Marked Woman

Prostitutes in American film noir were replaced by “taxi dancers” and “hostesses” to get around the Production Code, but there should be no confusion that Bette Davis and her roommates in Lloyd Bacon’s hugely popular Marked Woman are sex workers; in fact, despite an opening statement to the contrary, the film is inspired by the true story of Thomas Dewey, popular Manhattan district attorney (and presidential candidate) who convicted Lucky Luciano in large part due to testimony from prostitutes. Mary Dwight (Davis) lives and works with her girlfriends — Gabby (Lola Lane), Emmy Lou (Isabel Jewell), Florrie (Rosalind Marquis), and Estelle (Mayo Methot) — in a night club (“clip joint”) recently taken over by mob boss Johnny Vanning, played by a fantastic Eduardo Ciannelli. The girls are paid to flirt with male customers and get them drunk so they’ll max out their consumption of exorbitantly overpriced food and booze (“How do you want it, honey? Soft and smooth, or loud and hard?”). When Mary gets a surprise visit from her little sister Betty (Jane Bryan), who’s unaware that Mary’s selling her body to pay for Betty’s college tuition (also the premise of 1949’s Salon Mexico), it’s the same day Mary is arrested for murdering one of her clients. Humphrey Bogart plays the Dewey stand-in, David Graham, who, in the wake of a tragedy, convinces Mary to face her fears and testify against the mob. (Credit to screenwriters Finkel and Rossen for resisting temptation to insert a romance between the two.) It’s a brutal life for these ladies (they die, they disappear, Mary is beaten up by thugs to the point of near-death hospitalization), but they get through it together. In the final shot, the “ladies of the night” walk side by side and disappear into the Manhattan fog.