Havana Widows (1933) User Reviews

Two gold diggers in search of gold in Havana

[blanche-2 · 6/10 · 16 June 2008]

Two of the screen's best wisecracking blonds, Mae and Sadie (Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell), star as gold digging showgirls in "Havana Widows," a 1933 comedy also starring Lyle Talbot, Guy Kibbee, Allen Jenkins and Frank McHugh. After being visited by an old friend who made her fortune in Cuba, thanks to a compromising situation and a sharp attorney (McHugh), two showgirls borrow $1500 from a friend, Herman (Jenkins). In order to get the money, Herman buys into a complicated scheme involving an insurance policy and a check, which later blows up in his face. Meanwhile, the girls head for Havana. There, they meet a rich, married mark (Guy Kibbee) and his broke son (Talbot) - who of course falls for Mae. The sharp attorney turns out to be a roaring drunk 24/7, and soon, Herman appears, trying to get his money back and running from his creditor. It makes for good fun.

This is a very light comedy with the fastest dialogue ever spoken, coming out Blondell's and Farrell's mouths like a machine gun. I'm sure the amount of speaking in "Havana Widows" would equal two of today's scripts. The roles they play are common ones for them - streetwise, hard-working young women with dry wit and a desire for some of life's comforts. They're both very good, Blondell with her adorable Kewpie-doll face and curvy body, and Farrell with that unmistakable voice and delivery. They made a good team. Frank McHugh is very funny as the attorney - in thirty years, he never changed, and in his last film, Easy Come, Easy Go, he is instantly recognizable. Allen Jenkins as the harried friend gives good support.

All in all, an enjoyable film, nothing groundbreaking.

Digging for gold with a treasure trove of thesps

[Fred_Rap · 6/10 · 30 April 2011]

A cast of Warner's brightest farceurs work overtime in this frantic, sporadically funny gold-digger farce. In the first of several pairings, Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell play gum-chomping burlesque chorines looking to strike it rich in Havana. Though pains are made to show Blondell as a tootsie of morals (early on, she refuses her boss's request to dance at a stag party), she apparently has no qualms about trapping vacationing millionaires into breach of promise settlements.

True to form, Blondell has a last minute change of heart when she falls for the son (Lyle Talbot) of her intended mark. Luckily for the viewer the sucker happens to be Guy Kibbee, whose rooftop escape from a Cuban Turkish bath is a low comedy hoot.

Hyperthyroid Allen Jenkins provides amusing support as (what else?) a gangster's lamebrained flunky, and the wonderful Ruth Donnelly appears all too briefly as Kibbee's carnivorous wife. Only Frank McHugh is a repetitious drag; he plays a constantly inebriated lawyer in the obvious speech-slurring style common to the thirsty days of Prohibition. You have to wonder whether such witless drunk acts contributed to the repeal.

Reasonably entertaining "B" movie, thanks to a really able cast!

[JohnHowardReid · 7/10 · 14 February 2014]

The title is somewhat misleading. At best, our USA showgirls are pretend "widows", and although they are supposed to be fleecing guys in Havana, neither of them are very patently anywhere near Havana. In fact, director Ray Enright makes no attempt whatever to disguise the fact that the girls never left a small corner of Warner's Burbank studio. By the way, IMDb which rightly insists that reviewers don't give away major points in the plot, sometimes does so itself. In this case, the number one major surprise is given away in the credits. So if you are set on enjoying this mild bit of nonsense, don't look at the credits beforehand. In this outing, second-billed Glenda Farrell has the major role and easily shades Joan Blondell. In fact, I watched Warner Archive's excellent DVD last night and I can't remember any major scenes where Joan was the dominant partner except for a bit of business with Frank McHugh. In fact, although his billing would seem to indicate that he was added to the movie as an afterthought, McHugh has a major role which he plays with delightful enthusiasm. On the other hand, Allen Jenkins is forced out of the proceedings early on, but makes a delightful comeback in the last reel or two. In all, the support cast, featuring many unbilled appearances by some of our favorite players, makes this well-produced "B" definitely worth seeing. Available, as said above, on an excellent Warner Archive DVD.

Snappy Sisters!!

[kidboots · 14 August 2011]

Unfortunately with Glenda Farrell billed second, you just know she is not going to end up with the leading man (Lyle Talbot), but be stuck, as usual with someone like Frank McHugh or worse (and believe me it is worse)!!! The movie starts off promisingly with "Presenting Iwanna Shakitoff -direct from Russia" - in other words chorus cuties in a third rate review!! When Mae (Joan Blondell) is laid off for refusing to perform at a stag party and Sadie (Glenda Farrell) is fined $5 for scratching her back, they decide to take Gladys Gable's (Noel Francis) advice and head to Havana in search of millionaires!!!

