Mae West claimed all her life that she had discovered Cary Grant. "He had only done a few screen tests" before she plucked him from obscurity, according to her. This is untrue, of course. She Done Him Wrong (1932, directed by Lowell Sherman) was Grant's eighth feature film. Grant was second billed in She Done Him Wrong after West herself, though even that wasn't his highest billing to that date (Grant had been top billed in Hot Saturday, the film that immediately precedes She Done Him Wrong in Grant's filmography). She may not have discovered him, but West sure knew a star in the making when she saw one. A diamond in the rough, as it were, and if Mae West knew one thing, it was diamonds. She Done Him Wrong was West's own first film, but she was already notorious for her plays in New York, some of which had been shut down by the blue noses for obscenity and race mixing. She Done Him Wrong was based on West's Diamond Lil, a play so infamous that the minders of the production code insisted that the title couldn't be used or even referred to by incorporating the word "diamond." Although She Done Him Wrong is a pre-Code film, it highlights the inaccuracy of that category. There already WAS a production code, signed onto by all of the major studios, enacted in 1930, on top of a list of "dos and don'ts and be carefuls" formulated in 1927. Although the code was widely ignored by the studios from 1930 to 1934, the arbiters of the code could and did occasionally flex enough muscle to get their way. She Done Him Wrong wasn't the only film to change its title and other elements due to the strictures of the Code pre-1934. William Faulkner's novel, Sanctuary, was so notorious that film productions were barred from using that title, too, and discouraged from adapting the book at all. Hence, the 1933 film version became The Story of Temple Drake and many of the details of the story were judiciously changed as a means of filing off the serial numbers. She Done Him Wrong follows a similar strategy. "Diamond Lil" becomes "Lady Lou," but they weren't fooling anyone.
What this film meant for Grant was a high profile role in a film that would be talked about by everyone. Indeed, the film was a gigantic hit and was nominated for the "Best Production" Oscar (aka: Best Picture), which it lost to Cavalcade, a film you've probably never seen if you've heard of it at all. It was Grant's first brush with the kind of success that would become customary for productions in which he starred. Although he would labor in thankless roles for Paramount for another three years, this film undoubtedly gave him a leg up for when he decided to forge his own path to stardom. It was a hint that he might be bankable, though no one should mistake this movie as a "Cary Grant" movie. West brooked no rivals for the spotlight.
The plot of She Done Him Wrong follows Lou as she navigates between several men, most of them no good. There's her current employer, Gus Jordan, who runs a bunch of shady shit out of his Bowery Dance Hall like circulating counterfeit money and sex trafficking. Then there's Dan Flynn, a corrupt political boss who aims to make himself the king of the Bowery, like Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall, once he muscles Gus out. Before either of them, there was Chick Clark, Lou's ex-fiance, who resorted to jewel theft to keep Lou in diamonds. He's cooling his heels in prison, though Lou still visits him. In this company, Salvation Army Captain Cummings would appear to be a dark horse for Lou's attentions, but Cummings is played by Cary Grant and he's second billed, so you know he's the front runner. Much skullduggery ensues as Gus and Dan jockey for the killing stroke against each other, Chick busts out of prison in a rage over the idea of Lou taking up with another man, and Cummings bides his time and keeps his very large secret. Meanwhile, Lou performs a couple of songs and cracks wise with a steady stream of entendres, double and otherwise...
She Done Him Wrong was set in the 1890s and its considerable production resources went to re-creating the era where, as the initial exposition card helpfully mentions, handlebars were rode on lips and wheels. This is a film where everyone is wearing an elaborate period costume, and while it tended to make the male characters look foolish--even the villains--those fashions enhanced the women of the piece. Particularly Mae West, who understood implicitly how to make a movie star. She was the bauble at the center of the film and she dressed to please. Grant is spared the ignominy of this film's men's clothing by virtue of being dressed in a spartan uniform to go along with his role as a captain in the Salvation Army. One of Grant's most valuable skills as an actor was as a clothes horse and he cuts a fine, if austere, image in this film. It's almost a surprise to see Grant's personality and humor emanate from such a get-up.
Some of the other evocations of the period are perhaps more subtle. The opening montage of life in the Bowery in the "Gay Nineties" is accompanied by what we would call a needle drop soundtrack today, consisting of tunes that would be familiar from the period. Some of those songs are remembered even today--"A Bicycle Built for Two" lives on in immortality thanks to Hal-9000 and Stanley Kubrick--but in 1933, when the 1890s were still relatively fresh in living memory, all of it would have been evocative. I don't know when the first needle-drop soundtrack appeared--I'm sure it was probably during the silent era as a batch of sheet music sent out with some film or other--but this is surely one of the earliest examples in the sound era. Although the film's sets are dressed to evoke the period, director Lowell Sherman occasionally packs the screen with characters such that the sets aren't the audience's focus.
