pre-Code
Pre-Code Hollywood was the brief era in the Cinema of the United States, American film industry between the widespread adoption of sound in film in 1929LaSalle (2002), p. 1. and the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code censorshi ...
drama film directed by
Victor Fleming
Victor Lonzo Fleming (February 23, 1889 – January 6, 1949) was an American film director, cinematographer, and producer. His most popular films were ''Gone with the Wind (film), Gone with the Wind'', for which he won an Academy Award for Best ...
Myrna Loy
Myrna Loy (born Myrna Adele Williams; August 2, 1905 – December 14, 1993) was an American film, television and stage actress. Trained as a dancer, Loy devoted herself fully to an acting career following a few minor roles in silent films. ...
Lewis Stone
Lewis Shepard Stone (November 15, 1879 – September 12, 1953) was an American film actor. He spent 29 years as a contract player at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and was best known for his portrayal of Judge James Hardy in the studio's popular '' Andy ...
and
Jimmy Durante
James Francis Durante ( , ; February 10, 1893 – January 29, 1980) was an American comedian, actor, singer, vaudevillian, and pianist. His distinctive gravelly speech, Lower East Side accent, comic language-butchery, jazz-influenced song ...
Upton Sinclair
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) was an American writer, muckraker, political activist and the 1934 Democratic Party nominee for governor of California who wrote nearly 100 books and other works in seve ...
. The film shows how two families are devastated by the effects of alcohol consumption and
Prohibition
Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholic ...
. In addition to the main story, many small vignettes illustrate the theme, such as a three-minute segment that documents the many steps in the creation of counterfeit imported liquor. When the film was released in March 1932, Prohibition had been law for almost 13 years and would not end until December 5, 1933 with the passage of the 21st Amendment.
Plot
In 1916, Maggie May Chilcote of Louisiana looks after her heavy-drinking father Roger, tying his shoes for him and retrieving him when he makes a spectacle of himself in public. Roger embarks on a drinking and gambling spree and loses most of the family's money. In the agonies of withdrawal, he kills himself. After the funeral, his friends toast him but Maggie vows to fight the scourge of alcohol abuse.
Maggie's brother Roger Jr., a writer, moves to New York City when his novel is accepted. His college friend, newspaper reporter Jerry Tyler, rents him a room in the modest hotel where he lives. Pow Tarleton, another drunkard who wasted his family resources, owns the hotel and his wife Bertha and their son Kip manage it. Pow stumps for Woodrow Wilson's successful reelection campaign, for the free drinks as well as the politics.
Jerry enlists to fight in
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
. After the war ends, the 18th Amendment becomes law in 1919 despite President Wilson's veto.
Maggie May comes to the hotel to meet her brother, and a flirtatious Pow shows her to Roger's room, assuming that she is a prostitute. Kip runs upstairs to evict her and is shattered when he learns the truth. Roger discovers that Pow has replaced all of Roger's liquor with water. Maggie May realizes that she and Kip have been fighting the same battle, and they warm to each other. She and Roger visit relatives on
Long Island
Long Island is a densely populated island in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, part of the New York metropolitan area. With over 8 million people, Long Island is the most populous island in the United Sta ...
, supposedly far from temptation.
On June 29, 1919, many hoard liquor and try to drink as much as possible before midnight. At a lavish party thrown by the Chilcotes' cousins, whose bar is stocked by a boat from Bermuda, Roger is smitten with actress Eileen Pinchon.
Bertha tries to wrest a bottle of bad liquor away from Pow. When it breaks, he beats her to death while she screams that Prohibition is in effect now. Maggie May comforts the devastated Kip. Pow is sentenced to life imprisonment.
Kip does not renew the lease on the hotel, leaving some guests wondering how to move the liquor stored in their rooms. Maggie May comforts Kip and is stunned when she confesses her love for him. They marry, and Kip joins the
U.S. Department of the Treasury
The Department of the Treasury (USDT) is the national treasury and finance department of the federal government of the United States, where it serves as an executive department. The department oversees the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and t ...
