Paid to Dance (1937) User Reviews

Short plot-packed, break-neck paced, B-movie with a young Rita Hayworth in a talking role some scenes.

[declancooley · 6/10 · 29 March 2024]

It seems those dancers-for-hire clubs have some shady dealings in the background with young girls being locked into contracts that allow them to be shipped to any club the owner wants - still, one can't operate without protection from the law and when a new protector comes into the picture, suddenly there's trouble in local boss Miranda's Paradise Club. These girls are also dying like flies and disappearing into thin air to the consternation of the citizenry so the governor decides to get tough has many repercussions for the girls. Rita Hayworth is a new dancer who gets mixed up in the conflict between the club owners, the agents and the law; however, she only has a few scenes here and there, and looks fairly ordinary here as she had yet to have her transformation into all-out film star. As the flick proceeds the pace picks up speed until by the end developments come thick and fast, enough to make your head spin. It's dog-eat-dog among the bosses as the steel ring of the police tightens. Clearly a low budget affair, this film in packs tons of plot as is surprisingly brutal near the end. Short and sweet!

Inflation didn't affect the dime a dance racket.

[mark.waltz · 4/10 · 24 November 2020]

Taxi dancing hadn't changed much since the days of Ruth Etting a decade before this was made, and this B crime drama shows the violence that the girls who wanted to get out of the racket faced. Jacqueline Welles (aka Julie Bishop) goes undercover when taxi dancers are found brutally murdered, one followed out of a train car by a sinister looking man who overhears her desperate attempt to escape.

That scene is followed by the headline announcing her murder, and this sequence is repeated several other times as other young ladies much abused find the same fate. Welles is joined undercover by Don Terry who joins the upper echelon of management with the big bad villains unaware that they've been infiltrated by the fed's.

Another one of the young ladies is a very young Rita Hayworth in one of her first major parts as Columbia, billed first in rerelease prints even though she was clearly supporting. The young Hayworth is certainly beautiful, but she hasn't had the Columbia makeover treatment yet. But in waiting for her to appear, it is a jarring moment when she does because the face is instantly familiar, but something is clearly not complete.

Her character is overheard on an intercom system by one of the head guys henchman, and that gets her threatened to possibly have the same fate as the others whose exits weren't as fortunate. This film is intriguing not only for Hayworth's appearance in it but for the subject matter which is a little racy considering this was post-production code. It's an adequate programmer that like many other programmers is watchable but quickly forgotten.