Good Dame (1934) User Reviews

Fredric March Supports Sylvia Sidney

[boblipton · 6/10 · 31 December 2021]

When exactly did the Production Code take full force? I know it was in 1934, the year this movie was released, but this hit the theaters in March, and it seems pretty much pre-code to me.

Sylvia Sidney is a chorus girl stranded in a small town, with $62 and her ticket back to Chicago. She's walking to the train station when a carnival pickpocket steals her purse, tears up the ticket and splits the money with his partner, 3-card Monte hustler Fredric March. He then runs into Miss Sidney, hears her tale of woe, and gets her a job in the show. She balks, when it turns out to be as a cootch dancer, but she gets snatched in a police raid, and March bails her out.

But they're both broke now, they can't go with the carny, so they stay in town and work a gag wherein she distracts the manager of upscale apartment houses by pretending to want to rent, while he uses the distraction to sneak in and peddle junk door to door. In between times, she drives him crazy, pulling off his loose buttons and sewing them back on, darning his socks, and refusing to play.

This is as close as Miss Sidney got to comedy in this period. There is a lot of low-class weepiness going on, of course, as she falls in love with him and his exasperated kindness, but March is slightly miscast, talking out of the side of his mouth and overacting. True, he slings carny lingo fast enough, but he moves wrong, and wears his clothes too well. He's not physically in the part. Compare this with the way he moves in Nothing Sacred; it's clearly a role meant to showcase his versatility, even if Miss Sidney is top billed.

Depression days 1934

[ilprofessore-1 · 6/10 · 2 December 2023]

This Paramount Picture, a tough girl/tough boy romance acted expertly by Fredrick March and Sylvia Sydney was made in 1934, the final year before the code came into effect. Typical of many a Pre-Code picture of the time, it is packed with sleazy unglamorous characters who go unpunished. Not much else to recommend it other than the occasional snappy dialogue, the chemistry between the two handsome leads, and some early Carnival scenes photogaphed by Leon Shamroy before his glossier Twentieth Century Fox days. March, usually the debonair leaving man is cast against type here, playing the sort of role that was to make Jimmy Cagney famous, and Sydney is lovely, vulnerable, and adorable. Once the Code was imposed, stories like this about the seamier side of life stopped being made. This minor film is a document then of how some people survived during Depression days. For that alone, it's worth watching.

Poor Sylvia Sidney just can't catch a break.

[mark.waltz · 4/10 · 30 November 2018]

If it's not living in a rat infested infested tenement like in "Street Scene", "Dead End" or "One Third of a Nation", it's being involved with bums like Fredric March, Spencer Tracy, George Raft or Henry Fonda. Okay, so some of those leading men played characters who were involved in circumstances that had them being framed for crimes they did not commit or being confusedwith somebody else or dealing with a past they were desperately trying to escape.

Before she played feisty old ladies who use their acid tongue to prevent themselves from being mistreated or exploited, Sylvia Sidney was probably Hollywood's most tragedy prone leading lady. Her pre-code characters were often used by the men she was involved with, and in this case, being robbed while trying to get out of town has her accused by the police of solicitation. Aided by carny con-artist Fredric March, she finds herself aiding him in his scams while secretly trying to reform him. but certain men cannot be reformed. In one of his rare non gentlemanly roles, March speaks with a definitive thug like accent, and basically overacts in a way which makes him seem completely unbelievable. Of his lengthy career, this is one of his few performance misfires and often you may laugh at how tough he's trying to be and how unsuccessful he is at convincing the audience that he is.

That pretty much leaves the film in Sylvia's hands and she creates a character that you can't help but root for because everything seems to be against her from the start. her only flaw is in the character thinking that March is worth trying to reform and that he is the man that she should settle down with if she manages to fulfill her goal. The cast of character actors is largely unrecognizable save for Bradley Page as the hard-hearted carnival manager and Russell Hopton as marches cohort who robs Sylvia in the very first scene. That alone should have told Sylvia to get away from him as fast as she can, which is a problem with the script that makes the remainder of the film so unbelievable. As a pre code curiosity, it does have some interesting elements about it but overall is nearly a complete misfire.

A very thugly Fredric March.

[hozana · 4/10 · 17 October 2010]

Right away in the opening credits you can get a pretty good idea of what's going to be right and what's going to be wrong with this movie. It has two things going for it: the adorable kitten-faced Sylvia Sidney, and Fredric "Total Pro" March. But then the credits let slip the film's weak point: five writers. For a 70 minute film with basically only two characters? Five writers. And it shows.

