Hello, Sister! (1933) User Reviews

Unfortunately, it was goodbye Boots!!

[kidboots · 7/10 · 2 February 2009]

James Dunn, who had been on the stage, was Fox's resident "young man about town". A lot of his films were pre-coders so they always had a darker side and because he could sing and dance he was often in musicals as well. He and Shirley Temple had great chemistry in their films together ("Stand Up and Cheer", "Baby, Take a Bow" and "Bright Eyes") but he also teamed with the beautiful Sally Eilers and Boots Mallory.

Mallory was the star of "Hello Sister", the film that was going to take her to the top. Unfortunately, Fox bosses were worried about Erich Von Stroheim's concept and quickly replaced him with the mediocre Alan Crosland. The grittiness and reality that was in the film was replaced by a simpering "boy meets girl in the big city" romance. The review in the N.Y. Times started glowingly with high praise for James Dunn and Boots Mallory but felt the film became bogged down in mediocrity half way through.

Millie (Zasu Pitts) and Peggy (Boots Mallory) are two small town girls trying to make their way in the big city. Walking down Broadway (the film's original title) in the hope of meeting a couple of nice boys, they meet Jimmy (James Dunn) and Mac (Terence Ray). Jimmy is paired up with Millie, but much prefers the prettier Peggy. They go to Coney Island and on the way home rescue a little dog that has been run over.

After a few months (and some news from a doctor) Peggy and Jimmy decide to get married. The future looks bright but Millie is not happy and decides to make trouble. Mac tells Jimmy that he has already "had" Peggy the first time they met, and Millie backs him up. In reality Mac had tried to rape Peggy but was stopped by Mona (Minna Gombell). Jimmy is distraught and leaves Peggy at the marriage license bureau.

Millie has a change of heart and convinces Jimmy she was jealous of their love. There is then an explosion in Peggy's building. A small subplot involved a drunken tenant who was always taking explosives up to his room. Of course Peggy and Jimmy are reunited and look forward to a rosy future together. Von Stroheim's influence is very much in evidence, the underlying mood is sombre. Why the title change is a mystery - "Hello Sister" sounds like a Zasu Pitts comedy and even though she was billed as the female star, she was definitely a supporting player. Stroheim had great faith in Pitt's dramatic abilities. She was magnificent as the miserly Mina in his production of "Greed" but her quirky mannerisms and whiney voice showed up in talking films and she was destined for a career playing "characters". Apparently in Von Stroheim's version of "Hello Sister", Pitt's role was that of a psychopathic girlfriend but with another director her part ended up as another comedy spinster.

Boots Mallory was a lovely leading lady, who deserved a better career. Unfortunately with "Hello Sister" - it was goodbye Boots!!!

Greatly Recommended.

Dawn, obscured

[marcslope · 6/10 · 11 December 2006]

Dawn Powell was sort of the poor man's Dorothy Parker, a wisecracking writer with unusually astute observations about New York, boy-girl troubles, and, especially, the behind-the-eight-ball position of the 1920s and 1930s Everywoman. All those qualities are present in her play "Walking Down Broadway," but they're filtered and standardized in this adaptation, begun by Erich von Stroheim and completed by others. A Fox pre-Production Code product, it does have unusual raciness, its hero and heroine a sweet young couple who face a premarital blessed event and don't get struck by lightning for it. But Powell's insights are compromised by 1) unwelcome comic relief, 2) Zasu Pitts getting second billing but in a small and mostly extraneous part, a character who makes no sense, and 3) a really phony, movie-invented Act Three climax. For all that, James Dunn and Boots Mallory are sympathetic in the leads, and the Minna Gombell character -- a wise, five-times-married good-time girl -- does get off a couple of good ones that have the authentic Dawn Powell ring.

Extraordinarily ordinary

[AlsExGal · 6/10 · 29 August 2010]

This film is more famous for what you don't see than what you do. What you don't see is whatever it is that the original director, Erich Von Stroheim, shot that was left on the cutting room floor after Fox basically re-shot the picture. Apparently it was too gritty for what Fox had in mind, and Alan Crosland of "The Jazz Singer" fame was brought in to direct.

This is a simple little "lonely boy meets lonely girl in the big city" story. Three girls who live in the same apartment building in New York City go strolling down the street in search of men. They find a couple of them - nice guy Jimmy (James Dunn) and his lecherous friend Mac. Millie (Zasu Pitts) falls in a muddy water filled ditch, so now the group is evenly paired. Jimmy and Peggy hit it off, but not until after Mac makes a pass at Peggy and she rejects him. Complications ensue.

