She Blogged By Night

"Fashions of 1934"

William Powell plays Sherwood Nash, a con artist who fails at one con and, when he stumbles into newbie fashion designer Lynn Mason (Bette Davis), is inspired to create a new con: knock-offs of original fashion dresses. Nash's true motivation is to irritate legitimate designers so they will hire him as a consultant to steal Paris' fashions in the same way he stole theirs. Paris designers are too clever and stop him before he steals their works, but Nash runs into ostrich feather producer Joe Ward (Hugh Herbert) in a Paris bar and hatches a new scheme. Nash convinces the feather producer to finance a show, gets an old con friend currently posing as a duchess (Verree Teasdale) to headline, and hires dozens of beautiful girls to wear glorious ostrich feather costumes. The show is a hit, giving Ward a boost in feather sales and making Nash known as a designer. Trouble comes when Lynn gets jealous of the fake duchess, and the real designers in Paris find out Nash is a con.

Bette is completely out of her element here. She's put in ridiculous wigs (or so much Dippity-Do that it makes her real hair look like a wig), heavy make up and clumpy false eyelashes. She's in the role of subservient, meek little girl who literally sits on the sidelines while the action goes on. She even alters her voice to mimic the upper class voice of early 30s starlets. Bette looks really lovely in the gowns, though, and while they're not exactly her style, she certainly has a terrific figure. Thanks to the whims of fashion, though, her bosomy figure wasn't the style in 1934.

Speaking of figures, this movie was one of the last pre-code films to come out before the July 1, 1934 enactment of the newer, harsher code. There are tons of girls in their underwear, including a surprisingly well-endowed Bette, and all the girls in the Busby Berkeley ostrich feather number are practically nude. There are a lot of double entendres, and the resolution of the trouble involves the fake duchess' birthmark in a very intimate spot.

Not a bad film, but definitely just an excuse to show fashions and have a musical number. That's not going to stop me from posting my extensive "Fashions of 1934" photo gallery. And by "extensive" I mean "eleven".

FURTHER READING:
sixmartinis and the seventh art: memories of busby
1934 review of "Fashions of 1934" from New York Times
Trailer for "Fashions of 1934" on YouTube