One of the most interesting of the Fox pre-code talkies, for several reasons: 1) It has nice girl Frances Dee as a perverse and masochistic society miss, snarling and hip-shaking and shocking the elite. 2) It has Judith Anderson, in a swell backless evening gown, playing a moll, against-the-grain casting of the most inspired sort, even if the movie never explains her high-tone Brit accent vs. her brother's American Midwest elongated vowels. (She also played a gangster years later in "Lady Scarface," but it's a much less interesting film.) 3) You get to see Blossom Seeley, the great vaudevillian, sob a couple of torch songs, and she's the real thing. 4), and most fascinatingly: George Bancroft plays a no- better-than-he-should-be bail bondsman who works both sides of the street and is terribly corrupt, yet the movie likes him, we like him, and he doesn't have to repent for it. It's lively and violent and funny, and, unlike so many Fox early talkies, it has the fast pace of a good Paramount or Warners flick from the same period.
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marcslope11 December 2006
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kidboots15 August 2009This is an excellent gritty thriller - just the sort of film you associate with George Bancroft. He plays Bill Bailey, a larger than life bail bondsman and a celebrity among high society and the criminal element. "I make my money off losers" - he makes his money extorting
assets off his clients. In one of the first scenes an elderly woman comes to him about helping her young son, once he realises she owns her own house he gets her to leave the deeds with his receptionist. He is that kind of a guy!!!
His lady love, Ruby Darling, is played, extraordinarily, by Judith Anderson - she owns a speak-easy, but they have known each other for a long time and are more like husband and wife. She helped him get to his present position of power. She also has a criminal brother, Drury (Chick Chandler), who has just been caught for a bank robbery - if he is found guilty he will go to jail for life on the 3 strikes you're out plan.
The big reason to see this film is Frances Dee. She is just a sensation as the "drop dead gorgeous" socialite, Elaine Talbert, who first comes to Bill's attention when she is caught shop-lifting at a big department store. Bill falls for her but it is quite clear something is wrong - she gets a crazy gleam in her eye when she hears about all the crooked things he has had to do in his line of business. You just know when she meets Drury that she is going to fall for him in a big way - after all he has just masterminded a daring bank robbery. Her views about how she likes to be treated by men raise a few eyebrows as well. Nymphomaniac, sado masochist, there is nothing that Elaine won't do - and Frances Dee pulls it off with aplomb. She had already given a superb performance in "The Silver Cord" as a young girl tottering on the brink of madness. It is a pity she was soon to wind down her career in favour of marriage to handsome Joel McCrea but she definitely left some wonderful performances.
Because Elaine double crosses Bill (keeping the $50,000 bail money and giving him worthless bonds in exchange) it looks like he has left Drury high and dry so Ruby organises some of the mob to destroy him. She realises her mistake at the end and madly hurries down to the pool hall to save his life (the eight ball has been filled with enough explosive to kill him). Being a pre-code you don't really know what to expect. The real ending is a scream. Elaine, hurrying to Bill after being thrown over by Drury, meets a girl who has been enticed to a man's room with the promise of modelling work. "He threw me around, he bruised my arms and really roughed me up" - Elaine's response "What's the man's name and what room is he in". The gleam in her eye leave you in no doubt that she definitely does not want to report him!!!
By the way the girl who is socked at the beginning - "Red's" girl - is the beautiful Noel Francis who played sultry vixens to perfection!! Blossom Seeley, a legendary singer of the time, sings "Frankie and Johnny", "On San Francisco Bay" and "My Melancholy Baby".
Highly Recommended. -
dougdoepke25 May 2008What a wacky little gem from cult filmmaker Rowland Brown. He got this one in just under the wire. The next year 1934 would see an all-out effort to "clean up the movies", and for the next 30 years audiences would get twin beds, closed-mouth kissing, and no hint of a human vagary that couldn't be shoe-horned into Jack Webb- style law and order or Rock meets Doris type romance.
None of that predictable conventionality here. Instead, it's an unapologetic look at a layer of urban life soon to be shoved back into the Legion of Decency's dark closet. Macho bail bondsman George Bancroft works the shady side of the law, dabbling at times in stolen property. Nothing too unusual there. But watch him caress thief Chick Chandler's shoulder even after the latter has moved in on Bancroft's girl, or laugh uproariously at a "sissy" remark thrown his way. He may end up with the bordello madam, but it looks like the law is not the only both-sides-of-the-street he works.
