The Lady Refuses (1931)
A destitute young woman is hired by a wealthy Londoner to lure his idling son away from a gold-digger. She succeeds in steering the young man back toward his work, but complications mount when she and the father fall in love and a sudden death leaves the son suspected of murder.
A briskly made RKO pre-Code melodrama, The Lady Refuses built a full vehicle around silent-era favorite Betty Compson as her sound-era stardom was cooling. Its copyright lapsed without renewal, and it entered the public domain in 1959.
Background
The Lady Refuses is a 1931 pre-Code melodrama directed by George Archainbaud for RKO Radio Pictures, released March 8, 1931, and running 72 minutes. Betty Compson stars as a destitute young woman, on the verge of prostitution, who is hired by a wealthy Londoner (Gilbert Emery) to lure his idling son (John Darrow) away from a gold-digger (Margaret Livingston); she succeeds in steering the son back toward his work, but complications mount once she and the father fall in love and a sudden death leaves the son suspected of murder. The screenplay, by Wallace Smith from a story by Guy Bolton and Robert Milton, circulated under several working titles, including Children of the Streets and A Lady for Hire.
What to watch for
The film’s opening premise, a woman paid to seduce a wealthy family’s wayward son away from danger, is blunter about its heroine’s economic desperation than the Production Code would allow only a few years later, which is why it still turns up in anthologies of pre-Code Hollywood. Betty Compson, a major silent-era star whose sound career was already cooling by 1931, carries the picture as RKO built a full vehicle around her rather than treating her as supporting talent. The plot’s late swerve into a murder investigation gives Archainbaud’s otherwise straightforward romantic setup an unexpected amount of narrative pressure in its final act.
