They Call It Sin

Loretta Young and Una Merkel

Thornton Freeland's They Call It Sin is a routine Warner-First National programmer from the pre-Code year of 1932. The film was a vehicle for Loretta Young after the removal of a recalcitrant Bette Davis. Young was probably the better casting choice as an innocent small town Kansan with a gift for music. The pleasant and lightweight David Manners plays a New Yorker visiting Kansas on a business trip. He locks eyes with Young in church when she is playing organ for the Sunday service. Sparks fly and soon they are sharing a rowboat in the Warner's lagoon.

The first third of the picture is replete with jabs at rural America which is portrayed as small-minded, staid, and stifling. Young's parents are caricatures in the spirit of American Gothic. On the day Manners is due to leave for New York, Young throws caution to the wind and rides around in his jalopy till midnight. Her mother spies them necking, tells Young to hit the road and chooses that moment to also tell her that she is adopted, the illegitimate daughter of a traveling showgirl. Young is unruffled by this, musing that this is why she felt she never fit in. So, she catches the next train to Gotham, chasing her showbiz dreams and Manners.

However, as soon as she is ushered into Manners' penthouse by his Japanese butler (a stereotype named Moto), she finds that he is engaged to the virtuous, but colorless Enid (Helen Vinson). A doctor friend (George Brent) of Manners shows an interest in her as does a Broadway impresario played by Louis Calhern. Spurred on by her newfound chum and roomie, Dixie Dare (Una Merkel), Young wangles a job with Calhern as a rehearsal accompanist; though Calhern has other things in mind for her. Young plays along, up to a point, but the film makes it clear that she won't give herself to him. The backstage and New York high life scenes are fun, but the last third of the film succumbs to melodramatic contrivance.    

Freeland is not much remembered today, but his filmography includes Whoopee!, Flying Down to Rio, and the original Brewster's Millions. He had a nice touch with musical comedy and romance. When Calhern first sizes up Ms. Young, Freeland gives us his perspective, a wolf's eye gaze up and down her corpus. Unfortunately, the melodramatic moments towards the end of the film are unconvincing. A character's fatal fall from a Manhattan balcony is clumsily directed and a subsequent operation scene is especially ludicrous.

George Brent and Ms. Young are fine, but nothing more. I admire Young's apple cheeked beauty, but have never been really moved by one of her performances with the exception of her efforts in Frank Borzage's sublime A Man's Castle. The more interesting bits in They Call It Sin are on the film's periphery. Calhern, who seems to be suppressing a "I can't believe I'm getting this well paid for such twaddle" face, brings added depth to a stock role. He knows his Lothario bit is getting old, but the show must go on and the casting couch beckons. Uncredited Roscoe Karns and Marion Bryan have fun moments as, respectively, a rehearsal director and a soda jerk. Bryan was Buster Keaton's leading lady in Steamboat Bill Jr., but found roles hard to come by during the sound era. It was Hollywood's loss.

They Call It Sin gets a bracing kick in the pants every time Una Merkel appears. Whether spying on Young bussing a suitor, doing cartwheels (admittedly via a stunt double), drunkenly warbling "Coming Thro' the Rye" or searching for her stockings clad only in her undergarments, Merkel provides the shot of moxie the flick needs. What a ginchy dame!