A Free Soul (1931)

 

Cast:
Norma Shearer ... Jan Ashe
Leslie Howard ... Dwight Winthrop
Lionel Barrymore ... Stephen Ashe
James Gleason ... Eddie
Clark Gable ... Ace Wilfong
Lucy Beaumont ... Grandma Ashe

Directed by Clarence Brown.
Produced by Irving Thalberg.
Based on the novel by Adela Rogers St. Johns.
Original Music by William Axt.
Cinematography by William H. Daniels.
Film Editing by Hugh Wynn.
Art Direction by Cedric Gibbons.
Costume Design by Adrian.
Sound Recording by Douglas Shearer.

Released June 20, 1931.
A Metro Goldwyn Mayer Picture.

Box Office Information:
Cost of Production: $529,000
Domestic Gross: $889,000
Forgein Gross: $833,000
Total Gross: $1,722,000
Profit: $244,000

Background:

When Strangers May Kiss (1931), Norma’s first movie since giving birth to her first child, proved that Norma Shearer could still be a slinky sex symbol, she decided to capitalize on it in her most daring film to date, A Free Soul, which would become known as one of her most notorious films.

And one of the most notorious films of the decade.

On top of all the sex Norma provided movie audiences, A Free Soul also showcased Lionel Barrymore in his Oscar-wining performance as the alcoholic attorney, and Clark Gable as the brutish gangster who shoves Norma around, telling her to “take it and like it.” This made a full-fledged star of Gable, his ground-breaking film, and upped the value for Shearer and Barrymore as well.

But what makes A Free Soul more popular is the fact that it was based on a real-life saga, one which involved the lives of two of the most famous people in New York.

Writer Adela Rogers St. Johns seemed to have everything from a view on the other side. She was the daughter of Earl Rogers, one the most successful New York attorneys to ever practice law, and enjoyed a life among the high society. But she was living in the 1920s---a time for moral rebellion. Aside from a fine reputation as a writer, she developed a reputation for being a party girl---though it never seemed to interfere with her career.

By 1927, she felt that she had experienced enough to pour it into a novel. A Free Soul, a semi-story of her life, was published William Randolph Hearst’s Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, becoming a hot-seller. It cast its heroine as the daughter of an alcoholic attorney, who takes a sexual walk on the wild side with a gangster, becoming addicted to his lifestyle, and ultimately leading to her own downfall.

As the daughter gets herself into more and more trouble, the father ruins his life with his drinking. It was a provocative subject; very hot material for the time, but it was the type of story which would have not been done as affectively in silent pictures. There was no better year for the novel to be published, for 1927 was the year Hollywood forever changed with the release of The Jazz Singer, the first movie to introduce vocal sound technology.

When Metro Goldwyn Mayer purchased the rights for the story, they had the idea of cast Joan Crawford in the title role. She had shot to fame in Our Dancing Daughters (1928)---a title which gives away the type of star she became known as. Her casting was welcomed by St. Johns. Crawford had the right kind of torrid-appeal to the movie audiences, but she was screen-immature. She still had a lot to learn about the medium, as her first sound movies prove.

This immaturity as an actress, and that Norma had proved herself to be the most important asset to Metro Goldwyn Mayer after her winning of the Best Actress Oscar for The Divorcee (1930), and the higher box office returns for her racy film cycle---Divorcee, Let Us Be Gay, Strangers May Kiss, only solidified their decision to cast Norma.

One problem did arise in the final script, however. The story focuses more on Stephen Ashe’s downfall as the film progresses. To subsidize her work in the film, Norma and Adrian worked on the designing of a wardrobe that would go down in film history. To make sure all eyes were on her, Norma sacrificed underwear for her art. A series of silky, satin gowns hid nothing about her figure, and revealed that she wasn’t wearing anything underneath.

This, on top of her in-your-face sexual persona made sure people would not forget her. And they certainly did not. A Free Soul opened to critical acclaim, though it was condemned by the censors. Cal York wrote just after the film’s release:

“One of the main objects in conversation over the Hollywood tea-tables is the change that has taken place in Norma Shearer. Once the discreet little lady of the films, she is now appearing in gowns so sensational that they make even hard-boiled Hollywood gulp a few gulps. When she is having her clothes designed for picture purposes she insists that they show as much of her anatomy as the law and Will Hays allow. And certainly being the wife of Irving Thalberg she gets whatever she wants on the MGM lot.”

