Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.

Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

ActuallyGlimmer The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Cheryl A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

kidboots Just through being her usual feisty self and trying to fight for better pay and parts Ann Dvorak found she wasn't at the top for very long. But with her luminous, compelling talent she made sure whatever the movie (even the most unentertaining Perry Mason) - she was going to make her role stand out. "Girls of the Road" was her last American movie for a while - she went to Britain with her husband Leslie Fenton, enrolled in the Woman's Land Army and drove an ambulance during the war.Beautiful Kay Warren (Dvorak), the Governor's daughter decides to go undercover to try to help and expose what is a huge, topical problem - runaway girls, who become road hobos and face rape and worse through life on the road. She almost ends up as a statistic on her first ride with an over fresh salesman and eventually teams up with Mickey (Helen Mack) a tough veteran of the roads (but of course with a heart of gold)!!! Kay finds life grim on the road, constantly being forced to move on, being incarcerated where they have the indignity of being hosed, then ridden out of town on a rail. With women hungry hobos leering out of the freight cars, it is fraught with danger and Mickey, who may have had an unpleasant experience is fearful, and determined not to ride. Every girl has a story - Irene is hitching across country to marry her fiancée, she opted to buy a wedding dress rather than pay for a train ticket, another wants to be a beautician. There's always a head girl - in this case it's Ellie (Lola Lane sure looks and acts tough!!!). She runs the makeshift camp where they all end up and although she doesn't exactly say "I'm the boss of this jungle - and I'll smack any dame starting trouble" (like it says on the poster) you could imagine her saying it.The film reaches a climax with the death of one of the girls. Kay manages to alert her father with the help of a kindly lorry driver. I don't know about the comparisons with "Wild Boys of the Road" - that was a very confronting, early Warners "social problem" movie. You just know, in this movie that nothing too awful is going to happen to these girls - it might muss their hair or smudge their lipstick. In one scene involving a caring policeman (Bruce Bennett in a small part) Kay looks stunning in a turban and smart matching outfit, she wouldn't have looked out of place at the Ritz - considering the scene before had them jumping from a moving train.Helen Mack had had a productive career during the 30s, most of her movies carried a big emotional crying scene but "Girls of the Road" saw her almost at the end of her career. Lola Lane started out in early movie musicals ("Let's Go Places", "Good News") then become one of the Lane Sisters (she wasn't really) for the "Four Daughters" series. This movie may have given Ann Doran one of the few parts she could really do something with. She is so recognizable but was rarely a featured player. In this film she plays the girl who steals the wedding dress.Recommended.

Michael_Elliott Girls of the Road (1940) ** (out of 4) "B" picture from Columbia has Ann Dvorak playing the daughter of the governor who decides to see what it's really like out on the streets. She joins up with a group of homeless girls who travel from town to town struggling to get food or a roof over their head. This film pretty much turns out to be a watered down version of William A. Wellman's classic WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD and while its heart is in the right place the final product doesn't have much going for it. The biggest problem I had with the film was a little bit of logic but we see this rich daughter seeing her new friends struggle yet she never offers them any help. Yes, I understand she wants to see what it's like being homeless but you'd think she would take care of her friends and just go on her little experiment alone. Another problem with the film is that the acting is pretty bad. Normally this wouldn't be too much of a deal breaker in a "B" picture but there are many scenes here that want an emotion impact and it just can't happen due to the bad acting. There's a death scene here, which is pretty embarrassing as well as a few other dramatic moments that just don't work. The screenplay really doesn't offer anything original as we go down countless roads that other films went down with much better results. I must admit that I found the 61-minute running time to feel too long and in the end the film really doesn't work on any level. What keeps the movie going is the fact that women take up all the lead roles and this little switch does make the film at least watchable if you don't mind "B" movies. Dvorak certainly had much better days as she appears uninterested from start to finish.

MartinHafer In many ways, this film reminds me of the 1933 film "Wild Boys of the Road"--which is about homeless teens who wander about the country (often in vain) looking for work and a square meal. This film is about homeless ladies who are in similar circumstances. How serious this problem was is uncertain (it's not like they kept statistics on this), but the movie seems earnest--and amazingly naive.The film begins with a commission reporting to the Governor about the plight of wandering homeless ladies. The Governor is moved and wants to do something but is uncertain if anything can be done about the problem. However, his secretary (Ann Dvorak--who also happens to be his daughter in the film) decides to investigate herself by hitting the road and posing as a homeless woman. This is an insanely naive and rather offensive notion--especially when she could be raped or otherwise exploited and the idea of a rich girl "slumming it" is a tad silly. In fact, in one of the first scenes, this nearly happens (in a sanitized 1940 manner) as a man isn't about to take 'no' for an answer after he picks up Ann.Ultimately, after spending time getting arrested for vagrancy, being hassled by cops, jumping trains, getting robbed and the rest in this 'dog eat dog world', Ann returns home to report to Daddy about the life of girl hobos. My quote in the summary, while not exactly what she said isn't that far from it! And, naturally, it all had a happy ending.To me, this film seemed rather fake. All the ladies looked really ragged...like they'd forgotten to put on the morning makeup and had gone a whole week without going to the beauty parlor! The most egregious of these was Dvorak--who looked like she was dressed for publicity photos of "her life when she has a day off". The ladies' "down and out" looks just seemed like Hollywood's sanitized version of the life of a homeless woman--the type that wouldn't feel particularly threatening to most in the audience. Compare this sort of film with a REAL film about social ills of the 1930s (such as "I Was A Fugitive From A Chain Gang") and this one comes up wanting. Perhaps well-intentioned and the acting wasn't bad, but it was fake from start to finish.

David Orr Once again, Turner Classic Movies has rescued another rough-cut gem from obscurity in the musty vaults of Hollywood! TCM has changed my life by showing the classics that most of us never even knew existed. And "Girls of the Road" is definitely in that category.Okay, so it's not "Gone With the Wind," but it's a classic even so. I've never seen anything quite like it. It's about female hobos from the Depression, running from the cops, fighting each other, living the vida loca al camino! Only in this subculture, all the women are young, beautiful and "good on the inside." Closest thing to this story I've seen is the "women in prison" movie genre of the period. There's a social-reform angle to it, as there was in many of the women in prison films. Remember, this was 1940--the Production Code ruled Hollywood. It was not possible to depict any vagrants or criminals in a positive light, at least not until they received a moral makeover.Watch it for entertainment, though, not for any particular message. Such as it was, the message was about as substantive as a mouthful of cotton candy. The stars had some funny lines, almost all were good looking, and life didn't look so bad at the end. What more can you ask for?