Frank Capra's pre-code early talkie involving class consciousness and loose flappers is a rather slow going, sloppy melodrama that is salvaged by the fresh performances of Barbara Stanwyck, Marie Prevost and Lowell Sherman.
Poor little rich boy Ralph Strong aspires to be a great painter but feels lost and empty amid his roaring twenties hanger ons bent on pleasure. He escapes them one night to clear his head and meets Kay Arnold, a professional escort, rowing a boat to escape the same madness from a yacht party. She agrees to model for Strong who eventually falls for her but is rejected by his family due to her past and station. After a visit from his mother Kay sacrifices her future happiness by agreeing to run off with one of Strong's party animal buddies.
There's plenty of racy double entendre dialog in Ladies, convincingly uttered by the perfectly dissipated Lowell Sherman and low rent good time girls Stanwyck and the tragic Marie Prevost who all but steals the film in a supporting role. Ralph Graves as Strong on the other hand is wimpy and washed out, behaving at times like a sulking child.
Capra and his regular cameraman Joseph Walker offer some beautiful tableaux that evoke the jazz age as well as beautifully lit atmospheric scenes of sensual tension. He allows these scenes to lag however and it doesn't help matters that Stanwyck and Graves lack chemistry. Other Capra tropes like the mawkishly sentimental scenes involving the parents and the lovers and the requisite redemption at film's end take whatever life Ladies of Leisure has and drowns it in a tearjerker ocean.
Poor little rich boy Ralph Strong aspires to be a great painter but feels lost and empty amid his roaring twenties hanger ons bent on pleasure. He escapes them one night to clear his head and meets Kay Arnold, a professional escort, rowing a boat to escape the same madness from a yacht party. She agrees to model for Strong who eventually falls for her but is rejected by his family due to her past and station. After a visit from his mother Kay sacrifices her future happiness by agreeing to run off with one of Strong's party animal buddies.
There's plenty of racy double entendre dialog in Ladies, convincingly uttered by the perfectly dissipated Lowell Sherman and low rent good time girls Stanwyck and the tragic Marie Prevost who all but steals the film in a supporting role. Ralph Graves as Strong on the other hand is wimpy and washed out, behaving at times like a sulking child.
Capra and his regular cameraman Joseph Walker offer some beautiful tableaux that evoke the jazz age as well as beautifully lit atmospheric scenes of sensual tension. He allows these scenes to lag however and it doesn't help matters that Stanwyck and Graves lack chemistry. Other Capra tropes like the mawkishly sentimental scenes involving the parents and the lovers and the requisite redemption at film's end take whatever life Ladies of Leisure has and drowns it in a tearjerker ocean.