Convicted Woman

I'm getting close to the end of all those B movies that TCM ran during the spotlight on B movies back in July or so. Today's selection is a prison movie from Columbia: Convicted Woman.

The movie starts off pleasantly enough, with a young woman named Betty Andrews (Rochelle Hudson) in a city park trying to get her shoe back from a dog. That's not relevant to the plot, other than her being in the park in the middle of the day is a sign that she is currently unemployed and looking for work. She had found a promising want ad in the paper, so she decides to go there and look for a job. That place is a department store, but she has to fill out an application form and then they'll inform her when there's an opening.

Betty goes into the female employees' lounge to fill out that form, and as she's doing so another woman comes in. Surprisingly, that woman looks a lot like Betty, and is even wearing the same dress! The woman then goes out onto the shop floor, where she sees a woman looking for a shop assistant. This other woman sees an opportunity. She takes the customer's $10 bill and claims she's going to make change, but she just disappears. And since Betty is wearing the same dress as the thief, it's unsurprising that the customer identifies Betty as the thief.

The case goes to trial, with a young reporter from the local paper, Jim Brent (Glenn Ford in an early role), covering it. He has quite a bit of sympathy for Betty, but there's not much he can do to help. Betty is found guilty, and despite the fact that the crime was only stealing $10, which seems like petty larceny, she's actually sent to the Curtiss women's prison for an entire year!

Under the direction of Chief Matron Brackett (Esther Dale), it's a tough place, leading one of the woman to commit suicide. Worse, the matron insists that the dead woman had pneumonia and that everybody knows it. Worse, if Betty tries to tell anybody about it, she's going to get in big trouble, like the worst jobs if not getting sent to solitary. Betty is able to get a call out to Jim, who shows up claiming to be her lawyer. When Jim prints the story, it comes to the attention of the Commissioner of Prisons, who appoints Mary Ellis (Frieda Inescort) the new warden. Mary has even more sympathy for Betty, because she was Betty's defense attorney at trial.

Mary sets about doing some Hollywood-standard prison reform, which is even going to involve furloughs, and that's going to lead to the climax over whether any of the women given a furlough is going to violate the terms, even if unwillingly.

Convicted Woman is a B movie, to be sure, but it's not bad as far as B movies go. Glenn Ford was at the beginning of his career and the studios I think didn't yet know what they had in him which is why he's underused here. Rochelle Hudson does well, and the plot, while nothing new even in 1940, works well enough.

I don't know the next time Convicted Woman is going to show up on TCM, but having been released by Columbia, it might show up on their Cinevault Classics channel that's on the Roku Channel app.