Unashamed (1932) watch online HD

In "The Unashamed" the Ogdens are a wealthy family that is very close and loving. Jean falls in love with a crass fortune hunter named Harry Swift who is obviously after her money. Her father and brother try everything to dissuade her. To force the issue, Harry persuades Jean to spend the night in a hotel with him (horrors!) When they fling this unheard of behavior in the face of her father and brother, to induce them to consent to marriage, things go badly. Jean's brother Dick shoots and kills Swift. However, Dick wants only to protect Jean's honor so he insists to his defense lawyer, Trask, that Jean be kept out of it completely.

The latter half of the movie consists of Dick's trial, and Trask's problem in trying to save Dick from the electric chair while protecting his wishes not to tell the real story of what happened. Thus Trask is not allowed to use the "unwritten law" as a defense (that's the one that allows husbands to kills their wives and wives' lovers). In addition, Jean is extremely bitter toward her father and brother since they've ruined her happiness. So she's not about to cooperate in the defense. Until...

This picture is extremely melodramatic, in a style which seems rather alien to us today, and a lot of the acting and dialogue is too stagy for our taste. Nevertheless, for its time, it was quite well done. The issues of class, honor and gender that the film raises may seem quaint but there were very real to rich people of the 20's and 30's. Similarly, the courtroom scenes are quite well executed with a real attempt to observe appropriate legal proecdures. The ultimate twist ending is also quite effective and will remind you of a more recent (and classic) courtroom movie.

Helen Twelvetrees is a spoiled rich girl who falls for an obvious cad. He wants her money. She wants him. Her father doesn't approve. His hardworking father, Jean Hersholt, doesn't either.

Most of all, her brother doesn't approve. The brother is played by Robert Young. He gives an excellent performance that is not at all perky or cute. His character seems dazed but also driven.

Indeed, there is a strong hint of more than brotherly love in the feelings he shows for her. Notging like those in "Scraface," still shocking over seventy years later. But it's there.

The movie is very good and never gives in to sentimentality.

I like Twelvestrees. She was attractive and acted well. She ought not to have been shot from behind, which she is often in his movie. Her face, not her derrière, was her strong point.

This above average courtroom drama sinks under the weight of its Hollywood happy ending, which simply defies belief. The first hour of Unashamed is, however, a fine example of pre-Code film-making. Brash young Joan Ogden (Helen Twelvetrees) is in line for a $3,000,000 payday from her rich daddy (Robert Warwick), but she's in love with gold-digging Harry Swift (the delightfully named Monroe Owsley). Her brother Dick (Robert Young) disapproves, and after Joan and Harry spend a night of passion in a hotel, he shoots his sister's lover. Enter slick lawyer Trask (Lewis Stone), hired to save Dick from the electric chair. Unashamed raises fascinating questions of morality and social stratification, and it depicts the wealthy Ogdens as more than willing to perjure themselves from here to Sing Sing in order to avoid the oh so obvious truth, not to mention an all expenses paid vacation on Death Row. The final ten minutes prove that crime does pay, as long as you have the best lawyer in town on your side.

Nobody suffered in movies like Helen Twelvetrees - those quivering lips, her big eyes, always ready to brim over with tears. Even the titles of her films tell all - "Bad Company", "A Woman of Experience", "Broken Hearts", "Disgraced", "Unmarried" - even with "Young Bride", you knew she wasn't going to be happy and starry eyed for long!!! On the other hand who couldn't adore Helen, with her wistful and fragile beauty, plus she was also a very fine actress.

The film starts with a wild society party, complete with an indoor swimming pool and a huge bubbling fountain. Joan Ogden (Helen Twelvetrees) is completely in love with Harry Swift (Monroe Owsley), a shady "businessman" - he is completely in love with her $3 million dollar inheritance. Dick (Robert Young) Joan's very affectionate brother (Gertrude Michael has the small and thankless role of Marjorie, his fiancée) is convinced that Harry is a cad and just not good enough for his little sister. Monroe Owsley plays his usual stock in trade - a slimy villain who is not above taking the heroine to the gutter. How could Helen fall for him - hasn't she seen any of his movies!!!!

Joan's father (Robert Warwick) threatens to disinherit her if she continues to see him, but she doesn't care. One day Mr. Ogden is visited by Heinrich Schmidt (Jean Hersholt), a Jewish delicatessan owner, who claims Harry Swift is really his son. He says Harry changed his name because he was ashamed of his heritage.

When Harry is warned off by Joan's father he persuades Joan to run away for a "naughty week-end". He hopes that Joan's dad will then instantly give his consent to the marriage to avoid a scandal. The father still refuses to give permission and then Dick comes in. He has been up all night looking for Joan - in the hospitals, in the morgue. In the scuffle Dick shoots Harry.

