Film review: Marked Woman (1937)

The Criterion Channel is running both a series of Bette Davis films and an "early Bogart" series, and this (like Petrified Forest) falls in the overlap.  I would say that in the year since that film, Bogart's acting got much better, while Davis's just got bigger.  Bogart is playing a good guy, something rare in his early years (although Crime School springs to mind) but actually doesn't come into the movie until at least half an hour has gone by.  This film is definitely Bette Davis's, and she seizes it with perhaps too much relish.  The plot is surprisingly progressive, in that it's an organized crime picture (based on the real Lucky Luciano trial) whose main focus is neither cops nor criminals but the women who work in a nightclub controlled by "Johnny Vanning" (played effectively menacingly by actual Italian Eduardo Ciannelli) a mob boss rapidly taking over the city.  The film opens with Vanning and his goons (one of them carrying his ridiculous little Pekinese) inspecting the club that Bette Davis ("Mary Dwight")

and her pals (who all live together in one apartment!) work at, "Club Intime" (a name that Vanning insists be changed to "Club Intimate" when it is explained to him what "Intime" means).  Mary is clearly the boss/brains of her gang, as we see when she stands up to Vanning and saves the job of Estelle (Mayo Methot, who met her future husband Humphrey Bogart on this film) when Vanning says she should be fired for being too old.  All goes relatively well (apart from the fact that the girls are essentially call girls now, albeit paid better than they were) until Mary's sister Betty, whom Mary has been putting through college, comes to visit, coincidentally the day following the night when one of Mary's "clients" racks up a huge bill at the club and tries to do a runner without paying.  His body is found with her name scrawled on a matchbook, and she and everyone in her apartment, including Betty (who up until that point had been under the impression that the girls all work in a store) are rounded up and taken downtown.  Finally we meet Bogey, playing crusading assistant DA David Graham, who has been trying to take down Vanning for a while and sees his chance.  Initially, Mary clams up, relying on Vanning to fulfill his promise to "take care of his girls," but one of Vanning's men visits her in jail and instructs her on what she is to do (as part of Vanning's lawyer's plan to undermine Graham), specifically tell a bunch of whoppers on the stand that can then be proven false by him, effectively destroying the case against Vanning.  She gets off, but not before being painted as a prostitute in all the papers, something that makes Betty too ashamed to go back to school.  In short order she is half-unwittingly sucked into the seedy nightlife (with a little help from Mary's naive-but-ambitious friend Emmy Lou).  She returns from a Vanning party having been plied with champagne by a creepy older man to meet a scolding from Mary, in response to which she turns round and goes back to the party.  This is a mistake, as the older man tries to force himself on her and when she tries to escape, Vanning slaps her so hard that she falls down a flight of steps and [spoiler]... dies.  This is a pretty shocking moment, as she's probably the last person you'd've picked to get it, but it's what steels Mary to turn on Vanning.  However, not before one of his goons slaps the living snot out of her and carves a cross (a sign that she has "crossed" him - geddit?) on her cheek.  He also keeps Emmy Lou on ice, but decides to bump her off after Graham, who has been raiding his clubs to put pressure on him, is seen heading his way.  She escapes, however, and runs to Mary's side in hospital, and they all go over to Graham.  Cue recreation of the actual Luciano trial.
I've got to say, while I have found Bette Davis a bit too much in the limited experience I have of her, she's certainly got that "star" quality, and this is an effective vehicle for her.  And it's a shocking (seems a lot more pre-code than you'd think for 1937 - unsubtle references to everything from prostitution to drug addiction, and lots of slapping people around) and thrilling plot.  But don't worry, Vanning gets his, and even calls off his "executioner" after the judge warns him that if anything happens to any of the girls, his chances of parole will vanish.