Paid to dance
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Paid to dance |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1937 |
| length | 55 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Charles C. Coleman |
| script | Robert E. Kent |
| production |
Irving Briskin , Ralph Cohn |
| camera | George Meehan |
| cut | Byron Robinson |
| occupation | |
| |
Paid to Dance , also known as Hard to Hold , is a 1937 American detective film starring Rita Hayworth. It was based on a story by Leslie T. White .
action
The nightclub owner Jack Miranda is suspected of running a girls' trading ring with the hostesses at his bar. Because of this, Agent William Dennis is hired to put Miranda under the microscope. To do this, he pretends to be a theater agent who opens his new office directly opposite the club. What he and the authorities don't know, however, is that Miranda is under the protection of influential politician Charles Kennedy. Williams friend and partner Joan Bradley is now also supposed to infiltrate the area around the bar and therefore takes a job as a dancer. She then tries to make friends with the other girls in the club, especially the confident Betty Morgan who leads the group. As it turns out, the young ladies don't just have to be at the service of the wealthy guests on the dance floor. Joan's information finally gives the police enough reason to shut down the club and arrest some of Miranda's henchmen.
When Miranda finds Joan in her investigation, he locks her in the basement. Meanwhile, William learns of politician Kennedy's dubious connections to Miranda. Kennedy now wants to get rid of the undercover agent in order to keep his dodgy business under lock and key. But Kennedy's plan to let William fall tied up in a car down a slope fails because William succeeds in freeing himself from his predicament at the last moment. When he and the police finally arrive at the politician's office, he is fatally hit in the following exchange of fire and Miranda is arrested shortly afterwards. When William frees Joan, she falls into his arms with relief.
background
The Columbia Pictures- produced B-movie Paid to Dance was made in 1937 one month after the release of the Warner Brothers film Murder in the Nightclub , in which Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart played the leading roles. Both films deal with the girl trafficking affair of the legendary Mafioso Lucky Luciano , who was sentenced to several years in prison in 1936.
Reviews
According to Daily Variety , the film "had all the characteristics to have been produced with a minimum of cost and effort". For the Los Angeles Daily News , Paid to Dance was "the first recent film that, instead of being shown, was to be sentenced to life imprisonment with no parole to keep the unsuspecting audience out."
Web links
- Paid to Dance in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Paid to Dance at Turner Classic Movies (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Gene Ringgold: The Films of Rita Hayworth . Citadel Press, Secaucus 1974, p. 88.
- ↑ "It has all the earmarks of being churned out with a minimum of expense and effort." See Daily Variety Gene Ringgold: The Films of Rita Hayworth . Citadel Press, Secaucus 1974, p. 89.
- ↑ "This is the first film of recent memory which, instead of being exhibited, should be sentenced to a life term without any chance of parole in a merciful effort to keep the unsuspecting public away." See Los Angeles Daily News quoted. after Gene Ringgold: The Films of Rita Hayworth . Citadel Press, Secaucus 1974, p. 89.