Way back in 2011, I did a brief one-paragraph mention of a movie called They Call It Sin, noting how it had somehow gotten a TV-G rating despite being a precode. The last time it aired, I recorded it, not having done a full-length post on it. Recently, I finally got around to watching it. TCM still gave it a TV-G rating, but that's not really the point of this post.
David Manners plays Jimmy Decker. As the movie opens, he's getting on a train from New York bound for Kansas, where he's supposed to try to secure a business deal. He's leaving behind a fiancée, Enid Hollister (Helen Vinson), who happens to be the daughter of his boss. Fast forward to a small town in Kansas that's preternaturally boring. One Sunday morning, it seems the only person who's doing any work is the soda jerk at the pharmacy; pretty much everybody else is at church.
Jimmy goes to the church, since another trope of these small towns is that everybody in town goes to the same non-denominational Protestant church. After the service ends, everybody leaves with the exception of Jimmy and the church organist, a young woman named Marion Cullen (Loretta Young). She's an aspiring composer, playing some of her own music after the service, and a woman who absolutely hates this stifling small town. It's later revealed that her ridiculously strict parents are in fact her adoptive parents, as her biological mother was a traveling entertainer who died here. Marion is taken with Jimmy when he mentions that he's from New York. He encourages her to pursue her musical dream, even suggesting he might be able to give her pointers if she ever gets to New York. But he can't be bothered to tell Marion that he's got a fiancée waiting for him back in New York.
As you might guess, Marion goes to New York, and looks up Jimmy. She shows up unannounced at his posh apartment just as he's getting ready for a visit from Enid and her parents, which would be mighty awkward. Fortunately for Jimmy, his personal physician, Dr. Travers (George Brent), is also there, and is able to take Marion back to the hotel where she's staying. Travers, for some reason, doesn't tell Marion about Jimmy's fiancée, so she only learns when Jimmy goes to see Marion and then Enid shows up.
Marion tries to get jobs on her own, eventually meeting aspiring actress Dixie Dare (Una Merkel). Both of them get a job with producer Ford Humphries (a young Louis Calhern), Marion as a rehearsal pianist and Dixie as one of the stars. But Humphries has selected Marion for her looks, and when she resists his advances he not only fires her from the show, but steals one of her uncopyrighted compositions and claims writing credit for it himself. Jimmy finds out from yet another trope of 30s movies, the gossip column blurbs, and goes to see Humphries about it, leading to a climax that could threaten everyone's happiness.
They Call It Sin is fun enough, but even for late 1932 it doesn't feel like it's doing that much to break new ground. All of the plot devices feel like things we've seen in a dozen other movies. And, despite the title, any "sin" there is is mostly fairly tame, with Humphries' actions (which nowadays would be considered sexual harassment) being the worst. But the cast pull it off well, and it's definitely worth a watch the next time it shows up on TCM.
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