Then there's sweet-faced ingénue Frances Dee as the rich girl on-the-make. But it's not Cary Grant or Ralph Bellamy she's hankering for. It's the load of masochistic pain that makes her eyes go all shiny and her voice all quavery. The problem is she can't decide whether it's the brawny thrills of a masterful man or the hip-swiveling charms of a hula girl that attracts her more. There's also the erotic sideline of lifting meaningless articles from downtown stores that sort of fills the day-to-day gaps, to say nothing of a sense of loyalty that sort of comes and goes. She may look like one of those madcap heiresses of the thirties, but the reality is far more Freudian and provocative.
And what other movie would dare make a sympathetic sex object out of that hawk-nosed paradigm of female villainy Judith Anderson. Apparently, it was her first film before the gargoyle type-casting that would later take hold. Meanwhile, the slinky gowns and plunging neck-lines are surprisingly effective, even if the facial profile is not exactly that of the classic Hollywood beauty. It's a measure of Brown's humanity, I take it, that her character as a bordello madam comes across as the movie's most sympathetic.
Mix these characters into what amounts to an urban inferno and you get a genuine piece of Hollywood exotica, to say nothing of the monocled cross-dresser who dates Chick Chandler's nervy thief, the same guy who hires on not one professional girl for the evening, but two (one of which is an early Lucille Ball). Note too, how easily the shady Bancroft mixes in with the respectable types. First it's an insurance executive, then a shipping magnate, and most conveniently, the city DA, as overworld and underworld blend into a single shape-shifting shade of gray.
It's that margin of ambiguity, not only between the sexes, but between the social classes and the law that lies, I believe, at the movie's core. The fluid nature of things is made more apparent by the fact that Brown remains non-judgmental throughout. His characters simply are as they are. Dee is made no less deserving of happiness than anyone else. And in one of the strangest of all Hollywood endings, where Bancroft and Anderson at last find true love, Dee goes gleefully off to another expected masochistic romp, unpunished. Love and lust both triumph here, with no moral distinction drawn at fade-out. And when Bancroft is made to remark that liberals acknowledge human vice and try to control it, whereas conservatives simply turn their backs on its existence, that sounds like Brown speaking. Certainly, he was no conservative in that respect. Hollywood, however, would unfortunately turn their backs on selected reality for the next thirty years, as Brown's all-too-brief career underscores. Too bad. For as the movie shows in its own unorthodox way, his loss was our loss too. -
blanche-230 May 2008"Blood Money" is a fascinating precode - what else can you say about a film that has Judith Anderson in a glamor role? And an ingénue who longs for S&M to boot.
This 1933 film concerns a bail bondsman named Bill Bailey (George Bancroft) who's been helping out the mob for years. He falls for a pretty shoplifter named Elaine (Frances Dee) - she's actually slumming, as she's from a wealthy family. This leaves Bailey's girlfriend, club owner Ruby (Anderson) in the lurch. She's the woman responsible for his success, helping him out when he was thrown off of the police force. However, Elaine (who would follow any man who thrashed her around like a dog, says she) steals some bonds instead of delivering them to the appropriate place, thereby setting up Bailey as a mob target and getting his brother-in-law in deep trouble with the law. Ruby believes he's responsible for her brother's problems, and has a hit put out on him.
The acting is over the top, the dialogue is rough and filled with sexual innuendos, the atmosphere is sleazy - it's pre-code all right. I read a transcript of an interview with Joel McCrea (intended to be for a biography that wasn't written) and he kept referring to "Mother" - I finally realized that he didn't call his wife, Frances Dee, "mother" - he was referring to her that way while talking to one of his sons, who was conducting the interview. As the promiscuous, dying to be hit ingénue, she wasn't very motherly in this.