As usual sizzling Glenda is the whole show and poses the big question - where did she learn to talk so fast?? Once the girls get to Havana, the movie seems to run out of steam. The snap certainly goes out of Joan's garters as she falls for poor boy Bob Jones(Lyle Talbot), she then becomes part of just another conventional love interest. It is up to Glenda to carry the movie with her usual sparkle and she really tries her best!!!

After conning their way to Havana (Allan Jenkins is the hapless fall guy), Deacon R. Jones (Guy Kibbee) becomes the main target as the sassy sisters realise they need money fast for their hotel bill. All the wonderful Warners players are there (Frank McHugh, Ruth Donnelly etc) the ones that usually make the A movies worth watching but without a strong story they just seem to meander along. Mae gets her man, Sadie gets a man too, although before the "I do's" are said, she is saying "I married the wrong man"!! Ruth Donnelly ,as Mrs. Jones, has a surprise for the girls who think they are coming into a big "shakedown" with her dim-witted husband Deacon - it seems she has wanted to divorce her husband for years and through the girl's hijinks she now has grounds.

Glenda Farrell always gives her all and I agree that she and Joan are snappy sisters, but Farrell is much better (and faster talking) in films like "Girl Missing" and "The Keyhole" both from 1933. J. Carroll Naish can be spotted as a taxi driver who becomes embroiled in a fight and poor old James Murray has an uncredited part as a bank teller.

Not exactly the most honorable dames!

[planktonrules · 7/10 · 13 December 2019]

"Havana Widows" is a film about a couple of chorus girls (Glenda Farrell and Joan Blondell) who have trouble making ends meet. However, when an old acquaintance tells them about a scheme to trick rich millionaires into breech of promise lawsuits, the pair head to Havana...the vacation hangout of the rich and fancy back in the day. Once there, they plan on trapping some poor sap and making him pay! Not exactly a decent or honorable couple of dames, huh?!

Considering how dishonorable and larcenous the women are in this film, you do wonder if Warner Brothers would have made this movie only a year later after the toughened Production Code was adopted. Probably NOT is what I think. But it is high energy as well as entertaining! Plus, having Allen Jenkins, Frank McHugh and Guy Kibbee on hand as supporting actors definitely elevates the quality and fun of this movie.

Carry On Gold Digging!

[1930s_Time_Machine · 6/10 · 5 October 2022]

If the Carry On films of the 60s and 70s were made in America and were made in the early 30s they wouldn't be that different from this. It's got that same feel of amiable silliness with absurd characters whom you know exactly how they're going to behave - because they do the same role in each film. It's sort of rubbish but actually really fun and entertaining to watch. Being from the early 30s however there's more of a 'cheer up everybody' theme going on which of course would have gone down well back then.

The plot is a little lame but that doesn't matter. What you're watching isn't to tax your brain or reveal any great secret of life - it's just an hour of fun. The story, about a couple of burlesque girls trying to chisel money out of rich men would be outrageous these days but back then when opportunities for girls like this to get a bit of money and in many ways, simply to survive in the Great Depression were incredibly hard, it was seen as quite acceptable. Indeed these girls are the heroes, the ones we're rooting for. That's made easier by them being Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell. That they find it so easy to lure these men from their wives is made unquestionably believable by the outfits Joan Blondell is just about wearing!

If you don't expect a memorable or deep film but just want a taste of early 30s fast-talking, frothy light entertainment with Joan Blondell looking amazing, this will definitely tickle your fancy.

Fun, if minor, comedy...

[AlsExGal · 7/10 · 29 April 2023]

...from First National and director Ray Enright. Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell star as a couple of show girls who decide to head for Havana to try and put some unsuspecting rich guys into compromising positions which will result in a big payday for them. They hone in on befuddled older man Guy Kibbee, but Blondell falls for his handsome (but poor) son Lyle Talbot. Also featuring Frank McHugh, Allen Jenkins, Ruth Donnelly, Hobart Cavanaugh, Ralph Ince, Luis Alberni, J. Carrol Naish, and Paul Porcasi.

Blondell and Farrell are two of my favorite ladies from this period of film, and I loved seeing them together. McHugh does his perpetual drunk shtick but I still found it funny. The gleefully amoral plot is a definitive example of pre-code inhibition.

What is odd here is that this seems to be a remake of sorts of 1930's The Life of the Party. Both were made in the precode era. The only thing I can figure is that the two female leads of that earlier film - Winnie Lightner and Irene Delroy were no longer headliners, and the new Warner Brothers stars were hardly even on the lot if at all just three years earlier. Thus the attempt at another bawdy version of the story, just with better sound technology and more current stars.

