Call Her Savage ** (1932, Clara Bow, Gilbert Roland, Monroe Owsley) – Classic Movie Review 13,262

The 1932 pre-Code drama film Call Her Savage is directed by John Francis Dillon and stars Clara Bow, Gilbert Roland, Thelma Todd and Monroe Owsley. It is Bow’s penultimate film role.

Director John Francis Dillon’s 1932 pre-Code drama film Call Her Savage stars ‘It’ girl Clara Bow in her penultimate film, valiantly and vivaciously struggling to make an indelible impression in the talkies as Nasa Springer, wild young woman born and raised in Texas by well-to-do parents,  who weds Lawrence Crosby (Monroe Owsley), who turns out to be a cad and a bounder.

It turns out that Nasa is a mixed-race Native American, which apparently explains why she has always been untameable and wild, and eventually allows allow her to find happiness with a handsome mixed-race young man called Moonglow.

Clara Bow did successfully made the transition to talkies in 1929 but by 1933 she walked away from Hollywood. It is odd that silent superstar Bow didn’t really fully make a go of it in talkies, because she is surprisingly attractive, funny and appealing in Call Her Savage.

However, the film is all over the place, sometimes melodramatic, sometimes amusing comedy, sometimes (as she lands in the gutter) glutinously weepy. Gilbert Roland shows the effort as he dully portrays Bow’s true love Moonglow, also half white and half Indian, and Owsley’s performance is stiff and boring, but there are some entertaining support turns and Bow carries the film.

Call Her Savage has a silent film sensibility but it is at the very least an intriguing curiosity, nicely shot by Lee Garmes, and Clara Bow feels deliciously modern.

The screenplay is by Edwin Burke based on the novel by Tiffany Thayer.

Call Her Savage was released by Fox Film Corporation on November 24, 1932.

It is the first Hollywood film to depict what is clearly a gay bar with same-sex couples. It was also the last until Otto Preminger’s 1962 Advise and Consent. Its portrayal of a scene in a gay bar would become impossible in less than two years when enforcement of the Hays Code became very much more stringent.

The copyright was renewed, but the film will enter the public domain in 2028. The film was restored in 2012 by the Museum of Modern Art and premiered at the third annual Turner Classic Movies Film Festival in Hollywood.

The cast are Clara Bow as Nasa Springer, Gilbert Roland as Moonglow, Thelma Todd as Sunny De Lane, Monroe Owsley as Lawrence Crosby, Estelle Taylor as Ruth Springer, Weldon Heyburn as Ronasa, Willard Robertson as Pete Springer, Anthony Jowitt as Jay Randall, Fred Kohler as Silas Jennings, Russell Simpson as Old Man in Wagon Train, Margaret Livingston as Molly, Carl Stockdale as Mort, Dorothy Peterson as Silas’ Wife, Marilyn Knowlden as Ruth as a girl, Douglas Haig as Pete as a boy, Arthur Hoyt, and Hale Hamilton.

Call Her Savage is directed by John Francis Dillon is made and released by Fox Film Corporation, is written by Edwin J Burke, is shot in black and white by Lee Garmes, and is produced by Sam E Rork, and is scored by Peter Brunelli and Arthur Lange.

Bow signed a two-picture deal with Fox Film Corporation on 28 April 1932 for Call Her Savage (1932) and Hoop-La (1933). Both were box office successes.

Clara Bow’s final film, Hoop-La, was released in 1933. She retired from acting and became a rancher in Nevada, having married actor Rex Bell in 1931.

Bow died of a heart attack in September 1965, aged 60.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 13,262

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