This is a no-miss if only to see Judith Anderson in a gown and jewels hanging out with mobsters and Frances Dee as something other than a pretty goody-two-shoes. -
Bail bondsman George Bancroft is known all throughout New York City and encounters people from every scrape of society in this pre-code crime drama. But he's going to need every ounce of street-smarts when he strikes up an acquaintance with kleptomaniac Frances Dee, a woman with a rather animistic sexual appetite. Judith Anderson gets to display a rare glamorous side here as the nightclub hostess obviously in love with Bancroft, with her famous mole darkened into a beauty spot. Dee gives Bancroft several looks that It's nice to see her playing a softer character. This is a fast-moving programmer, made on a dime, but not showing it. Quick edits, snappy photography and dialog, nice musical interludes by Blossom Seeley (singing such standards as "Melancholy Baby"), and a side of seedy New York sung about in the same year's "42nd Street" diluted in most movies. There's hints about lesbianism in addition to Dee's whacked-out libido. Tons of familiar character actors pop in and out, most notably Etienne Girardot, Chick Chandler (as Anderson's gangster brother), Clarence Wilson and Edward Van Sloan. There's even a very young Lucille Ball in a quick appearance! An exciting dog racing sequence is one of the film's visual highlights, and the finale is downright suspenseful, like something Hitchcock might do.
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planktonrules1 January 2008I called this film a "Pre-Code" film because up until the strengthened Production Code was enforced in 1934, Hollywood was a very sleazy place by even today's standards! While in the mid-30s through the 50s films were sanitized (in some cases, too much), in the Pre-Code days, topics like adultery and extreme violence were common and it was not too unusual to hear cursing, discussions of abortion or prostitution and even occasionally nudity--even in supposedly family films like TARZAN AND HIS MATE! While BLOOD MONEY isn't nearly as rough and family unfriendly as many of these films, it deserves to be considered a Pre-Code style film because the main character and his wife had an "open marriage"--he was allowed to sleep around as long as he "came home to her when the day was through". Also, the film features a bad woman who loves to break laws and have sex--though in the later 30s and for the next twenty or more years, women were NOT supposed to particularly like sex!
The story is about a guy named "Bill Bailey" (George Bancroft) and he's a rather resourceful but sleazy character who is a bail bondsman and best friends with the mob. Through conniving, blackmail or what have you, Bill is able to get practically anyone off for any crime--provided they can pay! Into this supposedly charmed life comes a truly crazed young rich lady (Frances Dee)--a woman who is addicted to stealing, promiscuity and self-destruction. At first, his affair with her is approved of by his wife (Judith Anderson) but when Dee steals some bonds and sets up the wife's brother, Bill's life falls apart---leading Bill to become the mob's #1 target! This results in one of the most exciting endings in a 30s film I have ever seen, as a bombing plot to kill Bailey is discovered at the same time they also discover that Dee was responsible for the mess! Decent acting, nice pacing and direction and an exciting and daring script, this is a good example of a Pre-Code film that has managed to stay exciting even more than 70 years later. -
Bunuel19767 March 2011This is another case of a film that turned out to be different than I had expected: in fact, I thought it would be a gangster picture – which is why I watched it following 2 Josef von Sternberg genre entries that happened to feature the same star, George Bancroft! Still, it does concern a racket of some kind – since the protagonist is a leading bail-bondsman with an ability to pull strings where and when required (if anything, this was an area of work which was hardly ever touched by cinema and certainly not at this point!).
The film came at the tail-end of the "Pre-Code" era, but it offers plenty of salacious elements – notably a gratuitous semi-nude Hawaiian dance and the uninhibited character of Frances Dee (which she herself described as "a masochistic nymphomaniacal kleptomaniac"!). Ironically, the lovely actress – soon to marry Joel McCrea and perhaps best-known for the Val Lewton/Jacques Tourneur horror classic I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943) – had just come off something from the opposite end of the spectrum, the David O. Selznick/George Cukor adaptation of the literary classic LITTLE WOMEN (1933)! Anyway, as had been the case with all 3 Bancroft vehicles I watched prior to this (there was also yet another Sternberg title, albeit not genre-related), he is played up to be something of a ladies' man (whereas a review of THUNDERBOLT [1929] had described his physical appearance as "repellent"!) but, at least, here he eventually settles down with someone closer to his type and age i.e. Judith Anderson in an early – and atypically glamorous – role (she is the owner of a speak-easy which comes equipped with a chanteuse whose vocal range takes in both Mae West and Al Jolson!).