Norma responded to the criticisms directly in the April issue of Modern Screen:

“I feel the morals of yesterday are no more. They are as dead as the day they were lived. Economic independence has put woman on the same footing as man. A discriminating man and a fastidious woman now amount to the same identical thing. There is no difference.”

Below: Lionel Barrymore and Norma Shearer have a unique father/daughter relationship in A Free Soul.

The credits for this movie overlook the San Francisco skyline. The opening scene for this movie establishes the unique relationship between attorney Stephen Ashe and his daughter, Jan. As she prepares for an important day, he is clueless to what “the modern woman should wear.”

She emerges from the bathroom and joins him for breakfast. His mother telephones, asking if they plan on attending her birthday dinner that night. Stephen has forgotten, but Jan makes the promise to her grandmother, and also promises, in directly, to try to have him show up sober.

In an effort to not ruffle her father’s feathers, she doesn’t mention a word.

Gangster Ace Wilfong is on trial for his life. All it takes is one look at him for Jan to be smitten. Her father is defending Ace’s life, and a hat at least two sizes too small lead to the jury’s conclusion that Wilfong is innocent. Stephen Ashe has saved his life.

Later that night, the entire Ashe family is gathered for their grandmother’s birthday. Dwight Winthrop is also attending. A famous polo player, he and Jan have been serious for some time now, and only recently agree to take their relationship to another level. He is intent on marrying Jan, who looks out the window to see her father stumble out of his automobile.

He’s smashed.

Stephen enters the room with the help of Ace. “He has disgraced this family for twenty years,” one of the guests says. His mother is heartbroken, and Jan tries to break the awkward silence by introducing Ace to everyone, though they could care less.

“What’s the matter with you bunch of snobs, anyway?” She asks. When they have no answer, she apologizes to Ace on behalf of her rude family. When he says he’ll be leaving, she announces that she is going with him.

Grandma Ashe tries to stop Jan, that it is indecent, but she insists that she must go.

In the car with Ace, they stop at a little hamburger house with the plan on eating like a King and Queen. Almost as soon as they place their order, Ace hears a car speed up, and back behind the restaurant. A drive-by shooting leaves his windshield like Swiss Cheese, and they turn around and take off.

He takes Jan back to his place…hidden from the rest of the world. “Tell me, why did those men want to kill you just now?” She asks, before turning around to a startling group of men behind her. Jan remains fidgety until Ace brings her into his room, where she goes from the uncomfortable to the ultra erotic in the blink of an eye. She’s taken with his lifestyle, with what just happened in the car, with his way of life. It is unlike anything else she has ever experienced before in her life, and she’s ready to make this a truly unforgettable night.
Jan and her father go out for dinner. He tries to resist the alcohol, but he can’t do it. When she leaves, he takes to, of all places, Ace’s speakeasy. There Ace announces his intentions to marry Jan, to which Stephen responds that he will never permit anything of the kind. His daughter is too good for Ace Wilfong, and will marry a respectable gentleman like Dwight. Ace’s anger is enough to have him storm out of his own bar and right up to his room.

“Hello there…” It’s Jan, appearing in a doorway in basically a piece of silk with a rope tied around the waste.

“Say I was just wondering what I’d do if you stopped coming up here.” Ace responds. He begins to talk about wanting to take their relationship to a more personal level. She laughs him off. “Say, don’t women ever want to talk?” he asks.

“Men of action are better in action. They don’t talk well.”

She laughs when he asks her to marry him, to which he responds in anger. Getting serious, she tells Ace that marrying him would change everything for her. People would never look at her the same (so I guess its okay to sleep with him, as long as she doesn’t marry him). “What’s in the future,” she wonders, “I don’t know.”

“I’m telling you.”

“Oh, no you’re not. No one is.” It’s that feminist assertion which places Norma Shearer above the other actresses of her time. She leans back and throws her arms in the air, “Put ‘em around me.”

Downstairs, the police invade the speakeasy. Ace’s men drag a drunken Stephen upstairs, where he sees Jan sitting on steps leading towards a window. He might be drunk, but realizing his daughter has been sleeping with Ace Wilfong is enough to sober him right up.

Not saying anything, he picks himself, grabs her coat, and they leave.

Back at their house, they have a critical discussion of their future. “You’re nothing but a cheap, common, contemptible little…”

She slaps him before he can finish the sentence. Crying, she begs for his forgiveness, and for his surrendering of the bottle. “Now, Dad, you’ve won only once case in the last six months. There’s only one reason you’ve lost all the rest.” He tells her that he can’t do it. He can’t live without his drinks.

