September Schooldays: Girls' School (1938)

Do you ever have that reoccurring dream where it is test day and you've forgotten to study? Now that it is September and the kids are settling into school, we look back at those halcyon days in the classroom before computers depicted in the movies of yesterday, a world that doesn't exist anymore.

RODNEY BOWCOCK: Magnolia Hall is a fancy boarding school where rich girls learn etiquette and how to behave properly in society. However, when no one is looking, they don’t pay much attention to their lessons. After a girl is spotted staying out all night, monitor Natalie Freeman (Anne Shirley) is goaded into telling what she knows to the faculty. Said girl, Linda Simpson (Nan Grey) has plans to elope with her boyfriend although the scandal regarding her indiscretion has complicated things. The other girls rally around Linda and harass poor Natalie who is attending the school on a scholarship.

SAMANTHA GLASSER: The open hostility against the scholarship student (Shirley) by the school, the teachers and the students is astounding to me. The teachers rat her out as the monitor who identified the popular girl when they should have given her anonymity for cooperating with them. If I were her, I would have dropped out long ago. She must have been overwhelmingly lonely.

The comradery between the other girls is fun to watch. They spill each other’s secrets and try to top each other on beauty, but they look out for one another too. In one scene, Grey starts to cry and her roommate immediately smashes her face skyward to keep the tears from ruining her makeup.

RB: The film doesn’t do much to endear the viewer to most of the girls in this school. They seem petty and vindictive toward Natalie, never giving her the opportunity to explain that she had no choice but to reveal what she saw (she likely knew that she would experience intense blowback for this). We never hear from Natalie’s parents, but we do meet Linda’s parents. Her father is the only friend that Natalie seems to have, as he gifts her flowers for the formal dance that unexpectedly creates more chaos.

SG: As is often the case in movies about youth from this era, the girls seem incredibly immature. The scene where Grey gestures instead of talking because she wasn’t supposed to talk about something seems like middle school antics, not the behavior of an engaged woman. It brings home just how young and unprepared scads of women of this era were for marriage and motherhood. It is also clear how little she knows about her fiancée, played by baby-faced Kenneth Howell.

RB: I often wonder when watching films like this if that’s how young people actually were, or if that’s just a hope that young adults will be that way. I assume again that there is some truth and fiction here, especially among the wealthier teens that would’ve been more pampered. I certainly can’t imagine either of my grandmothers acting like this.

SG: Another way this film feels antiquated is the charm school sequence when a high-society matron does her community service by educating the ladies on how to properly behave at a dance, from alluringly draping themselves over doorways and walking with poise. Even by the late 30s, these ideas were becoming old-fashioned, but the existence of such a lecture seems absurd to modern eyes.

Doris Kenyon, a former silent film star, plays Grey’s mother. She began her movie career in Fort Lee, New Jersey, America’s film capitol before Hollywood.

RB: Pierre Watkin plays Mr. Simpson. Watkin was a notable bit character actor in Hollywood, usually playing uncredited roles in over 400 films and TV series. His roles ranged from He Who Gets

Slapped all the way through episodes of Highway Patrol. He fits the kind of actor that we love to celebrate here in Picture Show-land.

SG: I got a kick out of seeing young Noah Beery Jr. as Shirley’s boyfriend. He fit the blue-collar role perfectly and I liked him immediately.

RB: I liked seeing him too. He’s completely likable and provides some of the few highlights in a film that I found was often bogged down with unlikable people.

SG: Photoplay announced that new actress Jean Lucius was discovered at a drugstore counter at Gower and Sunset and cast in this film. Unfortunately for her, she only landed a few bit parts before her career fizzled out.

RB: All of her roles were uncredited and in a few cases, it’s undetermined if she actually appeared in the films on IMDB attributed to her. IMDB also claims that she is still alive, but if she is, she’d be 102 years old. In all likelihood, I assume that we just collectively lost track of her over the decades. I’d be interested in knowing more about her experience in Hollywood.

SG: Cinematographer Franz Planer keeps the camera moving down halls and into rooms to spy on various conversations. He went on to become Director of Photography on classics like Criss Cross, Roman Holiday and Breakfast at Tiffany’s as well as lesser-known films we have run at the Picture Show including Snafu and The Blue Veil.

RB: The film was directed by John Braham who spent a bulk of his film directing at 20th Century Fox where he helmed films like The Lodger and The Brasher Doubloon. He is likely remembered today for directing a dozen episodes of The Twilight Zone. The screenplay is by Tess Slesinger, a Communist sympathizer (although she later became disillusioned) that also helped establish the Screen Writers Guild. Had she not tragically died of cancer at the tender age of 39 in 1945, we can surmise that she likely would’ve come under fire by Joseph McCarthy and his ilk. Likely her most notable film is adapting the screenplay of A Tree Grows In Brooklyn (1945).

SG: Photoplay’s reviewer said, “With such writers as Richard Sherman and Tess Slesinger on the script, you’d expect great things from this. But it disappoints. The simple, Durbin-like charm you are led to expect is missing.”

Roscoe Williams of Motion Picture Daily said, “It is a wholesome story involved with no probings into the esoteric and it has nothing whatever in common with Maedchen in Uniform or any of the imitations of that film. It is a distinct novelty as to subject matter and treatment and susceptible of profitable exploitation as such.”

RB: The film was generally geared toward the teenagers and did well on that front. “This is a dandy picture…should be given plenty of publicity to the younger set,” noted Jim Haney of the Milan Theatre in Milan, Indiana.

SG: Ralph Bellamy said, “Girls’ School isn’t too far away from Girls Dormitory—except that it’s laid in America and it doesn’t have Simone Simon.” Thanks for the recommendation, Ralph! That’s another movie I need to seek out.

It is true that the story uses well-trodden tropes, but it does so with style and interesting characters, so I quite enjoyed it. I was a rabid fan of the teen movies that were coming out nonstop in the late-90s and this film reminded me of a 30s version of those down to the comedic fat girl and the climax on prom night. It went down easy, familiar and sweet. Three stars.

RB: As you can see by our newspaper clipping, the film at least in Cleveland was marketed oddly as the co-feature to a stage performance by Gypsy Rose Lee. Was this an attempt at creating a program that would appeal to the entire family, or was the plan to use the picture to clear the theater out so men didn’t sit around loafing all day? Considering that I found this to be a sluggish melodrama with few relatable or enjoyable characters, I kind of suspect the latter. Two and a half stars.