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Bachelor Apartment from 1931 with Lowell Sherman, Irene Dunn, Mae Murray, Charles Coleman, and Claudia Dell
Today the narrative of a woman marrying a man for his money to obtain a luxurious lifestyle is unacceptable to our culture. So even though it still goes on, we just ignore its existence. In the 1930s, however, one movie after another was made based on this premise alone.
Where it gets muddy, by 1930s values, is when the woman is willing to exchange s*x for lifestyle without a wedding ring. This was viewed as wrong by the older set, but the younger generation, especially many poor girls, often saw it as a way up and out of the Depression.
The ne plus ultra of this arrangement, which is also part of the plot of innumerable precodes, is for a young pretty woman to become a "girlfriend" of either a wealthy married man – or even a pl*yboy who isn't going to marry her – in return for a Park Avenue apartment, furs, jewels, etc.
It is in this moral swirl that Bachelor Apartment cavorts. Lowell Sherman plays – he also directed – a "love 'em and leave 'em" pl*yboy. Now in his forties and a successful businessman, he is getting tired of the game, but getting out isn't that easy.
His exit ticket appears in the form of Irene Dunn, playing a poor stenographer and the sensible older sister of an actress wannabe and flighty girl, played by Claudia Dell. The girls barely get by on Dunn's salary. Dunn accepts the struggle, while Dell is getting fed up with being poor.
A few silly coincidences bring these three together, which has Sherman helping Dell get a part in a Broadway show. He also talks Dunn, who sees him as a scoundrel, into working for him as an executive secretary, predicated on his promise of absolutely no hanky-panky on the side.
Things would work out well from here according to the Hallmark formula: working together, Sherman would fall in love with practical, pretty, and smart Dunn, who would slowly fall in love with Sherman once she saw he was a decent man ready to reform. But trouble lurks in an ex.
The "ex," played by Mae Murray, is a former "girlfriend" of Sherman’s who still wants to "see" him even though she married Sherman's best friend. Sherman wants no part of any of that, but – say what you will about men – this is a woman who won't take "no" for an answer regarding s*x.
The two thin threads of the story from here are Dunn's sister spiralling toward a "kept woman" setup, while Sherman's efforts to quietly woo Dunn are continually thwarted by Murray showing up inconveniently and not wearing underwear.
For fans, again, of Hallmark movies, both threads are regular storylines in those movies today, but without the racy precode edge. It's pretty funny to see that in 1930 they put the s*x into these stories in a way that Hallmark won't, which makes the 1930s movie much more realistic.
Often, in precodes, the woman owns the movie, but this one is Sherman's, despite being an odd leading man. He's handsome in a fin de siècle way that was already dated by the 1930s, but the guy has a screen presence that helps him pull it off.
His scenes with Dunn are good, but his best scenes are the witty banter he exchanges with his proper-on-the-surface, but full-of-the-dickens-underneath butler played with pitch-perfect placid mirth by Charles Coleman. They have a My Man Jeeves dynamic working between them.
Dunn, as always, is likable and professional, knowing exactly how to play the serious older sister and executive secretary who only comes around after being reliably shown Sherman's sincerity.
The moonshot in this one is Murray. She plays her ex-girlfriend-from-hell character as an unhinged woman: wanton and mildly psychotic. Her laugh is straight from crazy town. She cackles her way into somewhat owning all her scenes.
Bachelor Apartment, like most 1931 "talkies," feels stagey and clunky. Yet if you see through that, there's an honesty hidden amongst the trite plot. It's an honesty about men and women, where s*x and money can change hands in many ways, based on the norms of the times.
Dell considers partaking in the oldest version of the trade, just dressed up as a high-end "girlfriend." Murray turns the tables by offering it for free, but becomes unhinged if it isn't accepted. Dunn, though, says nyet to all that as she wants the real thing: love and marriage.
Today we don't like to talk about the first or second arrangements in our movies because they don't fit the political narratives of the moment, nor for the same reason, do we show the third one other than when it's broken.
So these tales have been shuffled off to cable TV movies, where they become simple stories stripped of the s*x and the deep, often gut-wrenching emotions that give them their verve. Or they are made as angry mainstream movies driven by an unforgiving political bias.
It's an odd outcome of our strident political times, but in this corner of life, and s*x, and love, 1930s precodes like Bachelor Apartment have more to say about real human relations and emotions than most of our modern movies.
