Wonderland Burlesque's Let's All Go To The Movies: Women Behind Bars Part VI: Women & Lady Parts

Wonderland Burlesque's

Let's All Go To The Movies

Women Behind Bars Part VI

Women & Lady Parts

So, the fun with today's selection of movies is that you never know who might show up. Yes, some surprisingly big names are involved, or actresses with ritzy pedigrees and a bit of dirt under their fingernails

So, pull up to the table for a taste of this week's line-up.

It all makes for the most delicious dish.

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Ladies They Talk About

(1933)

(This film is based on the play Gangstress, or Women in Prison by Dorothy Mackaye and Carlton Miles. In 1928, Mackaye, Prisoner #440960, served less than ten months of a one- to three-year sentence in San Quentin State Prison. Unlike many future films in the genre, in Mackaye's stories, there's not an innocent broad to be found.)

(Remade in 1942 under the title Lady Gangster, starring Faye Emerson.)

(Lillian Roth has a featured role in this film. Roth's life story and battle with alcoholism was told in the 1955 film I'll Cry Tomorrow, in which she was portrayed by Susan Hayward, who was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress for her performance. Sober, Roth went on to become a popular night club singer and entertainer.)

(Barbara Stanwyck was orphaned at the age of four and partially raised in foster homes. She lived to work, and was the favorite actress of numerous directors, including Frank Capra, Fritz Lang, and Cecille B. DeMille. She made 85 films in 38 years before turning to television to extend her career. She was nominated for Best Actress four times, but never took home an Oscar, until she received a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1986. Television was a different story: she received three Emmys - for her work on The Barbara Stanwyck Show, The Big Valley, and the mini series, The Thorn Birds.)

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Lady Gangster

(1942)

(Starring Faye Emerson, who would go on to earn the nickname 'The First Lady of Television'. She led an interesting life. This was her first starring role. From 1944 to 1950, she was married to Elliott Roosevelt, son of Franklin Delano Roosevelt - a union encouraged and made possible by Howard Hughes. She and her husband would live with Eleanor Roosevelt. It was Emerson's second marriage, which by 1947 had begun to fall apart. After having made her Broadway debut in The Play's The Thing, Emerson attempted suicide on Christmas Day 1948 by slitting her wrists, and was hospitalized. She returned to film, appearing in one crime drama after another. Later in life, she went on to host her own series of popular late-night talk shows and married one more time before retiring from show biz and moving to Europe. She died in Spain at the age of 65.)

(The film features a young Jackie Gleason.)

(It also features South American hotel heiress Ruth Ford, sister of  bohemian surrealist Charles Henri Ford. Ruth was a popular model and a member of Orson Wells Mercury Theatre. She married twice, both film actors, and had one daughter. When she died in 2009, she owned two large apartments in New York City's famed Dakota building. She left both to her housekeeper/cook, cutting her daughter and granddaughter out of her will completely.)

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Violent Women

(1959)

"Women barred from the men they hunger for.. take a last stab for love and freedom!"

 

(Five female prisoners murder an informer, then escape through a drainpipe into the streets of New York.)

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7 Women From Hell

(1961)

"Secret until now!"

"The truth about those camps and the barbed wire nightmares."

"Women... captured and enslaved, forced to submit to the inhuman demands of barbarian conquerors!"

  (In New Guinea, in February of 1942, the Japanese army invades a community, sending seven women with nothing in common to  a war camp in the jungle.)

"At last! The whole shock by shock truth about what happens to women... at the mercy of barbarian conquerors!

"Slaves of their every desire... victims of every hell a woman can know!"

(The film features a pioneer of female superheroes, Yvonne Craig. She was an actress and ballet dancer best known for her roles as Batgirl/Barbara Gordon in the 1960's television series Batman, Dorothy Johnson in the 1963 movie It Happened at the World's Fair and as the green-skinned Orion slave girl Marta in the Star Trek episode Whom Gods Destroy.)

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Women Of Devil's Island

(1962)

(In the late 18th century, a group of French female convicts - among them streetwalkers, murderers, and revolutionaries - are shipped to Devil's Island penal colony, where they are forced to pan for gold for King Louis XVI of France and his Austrian queen, Marie Antoinette.)

