Gold Dust Gertie

With a title that makes it sound as if it's set in the Yukon (it was previously called 'Red Hot Sinners'), 'Gold Dust Gertie' was originally shot as a musical but trimmed of its songs for U.S. release. As the film now stands there's at least one moment when Winifred Lightner is obviously welling up to blast out a song that doesn't come; and we instead have a very broad and physical farce played at breakneck speed and well attuned to the cynical pre-Code mood and mores of the Depression's bleakest year, 1931.

In the relatively small dose that the 65 minutes of 'Gold Dust Gertie' provides, Ms Lightner proves beguiling company as a gold-digging serial polygamist. She has a face that isn't conventionally pretty (resembling a cross between Gracie Fields & Ruth Donnelly) but is extremely expressive, has a voice and personality that would easily fill every corner of a theatre, and can carry off a scene in which she models a swimsuit in order to ensnare her next intended prey Claude Gillingwater. Lightner's earlier husbands, now being milked by her for maintenance, are played by a younger version of the vaudeville duo Ole Olsen and Chick Johnson of 'Hellzapoppin' fame, who differ physically from how modern viewers are usually accustomed to seeing them ten years later in that Olsen has a moustache and Johnson is a few pounds lighter.

(As the twin sisters to whom Olsen & Johnson's characters are now married, Vivian Oakland and Dorothy Christy make a handsome pair while also displaying the comic potential both would also demonstrate working with Laurel & Hardy in 'Scram' and 'Sons of the Desert' respectively.)