Our latest film find is Millie a neat pre-code film with Helen Twelvetrees as the title character. Wow, she becomes one independent gal! In the early part of the film, Millie leaves her cheating husband and swears she will never again depend on a man for financial support. She also swears off the idea of marriage.
I had never seen a film with Helen Twelvetrees and found her performance gutsy and very good. Her female friends played by Lilyan Tashman and Joan Blondel were also wonderful. It's unfortunate that the Hays code would soon quash screen portrayals of independent women and those who refused to stay in bad marriages.
The Hays Code was designed to clean up the films produced by Hollywood. Written in 1930, by former Postmaster General Will Hayes, it was not enforced until 1934. The code contained a set of rules that forbade the appearance of everything from "lustful kissing" to belly buttons. It also demanded that the "sanctity of marriage" be upheld on screen with divorce seen as generally unacceptable.
Kudos to Pub-d-Hub for making this film available on Roku. Also, please be sure to see Wikipedia's biographies of Twelvetrees and Tashman. The information is funny, surprising, and sad. Twelvetrees committed suicide at the age of 49. Tashman, whose lesbian lifestyle was an open secret in Hollywood, died of cancer at the age of 37.
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