Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

VividSimon Simply Perfect

Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Michael O'Keefe Barbara Stanwyck's fourth movie and famed director Frank Capra presents her the vehicle to start her ride to stardom. Jerry Strong(Ralph Graves)is the son of a wealthy railroad magnet(George Fawcett), but he angers dear old dad by not wanting to follow in his footsteps. Jerry wants to be an artist, although hasn't found his perfect model to pose for him. On a middle-of-the-night drive, the younger Strong rescues the lovely Kay Arnold(Stanwyck)sneaking out of a party. Yes, she describes herself as a "party girl"...this is the mid 30s, OK. Strong has found his model and Miss Arnold really wants the money to pose. It takes a while for a romance to begin smoldering; about the same time Jerry's father demands he leave the girl with the bad reputation alone or more or less lose his inheritance. It is not hard to recognize the beauty of the young Miss Stanwyck. My favorite sequence is watching her through a raindrop soaked window changing into sleepwear. This is a passionate romance drama, of course filmed in Black & White. Ninety-nine minutes passes quickly. Rounding out the cast: Lowell Sherman, Marie Prevost and Nance O'Neil.

dougdoepke Slow-moving, over-long hundred minutes that a few years ago would have been dubbed a "woman's" picture. Though directed by the legendary Frank Capra, too many scenes labor at getting the point across-- the overnight episode, the many scenes of Kay {Stanwyck} "pining" for her man. Frankly, I found myself hitting "fast forward" to eliminate some of the redundancies. Now, I'm not opposed to love stories; I'm just opposed to the needless stretching of a point, and this film has too many over-worked scenes. Too bad that the sparkling opening scene proves misleading. My guess is that movie makers in 1929 were still feeling their way through the new sound technology, even the talented Capra. Certainly, his later films show both the economy and pacing generally absent from this early effort.At least the young Stanwyck gets to show her acting chops as she runs the emotional gamut from great joy to deep sadness. It's quite a performance in an especially demanding role. The trouble is her co-star Ralph Graves has all the charm and appeal of dried cement. Next to Stanwyck, he's a deadening presence and makes drawn-out scenes seem endless. As a supposed artist, he's simply miscast. Unfortunately, he also sounds like one of those silent screen stars unable to deliver the new technology in convincing fashion. Too bad that the enlivening Prevost and the amusing Sherman don't have more scenes to boost the energy level.Nonetheless, there is one scene that almost redeems the rest. Mrs. Strong (Nance O'Neill) visits Kay to break off the disreputable Kay's engagement to her son Jerry (Graves). In an ace performance, Strong enters as a proud, assured woman of wealth and breeding, convinced that son Jerry is about to make a huge mistake marrying a floozie. However, as Kay's noble nature emerges under a common concern for Jerry's wellbeing, Mom begins to see past Kay's dubious reputation just as Jerry has. The emotional stages each moves through toward a mutual respect proves quite compelling. It's a marvelously written and performed sequence, full of nuance and conflicting emotion, and in my view the film's real centerpiece. Anyway, for those interested, the movie now stands mainly as an early look (before her teeth were fixed) at one of the screen's outstanding personalities.

Michael_Elliott Ladies of Leisure (1930) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Frank Capra's remake of a (now lost) 1926 film has Barbara Stanwyck playing a "party girl" who begins working as a model for an artist (Ralph Graves). The two have an up and down relationship but soon they fall in love, which doesn't sit too well with his rich family who knows her secret. This film starts off with one thinking they're going to get a Pre-Code sexploitation but it quickly turns into a very dramatic love story. I think there are quite a few flaws here but this is certainly the best of the early sound Capra movies that I've seen. Apparently there's a silent version of this out there and I'd like to see it at some point so hopefully TCM will show it. What works best with this film is the performance by Stanwyck who is pretty remarkable considering this was only her third film (4th if you count her work as an extra). She gives a very dramatic and believable performance but also gives that Stanwyck style that she is best known for. Seeing her with that style so early on in her career made me wonder if Capra had a major part with that. This is the film that made her a star so I guess it's a possibility. Graves, on the other hand, didn't have me too impressed as he came off quite wooden and at times I really couldn't figure out what he was trying to display on screen. George Fawcett, a veteran of several D.W. Griffith features, does a very good job in the role of the father. The film still has quite a few flaws and that includes poor technology because a lot of the sound is pretty bad. Just check out the scene where we first see Stanwyck and she's trying to talk to Graves. You can't even make out what she's saying. Another problem is a rather snails pace, which starts to hurt the film towards the end. With that said, there are still some remarkable sequences here with the best being the scene between Stanwyck and Graves' mother in the film. This sequence is high drama at its very best and is reason enough to see the film.

bill-790 One reviewer here complimented the whole cast of "Ladies of Leisure." Well, I must respectfully disagree. I found Ralph Graves' performance to be rather wooden. Graves had been in films since he was teenager just after Word Ware I had ended, but clearly he found it difficult to deliver a natural performance in the sound medium.I do recommend the film for historical purposes if nothing else. It was released in the Spring of 1930 and may have been filmed in late 1929. That would definitely qualify "Ladies of Leisure" as a member of that first generation of sound films dating from 1928 to 1930.One thing I wondered about is whether a boom mic was used. I think someone else opined that hidden mics, placed here and there around the set were still used in this production. I do know from my reading that sound film technology was making progress just about on a week by week basis in those early days.