BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Micitype Pretty Good

TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

JohnHowardReid Executive producer: David O. Selznick. Copyright 1 October 1932 by RKO-Radio Pictures, Inc. New York opening at the Roxy: 14 October 1932. U.K. release: 1 April 1933. 8 reels. 74 minutes.NOTES: Only film of Broadway actress and Hollywood starlet Peg Entwistle who committed suicide by jumping from the top of the famous Hollywood sign soon after the picture was completed.COMMENT: Myrna Loy gives a stand-out performance in this thriller. She's a vicious murderess who will stop at nothing to revenge herself on the twelve members of a racist sorority who made her school days hell. Loy is so impressive that she easily out-shines every other member of the cast, including highly-touted Irene Dunne, fresh from her 1930/31 Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for her performance in Cimarron. Loy also has the advantage of superior make-up, costuming and lighting, whereas Miss Dunne often looks positively dowdy. Of the other eleven women, the most interesting are Mary Duncan, Harriet Hagman and Peg Entwistle. This trio is seen right at the very beginning, with the lovely Mary Duncan, the slinky temptress of silents, as the trapeze artist who receives a rather frightening horoscope. She confides in her friend, Peg Entwistle (an excellent performance this), that she fears she will cause the death of her sister — the wonderfully personable and beautiful Harriet Hagman.The hero, Ricardo Cortez, makes a rather late entrance and then has not a great deal to do, despite his top billing. Nonetheless, he does give an ingratiating performance. Ed Pawley is likewise impressive as Loy's lover/accomplice. But, next to Loy's, the most memorable acting in the movie comes from C. Henry Gordon. No-one who sees this picture will ever forget the subway scene with Loy and Gordon, masterfully edited by Buddy Kimball.

Antonius Block Campy and entertaining, there are flashes of brilliance here: tight shots on Loy, made up as an evil Indian mystic bent on getting revenge against her old classmates, some scenes where tension is built up rather nicely (I won't spoil them), and even a car chase scene, 1932-style. You'll have to suspend disbelief over the concept that the mind can be controlled by another via 'waves', but that's part of the fun. Loy's motivation is revealed towards the end as she confronts Irene Dunne, and it reveals the racial climate of the times: as a "half-caste Indian half-breed", she was not allowed to "pass" as white in a sorority. As she explains it, for half-breed men this meant being a coolie, and for a woman, she simply shrugs, implying prostitution. As with many films treating race relations at the time, it has a mixed message, on the one hand, pointing out the unfairness of the sorority (and how racist its rules were), and on the other, elevating fears of violence by non- Caucasians. It's interesting that the film has quite a bit of the framework of the modern thriller in it, but it's not fleshed out as much as it ideally would have been, and seems abrupt in places. Finding out that the original release was 14 minutes longer could explain that, but I have to review it for what survives. You could do worse, and it's actually kind of a fun movie. Oh, and last point – interesting to see Peg Entwistle in her only credited screen role, before jumping from the 'H' in the Hollywood(land) sign in despair. Watch for her character 'Hazel' early on.

bkoganbing Watching Thirteen Women I wonder what Merle Oberon must have thought. She lived in real life what Myrna Loy's character was experiencing in the film. It was only after she died that it came out that Merle was of mixed racial origin. She successfully passed her entire life.Loy who was in fact Caucasian until she became the incarnation of the perfect wife and mother played a whole lot of these exotic characters. She borrows a bit from her performance as Fu Manchu's daughter in playing a woman who is exacting terrible revenge on members of a sorority at a finishing school who discovered her background and used it to get her expelled. It was her ticket into the white world and respectability as she saw it.Using C. Henry Gordon as a phony swami she has unpleasant horoscopes made against her thirteen enemies. Loy doesn't want to just kill them, she wants to torment them and uses Gordon as her means. Loy wants maximum satisfaction.In the case of Irene Dunne who she sees as her chief enemy Loy also has plans for Dunne's child as well.A whole lot of women dominate this film as the sisters like Kay Johnson, Jill Esmond, Florence Eldridge and more. Ricardo Cortez plays the police sergeant who tracks down Loy and Edward Pawley plays another of the men she uses in her fiendish schemes.As this was a before the Code film, there was some frank talk about racism under the guise of snobbery. No doubt that Dunne and the rest were guilty of it. It drove Loy off the deep end and she enacts a terrible vengeance.A really good before the Code film that should be better known.

jotix100 Swami Yogadachi seems to have a knack for predicting the future. When he tells Ursula Georgi what hers will be like, she reminds him that he, too, will die a horrible death. Yogadachi, who has been the favorite of some of the well-to-do women who were together in college, rules over their lives, except with the grounded Laura Stanhope. Laura, who has witnessed some of her former class mates die in mysterious circumstances, is not immune to a threat that comes her way and involves her young son."Thirteen Women", directed by George Archainbaud, is a hybrid film that showcased some actresses that were making their mark in Hollywood. Of course, this film would not have a chance to be made today because even with a couple of stars, it would be prohibitive. The film is a curiosity because it's seldom played. As Neil Doyle pointed out in this forum, "Thirteen Women" boasts a music score by the great Max Steiner, at a time when music didn't play an integral part of most pictures of the period.Irene Dunne makes a rare appearance in this film of mystery and esoterica. She usually was seen in comedies that catered to her talent for that type of feature. Myrna Loy appears as yet another one of her evil Asian women, a person of mixed blood who was ostracized by the snobs in college, and now wants her revenge. Ricardo Cortez plays the police detective investigating the different crimes involving the sorority sisters. Jill Esmond, Kay Johnson, Mary Duncan, Florence Eldridge, and C. Henry Gordon, who plays the Swami, do a good job.