Wonderland Burlesque's Let's All Go To The Movies: Women Behind Bars Part II: Big, Betrayed, Convicted and Condemned

Wonderland Burlesque's

Let's All Go To The Movies

Women Behind Bars Part II

Big, Betrayed, Convicted and Condemned

This week's Let's All Go To The Movies is all about women who are big, betrayed convicted and condemned. A mixture of film classics starring some of the loveliest ladies to light up the silver screen during the golden age of Hollywood, and drive-in move fare featuring some of our favorite blaxploitation and exploitation movie heroines, these films both preached morality and titillated the viewers. 

Now let's experience the clank and terror of metal bars, and learn a bit more about these scandalous movies and their big name stars..

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Ladies Of The Big House

(1931)

(Newlywed Kathleen Storm, as played by Sylvia Sidney, finds herself  and her husband, who has been sentenced to the death penalty, framed by her criminal ex-boyfriend. In prison she meets an ex-girlfriend of the man who framed her and her husband who eventually agrees to help clear the couple's names.)

(Sylvia Sydney remains one of my all-time favorite actresses. She was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress for her work in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams, but you may remember her best as the chain-smoking receptionist in hell from the film Beetlejuice.)

(This was an advertisement in Film Daily,)

(Gene Raymond made a career appearing in light musicals and films with the likes of Loretta Young, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and Ann Sothern. He also wrote a number of songs, one of which, Will You?, he sang on screen to Sothern, while others were sung on screen by his real life wife, the celebrated Jeanette McDonald.)

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Condemned Women

(1938)

(Linda Wilson, played by Sally Eilers, doesn't give a damn about life until she falls in love with Dr. Phillip, the prison psychiatrist. However, her turnabout is short-lived when she's asked to break up with the doctor, as her presence in his life stands in the way of his career.)

(Eilers was one of Mack Sennet's 'flaming youth' comedians, along with school chum Carole Lombard. She was a vivacious and much beloved presence in 1930's era Hollywood.)

(Anne Shirley is another favorite actress of mine. A true beauty, she appeared in a number of film noirs and was nominated as Best Supporting Actress for her work in the classic, Stella Dallas. She began her career as a popular child actress under the name Dawn O'Day.)

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Convicted Woman

(1940)

AKA: Dames/Daughters Of Today

"Caged women! What would they do if they were turned loose for a day?"

"Would they use their fleeting freedom for home and dear ones... for love... for crime?"

(Rochelle Hudson played both Shirley Temple's older sister in Curly Top, Claudette Colbert's adult daughter in Imitation Of Life, and James Dean's mother in Rebel Without A Cause. She also appeared in films opposite both  W.C. Fields and Mae West.)

"Women weep... but not for their sins... as tear gas quells female prison riots!"

(This film also includes 24 year-old Glenn Ford as reporter Jim Brent)

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Girls Of The Big House

(1945)

(This drama stars Lynne Roberts who appeared opposite the likes of Roy Rogers, Sonje Henie, Linda Darnell, Cesar Romero, Jane Withers, Lloyd Bridges, Loretta Young, Agnes Moorehead, and Gene Autry in 64 films.)

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The Ship Of Condemned Women

(1953)

"Adventure and excitement you will long remember!"

"The fury of 100 love -starved women!

"Caged for the sins of their past... their break for freedom climaxed by an orgy of wanton lust and revenge!"

"The screen explodes violently with the unleashed emotions of suppressed desires."

"A story so daring they said it could never be filmed."

(An Italian historical adventure-melodrama concerning a ship filled with imprisoned women being transported to a penal colony. French actress Kierma had made a name for herself playing a native girl in Outcasts Of The Island, while May Britt appeared in a number of films from 1953 until 1960, when she retired from film to take on the real life role of Mrs. Sammy Davis, Jr.)

(Reportedly, both John and Robert Kennedy told Frank Sinatra to tell Sammy not to get married before the 1960 Presidential Election, as interracial marriage was still illegal and neither Kennedy wanted a scandal. Sammy duly waited and then tied the knot five days after the election.)

(After making a slew of movies in Italy, Britt was imported to Hollywood where she appeared opposite the likes of Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Robert Wagner, Robert Mitchum, and Peter Falk. She also starred in a universally-panned remake of the Marlene Dietrich classic, The Blue Angel.)

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Betrayed Women

(1955)

"Women in solitary!"

"What happens behind the barrack walls of the female Devil's Island?"

"The girls who take the rap for the big shots of crime!"

(This British film stars B-movie queen, Beverly Michaels. Michaels made a career out of playing 'bad girl' types. In an interview she once said, "One of the penalties... is that some people, especially the wolf type, can't forget it was just a movie. I get my share of wisecracks. But I ignore them. You have to. If you're going to play roles like I have, you have to expect to be a target for such remarks. I just pretend I don't hear them. If you're going to be supersensitive, you had better get out of the business. I always have hope that my next picture will make me a decent woman." She was married to an executive at MGM and then  a director who cast her as the lead in her best remembered film, 1954's film noir Wicked Women. In the 1980's, when vintage bad girls like Diana Dors and Mamie Van Doren experienced renewed popularity, Michaels resisted all offers and attempts made to cash in on her former notoriety, preferring her privacy, instead.) 

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 Big Doll House

(1971)

"Their bodies were caged, but not their desires."

"They would do anything for a man - or to him."

(Another with Pam Grier and Roberta Collins, who appeared together in Caged Women/Black Mama White Mama that same year. Both films were shot in the Philippines at the same time, using the same buildings and sets.)

"Soft young girls behind hard prison bars... they'd do anything for a man or to him!"

"Boiling passions confined behind concrete walls."

"Naked lust that builds to a climax of death."

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The Big Bust-Out

(1972)

AKA: The Crucified Girls of San Ramon

"Soft skin bursting through hard prison walls!"

"Locked in a cage of wild desire."

"The chain their bodies but not their lust!"

(Renamed The Big Bust-Out in 1973 when B-movie king Roger Corman bought the US film rights. He trimmed 20 minutes off the film, later commenting that it wasn't a very good film but he still managed to make some money off of it.)

(Featuring blaxploitation star, Venetta McGee. McGee would star opposite Clint Eastwood in The Eiger Sanction among many other films.)

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The Big Bird Cage

(1972)

"Lashed to a terrible machine that maims tender young bodies and cripples innocent young minds."

"Men who are only half men and women who are more than all woman."

(This is the third of four prison films starring exploitation film queen Pam Grier. It also features  blaxploitation star Carol Speed and Anita Ford, most famous for her time, from 1972 to 1976, as a model on The Price Is Right and starring opposite Burt Reynolds in The Longest Yard.  )

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Convict Women

AKA: Thunder County

(1974)

To stay alive they have to kill..."

(Four women escape from prison only to be hunted in the swamp by a lecherous redneck.)

(Starring Mickey Rooney and Ted Cassidy, who is best remembered as Lurch in the television version of The Addams Family.)

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And that's all for now.

Tune in next week...

Same time, same channel.

The Big House - Tina Fey and Kermit The Frog

from the motion picture Muppets Most Wanted