Lilly Turner (1933)
Directed by William A. Wellman

Film Review

It was while working together on Frisco Jenny (1932) that the director William Wellman and actress Ruth Chatterton grew to appreciate one another's talents, having first been mutually contemptuous of each other.  Their second collaboration is a similarly gloomy melodrama which, like the one before it, powerfully conveys the hardships experienced by ordinary Americans, particularly women, during the Great Depression of the 1930s.  Lilly Turner is the perfect vehicle for Chatterton, allowing her to show her worth as a serious dramatic actress whilst giving her the freedom to make use of her comedic skills (albeit very subtly)  in some of the lighter scenes.  Here, she plays opposite her then husband and frequent co-star George Brent, whom she would divorce the following year.

Whilst not quite so hideously contrived as Frisco Jenny, Lilly Turner does exhibit many of the toe-curling vices of the 1930s American melodrama, in particular an over-reliance on coincidence and stock characters who are pretty well summed up in their one word job description (bounder, drunk, quack, strongman, etc.).  Many of the film's shortcomings can be traced to the stage play of the same title (written the year before by Phillip Dunning and George Abbott) on which it is based.  The smallness of the budget and the absurdities of the plot are to a large extent masked by the generally excellent performances and the oppressive mood that Wellman and his cinematographer James Van Trees manage to create, a mood that presages the great American films noirs that were to come in the following decade.

A thick air of fatalism hangs over this film, not unlike that felt in the poetic realist dramas that would be made in France later in the decade (Le Quai des brumes (1938), Le Jour se lève (1939)).  Although Chatterton gives her character plenty of spunk, she is far from in control of her destiny - social and economic forces will determine her future happiness.  That said, you can't help sensing in the film's wonderfully ambiguous ending that Lilly Turner will get what she wants, eventually.

Film Synopsis

When Lilly Turner marries Rex Durkee, an aspiring actor, she could not be happier.  But her dreams soon turn to dust when Rex forces her to become a dancer with a rundown carnival and she discovers that Rex is already married.  She promptly marries her alcoholic friend Dave Dixon, but he proves to be no better than her first husband.  To earn her crust, she lends her services to a quack doctor, Peter McGill, and immediately enflames the passions of McGill's simple-minded strongman, Fritz.  Driven mad by his desire for Lilly, Fritz soon ends up in a lunatic asylum, just as Lilly turns her attention to a passing cab driver, Bob Chandler, who becomes Fritz's replacement.  Bob and Lilly fall madly in love but Lilly is unsure whether she can bring herself to abandon Dave, who has become totally dependent on her.  One day, Bob announces he has been offered an engineering job in another country.  Lilly must make up her mind to leave Dave and start a new life with Bob...