James Dunn really saves the picture with his optimistic and likable every-man persona that he did so well. In spite of the short running time you really feel the chemistry between himself and Peggy. Zasu Pitts is good as a rather backwards homely girl who strikes out in an uncharacteristic and venomous way towards the end of the picture. Will Stanton plays the same obnoxious drunk that he played in "Me and My Gal" and makes you want to change the channel every time he shows up - he's that annoying and completely unfunny. Before the film is over Stanton proves that three things that fire and explosions can't destroy are roaches, termites, and his act. Recommended for the curiosity factor of it all.

A Remarkable Pre-Code Title

[louellyne · 7/10 · 18 November 2012]

I was able to catch about 26 or so minutes of this movie on you-tube, and what I saw was actually pretty remarkable. The plot has clear intimations of rape and unwed pregnancy, as well as women with loose morals and predatory men. What I saw was so clearly directed by a fine director that I have to believe that at least portions of it must have been directed by Von Stroheim. The settings were very atmospheric, with some great carnival scenes early on. I don't know why whoever posted the movie only made about half of it available, but what's there flowed like a complete movie and I was thrilled to see it. I wish someone would post the entire movie somewhere, or release it on DVD. I have to believe that movie lovers would snap up every copy available, due to the legend surrounding it. I do know that Hello Sister was screened as part of a Von Stroheim retrospective earlier this year in New York, so hopefully we'll see it come DVD someday. Until then, by all means see what you can over at you-tube. It's well worth your time. Finally, in one scene Zasu Pitts refers to herself as homely, which to me is hogwash. She was in fact quite beautiful.

And goodbye, career!

[wmorrow59 · 4/10 · 2 August 2009]

This forgotten melodrama belongs to a special category: it's one of those movies with a behind-the-scenes story that's more interesting than the material that made it to the screen. Judged strictly in terms of content 'Hello, Sister!' isn't all that bad, nor is it especially memorable, either. It's essentially a Boy Meets Girl story in an urban setting, and aside from the occasional offbeat touch there's little to distinguish it from standard Hollywood product of the time. Considering what might have been, however, it ranks as a major disappointment, and also marks the ignominious end of a once great directorial career.

The project began with a stage play by novelist Dawn Powell called "Walking Down Broadway." The play concerns two young women who come to New York from a small town and find it difficult to meet decent men. Then one of them, Madge, meets a good guy. They fall in love, and she becomes pregnant. The lovers argue and break up. A woman friend helps Madge get an abortion, and she eventually reunites with her boyfriend. Powell couldn't interest anyone in staging her play, but managed to sell it to Fox Films. ("Walking Down Broadway" finally received a belated premiere production by NYC's Mint Theater Company in 2005, forty years after Powell's death.) Even in the Pre-Code era the medical termination of a pregnancy was a taboo subject, but Powell's dialog was sharp and pungent, and the story of troubled romance in the big city held the potential for an effective screen drama.

Oddly enough, the first director associated with this project was none other than Erich Von Stroheim. Stroheim is not the first name that comes to mind for material of this nature: he was best known for his work from the silent era, often tales of aristocratic decadence, set in Europe before the First World War. Powell's story was contemporary and concerned the struggles of young, middle-class American types, more along the lines of King Vidor's The Crowd than Stroheim's imperial spectacles. On the other hand, Stroheim also made Greed, which concerned lower middle-class life in San Francisco. But he had not yet directed a talkie, and his position as a director in Hollywood at this time was tenuous in the extreme. Stroheim was known for financial extravagance and bizarre behavior on the set. More to the point, perhaps, he hadn't had a hit to his credit since the mid-'20s, and was blamed for the collapse of Queen Kelly, an unfinished collaboration with Gloria Swanson that lost a fortune.

It's unclear whether Stroheim chose to adapt Powell's story or if the Fox front office assigned it to him, but once he set to work on it he did so with relish. While keeping the basic story-line of two small town women in the big city, Stroheim made a number of changes. The central female character was renamed Peggy, and the role of her roommate (a chubby, giggling flirt in the play) was reworked as a neurotic spinster called Minnie for Stroheim's perennial favorite ZaSu Pitts. Newcomer Boots Mallory was cast as Peggy, while Jimmy, the young man who attracts her eye, was portrayed by Fox's up-and-coming leading man James Dunn. Mallory was a good choice, fresh and pretty yet not too glamorous, but Dunn's casting was ill-advised: he was in his 30s and appeared older, and it's hard to accept his Jimmy as inexperienced and naive. (Someone like Dick Powell would have been more appropriate.) Stroheim took the play's tomcat character Mac and turned him into a rotter who attempts to rape Peggy, and also concocted a sequence in which Minnie succumbs to despair and uses a gas oven to attempt suicide. The gas causes an explosion and fire that engulfs the women's apartment building, leading to an action-packed climax quite different (i.e. more "Hollywood") from the wistful conclusion of Powell's play.