.
Kip's boss, the Major, doesn't believe in Prohibition but will enforce it with only a fraction of the resources needed. He assigns Kip a partner, Abe Schilling, a quirky, experienced agent. In a bar, they watch teenagers drinking. When their cover is blown, they are beaten and ejected from the bar. A crook warns Kip that bootleggers are forming an association. Maggie tells Kip that she is pregnant.
The gangsters organize all over the country with systems of bribery and terror and the financial backing of many businessmen. At Eileen's speakeasy, a glamorous nightclub frequented by celebrities, Abe announces a raid, and the cops smash everything. Roger, a major investor in the club, is shaken. Roger wakes up sick and blind and Eileen runs away. An ophthalmologist says that he has seen hundreds of cases like it since Prohibition began; some bootleggers have not removed the methyl mixed into the alcohol to render it undrinkable. Roger moves in with Kip and Maggie and learns
braille
Braille (Pronounced: ) is a tactile writing system used by people who are visually impaired, including people who are Blindness, blind, Deafblindness, deafblind or who have low vision. It can be read either on Paper embossing, embossed paper ...
.
Kip promises justice for Roger. The Major signs the warrant but says that it is futile, expounding on the failures of Prohibition. With Maggie about to give birth, Kip is kidnapped from the hospital by gangsters who plan to make his horrible death a warning. Abe saves him but is shot. He dies in Kip's arms, telling him to quit the department because it its efforts are futile and that taking care of his family comes first. At the hospital, Kip looks at his tiny son, “born into an awful mess...Before they pull him into it, I guess they'll have it all figured out.”
Wallace Ford
Wallace Ford (born Samuel Grundy Jones; 12 February 1898 – 11 June 1966) was an English-born naturalized American vaudevillian, stage performer and screen actor. Usually playing wise-cracking characters, he combined a tough but friendly-face ...
Lewis Stone
Lewis Shepard Stone (November 15, 1879 – September 12, 1953) was an American film actor. He spent 29 years as a contract player at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and was best known for his portrayal of Judge James Hardy in the studio's popular '' Andy ...
as Roger Chilcote
* Neil Hamilton as Roger Chilcote, Jr.
*
Jimmy Durante
James Francis Durante ( , ; February 10, 1893 – January 29, 1980) was an American comedian, actor, singer, vaudevillian, and pianist. His distinctive gravelly speech, Lower East Side accent, comic language-butchery, jazz-influenced song ...
as Abe Schilling
*
Myrna Loy
Myrna Loy (born Myrna Adele Williams; August 2, 1905 – December 14, 1993) was an American film, television and stage actress. Trained as a dancer, Loy devoted herself fully to an acting career following a few minor roles in silent films. ...
as Eileen Pinchon
Production
The AFI catalog states that MGM paid $18,000 ($287,000 in 2020) for the rights to Upton Sinclair's novel. However, TCM lists the price as $20,000 ($319,000 in 2020).
In the book, Kip is killed, and Maggie May rallies the women of America for enforcement, financial support and community action. The book ends with her slogan: "Prohibition hasn't failed! Prohibition hasn't been tried! Try it!"
Reception
In a contemporary review, ''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' critic
Mordaunt Hall
Mordaunt Hall (1 November 1878 – 2 July 1973) was the first regularly assigned motion picture critic for ''The New York Times'', working from October 1924 to September 1934.
Leonard Maltin
Leonard Michael Maltin (born December 18, 1950) is an American film critic and film historian, as well as an author of several mainstream books on cinema, focusing on nostalgic, celebratory narratives. He is perhaps best known for his book of fil ...
awarded the film 2.5 out of 4 stars, calling it "strange but interesting."
Introducing the film in February 2020,
Eddie Muller
Eddie Muller (born October 15, 1958) is an American writer based in San Francisco. He is known for writing books about movies, particularly film noir, and is the host of Noir Alley on Turner Classic Movies (TCM).
Early life and education
Muller ...
called it "an unusual mix of historical documentary, family melodrama and crime movie."