UPPERWORLD (1934)

Fairly interesting romantic melodrama, with a predictable plot made palatable by good performances all around. Warren William plays a railroad magnate on the verge of completing an important merger, Mary Astor is his wife, and Dickie Moore is their young son. William, despite his business responsibilities, tries to spend as much time with his family as he can, but he finds Astor slipping away, not to another man, but to her socialite life. Feeling lonely and sorry for himself while out on a joy ride in his motorboat, he rescues a young swimmer (Ginger Rogers) who turns out to be a charming chorus girl. They have an apparently innocent afternoon together and later, when Astor is too busy to join William in an anniversary dinner, he renews his friendship with Rogers when he finds her singing and dancing in a Broadway revue. They drift into a casual affair that ends abruptly when Roger's producer and lover (J. Carroll Naish) tries to blackmail William with love letters he wrote to Rogers. During a confrontation, Naish tries to shoot William, but Rogers leaps in front of him and takes the bullet; William shoots Naish dead and leaves the scene, but circumstances catch up with him and he is tried for murder. The messy headlines derail his merger and threaten to end his marriage, but (Spoiler Alert!!) in a rushed and somewhat implausible finale, William is found innocent by reason of self-defense and the two go off to Europe for a healing second honeymoon.

William, Rogers, and Astor all make this worth sitting through. I like the fact that all three characters are presented in ambiguous shades of gray rather than black and white. For example, William's "fall" with Rogers comes off realistically; they're not in love with each other, but they take obvious joy in each other's company--in this year when the Production Code took effect, their relationship is portrayed as technically platonic, but it doesn't take much reading between the lines to assume a physical affair is taking place, and this reading makes more sense plotwise. Astor doesn't come off as a brittle, unfeeling bitch; in fact, she presents an interesting rationale for her behavior, telling William that social success is for women what business success is for men. There are many little gems in the narrative and the dialogue. Andy Devine, as William's chauffer, tells his boss that he hangs around the public library because it's a good place to meet "girls with ideas." Robert Greig, as the butler, notes that when his wife left him, he consoled himself "with a cup of tea and a chambermaid." Rogers gets a full-fledged musical number, the mildly naughty "Shake Your Powder Puff," and there's a delightful moment with Rogers and William singing "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" during an afternoon tete-a-tete. Sidney Toler plays a cop with a (justifiable) grudge against William, and John Qualen has a nice bit as a janitor in Rogers' building. Despite its plotting problems, this is well worth seeing if you're a fan of the era. [TCM]