Jan makes a final solution. She’ll give up what she needs, Ace, if he’ll give up what he needs, alcohol. With an agreement reached, they make a trip to the great outdoors. They spend three months in Yosemite, with Stephen staying sober the entire trip. When it comes time to leave, he grows leery of returning to reality, and stops in the liquor store for something to drink. Jan catches him drunk hours later, and heads back to Ace Wilfong when her family decides they want nothing to do with her.

When she goes to his apartment, he’s icy towards her warm hello. She left him for three months while he planned that they would be married. Well, now he has decided that time has come. It only takes a second for her slip out of his apartment behind his back before he can arrange a ceremony.

Fortunately for Jan, Dwight is still there for her. She confides in him about the mistakes she has made, about her regrets. While so much has changed for her, his feelings remain the same.

Ace storms into Jan’s place, saying that they’re going to be married right away. Dwight stands up to Ace, who insists that Jan “tossed all the Ritz overboard months ago. She came to my place and she stayed there…She’s mine…She belongs to me.” And if Dwight dares marry Jan, he won’t live long enough to start the honeymoon.

Dwight goes to Ace’s office one night, pulls out a pistol and shoots him dead. Arrested, Jan goes to visit him in jail. She decides to find her father to act as Dwight’s attorney. She searches the dreads of the city to find her father, all alone, drunk, and passed out on a cot.

On the witness stand, Jan surrenders her reputation, confessing to her relationship with Ace Wilfong. Before he can finish his statement, Stephen falls to the floor of the courtroom and dies. Jan, over his body, lets out a bloody scream. But Dwight is found innocent.

The film ends with Jan and Dwight leaving San Francisco, planning to start their new life together.

This is a harshly dramatic movie…one of the most dramatic of all the Pre-Codes. There is no attempt to make comic relief here from beginning to end the film deals with strictly adult material, and even the happy ending is filmed solemnly.

On top of the brilliant acting, it’s what makes A Free Soul such a fine example of moviemaking.

Norma Shearer is phenomenal. If she deserved an Oscar for The Divorcee, then she deserved three for this movie. Here her performance calls for so much in terms of emotion, but the most popular example of her work in the film is her erotic scenes with Clark Gable. This begins when she first arrives at his apartment. Her body movements are slow and subtle, making that breath-taking gown cling to her body in all of the right spots.

When she sits on the couch and runs her hands along the side of her head, she looks like a deranged maniac trying to hold herself back from pouncing on her victim, which is exactly what she is doing.

Her second big sex scene is the film’s most notorious. Watching her appear in that doorway is something one sees in a movie and never forgets. Everything about her performance is on key. The way she grins while she runs her fingers along his jacket. The way she shakes her head slightly so her hair moves about. Her walk. Her delivery of her lines. Everything is there; nothing is missing. It is impossible to imagine Joan Crawford or even Barbara Stanwyck being as on-key as Norma is without coming off as cheap or slutty.

And that’s just how she is. Like Cagney’s gangsters, one doesn’t look down on Norma’s free-spirited young woman as a problem of society, but a rather admirable girl who knows exactly what she wants and how to get it.

As she tells Ace “Oh no you’re not, no one is,” she’s giving us a fine example of how no one can control this young woman’s life but her.

But sex isn’t the only honor Norma deserves; she also gives the film a real dramatic punch. Watch her in the scene where she and Lionel Barrymore have their critical father/daughter moment, where she agrees to give up Ace if he gives up booze. The tears continuously fall from her eyes, yet she’s so involved in delivering her speech, it’s almost like she doesn’t even notice. That’s what makes a fine actress.

While Norma dominates the first half of this movie, Lionel Barrymore dominates the second. He is character acting; he does that in all of his movies but here he’s so believable as a man who is like so many out there. He is controlled by alcohol. It dominates his entire life, effecting his relationships, the way he behaves, and his appearance. Everything in A Free Soul suggests that he is a full-blown alcoholic, Clarence Brown makes no attempts for subtly.

Clark Gable is entirely absent of human emotion, though he is so unattractively photographed. The only question one has to ask about A Free Soul is how Norma is so smitten with him upon eye’s first glance. He does die a memorable death, bringing down his office supplies with him as he goes.

Leslie Howard starts off as little more than a doormat, but progresses to hero by the finale.

