Illicit ** (1931, Barbara Stanwyck, Ricardo Cortez, Joan Blondell, Charles Butterworth, James Rennie, Natalie Moorhead) – Classic Movie Review 6849

Director Archie Mayo’s 1931 pre-Code romantic drama stars Barbara Stanwyck as Anne Vincent, a young woman with advanced ideas, who walks out on her blueblood husband Dick Ives (James Rennie) when he strays after they have been successfully living in sin for some time. She did not want to marry as she believed marriage would destroy their relationship, and now she can return to dating.

Price Baines (Ricardo Cortez) flirts with the fun-seeking heroine, while Rennie returns to the arms of his old flame Margie True (Natalie Moorhead). But can the married couple get back together again?

Warner Bros’ common-or-garden weepie about the trials and tribulations of married life is based on a play by Edith Fitzgerald and Robert Riskin and a story by Harvey F Thew, who also writes the screenplay.

This story, with its feminist overtones, is bold and modern for its day, but that is a long time ago, and the movie is now dreadfully faded, and brought down with cardboard characters and mechanical plotting. It remains intriguing, though, for its themes and as a reflection of the era, and it is much enhanced by the spunky charisma of the then rising young star Stanwyck, who was only 24 and in her fourth credited movie, following Ladies of Leisure (1930).

Also in the cast are Joan Blondell, Charles Butterworth, Claude Gillingwater, Hazel Howell, Lucille Ward and Barbara Weeks.

Illicit is directed by Archie Mayo, runs 79 minutes, is made and released by  Warner Bros, is written by Harvey F Thew, is shot in black and white by Robert Kurrle and is scored by Louis Silvers.

It is remade as Ex-Lady in 1933, with Bette Davis and Gene Raymond, notable as Davis’s first starring role and for her revealing negligées. Warner Bros must have liked Illicit to re-make it so quickly.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6849

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