Cheap Ex-Lady (Video) (Robert Florey) Price

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Customer Reviews of Ex-Lady

BETTE DAVIS AS A SLINKY, SOPHISTICATED SIREN..
This film, which was rather risque for its day, features a very blonde and nubile Bette Davis in her first role for which she received star billing. Playing the role of sophisticated, free spirited, and successful commercial artist Helen Bauer, who believes that love does not necessarily lead to marriage, though it can lead to the bedroom, Bette is charming. It seems that Helen is in love with ad agency owner Don Peterson, who wants to marry her. At first she refuses, but finally gives in. She is a most reluctant bride, however, as she is afraid that the bonds of marriage will ruin their love.

They do run across some bumps in the road and have some inconsequential flings to make each other jealous and to test the waters, but it is nothing that true love will not conquer. She and Don weather the storms and discover that they are irrevocably bound to each other, not by the bonds of matrimony, but by the bonds of true love.

This is a brash and breezy film that is really a bedroom farce. Sex outside the bonds of marriage and the concepts of a successful working woman are some of the cutting edge issues addressed. Somewhat heavy handed and stilted, it is a still film worth seeing just to watch Bette Davis as a sophisticated, slinky siren in this early role. While she is good, however, the best is yet to come. This is a film for die hard Bette Davis fans or classic film lovers. Others may be disappointed.

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BETTE HAD BETTER
This little potboiler from 1933 has the distinction of being the first film in which Bette Davis received top billing. Bette WAS rather impishly cute and sexy in her early blonde ingenue roles - but she was utterly disgusted upon the release of this tawdry little number, and, in her memoirs, she wrote "my shame was exceeded only by my fury". All she got out of it was status without achievement. Darryl F. Zanuck had personally selected it for her - one of his last productions before he quit Warners in protest at the studio's delay in restoring the pay cuts it had forced on its staff in the cost-cutting emergency following the signs that at last the cinema box-office was being hit by the Depression. Robert Florey directed this bedroom farce which stated that free love is preferable to betrothal; it was to make a star out of Davis but she felt embarrassed - not enhanced - by 'smart' situations and frivolous bedroom scenes. The film decides that while "free love" may do more for the undressing scenes, a submissive wife makes for a safer box-office (even in pre-code 1933!). EX-LADY was a re-make of a rather risque - but rather unsuccessful - Barbara Stanwyck vehicle entitled ILLICIT two years prior. The original poster for this film has received near cult status among collectors: a bare shouldered young Bette, blonde and beautifully seductive with the words describing "Filmdom's newest favourite after her achievements in CABIN IN THE COTTON and 20,000 YEARS IN SING SING" - AND - "We don't DARE tell you how daring it is" Malarkey.

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So What?
This Bette Davis movie isn't bad, I guess, but it sure is a bore. So she doesn't believe in marriage and is living in sin with Gene Raymond: well, what of it? Takes more than that to be interesting, I'm afraid. Most noteworthy because it features Frank McHugh as an egghead, very different from the "Toity toid street" roles he got later in life. Rent it if you've got time to lose and money to burn.