Another important character is Anderson's younger brother, an unrepentant criminal whom Bancroft is often required to bail-out for the woman's sake. However, the situation is complicated when Dee (another of the hero's clients) enters the picture – Bancroft neglects Anderson for her but, after she meets the "exciting" young man herself, begins an affair with him behind her 'protector''s back! In a complex turn-of-events, the protagonist himself becomes a pariah and is marked for death (via an exploding billiard-ball a' la Buster Keaton's SHERLOCK JR. [1924]!) by the city's gangland factions – with Anderson's consent! – but, ultimately, she sees the error of her ways and races against time to stop the attempt (suspense is admirably built here through cross-cutting, with her car even getting involved in a wreck!). The finale sees the two getting back together while Dee bumps into a girl who had been practically ravaged by her proposed employer when answering an ad and, ever a glutton for punishment, she takes up the call herself!
Finally, this is the first of 3 pictures by Rowland Brown (who seems to favor shooting from odd angles!) I will be watching over the course of succeeding days – the others are the thrillers QUICK MILLIONS (1931) and HELL'S HIGHWAY (1932); incidentally, he would make another film with Bancroft i.e. the gangster milestone ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES (1938) – by which time, however, both had been demoted: the director to co-scriptwriter status and the star to a supporting role! -
F Gwynplaine MacIntyre9 March 2002Bail bondsman Bill Bailey's motto is "Bailey for Bail", and he always has a fistful of cash for any felon who needs bail money. Bailey has plenty of friends in the crime world, and plenty of enemies among the city's district attorneys. But most of Bailey's "friends" are strictly the fair-weather type; his only true friend is Ruby Darling, who sees plenty but reveals very little. Bailey and Ruby spend a lot of time going to nightclubs where the women smoke cigars and dress like men.
Bailey has got a hot passion for Elaine Talbert (who does NOT dress like a man), but Elaine prefers guys who treat her rough and make her like it. Elaine persuades her boyfriend to steal some financial securities, confident that (if he gets caught) good old Bailey will bail him out.
Meanwhile, some of Bailey's gangster pals have decided he's been breathing too long. They invite Bailey to join them at the pool hall for a friendly game of eight-ball. Oh, yeah: everybody but Bailey knows that the eight-ball is full of nitroglycerin ... if Bailey pots the black, he goes boom. Desperately, Ruby races to the pool hall to warn her friend. Will she get there in time to stop Bill Bailey's billiard-ball bomb, or will Bailey end up behind the eight-ball?
"Blood Money" is a weird film, strangely fascinating. It was written and directed by Rowland Brown, a brilliant film-maker whose promising career was ruined by his penchant for violence. After punching out several Hollywood producers who got in his way, Brown decided to relocate to England for a fresh start. His credentials and his substantial talent won him the assignment to direct Leslie Howard in "The Scarlet Pimpernel" ... but, once again, a minor disagreement with a producer led to violence, and Brown was blackballed.
SPOILERS COMING. "Blood Money" features some strange depictions of 1930s sexuality. There's a mannish woman in the nightclub; she offers Bailey a cigar and calls him a "big cissy". Elsewhere, Bailey bullies a cabdriver and calls him a "fag". (The cabbie is played by beefy Matt McHugh, an actor not usually cast in "swish" roles.) Bailey's love interest Elaine is clearly a sexual masochist, who goads men into beating her. Frances Dee, who usually played virginal good-girl roles, gives the best performance of her career here. At the end of the film, Elaine meets a young woman - weeping, her clothes torn - who has just been beaten and violated by her prospective employer. Elaine asks for the man's address, implying that she'll take action against him ... but, when we see the look of eager delight on her face, we know why she's really going there.
Watch for a brief appearance (in the nightclub sequence) by vaudeville star Blossom Seeley, singing a Rodgers and Hart ballad called "The Bad in Every Man". If this obscure song sounds familiar, that's because Richard Rodgers later used the same tune (with a new lyric by Lorenz Hart) as the much better-known song "Blue Moon".
"Blood Money"'s climactic scene with the explosive eight-ball is ridiculous, especially since Buster Keaton had already played this same idea for comedy (with an explosive 13-ball) in "Sherlock Junior". But Judith Anderson (later a Dame of the British Empire) plays her role well, despite some corny dialogue, and the eight-ball is defused in an unexpected way. My rating for 'Blood Money': 9 out of 10. -
JohnHowardReid4 December 2017It's a real shame that you cannot buy this most engaging movie any more, as the distributor seems to have gone out of business.