Dick goes on trial for his life but Helen refuses to help him, After all he did kill the man she loved. John Miljan is very good as the barn- storming district attorney. Things look pretty hopeless - Dick is insisting that it was an accident. Joan is needed to confess her part in this sordid story so Dick's lawyer can plead "the unwritten law". At last Joan has a change of heart and goes on the stand for a powerful finish. This was shocking stuff, but fans of Helen Twelvetrees knew what to expect.

I don't know what happened to her but she made her last film, "Unmarried" in 1939. She definitely deserved a longer film career.

Highly Recommended.

Overall, a good offering from MGM, with above average script and a fast pace, racing to a quite interesting and unexpected twist of an ending.

But having said that, the movie has some creepy undertones that set it apart even from other pre-Code films. Most obvious, right from the beginning, is the weirdness of Helen Twelvetrees, the beautiful star of Unashamed (her career unfortunately over by 1938), kissing everyone in sight in the first 10 minutes of the film. A lot. Her boyfriend; her brother; her father; on the lips; on the cheeks; did I say "a lot"? Robert Young, normally normal, is weirdly obsessive over his sister. They hug and hold and kiss a great deal, and it's unnerving a little, being brother and sister and all. I wonder if audiences in 1932 felt the same way. But he just wants to "protect" her, he says.

Fascinatingly, the pre-Code element of open pre-marital sex is not just one that goes along for the ride here; rather, publicly acknowledged pre-marital sex, and the shame that is supposed to be concomitant with it, are the CENTRAL drivers of the plot. We should be grateful that films like this were made before the Hayes Commission came to pass.

There are some other surprises and weird diversions along the way. The German father is quite graphic in his resentment over Robert Young's murder of his snotty and selfish son, looking forward to being present when Young burns on the electric chair. A jury member cannot hear the proceedings, and asks Lewis Stone to speak louder; weird - not sure of the reason this is in here.

And sadly, when Louise Beavers, playing the African-American housekeeper, takes the stand at the trial, we cringe as she is forced to misunderstand "perjury" to mean "polygamy", although I had to listen to the lines several times to understand what she was getting at. This is supposed to be funny.

Finally, pay close attention to Helen Twelvetrees' left arm, about 3 minutes into the movie, when she is standing with her boyfriend on what appears to be a dock or a pier. As she turns away from the camera and then back again, her left arm stretches out, and it hyper-extends by a shocking amount, bending backwards by a good 20 degrees. As my wife, a nurse, said, when I showed it to her, Yikes!

An excellent movie to spend 75 minutes watching and thinking about.

Harry Swift (Monroe Owsley) is an awful young man...and without an ounce of character. He's been spoiled his entire life by his idiot father (Jean Hersholt) and he's been wooing Joan Ogden (Helen Twelvetrees). His interest isn't strictly honorable, as his interest really is in her money as she comes from a wealthy family. When his father learns of their relationship, he approaches Joan's father and tells him that his son is just no good. Not surprisingly, Joan's father forbids her from marrying Harry. As for Joan's brother, Dick (Robert Young) he knows Harry and thinks he's a cad. So to try to force them to allow the marriage, Harry spends the night with Joan...in a hotel room (after all, this is a Pre-Code picture)! Despite that, the family still won't budge...they won't condone this awful marriage. In fact, the brother is so against the marriage that he kills Harry! Soon Dick is on trial for his life...and Joan seems oddly indifferent to his fate.

This is a very strange movie in that you see Dick murder Harry. Sure, Harry was a terrible person but the film seems to imply that Dick and his lawyer lying in court was okay and that Joan SHOULD have lied for Dick! That's all very weird...as is Dick's almost incestuous feelings towards his sister. What's weirder? Joan doing a 180 late in the film...and not conceivable reason for this. Overall, a strange, muddled plot...though the film is oddly entertaining despite the writing and overly dramatic moments. In essence, it's watchable and enjoyable crap.

By the way, it's odd that Robert Young's character was referred to as a boy! In one scene, someone even says "...the boy is a minor"...and yet Young was 25 when he made this film.

***SPOILERS*** Based on the true life murder of Francis Donaldson III the year before by the brother Eddie Allen of the woman he supposedly deflowered "Unashamed" has hot headed Dick Odgen, Robert Young, in a fit of rage gun down gigolo and degenerate gambler Harry Swift played by Monroe Owsley. That after him bragging that he spent the evening together with his pure as the morning snow sister Joan, Helen Twelvetrees,in some sleazy $5.00 a night hotel room in the city's red light district. What the two did is anybody's guess, they could have been playing cards for all we know, but just being alone together with a man she's not married to is enough to ruin Joan's standing in the social register as well as church she attends.