(The film sported an international cast: Guy Madison from the US, Michèle Mercier from France, Swiss-born Paul Muller and Marisa Belli of Italy.)

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House Of Women

(1962)

"Secrets of the cells! Shame of inmates! Babies born in jails! Innocents thrown in with female bully-boys!!!!"

"Let Sophie, Erica, Candy, and all the rest tell you about the nation's most notorious women's prison!"

(An infatuated, unethical Warden keeps an innocent young mother behind bars, blocking her attempts for parole.)

(Shirley Knight heads up the cast. During her long career, Knight was nominated twice for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress: in 1960 for Dark At The Top Of The Stairs and in 1962 for Sweet Bird Of Youth.) 

"The bombshell of truth that blasts through the concrete and steel fortress of the..."

"This is home sweet home to the most shock-proof women you'll ever meet!"

"Scandal beyond belief!"

(The cast also features two soap opera greats: Constance Ford from Another World and the formidable Jeanne Cooper from The Young And The Restless.)

(Director Crane Wilbur was brought on board ten-days into the shoot, when the original director was suddenly fired.)

  

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99 Women

(1969)

AKA: The Hot Death

"One soul hungered to touch another!"

"Whisper to your friends you saw it!"

(An international production featuring an international cast, led by some big names in the industry: French actress Maria Schell, American Mercedes McCambridge, Italy's Luciana Paluzzi, Austria's Maria Rohm and Czech actor Herbert Lom.)

(McCambridge remains one of my all-time favorite actresses. She won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her screen debut in 1949's All the King's Men and was nominated in the same category for 1956's Giant. She also provided the voice of the demon Pazuzu in The Exorcist. But my personal favorite is when she locks horns with fellow rancher Joan Crawford in 1954's Johnny Guitar.)

(McCambridge's personal life was marred by tragedy. Her son became a futures trader for a large holding company. She gave him her money to invest. He opened up a false account in his mother's name, in which he deposited all profits he made for the company, while posting all losses on the company's ledger. When discovered, the company said they would keep the matter private if McCambridge would cooperate and return the money. She refused. The scandal so distressed the son that he murdered his wife and two children before killing himself. He left his mother a note: "Initially you said, 'well, we can work it out' but NO, you refused… You called me a liar, a cheat, a criminal, a bum. You said I have ruined your life… You were never around much when I needed you, so now I and my whole family are dead - so you can have the money… 'Night, Mother.")

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Women In Cell Block 7

(1973)

"What makes a nice girl die in a place like this?"

(Believed to be the very first Italian 'women in prison' film.)

(Contains the classic line: "Get back to the sack, you rotten lesbo!")

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Women Behind Bars

(1975)

(Spanish director Jesús Franco' career spanned from 1954 to 2013, during which time he wrote, directed, produced, acted-in, and scored approximately 173 feature films - many of which starred his wife, Lina Romay, who also worked under the names Candy Costar and Lulu Laverne.)

"Welcome to prison, ladies...!"

"Unfolds with brutal fury...!"

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Women In Cellblock 9

(1977)

AKA: Flucht Von Der Todesinsel/Escape From Death Island/Tropical Inferno

(Another Jesús Franco film - a Swiss production featuring several sex scenes and lots of sexual violence. It remains banned in the UK, chiefly because one of the actresses was only sixteen at the time of filming.)

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Women In Fury

(1984)

AKA: Amazon Jail

(A young woman is jailed for murder in a Brazilian prison where she is brutalized by the inmates and guards. The young handsome prison doctor, convinced of her innocence, works behind the scenes to obtain her freedom.)

(Brazilian actress Suzane Carvalho began her career at the age of two, appearing in commercials. She began appearing in films at the age of fourteen. After appearing in the Brazilian version of Playboy, she did several films like Women In Fury, but by 1989, had a change of heart. She abruptly quit acting and became a race car driver, competing worldwide to this day.) 

(Some borrowed artwork?)

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And that's all for now.

Tune in next week!

Same time, same channel.

 Prisoner - Miley Cyrus feat. Dua Lupa