Wednesday, January 30, 2019

Cafe Hostess (1939)

A nicely sleazy noir about hostesses and various crimes in a club. Jo (Ann Dvorak) is a "B girl" (aka a prostitute) in seedy Club 46 which is owned by Eddie Morgan (Douglas Fowley). Jo is a welcoming hostess to guys out of town, keeping them entertained and then picking their pockets. Detective Steve Mason (Arthur Loft) is after Morgan but can't get the evidence he needs...

Sailor Dan Walters (Preston Foster) arrives at the club and falls for Jo (of course). He wants to take her away but Jo knows that escaping her past won't be easy. Dan seems to find out all about Morgan's criminal activities in one night which indicates that Detective Mason is rather poor at his job.

Cafe Hostess is not very original and isn't a bad movie though is a little pedestrian at times. It also falls into melodrama but it does end in an entertaining huge brawl. The most interesting part of the film though was how it fell foul of the censors as it violated the moral codes of the late 1930s.