"Blood Money" is a really interesting movie, formerly available on an excellent DVD disc, released by Vintage Film Buff, "Blood Money" (1933) was directed with a real punch and considerable style by the super- talented Rowland Brown, who makes the most of an extremely gritty screenplay in which the charismatic George Bancroft plays a bloodsucking bail bondsman and the lovely Frances Dee (of all people) a masochistic, high society floozy.
Judith Anderson is also in there pitching as the hero's former glamour interest (!) while the legendary Blossom Seeley sings a couple of Rodgers and Hart numbers. -
1930s_Time_Machine17 April 2023All the critics and all the old movie books rate this highly, personally I found it awful. Awful and very boring. It's not so much a black and white film, more of a dull, grey nebulous lump of fog. The premise of Rowland Brown's story actually sounds really exciting and Rowland Brown, who also directed this, was a pretty decent filmmaker so this should have been a thrilling, exhilarating picture - but wasn't.
What made this so interminably dull was the acting. It's not bad acting, it's just dull, flat and lifeless. George Bancroft's character is one of the dullest, most characterless leads I've ever seen. You simply couldn't care less about him. Will he get shot? Will he find happiness? Nobody cares!
Besides Mrs Danvers badly impersonating Mae West, the other female lead is Frances Dee. Her character, the obligatory millionaire's daughter, is so poorly written, so poorly explored it lacks any depth or credibility. She is is ridiculously unreal.
Like with BROADWAY THOUGH A KEYHOLE and BORN TO BE BAD, this picture which is one of the very first films to come out of that brand new studio: Twentieth Century Pictures. It seemed like they hadn't quite found their mojo. Even with their big bank account, their talent and enthusiasm, the teamwork hadn't seemed to have quite gelled yet. -
melvelvit-118 April 2008Pre-Code Hollywood was a "fascinating period in American motion picture history from 1930 to 1934 when the commandments of the Production Code Administration were violated with impunity in a series of wildly unconventional films -a time when censorship was lax and Hollywood made the most of it..."
The underworld-set BLOOD MONEY(Fox 1933), typical of its time, tweaks convention by making no apologies for its morally compromised characters or their criminal actions and risqué situations. Burly George Bancroft plays high-profile L.A. bail bondsman Bill Bailey, a man who makes a very comfortable living off society's less fortunate. Vice queen Ruby Darling (a languid, bejeweled Judith Anderson swathed in fur) put him on top after he was thrown off the police force for theft and he repays her by falling for kleptomaniac Elaine Talbart, a Beverly Hills society girl with an "underworld mania". When Bailey introduces Elaine to Ruby's bank-robber brother, Drury (Chick Chandler), sparks fly but a double-cross by Elaine forces Ruby to put an underworld contract out on Bailey. In this film's universe, criminal careers, shady politics, high society hypocrisy, prostitution, and sexual ambiguity are all alluded to in breezy fashion and even unrequited love resolves itself in an upbeat ending. Frances Dee steals the show as the over-heated Elaine, a gal who's eyes light up at the very thought of crime. She's last seen chatting up a stranger who was just manhandled and near-raped by a photographer she interviewed for; Elaine, growing visibly excited, asks the girl what floor his offices are located on and rushes off to meet him! Buxom songstress Blossom Seely, done up as "Diamond Lil", torches it up in a speakeasy and look quickly for a platinum blonde Lucille Ball playing a five dollar hooker at the dog track. -
SimonJack25 September 2021"Blood Money" is a noir mystery and drama set in Los Angeles in the early 1930s. This was during the Great Depression, but there's no sign of bread lines and people out of work here. One can imagine that the depression was felt much less in the film capital where movies were still being made to help raise the spirits of the public across the nation. Well, that included crime and murder flicks as well. While this one isn't about murder, it is one heck of a film that shows widespread corruption.
Just about everybody and anybody who is anybody is a friend of and probably on the take with Bill Bailey. The famed bail bondsman is played very well by George Bancroft. I can't think of another film that ever featured or touted a character who was a bail bondsman. Such roles barely get notice when they do appear in an occasional film.
