is a member of Maryville's "jet set," but instead of private planes, they tool around in roadsters. And in place of the Rivera, they drink and carouse at Willow Springs, a lakefront honkytonk. Often finding herself in precarious situations, Ruth walks that sometimes dangerous tightrope between respectability and being subjected to hot rod romances.

In his first leading man role, Cary Grant is very effective as Romer Sheffield, bon vivant and Maryville's resident playboy. When he strides into the bank, dressed in white to flirt with Ruth, his screen charm is palpable. Infatuated with Ruth, Romer invites the whole gang out to his summer place on the lake to become better acquainted with the polite-yet-wary office girl. There, the film shifts gears from a light-hearted comedy to cautionary tale. Irritated by her aggressive date's incessant pawing, Ruth flees his unwelcome advances. Spending a few chaste yet romantic hours with Romer, Ruth is chaperoned home by his chauffeur. Spotted getting out of his car, she becomes the victim of gossip. She loses her job and finds herself being shunned by the townsfolk.

Though primarily remembered today as the first film to feature Grant and his good pal, Randolph Scott, this Is Nancy Carroll's movie. It deserves to be known for her deft combination of pathos and pluckiness, and offers a clear demonstration of why, for a brief time, she was Hollywood's most popular female star. Who knows why she was deemed "difficult" by the people in power at Paramount. Carroll herself said, "(Though) I have discovered it doesn't pay to fight too much... since I have stopped fighting, my pictures are not always as satisfying."

Though she never stopped working, Nancy Carroll never achieved the same success she had in Hollywood during the late twenties and early thirties. Active in television and on the stage, she died in 1965 while appearing in the play, Never Too Late.

A polished Pre-Code crowd pleaser with the obligatory leading lady in underwear scene, and a truly eye-popping ending, Hot Saturday is mandatory viewing for any film buff interested in movies from that era (and all those who just like a good flick!).

Directed by William Seiter and co-starring Eddie Woods, Jane Darwell, Lillian Bond, and the always amusing Grady Sutton, Hot Saturday is available on YouTube.