Sing, Sinner, Sing1933

This lively Pre-Code mix of music and melodrama crams a lot, stretching from gambling-ship revelry to Death Row, into its short feature runtime. Lela Larson (Leila Hyams) is the star blonde torch singer on Queen of Joy, "the floating Monte Carlo." When she witnesses a shipboard murder her thuggish boyfriend (Paul Lukas) is mixed up in, she impulsively accepts a tipsy patron's offer to whisk her ashore, thus becoming the wife of a dipsomaniac millionaire. But her not-entirely-respectable past comes back to haunt her. SING, SINNER, SING was clearly inspired by a scandal that shocked the nation one year prior, when the tobacco-heir husband of famed real-life "torchy" Libby Holman was shot dead during a party under murky circumstances (murder? suicide? a marital spat?) that are still debated today. It was one of the best productions from short-lived Majestic Pictures, a "Poverty Row" outfit whose efforts often looked anything but cheap thanks to their policy of renting expensive sets and costumes from better-funded studios (and, in 1935, Majestic would be absorbed into "mini-major" Republic Pictures). It was, oddly, the sole feature directed by Howard Christie (and thus justifying the need to offer this soft transfer from a well-worn theatrical print) who, after World War II, would become one of Hollywood's most prolific producers of B-grade features and television western series. Leading lady Hyams is little-remembered today but was an attractive, versatile and natural performer for about a decade, with prominent roles in such classics as RUGGLES OF RED GAP, FREAKS and ISLAND OF LOST SOULS. She turned down the role of Jane opposite Johnny Weissmuller in TARZAN. In 1936, Hyams retired from acting altogether, becoming one of Hollywood's most popular socialite hostesses in a fifty-year marriage to agent Phil Berg. - Dennis Harvey