But here, our "hero," while operating on the edge of the law - not clearly violating it, is a likable guy who is friends with all the police force, the judges and courts, and the city and state politicians. Bailey's girlfriend is Ruby Darling (played by Judith Anderson), who owns and runs an upscale speakeasy. Blossom Seeley plays the singer in her joint. Seeley was a famous singer who performed on vaudeville and in nightclubs, and this is just one of four films that she was in.
When Bailey gets a society gal out of a jam for shoplifting, he is smitten by her. Frances Dee plays Elaine Talbart. But she goes for any man who's exciting and winds up with Ruby's brother, Drury Darling, who's a master con-man and robber. Bailey has some problems when Ruby is jealous of his affections for Elaine, but in the end things might just work out
Lucille Ball has a small part in this film as one of Drury's girl friend's at the race track. Here are some favorite lines form this film.
Judge's Wife (Florence Roberts, uncredited), "Well, that Bill Bailey has a lot of nerve." Judge (Clarence Wilson, uncredited), "Mmm, yeah. But he's got a lot of influence too."
Butcher Weighing Sausages (Herman Bing, uncredited), "That was Bill Bailey. He just ordered one hundred and fifty turkeys for Thanksgiving." Butcher (Dewey Robins, uncredited), "For charity, huh?" Butcher with Sausage, "Yeah, sure, for our poor judges, our poor lawyers, and our poor police officers."
Racetrack Spectator (Dennis O'Keefe, uncredited), "You haven't picked a winner tonight, Bailey." Bill Bailey, "I make all my money off losers."
Ruby Darling, "Weren't you ever romantic?" Bill Bailey, "Heh, heh. Can you imagine a guy getting romantic in a reform school, hmmm?"
Bill Bailey, "As long as you have cities, you're bound to have vices. You can't control human nature by putting in a new mayor."
Bill Bailey, "The only difference between a liberal and a conservative man is that the liberal recognize the existence of vice and controls it, while the conservative just turns his back and pretends that it doesn't exist."
Bill Bailey, "The tougher the times, the better my business."
Bill Bailey, "Why, if you were dying and needed blood for a transfusion, I'd be the first one to give it." Ruby Darling, "So, the only way we can get together is to have a blood transfusion, huh?"
Ruby Darling, "I can remember when you thought a hamburger sandwich was a banquet. And you called a dinner a feast."
Bill Bailey, "And, don't forget - behind every Barnum there was always a Bailey." -
Plot. Bill Bailey is a Los Angeles bail bondsman who lives in a world of complete, casual corruption, where all he has to do is pick up the phone to get the charges against a client dismissed. He falls in love with slumming socialite who bluntly and startlingly declares her sexual preferences with this immortal line: "If I could find a man who would be my master and give me a good thrashing, I'd follow him around like a dog on a leash."
Bizzaro pre-code movie that rambles along with scene after scene and virtually no real cohesive plot. It's rather boring. -
richardchatten24 January 2018Wow! Were do you start with this one?
Director Rowland Brown (soon blackballed in Hollywood for hitting a producer) certainly confirms his reputation for style with this racy little pre-Code gem, in which an impossibly youthful Judith Anderson and Frances Dee are both revelations: the former as a supple, sleepy-eyed, smoky-voiced dame draped in a succession of slinky backless thirties evening gowns; the latter as a spoilt little minx who in Miss Dee's own words is a "a kleptomaniac, a nymphomaniac, and anything in between".
Great fun. -
AlsExGal12 March 2016...who spent so much time over at RKO playing the sweet young thing. Dee plays the catalyst of the entire story, even though, sometimes, you won't even know what she is up to.
The main character, however, is George Bancroft as Bill Bailey, a bail bondsman and PR man extraordinaire. It shows how well connected he is as just about every criminal in town has bail through Bailey. He knows the attorneys, the judges, and most of the underworld. He carries around cigars that say "Bailey For Bail" on them. It's mentioned later that he was once a cop that got thrown off the force for graft, and even though he's a gray character, he plays this like Popeye - "I am what I am", and you know something, I liked him. I liked him because he was on the level about who he was and what he did. He has a girlfriend (Judith Anderson as Ruby Darling) who seems to be a madam, maybe not, but for sure runs an upscale saloon complete with torch singers. And she, like Bailey, "is what she is". She does not pretend.
