This one should be rather easy to guess with the inclusion of a few pics of the main characters here. Obviously this is a pre-Code movie made in 1933 with the female protagonist (Gertie Waxted, sic! One of the silliest names ever!) playing some kind of call girl (although we have to wait over 30 minutes until Gertie makes her first entrance in this movie) and chorus girls in short skirts in a night club.

The actress would soon become very successful and famous (she was even labeled Queen of Hollywood later) after playing in a movie opposite yours truly, i.e. Mr. Asta of course. After finishing this movie the director, who soon casted her in other movies like the ones with Mr. Asta, is reported to have said “This girl’s going to be a big star! Next year she’ll be a star!” Well, he was right.

But here she plays opposite the lawyer Jackson ‘Jack’ Durant, a man with a ludicrous moustache.

The Tony Gazotti character, whom the press almost reported dead, only dies at the end of the movie and the actor himself also starred in two of the movies with Mr. Asta (and the Gertie character of course) about a rather slim male person.

The plot is quite simple. Well, it was a Cosmopolitan Production based on a Cosmopolitan Magazine story by Arthur Somers Roche, so this certainly isn’t prize winning literature. A lawyer (Jackson ‘Jack’ Durant) think it’s more interesting and personally rewarding to defend crooks and gangsters (after he has just successfully saved Tony Gazotti from the electric chair) and therefore argues with his girlfriend, they separate but the girlfriend’s new flame is accused of a murder he didn’t commit. Mr. Durant takes this case and plays a private dick to solve the case. And finally he falls in love with the prostitute Gertie Waxted.

There’s another female actor in this movie, who became famous as the grapefruit girl in The Public Enemy. There’s a great scene here where she - as Mimi Montagne - wants to throw a bottle of perfume at her lover who has just left her.

But after taking a quick look at the bottle’s label she rather replaced it with another one.

Gertie also has a memorable scene when she realises that Mr. Durant doesn’t want to sleep with her. Her perplexed look in the mirror is priceless and you can easily guess her thought What’s wrong with me?.

Anyway, she stays at Mr. Durant’s place and sleeps alone while Mr. Durant spend the night on the couch in another room. The next morning Gertie expresses her slight disappointment: “Well, last night I didn’t exactly have to fight for my honour.” As if she would’ve offered much resistance in this fight.

Not only does our Gertie looks so sweet in this movie (that’s why I just couldn’t resist to post quite a few stills with her) but she also delivers some lines in a great, nonchalant manner:

Jackson: I’ve been stupid, very stupid.
Gertie: Of course, you’re a man!
Jackson: You shouldn’t have done this. Something might have happened to you.
Gertie: I knew. That was one of the things I knew I knew.
Gertie: You’re the strangest girl I’ve ever met.

And when Jackson finally tries to kiss her, Gertie makes sure he really, really means it:

No, don’t kiss me! Don’t ever kiss me, not if you don’t mean it! Not unless you’re crazy about me!

So, what’s the title of this movie and the name of the Gertie character?

The movie we’re looking for is maybe one of the raciest of the pre-Code movies made by a major studio, Warner Brothers in this case. The movie itself is something like an early version of Madame X’s Just That Type Of Girl song (or the song is a late sound version of the movie), i.e. a woman who’s a gold digger and doesn’t mind to use her female power to get what she wants.

Anyway, the one song heard throughout the flick is W.C. Handy’s St. Louis Blues, either as instrumental or sung by Chico, the female protagonist’s partner in crime, friend and maid played by an African-American actress.

But back to the main character Lily Powers, who has had a very troubled childhood, since she’s been sold by her father to any man who offered enough money or like the corrupt politician Ed Sipple protection (who calls her sweetheart of the night shift) for the father’s speak easy.

Or to say it with Lily’s words:

Yeah, I’m a tramp, and who’s to blame? My father. A swell start you gave me. Ever since I was 14, what’s it been? Nothing but men! Dirty, rotten men! And you’re lower than any of them! I’ll hate you as long as I live!

So Lily isn’t too unhappy when her father dies in an explosion of his bootleg still. And then there’s Adolf Cragg who tells Lily to exploit herself and cites Nietzsche:

A woman, young, beautiful like you can get anything she wants in the world because you have power over men. But you must use men, not let them use you. You must be a master, not a slave.
Look. Here. Nietzsche says:
“All life, no matter how we idealize it is nothing more, nor less, than exploitation.”
That’s what I’m telling you. Exploit yourself. Go to some big city where you will find opportunities.
Use men. Be strong! Defiant! Use men to get the things you want!

And that’s just what Lily does, she travels to New York with Chico, pays for the trip with her body by seducing a train inspector and when in New York she climbs the ladder of success - wrong by wrong. From the Filing Dept. to the Mortgage Dept. to the Accounting Dept. of the Gotham Trust Company until she finally gets to the head of the bank.

To cut a long story short Lily becomes the notorious bank tragedy woman, spends some time in Paris, France, and finally gets half a million dollars. And promises herself “Someday I’ll have the other half that goes with it.” Actually things end a little bit different than Lily planned it.

The movie we’re looking for has been re-discovered as an unedited negative in the Library of Congress a few years ago and finally the world was able to see a rather uncensored version that adds a different meaning to this film than the version eventually approved by the Hays office in 1933. William Hays considered the movie demoralizing. And I’m sure there aren’t many movies even today, in which a father pimps his daughter, in which politicians trade patronage for sex and in which working people cheat on their wives or use the workplace for sex.