It's Swift's dad grocery store owner Heinrich Schmitd, Jean Hersholt, who had no use for his rotten and no good son anyway that wants revenge for his son's murder and wants to be at the scene when Dick is fried in the Sing Sing electric chair and it's Joan who's testimony at Dick's trial that will put or strap him into it. Joan had a quick change of mind later on when she realized that her brother killed Swift not just in self defense or for revenge but to save her honor in Swift turning or trying to turn her into a slut or loose woman by insinuating that she willingly spent the night with him for, something never mentioned in the film, casual sex.

***SPOILERS***It's Dick's lawyer Henry Trask,Lewis Stone,who tells Joan that the only way to save her brother's life is to testify in court about just what a wild and crazy about sex women she is to show that she in fact is guilty for what Dick was forced to do! It's by making herself look as bad an immoral as she was that the jury voted to acquit Dick of the murder charge. And at the same time have Joan run out of town on a rail for dragging her family's good name through the mud. Was Joan really the low life that she made herself out to be in order to save Dick from getting fried or did she do the right thing in making herself look so bad that no one would feel sorry for her to save his life? That's a question for the jury, or the audience watching the movie, to decide and Joan to live with.

One of the Interesting Things about Pre-Code Films is, of course, the Frankness and Non-Skirting way the Story and Dialog go about the Business of such things as Pre-Marital or Promiscuous Sex. It's just there, not Avoided like Post-Hays Movies. Here it is Actually the Central Part of the Storyline as the "in love" Couple check in to a Hotel.

The Next Morning, after Making Whoopee the Lovers use this as a Way to get Her Father to "force" Them to Marry (something the Dad did not want), because it is the Accepted Thing to do. But if that isn't Complicated Enough, Enter a "Loving" Brother who Despises His Sister's Cad Boyfriend and then there are Fireworks.

The Remainder of the Movie is set in a Courtroom where things get a bit Dicey about the Spicey Love Making and Crime. The Movie has a 1932 Mindset and looking at it Today might seem Difficult or a bit Strange with all the Talk about Unwritten Law and so forth, and the Ending may come Across as a Little more than Strange.

Overall it is Worth a Watch for the Dated Dialog, Social Mores, Incestual Overtones, and the Bizarre Conclusion.

There's no justice for murder in this pre-code shocker, even if struggling poor boy Monroe Owsley is allegedly out to marry wealthy Helen Twelvetrees for her money. The daughter of powerful Robert Warwick, Twelvetrees believes that Owsley loves her for herself, even though her brother Robert Young and father feel that his intentions are not honorable. Owsley, a friend of Young's, takes Twelvetrees away for the weekend, and when they return, Warwick and Young are horrified and refuse to allow her to marry him. A fight breaks out between Young and Owsley, and Young rushes back in with a gun, shooting Owsley dead. He goes on trial and faces the electric chair, and the embittered Twelvetrees must face her anger as well as the truth, pretty much manipulated by Young's attorney, played by the future Judge Hardy, Lewis Stone.

When I first saw Young interacting with Twelvetrees in this movie, I felt right away that they didn't seem like brother and sister. There was something a little too close for comfort between them, as if he had sexual feelings for her and wouldn't allow her to marry anybody. That subject has been dealt with in films before, but it was never as blatantly obvious as it is here, and the explanations of how the two siblings were raised without a mother and that Twelvetrees became sort of a mother figure to Young just never rang true to me. While it's obvious that money was the goal of Owsley's desire to marry Twelvetrees, there did seem to be an affection there, and if a poor girl can marry a rich man and later fall in love with him, why can't a poor boy (the son of immigrant grocer Jean Hersholt) marry a rich girl if the potential to fall in love is there as well?

This film basically allows somebody to get away with murder, even with a supposedly honorable motive twisted by the screenwriter to get the character off. It is a disturbing film in so many ways that I'm surprised that this wasn't a notoriously banned film like the same year's "Freaks", also from MGM. I'm surprised that a moral tyrant like Louis B. Mayer would allow a film with such insinuations and a slap in the face of justice to be released. Irregardless of the motives and the twists and turns with a writer's pen, Young's character did kill Owsley intentionally, and he purged himself on the stand. There's a funny cameo by Louise Beavers as the family cook which makes her character seem like a total buffoon, even if she is a lovable one. Twelvetrees adds so many inconsistencies to her characterization that at times it seems that she's two different characters. In summary, I too am unashamed to call this one of the great bombs of the pre-code era that is almost too bizarre for words.