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Making her way back to the city, she returns to Tony's apartment but discovers him seducing another woman with exactly the same lines he once used on her. In despair, Marjorie shoots them both. A final courtroom and jury scene completes the film - however the question of
Marjorie's guilt is left unresolved. A title offers cinema goers cash prizes for the best written verdict sent in.
330:, Willis Kent was able to avoid censorship by not submitting his films for censorship classification. Advance publicity was avoided because exploitation films were quickly and cheaply made, and like Esper, Kent handled his own distribution and exhibition to independent cinemas. Film screenings would be therefore often be over before municipal authorities could react.
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Having been thrown out of home by her family for staying out, and Tony having secretly arranged for
Marjorie to be sacked, Tony charms Marjorie and lures her into living with him in a stylish apartment, with promises of marriage and lavish lifestyle. After a few months, he tells her he wants her to
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Marjorie Benton, who is “just a kid,” dreams of an office job, but works at the
Pacific Laundry and is the only breadwinner for a family of coarsely-spoken strikers and loafers. She finally goes on a night out with Florence, one of the other laundry workers, to a seedy nightclub. At the nightclub
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Tony then offers her a "long vacation" up the coast. This turns out to be at a brothel, run by madam Pearl. When
Marjorie refuses to work, she is locked in her room. Tearfully, she explains to another prostitute, Roxy, that she is pregnant. If only she could tell Tony. Roxy helps her to escape.
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To expand the film to a marketable length, exploitation filmmakers like Kent used "padding," often setting the main characters in a nightclub, which became an excuse for a series of acts. Cut-aways at frequent intervals would show "the story characters sitting at a table rapturously enjoying
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they watch some impromptu acts and
Marjorie drinks alcohol and tries marijuana, which Florence does not approve of. The girls catch the eye of Tony Kilonis who insists on driving them back to Florence's. Tony warns Florence not to say anything about his reputation to Marjorie.
296:. Burlesque dancer Rose La Rose performs a partial striptease, until interrupted by an angry boyfriend who covers her with a table cloth. (She appears in the same clothes and in front of an identical bar room set up in "Rose la Rose, Tops in Any League", a short stag film).
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entertain a gentleman at a hotel "for money". Marjorie is initially shocked. In an unusual close up shot on Tony's face, straight to camera, he threatens her and she complies. Marjorie works as a regular call girl at a hotel until exposed when she steals from a customer.
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commented that "it is a story of white slavery, and is very sordid. Constance does a fair job of acting in the picture but I doubt...(it) will help her career. She would have been wise to stay out of such a picture."
377:. In it, Willy Castello's character, about to be executed, reviews his life of crime. This is the device used to include some of the most salacious scenes from the Willis Kent Studio exploitation films.
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The film begins with a long subtitled introduction, stating 90,000 women in the US go missing annually and suggesting many are forced by circumstances to join the “Sisterhood of Sorrow”.
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themselves". In addition, Kent's films usually began with a "square-up", a statement at the beginning of the film justifying itself as a dramatic exposé of one of society's problems.
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349:. Married for ten days in May 1937, their divorce was not finalised until December 1937. Accounts of the drawn out divorce dominated US and Australian newspapers for months.
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Willis Kent's main film production output was B-westerns. However, he also made a number of exploitation films, including
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Performers on exploitation films were not on ongoing contracts. Leading actress
Constance Worth had lost her
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made outside the
Hollywood production code, dealing with topics of white slavery, prostitution and murder.
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The Sydney
Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954), Mon 6 Mar 1939, Page 9, “It Happens in Hollywood”
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Marjorie (Constance Worth) is introduced to Pearl (Clara
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Mirror (Perth, WA : 1921 - 1956), Sat 21 Aug 1937, Page 8, "Brent Wanted to Elope"
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In 1943, Willis Kent used sections of this film and his other exploitation films for
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Eric
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San Bernardino Sun, Volume 44, 8 December 1937. "Irish Screen Star Divorced"
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Bold! Daring! Shocking! True! A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959.
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326:(1940). Jeremy Geltzer suggests that like fellow exploitation filmmaker
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contract in 1937, and had been through a messy divorce from actor
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The film was never released in Australia, where Jocelyn Howarth (
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Dirty Words and Filthy Pictures: Film and the First Amendment.
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Jan Duggan as Cleopatra Pepperday sings the Seashell song in
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sings "The Seashell Song", which she first sang in the 1934
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Rose La Rose strip tease, apparently filmed on set of
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534:American black-and-white films
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559:1930s English-language films
433:Eric Schaefer(1999), P.68-70
374:Confessions of a Vice Baron
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539:American crime drama films
469:Accessed 26 December 2016
457:Accessed 27 December 2016
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393:See Eric Schaefer (1999)
364:The Sydney Morning Herald
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544:1930s exploitation films
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278:Paula Bromleigh as Roxy
142:July 14, 1938
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209:. It was produced by
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189:is a 1938 American
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320:(1938) and
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191:drama film
162:77 minutes
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119:Production
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175:Language
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316:(1937)
178:English
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