Tweet THE RECKLESS HOUR (1931)

Recent Warners release stars Dorothy Mackaill in a snappy role of model who wants to date a rich man but gets burned by him.
Then she meets another rich man (Conrad Nagel). She she tell him all? Will he use her also?

Nice pre-Code with Joan Blondell as the younger sister, H.B. Warner, Helen Ware, Walter Byron, Dorothy Peterson, Billy House, and Joe Donahue.

Mackaill looks great!

Mackaill looks great!

Blondell wasn't too hard to take, either.

I agree..... Joan Blondell always seemed to get the shaft at Warners yet she was a solid actress never really allowed to do much more than being Joan Blondell. She certainly had some fine moments, however, and she always looked great.

Watched this again tonight--terrific, but I'd forgotten that possibly the most insufferable jerk ever to stand before a camera, Joe Donahue, has a fairly large part in it. Dorothy & Joan played surprising similar roles in a picture I think I like even better, Office Wife. In that one, I seem to recall, Joan's part was perhaps larger...and merely "being Joan Blondell" is quite enough for me!

I watched this several months ago when Warners released its Archive Collection DVD. I also enjoyed it immensely, but - I certainly agree about Joe Donahue being "insufferable". He only made four films, however. He got into show business on his brother's bootstraps. His brother was one of the 1920's best known Vaudevillian dancers. His brother Jack also had been Marilyn Miller's leading man in a couple of Broadway plays. When Miller made "Sunny" in 1930 as a film, she had Joe cast as her leading man because his brother had died of high blood pressure that same year. Anyway, that's history...

I certainly agree about Joe Donahue being "insufferable". He only made four films, however.

One of those four, unfortunately, was another favorite of mine, Dolores Costello's Expensive Women. In that one, he had a major part, and such a FAH has never again appeared on the screen! Kept thinking, "THIS is supposed to be amusing?"