Stroheim completed his work on the project in the fall of 1932, on schedule and within the allotted budget, but, as so often happened in his star-crossed career, trouble erupted almost immediately. Stroheim's film was gamy and raw, and Fox's top brass were worried about censorship issues. At the same time a power struggle between the studio's executives resulted in the ascension of producer Sol Wurtzel, who favored lightweight escapist fare. Wurtzel and Stroheim despised each other, and it was Wurtzel who chose to bring in a new director and screenwriter and have much of the film re-shot. Stroheim's name was removed from the credits and most of his footage was discarded, while some of his scenes were inter-cut with material created by others. It is only this re-titled hybrid version of the film which survives today.

Given its troubled history, the movie is exceptionally difficult to evaluate objectively. Unsurprisingly, the tone is inconsistent. Much of the material featuring Mallory, Dunn, and Pitts has the feel of a routine comedy-drama, while other sequences, such as Mac's attempted rape of Peggy, are startlingly intense. Even this sequence is undercut by the insertion of "comic relief" moments added after Stroheim's departure. Worse still, an actor named Will Stanton who specialized in playing drunks was written into the story in a recurring role. (It was the woefully unfunny Stanton who almost ruined Raoul Walsh's Me and My Gal, also made at Fox in 1932.) Minnie makes no attempt at suicide in the reworked version of the film; it is Stanton's supposedly funny drunk who causes the climactic fire. If that was intended as comic relief, it failed.

'Hello, Sister!' was released with little fanfare, and was quickly forgotten. Sadly, Erich Von Stroheim was never again entrusted with another directorial assignment. What survives of his work in this film suggests a vibrant if seamy slice-of-life saga that could have ranked with the most memorable dramas of the Pre-Code era. Instead, it's one more case of What Might Have Been in a career that suffered more than its share of such calamities.

For those interested in Erich von Stroheim only

[psteier · 4/10 · 11 August 2001]

A girl meets boy story, most interesting for what may have been left out. Originally written and directed by Erich von Stroheim, the result tested poorly, so new scenes were shot and the picture was recut. Unfortunately, what is left is not very exciting, even with an attempted rape and the female lead getting pregnant out of wedlock.

There are a few scenes shot in Coney Island's Luna Park.

Odd mixture of comedy and drama for a rare pre-code film.

[mark.waltz · 5/10 · 31 May 2014]

Two totally opposite female neighbors take a night out on the town in Manhattan and find adventure in the evening air, all of a sudden ending up in Coney Island. For fluttery Zasu Pitts, it will be an evening she doesn't forget, falling into a sewer. Her gal-pal (Boots Mallory) asks if she fell into a manhole to which Pitts self-effacingly replies, "I never fall into anything involving a man". But for Mallory, it is a magical night, falling in love with James Dunn and ending up in a predicament that was very scandalous in 1933 and a string of misunderstandings which leads to a massive fire in a thrilling conclusion.

Of course, Pitts steals every moment in which she is on screen, playing an overly chatty klutz who keeps saying the wrong thing which disillusions every man she encounters. In a sense, she's a pitiful character you might find yourself ashamed for laughing at. Minna Gombell adds fine support as another one of their neighbors, an obvious floozy, while Will Stanton is the neighborhood drunk who can barely stand and encounters the residents of this apartment building every time they make an exit or entrance.

The real star of the film is the profound, sometimes sinister way director/writer Erich Von Stroheim tells the story, especially a sudden reference to Van Goh's "The Last Supper" painting which zooms in on a close-up of Jesus in a rather macbre way. This is utilizes to reference the heroine's humiliating predicament of being an unwed mother and the doctor's understanding compassion which was usually provided as judgmental and finger-wagging in similar films of this type.

One of the more Pre-Code films!

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 17 October 2021]

"Hello, Sister!" is a film that clearly could not have been made the same way had it been made only a year or so later. This is because the new Production Code which took effect in July, 1934 forbade several things you'll see in this film...and unlike the prior code, this one had teeth and greatly changed Hollywood.

Two young women spend most of their free time at home in their apartment. Their neighbor convinces them to go out and have a good time with some men...and Peggy (Boots Mallory) meets Jimmy (James Dunn). They hit it off very well and she invites him to her apartment to talk. All they do is talk...but such things would NOT have been allowed with the Production Code...especially since she's wearing a house coat! After he leaves, however, another man pushes his way into her apartment and rapes her. While they don't show the rape and you only know it's a rape later when she ends up pregnant, the physical assault on her and her neighbor by this monster is VERY vivid. Again, there is no way any of this would have been allowed in the Code era. Now Peggy has a problem...she's in love with Jimmy but is afraid to tell him.

