Allotment Wives (1945)

People are voting emotionally.

As Good As It Gets

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

The acting in this movie is really good.

"Allotment Wives" is a 1945 film from a poverty row studio, Monogram. And it looks like that's where it came from: a bad print that kept freezing and rotten sound.But give Kay Francis credit. Even when she knew Warner Brothers was trying to get rid of her, she kept right on working as if the rotten parts didn't bother her at all. By 1945, Francis was all but through, and she starred in this film. It's the story of a ring of women who married several servicemen at a time in order to get their pay as well as their life insurance if they were killed. The leader of the group runs a tight ship, but trouble begins when a government agent posing as a reporter starts snooping around.I wasn't as impressed with this film as several others on this board. I thought it was routine. I always enjoy Kay Francis, very much a star in the early '30s. Here she's in a Joan Crawford type of role and handles it differently from the way Joan would have, much more subtly. Paul Kelly and Otto Kruger are featured and give good performances.Kay Francis returned to her stage roots in the '40s and finally retired in 1952. When she died, she left one million dollars to train Seeing Eye Dogs.There's an interesting story about her. Once when she had been retired for some time, she was recognized. "Aren't you Kay Francis?" someone asked. She answered, "I was."

This was an enjoyable, yet unremarkable, film that deals with a racket of women who marry multiple servicemen in order to collect their allotment benefit checks. It all seems like a rather elaborate way to earn a buck, and easily traceable. Playing the leader of the syndicate is actress Kay Francis in her final role. In the mid '30s she was under a Warner contract and was reportedly the highest paid actress in the world. But unfortunately by the end of that decade she had gotten the reputation of 'box office poison' and she had to finish her career in poverty row b movies like this one. The film also features Otto Kruger who plays his usual suave gentleman villain part, he is number 2 behind Francis at the top of the scheme. Walk, don't run to this one.

In 1945, with offers dwindling, Kay Francis made a last attempt at a film comeback by forming her own producing company with Jeffrey Bernerd. Bernerd was a feisty Englishman who had produced some exploitation movies, including "Where Are Your Children" and "Are These Our Parents". Even though Kay had been associated with studios such as Paramount and Warner Bros., the studio where Kay ended up making her last three movies was lowly Monogram, "the graveyard of burned out stars". Though Bernerd remembered her royal treatment in her heyday he was surprised at her ruthless penny pinching approach which included looking out for low budget stories and with "Allotment Wives" even rewriting the script. The picture had a 10 day shooting schedule with the main objective being to make money. Kay certainly did try to tackle hard hitting subjects, first with "Divorce" and now with "Allotment Wives" which tried to delve into the problem of women who bigamously marry soldiers in order to collect benefits.This movie, which allowed Kay to be totally unsympathetic yet fascinating, starts in an almost documentary fashion, introducing the "Office of Dependency Benefits" which supported the wives of servicemen. When Peter Martin (Paul Kelly) finds that his good friend has killed himself (due to finding out his new bride already has several husbands) he goes under cover and his search leads him to Sheila Seymour (Francis). She runs a canteen that caters for servicemen in more ways than the obvious. She recruits her "hostesses" from her beauty shop which in turn is a front for a "Allotment Wives" syndicate.One of the hostesses, Gladys Smith (Gertrude Michael) recognises Sheila as an old partner in crime. They had both been petty criminals although Sheila mysteriously escaped reform school and now Gladys is out for revenge and she finds it in Connie. Connie (Teala Loring) is Sheila's secret, a rebellious daughter who she has been shielding in an exclusive girl's school but Connie is only too eager to get involved in the high living and bright lights that Gladys introduces her to. Toward the end the movie swings into action with Sheila showing to what lengths she will go to, to protect her daughter. Guns blaze, bodies fall over beds, even Sheila's right hand man, Whitey (Otto Kruger) takes a bullet to protect Connie who doesn't seem a particularly agreeable girl.Gertrude Michael turned up in many programmers during the thirties, always playing elegant types, so she must have hoped a surprising lead in "The Notorious Sophie Lang" (1934) would push her into the big time. Unfortunately she was disappointed and by the early 1940s she was even clinging on to poverty row programmers but she could always be proud of Sophie Lang.

I love movies made in the 1940's esp. Noir type movies. This particular movie, Allotment Wives, was being shown years ago at an extremely limited engagement at the Roxie Theatre in San Francisco, California. I had to miss going to see the show, and I've regretted it ever since. I'd love to see this film. I love movies like The Best Years of Our Lives, So Proudly We Hail, Stage Door Canteen, The Red House, Detour, Mildred Pierce, Air Force, Citizen Kane, White Heat, High Sierra, Dark Passage, 30 Seconds Over Tokyo, etc. I hate to think I would go to my grave without seeing Allotment Wives. Do they show it on late night TV? How can I see this? If you have any ideas, I would be grateful to you, fellow Noir aficionados.