The Woman Racket

Quite some time back, TCM did a night mentioning the Moore brothers of silent film; all three of them appeared together in the 1929 movie Side Street. Another movie that aired, starring Tom Moore, was The Woman Racket. Since it sounded interesting and I'm always up for early talkies, I of course recorded it and eventually got around to watching it and writing up this post that I saved to post at a suitable distance from Side Street.

The Woman Racket was released at the beginning of 1930, which of course was right in the middle of the Prohibition era. And if you know your Hollywood movies of the time, the speakeasies that served alcohol also had gambling and or a floor show. Singing at one of these floor shows is Julia (Blanche Sweet). But wouldn't you know it, this just happens to be the night that the place gets raided by the authorities, forcing everybody to try to flee to keep the cops from nabbing them. Julia does the same, but she is in fact nabbed by one of the cops, Tom (Tom Moore).

Despite Tom's seeming to be an honest cop, he immediately falls for Julia and basically offers to keep her from being arrested if only she'll date him. And she's so willing not to be arrested that she's OK with becoming his girlfriend. It goes farther, and the two get married with Julia quitting her job at the speakeasy. It's only then that she learns that trying to be the wife of a cop, or more importantly on a cop's salary, isn't exactly a bed of roses.

Julia was used to having the better things in life considering how well she was paid at the club. Tom wants her to be happy, and scrimps and saves to buy Julia a stylish dress from the vintage clothing store. Julia, being bored out of her mind having to stay home while her husband pulls the night shift, decides she's going to put on that dress and pay a visit to her old stomping grounds. There, she finds that her old boss has gone into business with Chris (John Miljan), who is a fairly slimy dude. Tom discovers that Julia has gone out, and it's basically going to be splitsville as Julia wants to go back to work at the club.

Worse, Chris almost immediately starts trying to put the moves on Julia himself, even though she doesn't really want it. So she basically threatens Chris with the idea that she could go back to Tom and tell Tom that she's got the goods on Chris, who is much more intertwined with the underworld than her old boss was. Chris decides that he's got to do something about Julia, so he engineers a way to get her framed for murder. But will Julia fall for it?

The Woman Racket is an interesting enough little early talkie, although people who aren't the biggest fans of movies of this vintage may find the plot a little unbelievable. That, and the movie certainly does have technical weaknesses that aren't really the film's fault. Sweet does a good job and probably should have had more of a career in talkies. The Moore brothers were already beginning to get up there in years by the time sound came in, so it's not a surprise that they didn't become big talking picture stars. Miljan would go on for the next several year to play a bunch of elegant-looking but sleazy types and had a fairly long career as a character actor.