The rape was handled oddly. While they fortunately didn't show it, when she finds she is pregnant, the doctor is nice but talks about the baby as if she made some sort of mistake....and she never tells him about the rape. But this also brings up an interesting issue...when Jimmy finds out, he assumes it's his...which means it might be his AND they were having relations...again, NOT a Code sort of plot!! What's next? See the film.

I appreciate that the film discusses rape...an important social problem. But it does it in a rather muddled way. Additionally, there's an ultra-bizarro subplot involving a drunk who is stockpiling explosives....which just seems to come from out of the middle of no where! As a result, the film isn't particularly good...though it IS interesting and worth seeing if you want to see how far Pre-Code films could go compared to the Code films of the following year.

I can imagine a better movie, the movie Stroheim might have envisioned

[davidmvining · 5/10 · 10 February 2023]

According to a pair of cinema historians, Erich von Stroheim directed either 60% or 75% of the final product that got the name, Hello, Sister! Originally titles Walking Down Broadway based on an unpublished play by Dawn Powell, Stroheim finally worked on time during production and within budget, but he ended up producing, reportedly, a serious-minded look at people torn apart by jealousy and suspicion. You can see these elements throughout the film, but the hour-long runtime and added narrative elements (almost all clearly designed to lighten the film with very obvious and not terribly amusing comedic relief) that consume a good amount of that limited runtime mash together inelegantly, to say the least.

Peggy (Boots Mallory) is a lower-class transplant to New York City who decides that she's tired of spending every night at home in her tenement building and convinces Millie (ZaSu Pitts) to go with her out on the town to find some men for some innocent fun. They quickly meet Jimmy (James Dunn) and Mac (Terrance Ray), pairing off with Peggy and Mac going together while Millie and Jimmy walk along. Mac, however, is unbearable, and as the night gets called, Millie ends up falling into an open ditch where she gets soaked and rescued. The three take her back to the tenement where Peggy makes it obvious to Mac that she doesn't care for him, and she ends up with Jimmy, the two of them hitting it off nicely. All of these machinations are necessary for the later accusations of infidelity that drive the movie's final fifteen minutes, but it's told in such a staccato manner that it feels like a lot has been cut out. It doesn't help that there's time dedicated to a drunk character (Will Stanton) who is stealing dynamite from...somewhere and storing it in his room, an action open to everyone in the building that they laugh off because...reasons. It's odd. I don't have to be told that this stuff was added in reshoots. It's obvious.

Anyway, Peggy and Jimmy date for a while until talk of moving in together and getting married gets interrupted by news that Peggy is pregnant (pre-Code film, for those wondering). She's nervous about telling Jimmy, but he's elated at the news and decides that they must get married right away, but he's delayed from showing up at the marriage license office because he's at his boss's office begging for a raise in a new department (purely melodramatic stuff here that doesn't exactly have much impact). This starts the rift between the two as Jimmy runs around town trying to find her, getting increasingly negative portraits of Peggy from Mac, who's angry that Jimmy isn't going to go in on a business venture with him anymore, and Millie, who's jealous of Peggy's happiness with the man she had been paired off with originally.

This isn't exactly great stuff, and it's not really because of the events themselves. All of this takes place over the course of something like thirty minutes over the first forty-five of the film (the other fifteen or so is dedicated to other tenement dwellers like the drunk, looking for laughs), and the characters simply don't have the depth necessary to actually form the connection with the audience. I have a strong suspicion that Stroheim's original cut of the film did have all of that.

The action-packed finale of the film is a large fire in the building. In the original cut, the fire was apparently caused by Peggy somehow, but in this it's caused by the drunk's dynamite exploding. I mean...that doesn't make a whole lot of sense but whatever. The actual fire action is thinly exciting as Jimmy has to break into the building, go up, rescue Peggy from her room by going through the skylight, and then getting her over the alleyway to the building next door. As the ending to a melodrama, you could definitely go worse, and it provides a nice punch to the ending of a largely thin and unremarkable first fifty-minutes.

Released without a directing credit at all with Raoul Walsh and Alfred L. Werker having filmed the remainder of the film, Hello, Sister! Is less enthralling that it probably was originally. In its truncated, mutilated form, it's definitely a lesser film from the era and from Stroheim. His experience was so negative in the end that he swore off directing forever, and he just became a character actor, mostly in Europe. His directing career was over, and he left a very short but very adept little filmography behind.