And then a different kind of customer walks into his establishment - socialite Elaine Talbart (Frances Dee), arrested for shoplifting, and hands him a six thousand dollar ring as collateral for much smaller bail. She claims the whole thing is a big misunderstanding (it is not). At first Bailey is just intrigued because her family is so wealthy, but soon he is falling for the girl. However, Elaine's big downfall, and the downfall of everybody she encounters, is that she is a spoiled brat who is addicted to excitement and danger. And THAT is why she starts a relationship with Bailey. He shows her a side of life she has never seen before.
One more thing, towards the beginning of the film Ruby's baby brother gets out of prison. Nope. There was no mistake. Her little brother Drury is a thief and probably will always be one. He doesn't like violence, he just likes money and isn't partial to hard work.
And then one day at the races when Bailey is with Elaine, over walks good looking Drury, and when she finds out his past she gets a twinkle in her eye...a ticket to even more excitement! Boy, has she got that right because Drury is about to pull another bank job. When he skips town with Bailey's bail and with his girl, it starts warfare with Ruby and the underworld on one side and Bailey, who realigns himself with the police, on the other side. The thing that nobody knows is that the act of betrayal that starts it all is caused by a decision Elaine makes unilaterally. How does this all work out and what was that decision? Watch and find out. I'll just say that the end of this film was a blast.
There are some great individual scenes in this one that are strictly precode - at Ruby's, Bailey offers a gentleman a cigar, "he" turns around and turns out to be a woman in a man's suit. She takes a puff of the cigar and says "you big sissy!". Bailey busts out laughing. A woman comes into Bailey's office with a boy about 15 and wants to put up his bail. She says "her boy is a good boy". Bailey asks what the charge is and she says "assault" - that was code for rape in even the precode era. Bailey asks how old the girl was, and the boy says 38. Bailey laughs at the thought - a thought that would not be funny today. Finally, a woman runs screaming out of a building claiming that a man advertised for artists' models, she showed up, and he attacked her. Elaine asks where is the artist? The woman points to an office, and Elaine grabs the ad and walks deliberately towards the office. Hot stuff from Fox, a studio not usually associated with precode stuff. -
ofumalow18 November 2020Rowland Brown was a prolific scenarist, but directed only a handful of films, the best being 1932's rather remarkable "Hell's Highway." This effort from the following year is interesting if not as successful. George Bancroft plays a bail bondsman who's somehow the kinpin of the town--at least its shadier quarters--and as such attracts a thrill-hungry debutante (Frances Dee). She proves trouble, particularly when they cross paths with his pining ex-flame's (Judith Anderson) genial ne'er-do-well brother (Chick Chandler), and the deb can hardly help throwing over semi-respectable George for an honest-to-god bank robber.
This movie has a fast pace, considerable esprit, and enough suggestive pre-Code titillation, though it's hardly in the "Baby Face" league of outrageousness. What makes it interesting is more the atmosphere than the plot, and the performances--both the ones that work and those that don't, quite. Bancroft is good, though maybe coasting a bit too much. Stage legend Anderson made her film debut (one short aside) here, and you can see why she didn't make another movie until Hitchcock and "Rebecca" seven years later--she's definitely got an unusual presence, but you can tell she just isn't comfortable with the medium yet. Ditto Blossom Seely, a then-famed vaudeville and nightclub singer who plays the latter here (she's basically onscreen just to sing three songs), but she too doesn't feel at ease, so she comes off as a somewhat colorless Mae West knockoff--I'm sure she had a lot more to offer than she communicated in a screen career that obviously didn't work out (this was the last of three films she made in 1933, her first and last such efforts).
Even if these performances are limited successes, they nonetheless add texture. And there are a number of very good performances, most notably by Chandler and Dee. He underlines the film's insouciant amorality by playing a compulsive stick-up-guy as a devil-may-care youth who doesn't commit crimes out of any need, but just because,..well, it's fun, and he can't help himself.