While She Done Him Wrong is considerably toned down from the stage play, there are still many elements that would keep the film in the vault during the Production Code era in spite of its huge success. The various criminal enterprises Gus is running would not have flown two years later, especially not that whole white slavery business. Neither would Lou's flitting from man to man for advantage. The guardians of the public morals were deeply uncomfortable with West's signature line in this movie: "Why don't you come up sometime and see me?" is a blatant sexual invitation. Her insight about Cummings when she cracks, "You can be had," is in a similar vein, or (showing Gilbert Roland's gigolo grifter a pornographic picture of herself, "Wait till you see this. For the bedroom. A little bit spicy, but not too raw, you know what I mean?". She Done Him Wrong bamboozles the Code through narrative speed. By the time the outrage to public morals registers on the viewer, this is already on to its next outrage. A determined scold will struggle to keep up. This is one of those films from the 1930s in which the filmmakers pack enough plot for three films into less than an hour and ten minutes. At sixty-three minutes long, it is the shortest film ever nominated for the Oscar, though it has more story than many longer nominees.
I do not know if Mae West could actually act and whether or not she could act is probably beside the point. I DO know that Hollywood studios in the classic era often didn't care if a star could act if they had a marketable personality. Could the Marx Brothers act? Maybe? But there is no real difference between the persona of Groucho Marx as Rufus T. Firefly or as Dr. Hugo Quackenbush. Harpo Marx is exactly the same persona in every film in which he appears, as is Chico. Hollywood was okay with this. They understood this. You knew what you were getting when you saw the Marx Brothers' name on the poster or the marquee. This was branding. The studios catered their films to those personae, asking, "what if Groucho was a head of state? What if W. C. Fields was a bank detective? What if Bud Abbott and Lou Costello met the monsters?" Mae West was such a movie star. She had personality, and a willingness to bust taboos. That transgressiveness was part of the brand of "Mae West." One of the film's bit players was Louise Beavers, playing Lady Lou's maid. Today, her character is a cringey stereotype, but in her day, it was revolutionary to have a black character as the main star's second banana/best friend. West insisted on black actors in her movies and plays, and paid a price for it from time to time when her shows were banned. She busted sexual taboos, too. My favorite line in She Done Him Wrong is at the very beginning, when a woman and her child greet Lou on the street and avow that "...Lady Lou, you're a fine gal, a fine woman." to which Lou replies, "One of the finest women ever walked the streets." That punctures any Victorian notions of proper womanhood at the outset.
West makes a revealing contrast with Cary Grant, an actor who also was sometimes classed as more of personality, like West, one who was always playing the character of "Cary Grant" in every film he made. But Grant could act even if he was layering his characters on the foundation of the Cary Grant persona. Here, he hadn't yet formulated who "Cary Grant" even was, but he does rely on his tendency to take on the character of whatever costume he wears. He's wearing a Salvation Army uniform? Okay. We buy that. He wears it splendidly. He turns out to be a federal agent? Sure. That works too. "Cary Grant" is a template, a kind of paper doll, and you can dress him up however you like. But Grant ISN'T the same in every film. Not yet, and maybe not ever. A contrast between this role and his role as the exasperated and suspicious boyfriend he plays in his first film, This is The Night, is striking. So is the difference between the shrewd Cummings and the gormless newspaper publisher in Thirty-Day Princess. Once Grant achieved his major stardom, his best films all reflect Grant's ability to adapt to suit the film even while remaining "Cary Grant." He does that here, too. I don't know that Mae West could have done that and I think it shortened her career once the Code excised the side of her personality that a paying audience wanted to see in the first place. But Grant? Grant was eternal. He left movies on his own terms not because he couldn't have adapted to New Hollywood--he was offered the role of Don Corleone in The Godfather, believe it or not--but because he was tired of Hollywood and didn't want to bother. I don't know that Mae West was capable of such grace.
My other posts on Cary Grant. Only about sixty more films to go:
This is the Night (1932)
The Eagle and the Hawk (1933)
Thirty-Day Princess (1934)
Enter: Madame (1935)
The Last Outpost (1935)
Wings in the Dark (1935)
Suzy (1936)
In Name Only (1939)
Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
Penny Serenade (1941)
Suspicion (1941)
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
To Catch a Thief (1955)
North by Northwest (1959)
Operation: Petticoat (1959)
Charade (1963)
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