Best movie of this year hands down!

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

"Lady Gangster" is a fun and fast B movie from Warner Brothers in 1942, and stars Faye Emerson, Julie Bishop, Frank Wilcox, Jackie Gleason, and Ruth Ford (Mrs. Zachary Scott). Emerson plays Dot Burton, who was a decoy in a bank robbery. She winds up getting arrested, and an old friend from childhood (Wilcox) believes she's innocent. She isn't. Before she goes to jail, she steals the $40,000 from her cohorts and leaves it with her landlady.This prison is like something out of Stage Door, with a common area and people knitting, dancing, and listening to the radio. Two women out to get Dot, Deaf Annie (Dorothy Adams) and her pal Lucy (Ruth Ford) have the lowdown on Dot thanks to Annie's lip-reading (total 2001: A Space Odyssey) and get her into lots of trouble.Very entertaining.

This is a remake of a much better pre-code drama that starred Barbara Stanwyck, "Ladies They Talk About". A better title of this would be "Lady Accomplice" because that is exactly what "B" actress Faye Emerson is playing here, a woman who calls the police (as Stanwyck did), diverts the police's attention by claiming witness to another crime, then getting a bank guard to open the bank early on the front of making a deposit. Of course, her part in the robbery which follows is revealed, and she is sentenced to a rather country-club like prison where the guards and the matron are certainly not as tough or ruthless as such others as Esther Dale ("Condemned Women"), Jane Darwell ("Girls in Prison"), Jeanne Cooper ("House of Women") or the most nefarious: Hope Emerson ("Caged") and Ida Lupino ("Women's Prison"). So this cleaned-up prison movie is a wimpy alternative to those others where it becomes very clear that the so-called "gentler sex" are getting just a tough of a time in rehabilitation as the men's prisons.But here, the real troublemakers are two stool pigeons (Dorothy Adams as a deaf inmate who can read lips, and Ruth Ford as the nastier one who reports everything to the matron) and discover that Emerson's intents to reveal the location of the money in the robbery is just a rouse to get revenge on the man (Frank Wilcox) who sent Emerson up the river as an attempt to reform her, an old childhood pal who is in love with her. The lack of racy dialog makes this a boring remake of a film that sizzled thanks to its pre-code innuendos of lesbianism and the delicious cut-downs between Stanwyck and the other inmates. Vera Lewis offers some amusing bits as the tough-talking old lady whom Emerson stashes the loot with, and a young Jackie Gleason is memorable as one of the gang members. Virginia Brissac plays the matron as if she was a high school principal, although the scene where Emerson gets one over on her is memorable. Fortunately short, this will never rank up there with other women's prison films, but makes an all right time filler.

When I see old-time prison/crime movies, I laugh out loud at some of the things I see, at least compared to films of the last 40 years which may be very profane and sadistically violent but at least they are realistic.In this film, the lead female character " Dot Burton," played by Faye Emerson, is sent to a women's prison. Inside are all white women except one black, who dances all the time. Talk about a stereotype. Emerson and her best buddy in here look like lesser versions of Rita Hayworth, Look around and you more of these nice, wholesome-looking babes. I guarantee you no prison population has ever looked this good! Yes, there are a few "baddies" and, of course, they are ugly women. The story also gives us a typical classic movie romance in which a guy falls in love with a "dame" the first time he talks to her. Then she falls for him quickly and but right away, of course, there is a misunderstanding and now the woman hates him. Ten minutes later she loves him again, then hates him, then loves him, etc. etc. No wonder few people in the film world ever took marriage seriously. On screen,it was just one big joke.Anyway, the story is pretty interesting even if it is more than a bit too dated. The film might be noted more for having two very young actors in here than anything else, guys who went on to because famous on television in the 1950s: Paul Drake and Jackie Gleason. Drake was Perry Mason's assistant on hat hit TV show and Gleason, of course, went on to huge TV fame with "The Honeymooners" and other shows. Here, he is billed as Jackie C. C Gleason."Lady Gangster" is only a little over an hour which is fine and the DVD transfer was surprisingly good. This was part of a 4-movie disc called "Mobster Movies," put out by Platinum. I have two of these discs so there are eight films I can watch, movies that, as far as I can tell, were not available on VHS. The other movie I watched on one of the other discs did not have the good picture quality this one had, so they probably vary from film-to-film.But, despite the drawbacks, these 1930s films are fun to watch because they are fast-moving, short and entertaining.

It's a peppy flick and in some ways better than the original 1933 movie titled Ladies They Talk About that starred Barbara Stanwyck.Fortunately, the Stanwyck movie was pre-Hays code so there is some snappy dialog and not so veiled references to prostitution that couldn't be filmed in Lady Gangster. The opening scene obviously shot in a real bank gives the film a realistic gritty feel that doesn't come off when a scene like this is shot on a set. Jackie Gleason in a small supporting role as one of Emerson's fellow bank robbers, provides a few glimpses of that "Poor Soul" face that he made famous years later on his TV show. Also, catching a very young dark-haired William Hopper (later of Perry Mason fame as Paul Drake)was also a pleasant surprise.