She Done Him Wrong (1933)

Mea West really puts on one hell of a show. She could act, she could sing, and she could write. This decadent little period musical adapted from the play by West, herself, is surprisingly affective. The story is interesting, the characters are well developed, and though you might have been expecting fluff, you actually end up caring about what happens. West carries the picture as Lou, the beautiful nightclub singer and object of every man's desire. Lou is unlike any other female character put non screen up to this point. She is sexy, funny, brave, and blunt. She never relies on a male hero to show up and save the day, no matter what kind of trouble she gets into. The rest of the cast is decent but nothing special. That includes Cary Grant, who still had a long way to go. West makes them all look good, though. That's real talent.

Fmovies: Mae West was an acquired taste. Some negative comments in this forum seem to forget the enormous talent of Ms. West, who was, without a doubt, a woman way ahead of her times. Mae West was the writer and the star of "Diamond Lil" on Broadway, a huge success at the time. The screen play, while not the strongest thing in the film, offers some good moments in which the star shines. Under the direction of Lowell Sherman, this Mae West vehicle appears somehow dated.

The mere task of translating the stage play into a film must have given the studios executives nightmares. How would Mae West get away with some of the suggestive dialog, where innuendo and double entendres play greatly in the star's delivery? Ms. West seems to be having great fun in playing Lady Lou, a woman who attracted men by just being there.

Cary Grant plays a small part as the Salvation Army Capt. Some of the most suggestive dialog in the film is directed at him. Gilbert Roland is another man that catches Lou's eyes and she makes it known she wouldn't mind a visit at her star dressing room any time.

We also see some of great old players in the film. Owen Moore is Chick. Noah Beery plays Gus. David Landau, Rafaela Otiano, and Dewey Robinson are seen in supporting roles.

The film is worth seeing just for the witty and daring dialog Ms. West wrote. Some of the lines are classics by now.

Set mostly in a bawdy saloon/dance hall in NYC during the 1890s, this film is a showcase for the talents of Mae West. She plays Lady Lou, a self-confident, sassy singer with a quick wit, who entertains customers with songs that have a Blues theme and were popular in vaudeville.

In this role, buxom Mae West is at her best. She struts her stuff, she wears tons of diamonds, she smiles in a slightly mischievous way, she rolls her eyes, and she speaks in a voice that is more than a little nasal. Her costumes are glamorous and flamboyant. In short, she presents an on-screen image that is wonderfully ... unique.

The film's story is thin and largely irrelevant. It involves the people around Lady Lou, some of whom are schemers and cheats. Implicit sexual references in the dialogue, and the character of Lady Lou, led the "National Legion of Decency" to push down our throats the Production Code, a wretched policy device that censored cinematic content for some thirty years thereafter.

If I have a complaint with this film it is that the story is too serious. Mae West is placed in scenes that allow her merely to recite dialogue. She is less an actress than a singer and on-stage performer. I would have preferred a more lighthearted musical theme, to play up her musical talents.

And so for me, the best parts of this film are the musical numbers few though they may be. Mae West sings "Frankie And Johnny" and a couple of other songs. One of my favorite sequences occurs about midway through the film. In what appears to be an authentically designed music hall set, an Irish tenor with a big mustache sings "Silver Threads Among The Gold", a musical tearjerker popular with barbershop quartets of that era. The song's sad theme prompts a man in the audience literally to "cry in his beer". Gas lights point upward to the stage. And behind the singing tenor, a curtain sways back and forth, with product signs that read "Old Whiskey", "Dijon Burgundy", among others. It's a sequence that is straight out of vaudeville. Marvelous!

"She Done Him Wrong" is a film whose story almost gets in the way of the main character, played by a legendary talent. The film is worth watching more than once, but only to see marvelous Mae West, and to listen to those wonderful songs from the bygone days of vaudeville.

She Done Him Wrong fmovies. After a supporting role in the George Raft film Night After Night, Paramount films realized what a gold mine they had in Mae West. Between her and a young radio singer named Bing Crosby, they pulled Paramount from the brink of bankruptcy, the white mountain studio nearly went under in the early Thirties.

After this the studio gave Mae her head in choosing material and she decided to use one of her own original plays, She Done Him Wrong. The story is set in the Bowery district of the 1890s and New York of the 1890s is where Mae grew up, she had a good ear and a good memory for character types she uses in the film.

Mae always plays Mae West and would you really want her as anyone else? She's a Bowery entertainer of the period, working in this case for Noah Beery's club as the main attraction. Beery's into some really shady business, he doubles in white slavery and nearly gets innocent Rochelle Hudson who tries to kill herself in his club. Mae saves her, but turns her over to Beery because she doesn't know about his other sideline. All she knows is that he pays off in diamonds as well as cash.

Besides Beery panting after her, we've got silent screen star Owen Moore, young Gilbert Roland who is the assistant to white slaver Rafaela Ottiana and in the film that would be his breakthrough, Cary Grant as a Salvation Army worker who's not all he seems. Mae personally picked Grant for his role, he was a young Paramount contract player beginning to get some notice. But as I said before in my review of I'm No Angel, this is not a Cary Grant film, this is a Mae West film.

Mae besides being one of the great sex symbols of the last century had a great memory and eye for detail of the bawdy Bowery of her youth. Good thing she came along before The Code was put in place. Her first films are her best, The Code definitely hampered her style.

And Mae West if she had anything, had style.

One of the very few Mae West movies that escaped the butchery of Hays censorship, this film is 70% filler, but when Miss West steps into the picture, her star quality just explodes out of the screen. Every drawled line is loaded with smutty innuendo, every man would sell his soul for her. West plays a woman who makes no secret of enjoying sex, nor of her willingness to use men as playthings who also buy her diamonds. in 1933 she already had conventional gender politics standing on its head, and was funnier and sexier than everyone else in Hollywood put together. If you never understood why Mae West achieved lasting fame, watch this to see a natural star at work, making it all look so easy.

A True Mae West Gem! This is Ms West's first feature film, and it certainly has her "signature" come-back lines throughout. For the first time her most famous line "come up and see me sometime" was taken in by cinema goers, and for years to come it was America's favorite "quote".

The plot centers around New York's bowery ca. 1900. Mae West is "Diamond Lil", the mistress of a big-time gangster, who two times her man because she can't resist tall, dark and handsome Cary Grant. The heat is on, but soon the story takes a twist (nothing that could take away any "cool confidence" from Diamond Lil, of course; she laughs it all off with more clever come-back lines).

This movie is a classic Hollywood gem. It was a smash hit when it opened, and since then it has lost none of its appeal. Mae West remains one of my favorite true movie stars, and she was never given proper credit for her screen writing genius! You're gonna like this picture!