Still packing a one-two punch as powerful as the day it was first released, today A Free Soul remains dramatic through its nostalgia. Seen today, it makes one ask if people of the time were seriously tackling such issues still controversial today.

In ways, these pre-code films show us how far we have come, how little things have changed, and how much longer we still have to go.

Below: Leslie Howard didn't stand a chance between Lionel Barrymore's alcoholic lawyer, Gable's gangster, and Norma Shearer's wardrobe.



Vintage Reviews:

Talking pictures are by no means elevated by the presentation of "A Free Soul," last night's screen contribution put on at the Astor. Nevertheless, it should be stated that Lionel Barrymore does all that is possible with his role. In fact, his is the only characterization that rings true, the other players being handicapped either through miscasting, the false conception of human psychology or poorly written lines. Norma Shearer may be the star of this film, but Mr. Barrymore steals whatever honors there may be.

This offering is an adaptation of Willard Mack's melodrama of the same title, which in turn was based on a novel by Adela Rogers St. Johns. Miss Shearer, who looks as captivating as ever, is called upon to act a part which is quite unsuited to her intelligent type of beauty. Leslie Howard is lost in the shuffle for some time, but he finally turns up as the hero in this lurid, implausible affair. Clark Gable is all very well as a gangster, but it is problematical whether a young woman of Miss Shearer's type would ever become enamored of an individual who behaves as he does here.

Not only are the natures of the persons involved frightfully strained, but also the incidents. James Gleason is called upon to be the bottle bearer for Stephen Ashe, a bibulous but brilliant lawyer, and Lucy Beaumont deals out a little pathos.

Undoubtedly all the members of the cast have ability, but the doings in this film benefit but little by their talents, except, as has been set forth, through Mr. Barrymore's portrayal. And even he has to compete with tremendous odds to be convincing.

Stephen Ashe (Mr. Barrymore) is somewhat reminiscent of Sir Gilbert Parker's character, Charles ("Beauty") Steele in ("The Right of Way"), but that story was much more worthy than that of this current film. Ashe is a drunkard, but in the early scenes he succeeds in winning the acquittal of Ace Wilfong in the latter's murder trial. During the dramatic moments in the court room, Wilfong conducts himself with such nonchalance that one might imagine that he was a defendant upon a minor charge.

Once he is freed, Jan Ashe, Stephen's daughter, played by Miss Shearer, becomes enamored of Wilfong, who is referred to as a gambler and an underworld leader—otherwise a gangster. When Ashe discovers this unfortunate and unnatural affection his daughter has for Wilfong he makes an agreement with her to give up drinking if she will see no more of her lover. This lasts for some time, but eventually Ashe buys a bottle of whisky and apparently his daughter takes advantage of her father's weakness to renew her affair with Wilfong.

In course of time, Jan is finally made aware of the brutishness of Wilfong, who presumably is not in the least grateful for Ashe's having saved him from the gallows. He announces his intention of marrying Jan and when Dwight Winthrop (played by Mr. Howard), who has really been in love with her, comes to Wilfong's apartment, the leading light of the underworld threatens to expose his relations with Jan and, incidentally, informs Winthrop that if he interferes with his (Wilfong) marrying Jan, that young man will find life very brief.

Undaunted, Winthrop goes to Wilfong's gambling place a little later and is ushered into the ganster's den. He does not give the gambler a chance to speak, but shoots him through the heart and then calls up the police on the telephone and announces the he has killed Wilfong during a quarrel over a gambling debt.

Jan apparently knows where to find her father, and the climax comes when Ashe turns up in the court room during the trial of Winthrop. He puts his daughter on the witness stand and she confesses her relations with Wilfong and also tells of the gambler's threats just before the shooting. Then, in summing up the case, Ashe tells the jury that the real murderer is himself, as he has neglected his daughter. He falls over dead just when his speech is ended.

The producers have taken unusual liberties with the law and court room procedure. The lawyer for the defense is an artist in tautology and redundants. Ashe, who knows nothing of the case, staggers into the court room and is permitted to undertake the case without any delay. Clarence Brown, the director of this picture, goes to great pains to show that Eddie has a whisky bottle in his pocket, and soon this individual is beheld pouring out some of the liquor into a paper cup to stimulate Ashe. Nobody in the court room is supposed to notice this, but all the spectators in the theatre are given a chance to see it. This is on a par with many of the other happenings in this unimaginative production.
Written by Mordaunt Hall. Published June 3, 1931 in the New York Times.

Below: Norma's eye-popping entrance.



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