Well, Lillie (Sylvia Sidney) is a young runaway who has been fired from her first job, chorus-girling, and then gets her purse snatched by Mace (Fredric March)'s sidekick, Spats, at a carnival. Mace is one of those card-mixer-upper guys you used to see in New York subway stations. Apparently this used to be a legitimate career, because later he is offered a job in another carnival.

Mace feels bad because he accepted half of Lillie's money from Spats before he met her and heard her sad story. So when she and the other "cooch dancers" at the carnival are arrested, Mace has Spats rob their boss Bluch to get the $50 to bail Lillie out. The other cooch dancers are mercilessly left behind, to sit in a small town jail for six months.

Bluch beats the facts out of Spats (who then mysteriously disappears from the movie) and pretty soon Mace and Lillie are marooned in a nameless and non-descript town, while the very shady carnival moves on. They take adjoining hotel rooms, and although Mace professes a wish that Lillie would keep away from him, she soon finds ways to monopolize him out from under the blonde across the hall, "accidentally" ruining his only two shirts when he wants to go dancing, etc.

The dialogue is never cute, it is frequently nonsensical, and in some wince-worthy moments it is totally undeliverable. The characters are motiveless. The plot is snarled and fails to hold audience interest. The sets and costumes are unexceptional. The camera work and cinematography just sort of lay there. Basically I'm saying don't seek this movie out. Let it come to you, if that's your fate, but even then don't feel obliged to watch it unless you're a Fredric March completist. If you are, it's a bit of a curio, because he seems to be doing some sort of a Cagney impression.

Four stars out of ten.

Bad writing and unlikable characters sink this one.

[planktonrules · 2/10 · 28 September 2021]

"Good Dame" is a terrible film and I think Hozana's review identifies the problem. The film has five different writers...and it shows. The characters make no sense, their motivations make no sense and they're about as likable as a case of herpes!

Lillie (Sylvia Sidney) goes to a carnival only to have her purse snatched. She is helped by Mace (Frederic March)...though in reality, he and his pals are responsible for the theft as he's a grifter. And, for once in his life, he actually does help her....and his pals are sore at him for returning her money. So, he's now out of a job and for some completely inexplicable reason, she follows him like a lost puppy for the rest of the story. But he's thoroughly coarse, nasty and shows her little in the way of niceness or decency. So, in essence, she's a doormat and he's a complete jerk...as well as a crook! Does this sound like the basis for a good film? No?! Would you want to watch such characters?! Well, then I guess you understand the problems. It's not supposed to be a comedy but a romance and there's little romantic about this mess of a film. I just wanted both of them to get lost and although I did manage to finish the movie, I am not sure how!

I'm Done With Sylvia Sidney

[view_and_review · 1/10 · 29 April 2024]

If you want to see a girl twist herself into an obsequious pretzel for a guy, then you may want to watch this movie.

Sylvia Sydney plays Lillie Taylor, a good dame who was stranded after her purse was stolen at a circus. She got a helping hand from a petty criminal, and very unrefined Mace Townsley (Fredric March) and she latched onto him like a puppy. He couldn't beat her away with a stick. She was so incomprehensibly stuck on him.

That tends to happen in a lot of these movies from that era. A guy does a simple nicety for a woman and she latches onto him after that. It's almost as if these women, as pretty as they are, have never had a man do one nice thing for them so the moment they receive some nice treatment, mostly just common courtesy, they don't know how to act. They feel like they must be his property from then on if he treated her well.

Lillie Taylor was auditioning to be Mace's doormat. No matter how gruff, disrespectful, or threatening he was, she smiled and desired him even more. I wish I could say that this behavior was anomalous, but it isn't. Lillie Taylor was just one of several women of that era who loved to be treated poorly, and Sylvia Sidney had the perfect face and demeanor for such a role.

Sylvia Sidney has a perpetual look as though she needs love and attention, or she needs a hug. She has such a weak, homely looking face. I can't stand it. I have not seen her in a single movie in which I thought wow Sylvia Sydney is grand here. Or wow Sylvia Sydney is crushing this role. Or wow Sylvia Sydney is really commanding. No, every time I see her I have a thought of wow this woman is so pathetic. So, in this one, she gets treated like dog spit, and turns around and cleans this guy's clothes!! No pride, no self-worth.

And she wasn't even consistent in her sentiments and her behavior. She was off and on, hot and cold. One moment she's being a bugaboo and the next she was giving him the air. I know that that was the character and not Sylvia Sidney, but I've seen her face in too many similar sappy roles. I'm done with her.

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