Flower shop girl Sidney has the bad luck to have a vicious hoodlum fall for her in a big way. When she prefers Raymond, the hood has them both framed for murder. Some powerful moments when they're allowed to see each other for a few brief moments in the penitentiary not long before he's to be executed, and it turns out that the meeting been arranged merely to give a tabloid a photo op. The conventions of "the big house" story seem to have been already firmly established by 1931: the snitch with the facial tic, the girl with phony society airs, the tough gal, the big break, the heavy-set matron (Jane Darwell, unbilled), Beavers as a friendly "hot music" loving mama. The story, the characterizations, the writing, all have the familiarity of the mid-thirties; solid entertainment, but not with the freshness found in so many pre-Code films.
Review of Ladies of the Big House
