ANNA LUCASTA, although it won't go down in film history as a classic, does have some redeemable assets; namely it's star PAULETTE GODDARD. Strutting about the Brooklyn docks in a tight black dress, as a free loving lady of the night, Goddard looks terrific. Her best scenes are played in that locale in a bar owned by Will Geer. Along with John Ireland as her merchant marine companion, she plays it to the hilt as only Paulette can. There was another version filmed later with Eartha Kitt playing the leading role, but this viewer liked Goddard better. A good supporting cast helped bring the corny dialogue to focus. With Broderick Crawford, Oscar Homolka, Gale Page, William Bishop and Mary Wickes [she's wonderful with her dry takes. And of course there's yet another scene which became a Goddard trademark; that of being in a bathtub of bubbles.
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guil1216 September 2001
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guil1224 October 1999Paulette Goddard, once more, shows her ability to take a slow script and one note character and bring life and substance to the role. She's the star of this drama and brings her own unique quality of glamour to Anna. There is a fine supporting cast and it is always nice to see Mary Wickes given a real role to play other than the usual wise-cracking parts she gets. I liked Goddard's interpretation above Eartha Kitt's in a latter version of the same play. Goddard shows she still has the stuff stars are made of. Quite a gal!
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jarrodmcdonald-117 September 2014While this story was remade by United Artists nine years later with Earth Kitt taking over the title role (and Eartha is quite good), I prefer this earlier version. Why? Probably because Paulette Goddard is an unsung goddess. Such calm, grace and glamour– she is very self-assured and gives the role of a prostitute something lesser talents would never give it: dignity.
Broderick Crawford is also very good, a year before ALL THE KING'S MEN. And Mary Wickes has a decent supporting part, a chance to really act minus the usual wisecracks. Plus John Ireland provides eye candy which never hurt anyone. -
AAdaSC26 May 2013Paulette Goddard (Anna) has left home and now leads a life of easy virtue in the bars of Brooklyn. Her father Oskar Homolka (Joe) seeks her out to come back and stay with the family. However, there is an ulterior motive at play, namely recent college graduate William Bishop (Rudolf) who has turned up with $4,000, and to whom Omolka has been entrusted to look after and help find a suitable wife for. Goddard fits the bill as a perfect suitor if his family can only keep her prostitution past from Bishop.
Well, there's not really very much going on in terms of story but it's a good cast. Broderick Crawford (Frank) and Mary Wickes (Stella) score highly for comedy factor as does Grayce Hampton (Queenie) as the old lush in the bar at the end of the film. Very funny. A mention must also go to Paulette Goddard who is good in the lead role.
There is not too much that happens and the film is obviously originally intended as a play, but everything about the story is predictable, so no surprises anywhere. It's clichéd in parts, so it's not a particularly well written play. Nevertheless, Goddard and her wish for snow keeps things going. Without her and Broderick Crawford, this would suffer. -
mark.waltz18 March 2024I was waiting for a big dramatic payoff in this film version of the Philip Yordan, the first of two, featuring Paulette Goddard in arguably her finest performance. At least she's contemporary, rather than her miscasting as Lucretia Borgia or the biblical queen Jezebel. Disowned by her judgmental father Oscar Homolka (who turned into an embittered alcoholic), she's spent three years walking the seaports of Brooklyn until he comes to find her, supposedly because her mother is ailing.
As it turns out, he wants her back for financial reasons, and they're not very logical. The son of a family friend has purchased a farm nearby them and has $4000 in spending money that brother-in-law Broderick Crawford (married to sister Mary Wickes) licks his lips over. Goddard initially wants nothing to do with the idealistic William Bishop, normally going for more exciting guys like sailor John Ireland, and unaware that she's being used a pawn slowly falls for him.
While Goddard is great and Wickes gets some funny lines, the men in this family are genuinely awful. In fact of the men, only Bishop has any decency. Squeaky voiced Dennie Moore (best known as the gossipy manacurist in "The Women") steals her scenes as the Brooklyn dive bar waitress, and there are good bits by Esther Dale as a restaurant owner and Grayce Hampton as the fur wearing drunken dowager. Irving Rapper directs this like it's a filmed stage production, yet the needed darkness of the play seems wasted on screen, like an "Anna Christie" wannabe that comes off weaker because of how ordinary it all seems.