Title: She Done Him Wrong Year: 1933 Genre: Comedy, Crime Country: USA Language: English Director: Lowell Sherman Screenwriters: Harvey F. Thew, John Bright based on the play DIAMOND LIL by Mae West Music: John Leipold Cinematography: Charles Lang Editing: Alexander Hall Cast: Mae West Cary Grant Owen Moore Noah Beery Gilbert Roland Rafaela Ottiano David Landau Dewey Robinson Louise Beavers Rochelle Hudson Tammany Young Fuzzy Knight Rating: 6.4/10
Still holding the distinction of the shortest movie ever nominated for Oscar’s BEST PICTURE, it runs only 66 minutes, Lowell Sherman’s SHE DONE HIM WRONG is a hitmaker that transfigures Broadway star Mae West into a celluloid sensation. A loose adaption of West’s own play DIAMOND LIL, this pre-code fluff has only one aim in mind, to glamorize West’s ribald and risqué persona. Her saloon singer Lady Lou, marcel-waved, bedecked with garish finery, outlandish millinery and all the bling accoutrements (you can only imagine how she looks in full color!), is a diamond girl who can handle the opposite sex with ease and throw off double entendres at the drop of a hat, whether it is the suave Russian Sergei Stanieff (Roland) or a straight arrow undercover captain Cummings (Grant, callow and slightly wooden), she never misses a chance for a fling. It is the gay nineties (1890s) in New York, Lady Lou is beset with men problems, her current patron Gus Jordan (Beery), the saloon owner, is doing seedy business with Russian Rita (Ottiano, a trampy continental evil leading young girls up the garden path) to keep buying Lou expensive stones, and his rival Dan Flynn (Landau) eyes for an usurpation but also has designs on Lou, meanwhile Lou’s ex-lover Chick Clark (Moore, his dramatization of desperation and malevolence gives the flick a boost) is in the can but threats to off her if she two-times him during his prison stint, plus, a besotted Sergei seems to be a low-hanging fruit at hand, but it is the righteous Cummings’ remark that “you have no soul” stirs her profoundly. A glamor puss always have a soft spot for the man who, at least apparently, doesn’t fall under her spell, he might be either frigid or batting for the other team, or in the most conventional mindset, a man who wants to put a ring on her finger. SHE DONE HIM WRONG sports West’s nonconformist attitude on the exterior, but au fond, it is a flirt rather than a tub-thumper, and to Yours Truly’s lights, West’s polyamorous attitude is a well-conceived stunt, she has snap and flex, her contralto voice is grand but also a bit arid, not to mention her phocine movement (she is a magnificent poser but ridiculously clodhopping when she ambulates), arms-akimbo penchant, her glamor is not because of her comportment but the outrageous ornaments. One can only say she is a dated beauty with a modern soul, and if anything, for any woman who has been made as a screen star at a rather ripe age, she was nearly 40 when she enters the motion picture business, Ms. West is a torchbearer but also an outlier, her movie career is rife with the battle with the draconian production code, but surely, she had her heyday and it is her fighting spirit rather than her larger-than-life kitschiness that still amazes us, one might humbly assume. referential entries: Gustav Machatý's ECSTASY (1933, 6.3/10); George Marshall's DESTRY RIDES AGAIN (1939, 7.1/10).
Cinema Omnivore 