Gambling Lady (Archie Mayo, 1934)
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Joel McCrea, Pat O'Brien, C. Aubrey Smith, Claire Dodd, Robert Barrat, Arthur Vinton, Phillip Reed, Philip Faversham, Robert Elliott, Ferdinand Gottschalk, Willard Robertson, Huey White. Screenplay: Ralph Block, Doris Malloy. Cinematography: George Barnes. Art direction: Anton Grot. Film editing: Harold McLernon. Music: Bernhard Kaun. Costume design: Orry-Kelly.
Barbara Stanwyck is invariably the best reason to watch any of her movies, and never more so than in Gambling Lady. Oh, her supporting cast is just fine: Joel McCrea is her reliable leading man and Claire Dodd makes the most of her rich-bitch foe. And the story, though familiar enough in its outlines and predictable enough in its resolution, keeps your attention, partly because the Production Code hadn't yet put a choke hold on depictions of the seamier side of life. Stanwyck plays Jennifer "Lady" Lee, an honest woman in a shady milieu: She's a professional gambler who refuses to cheat. It's a familiar Stanwyck character: tough but vulnerable, and she gets many chances to show both sides throughout the film. Her best moment, perhaps, comes at the film's climax, when the rich bitch triumphs, forcing Lady to lie to save McCrea's character, the wealthy Garry Madison, whom Lady has married, from jail. So we get Stanwyck putting on a façade of cynical laughter as she pretends she has never really loved Madison but was just in it for the money. We who know the truth can see the tears welling up inside Lady, but Stanwyck successfully keeps up the front before she makes her exit and collapses in grief. This is screen acting at its best, so that even if the plotting is contrived and the situation trite, Stanwyck wins us over, making more of the scene, in fact of the whole movie, than it really deserves.