SHE DONE HIM WRONG

SHE DONE HIM WRONG (1933). Director: Lowell Sherman.

"When women go wrong, men go right after them!"

In New York's Bowery during the Gay Nineties, saloon singer Lou (Mae West) has taken up with the owner, Gus (Noah Beery Sr.), after her previous boyfriend, Chick (Owen Moore), wound up in jail. Lou doesn't really want either of these comparative plug-uglies, but instead hankers for Russian Rita's (Rafaela Ottiano) man Serge (Gilbert Roland), and especially do-gooder Captain Cummings (Cary Grant), who has a secret. But Chick isn't about to let his gal wind up with another man, so he breaks jail ... Louise Beavers is fun as the maid, Pearl, and Rochelle Hudson appears as a poor little waif named Sally. This is an amiable movie -- not so much a parody of a melodrama as a melodrama with laughs -- that is full of West's patented double entendres and sex-emphatic "acting." Grant comes off very well in his scenes with West. As usual, West's character is a shady lady who plays the game as the men do, and generally comes out on top.

Verdict: Brief and minor but amiable and with some great one-liners. **1/2.