Public Stenographer (1934) Online

Just daring to produce a film called "The Public Stenographer" deserves some sort of respect. But even if that very flat, unemotional title matches in some way the overall plot and editing of the film, there is still a lot to enjoy including a few rare scenes that really touch the heart.

Ann and her roommate Lucy both work at a posh city hotel dodging, or choosing carefully, the interests of wealthier men as they go about there independent and busy lives. But because of a simple mistake Ann comes to know one of the hotel patrons, Jimmy, in a different way. He is head over heels, but she is much cooler.

As the screwball sparring progresses, particularly in a series of incidents with Ann's and Jimmy's automobiles and the ever-present motorcycle cop, so too progresses a scam concerning a large public works project and lots of government money.

Ann gets tied up in the possible relationship as well as a possibly disastrous professional choice, all along comforted as well as tempted by her somewhat more worldly roommate. It is the relationship these two women have and their various interactions that make this film memorable, even while the love story and financial intrigue are relatively mundane.

The various strands of this movie, each satisfactory in itself, do not blend well together.

Ann and Lucille both work in the same hotel, as public stenographer and telephonist respectively. They share an apartment and regularly date men to get a free meal –sometimes having to walk home. This is Warner Bros 'gold digger' territory, usually inhabited by Joan Blondell or Una Merkel, but here adequately covered by Lola Lane and Esther Muir.

The 'serious' element of the plot concerns the efforts of a shady firm of engineering contractors, Hendricks and White, to beat their upright competitors, Martin and Son, to public contracts by fair means or foul (preferably foul).

Ann meets Jimmy Martin, and there ensues a battle of the sexes of the knockabout kind usually associated with screwball comedies.

The mood however suddenly turns to emotional drama when it appears that Jimmy has departed for Cincinnati to wed a society girl, and this after having spent the night with Ann.

To avenge her friend, Lucille sells her shorthand notebooks, containing details of the Martins' business, to Hendricks and White. When Jimmy returns to marry Ann, the two girls have to take drastic steps to recover the notebooks.

The mixture of genres makes for an uneven film.

The Alpha DVD of this film is watchable, but both video and sound show the age of the material. Curiously, it bills Duncan Renaldo as Lane's co-star. This appears to be a mistake as to who played the role of Jimmy, or it might reflect the fact that Renaldo went on to great success as the Cisco Kid, while Collier retired the following year, having been in films from the age of 14.

Lola Lane is a public stenographer at a Manhattan hotel. Her room mate, Esther Muir, runs the switchboard. Engineer Buster Collier likes her when she tries to grab the cab he's in, and he pursues her between trying to get a government contract.

Like many a Poverty Row movie, this has a strong opening scene, with the two girls walking home from a double date that went wrong, but the movie becomes rather dull after that. The actors give it their best, although the scene where Collier is teaching her to play golf, while realistic, is more about how he's annoyed with her inability to take to the game and to my 21st-century ear does not sound like a man trying to win over a woman.

Miss Lane was the oldest of the four Lane Sisters. She was born Dorothy Mullican in . After a start playing the piano in a movie house at 12, she got a contract with Gus Edwards and toured in vaudeville. Eventually she and her sisters got Warner Brothers contract, but while she gave some good performances, her leads never got out of the Bs and she retired from the screen in 1946 to round out her fourth marriage (to Roland West until his death) and Robert Hanlon (to hers) in 1981.