Dee was usually cast in nondescript ingenue roles, but she really digs into this change-of-pace character. The script doesn't spell it out, but the way she plays the society girl (who in addition to picking up shady men is a compulsive shoplifter) makes it absolutely clear that this woman is CRAZY--the kind of nuttiness that probably would have landed her in lockup already if she didn't have wealth and privilege protecting her, with a tycoon father eager to view her behavior just as mild eccentricity. She does have a couple eye-opening lines pretty much saying flat-out that she is looking for a bad man who will push her around--she's a debutante looking for a club-using caveman, the less respectable the better. It's quite the character, almost more than the movie knows what to do with, and Dee really throws herself into it, without becoming hammy. Pity her career didn't take a few more such left turns--she clearly relished the opportunity to be "bad." At a revival screening much, much later, she reportedly told the audience that in "Blood Money" she played "a masochistic kleptomaniac nymphomaniac," something you don't see everyday on screen (esp. in 1933), and to her credit that is exactly how it comes off. -
tavm5 February 2019When I looked at Nina Mae McKinney's filmography list on this site, it listed this movie as among her credits as "Rebecca, Ruby's maid". But the black woman playing such a maid-ID'd as Jessica, by the way-didn't look like her. So I looked at the TCM site link on Wikipedia for this movie and TCM ID'd Theresa Harris as playing in the movie as simply "maid". Since there's no other domestic servant in the film, I'm guessing that's indeed Ms. Harris. Anyway, this was quite a dramatically thrilling movie starring George Bancroft as bail bondsman Bill Bailey. He's mixed with thrill-seeking Frances Dee as Elaine Talbart, Judith Anderson's Ruby Darling, and Chick Chandler as her brother, Drury. This movie lacks a movie score which is probably to the pic's benefit. So that's a recommendation of Blood Money.
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jarrodmcdonald-122 February 2022BLOOD MONEY (1933) was made by Darryl Zanuck's fledgling company 20th Century Pictures and released through United Artists. (20th Century Pictures merged with Fox in 1936.) It marked the feature film debut of Judith Anderson. This would be her only film in the 30s. She was quite busy on Broadway and on the London stage from 1934 to 1939, before returning to films in her most famous role as the housekeeper in REBECCA (1940).
Anderson's character in BLOOD MONEY, ironically named Ruby Darling, is a vamp as well as a powerful underworld figure. In some ways, this role seemed like something Mae West would have played, except without the cutesy innuendo. Ruby operates her shady business out in the open, as much of it as she wants to be seen, running a nightclub while keeping her criminal brother out of trouble with the law.
When her brother (Chick Chandler) robs another bank and faces life in prison, she enlists the aid of her on again-off again lover, a corrupt bail bondsman named Bill Bailey (George Bancroft, the star of the picture). This relationship is complicated by the fact that Bill has become smitten with a society girl (Frances Dee) who is anything but wholesome. The girl ends up jilting Bill and marrying Ruby's brother, which adds another layer of complex emotions to the proceedings.
What I like about this film is how deceptively simple it starts, then we become more and more engrossed in the deeper layers of corruption in which these people exist. We root for Ruby and Bill to get back together at the end, even though neither one is probably worth rooting for individually. But they do make a dynamic couple, with Ruby calling the shots.
Frances Dee's character Elaine Talbart really goes to the dark side and has an unhealthy fixation with crime. A story like this could not have been filmed a year later after the production code was firmly in place!
There's a great line of dialogue where Bill says, 'The only difference between a liberal and a conservative is that a liberal recognizes the existence of vice and controls it, while a conservative turns their back like it doesn't exist.' In this regard, Ruby is the ultimate liberal because she has all the bad boys under her control. Elaine, who comes from a proper upper class family, is rebelling because men treat her as if she is unimportant. -
Michael_Elliott27 February 2008Blood Money (1933)
** (out of 4)
Early Pre-Code from Fox has George Bancroft playing a dirty bail bondsman who gets caught up with a rich girl (Frances Dee) who can't seem to stay out of trouble. I had read several good reviews of this film, which compared it to the fast Pre-Codes of Warner but I found this 65-minute drama pretty boring from start to finish. Bancroft gives his best Cagney impersonation but doesn't add anything to the character. He's neither cool, stylish or tough. The most interesting aspect is seeing Dee play a bad girl, which I guess we'd compare to Paris Hilton today. Dee usually played the good girl so it's nice seeing her doing something different. The film has some pretty rough dialogue, which includes two different times where Bancroft is called homosexual terms including a "fag". The ending also rips off Keaton's Sherlock Jr. with an explosive cue ball, which is just downright stupid here.