LADY FOR A NIGHT, 87 minutes of costume-gussied twaddle from 1942 is only of interest as a completist check-off item for fans of Joan Blondell and John Wayne. Not much of a feather in either’s caps, with the chief entertainment value being how truly bad most of it is.

“My taste in women is notoriously bad…I don’t like ladies.”

Louisiana, during Reconstruction. Mardi Gras Queen ‘Jenny Blake’ (Blondell), co-owner of a casino showboat (the ‘Memphis Belle’) with well-connected ‘Jack Morgan’ (Wayne) is bound to break into the high society circle that disdains her and her class. She finagles marriage with the drink-sodden son of a family who owns a once-grand plantation, hoping the prestige of their ‘grace’ and property will boost her into acceptance from those who ‘count’. But the family is seriously messed up, and Jenny is trapped in their spiderweb of nastiness. Part bemused, part concerned, spurned Jack bides from the sidelines. A ‘yassuh’ passel’uh dem colored fokes sho-nuff shuffle around as comedy relief that will (or at least should) cringe you under the nearest sweeping staircase. Can the Old South ever get its act together? Don’t answer. For vivacious fave Blondell, 35, is this last time she’s first-billed and has the leading role? Lamentably, yes. Can a contract with cheese-grinding Republic Studios insure that Wayne, 34, finally rescued from a decade of B-movie bondage by 1939’s A-list Stagecoach, will still be stuck with some second-rate projects? Yep, and this was the lousiest of the lot. *

Yeesh, what a mess. Blondell troupers thru with expected feisty determination, but there’s little to admire in the Jenny dame beyond what the costume designers festooned her with. Also be-suited to dandy proportions, Wayne saunters in & out with minimal conviction; second banana Jack’s a bore, and those expecting typical Duke duking get a whole lotta nada this time round. Over-acting galore cornballs the supporting cast: Blanche Yurka as another devious witch (in the looming gloom mode of Mrs. Danvers from Rebecca); Edith Barrett, goggle-eyed as her belfry-driven sister (paging the great Patricia Collinge from another degenerated tribe in The Little Foxes); Ray Middleton, opera singer-turned-thespian, doing one of the worst played-straight drunk shticks you could ever stagger upon (Ray Milland he ain’t); and Hattie Noel, as Jenny’s loyally sassy maid ‘Chloe’, taking that “just like part of the family” cliche past Saturn to the outer rings of Neptune. Three years earlier Noel had auditioned for ‘Mammy’ in Gone With The Wind; this part is so doggone winded it almost seems like a burlesque of Hattie McDaniel’s exceptional performance in GWTW. Noel’s mugging, and the horrendous stereotyping of the other African-American characters in Lady For A Night is the worst aspect of the movie, the eye-rolling, ghost-fearin’, shuck-dancin’ looks like something from the 1920’s—or a poisoned Easter egg tucked away somewhere in the hog-trough feedbag of Project 2025. **

Directed by Leigh Jason, scribble-dribbled by Isabel Dawn and Boyce DeGaw. Credit where due: David Buttolph provides hearty scoring, Walter Plunkett the flashy costuming. A gross of $2,300,000 placed it 113th in 1942. With Philip Merivale, Leonid Kinskey, Montagu Love, Lew Payton and a bunch of leggy showgirls, performing a can-can of “Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay.”  No matter that the rouser wasn’t popular until twenty years after when the story was set.

* Released in January, this was the first of seven movies Wayne starred in during 1942, three for Republic, the others on loan-out to Paramount, Universal and MGM. Reunion In France is pretty lame, the rest are variably enjoyable: Reap The Wild Wind, The Spoilers, Flying Tigers, Pittsburgh and In Old California  As his star rose, Blondell’s was moving into co-star status, which did allow for telling parts in good movies like Cry ‘Havoc’, A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Nightmare Alley, The Blue Veil, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? and The Cincinnati Kid. Mercifully, Lady For A Night remains where it belongs, mildewing in the bayou.

‘Lady‘s main fame claim—US Army Air Force pilot Robert K. Morgan saw it on liberty and the name of Jenny & Jack’s showboat reminded him of his girlfriend (who lived in Memphis, Tennessee); he and his crew then voted to christen their B-17 bomber Memphis Belle. The 25 missions the aircraft flew against the Nazis figured in William Wyler’s 1944 documentary The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress, fictionalized 46 years later in the 1990 feature film Memphis Belle. 

** Hattie Noel, 1893-1969. On stage since she ran away at 12, in vaudeville, nightclubs, circuses and 18 movies between 1934 and 1943; she went on to do pioneer black standup comedy. Her film credits include The Women, Kitty Foyle, The Return Of Frank James and King’s Row. Those four are good movies, a far cry from the regressive Lady For A Night, but it’s the one that gave her the most room to strut her brand of stuff. It’s up to you whether her antics make you chuckle or up-chuck.