C U in C-u-b-a

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 13 December 2019]

Back in the days when Havana was quite the recreation spot for Americans two chorus girls, Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell decide they don't like living hand to mouth in the Great Depression. So they bamboozle Allen Jenkins out of $1500.00 which he gets from his boss gangster Ralph Ince. Farrell has Jenkins wrapped around her finger, he is such a sap in Havana Widows.

When they get to Cuba, Blondell makes a play for rich Lyle Talbot. But the getting isn't easy, there are a lot of Blondells and Farrells out there on the same mission.

The girls are funny, but this film really belongs to Allen Jenkins. Frank McHugh also gets some laughs as the perpetually inebriated attorney who'll secure you a divorce between shots.

I'd check this one out.

Misses Blondell & Farrell Go Cuban For Comedy

[Ron Oliver · 10/10 · 3 June 2001]

Two hard-luck but crafty ladies decide to act like HAVANA WIDOWS by sailing to Cuba to meet & blackmail rich gentlemen...

This was the sort of ephemeral comic frippery which the studios produced quite effortlessly during the 1930's. Well made & highly enjoyable, Depression audiences couldn't seem to get enough of these popular, funny photo dramas.

Joan Blondell & Glenda Farrell are perfectly cast as the frantic, fast-talking females who will go to great lengths to make a little dishonest dough. Although Joan gets both top billing and the romantic scenes, both gals are as talented & watchable as they are gorgeous.

Handsome Lyle Talbot plays Joan's persistent suitor, but he's given relatively little to do. Chubby, cherubic Guy Kibbee appears as the girls' intended target. Whether awakening to find himself in the wrong bed or being chased across the roof of a Cuban hacienda in his long johns, he is equally hilarious. Behind him comes a rank of character actors - Allen Jenkins, Frank McHugh, Ruth Donnelly, Hobart Cavanaugh, Maude Eburne, Dewey Robinson - all equally adept at pleasing the toughest crowd.

Movie mavens will recognize an uncredited James Murray as the suspicious bank teller with the forged check. This very talented actor was pulled out of complete obscurity to star in King Vidor's THE CROWD (1928), one of the silent era's most prestigious films. Hopes were high for a great career, but his celebrity faded quickly with sound pictures. After a long string of tiny roles & bit parts, broke & destitute, his life ended in the waters of a New York river in 1936. He was only 35 years old.

While never stars of the first rank, Joan Blondell (1906-1979) & Glenda Farrell (1904-1971) enlivened scores of films at Warner Bros. throughout the 1930's, especially the eight in which they appeared together. Whether playing gold diggers or working girls, reporters or secretaries, these blonde & brassy ladies were very nearly always a match for whatever leading man was lucky enough to share equal billing alongside them. With a wisecrack or a glance, their characters showed they were ready to take on the world - and any man in it. Never as wickedly brazen as Paramount's Mae West, you always had the feeling that, tough as they were, Blondell & Farrell used their toughness to defend vulnerable hearts ready to break over the right guy. While many performances from seven decades ago can look campy or contrived today, these two lovely ladies are still spirited & sassy.

Rich People are all Scheming, Conniving Crooks . . .

[oscaralbert · 6/10 · 22 December 2018]

. . . the always eponymous Warner Bros. film studio warns a nation then writhing in the throes of the Great Depression with HAVANA WIDOWS. Whether hopped up on booze like "Lawyer Duffy" here, or sober as a hanging judge (for example, this flick's "Deacon Jones"), Warner's team of clairvoyant prognosticators forecast that the Corrupt Conservative Communist Corporate Class will swiftly spell doom for America UNLESS the USA expels them pronto from the American Heritage Dictionary. HAVANA WIDOWS also exposes Big Insurance for the scam that it is. Soused agent "Otis" flim-flams the dim-witted "Herman," inspiring the latter toward such crimes as forgery and murder-for-profit. During HAVANA WIDOWS, the Wealthy Set are shown hanging out in joints with names such as "The Coffin Nail," as Warner's prophets try to warn the Bubble Profiteers that they'll be roasting in Hades for a long, long time unless they quickly divest themselves and mend the miserly, money-grubbing ways.

Pre-code misfire

[ChorusGirl · 5/10 · 28 January 2007]

It's tempting to imagine this is a taste of the long-lost film CONVENTION CITY, made in the same year, from the same studio, with a similar themes, and some of the same cast (and, if you know Warner Bros, probably some of the same costumes, sets, and extras too).

I'm hoping this is not the case. HAVANA WIDOWS is a snooze, missing the grit and edge of the other Warner Bros films from their amazing 1931-33 output. This studio didn't always fare well with straight comedies--they usually struck gold with the dramas and musicals (and 2 horror movies), where the comedy played supporting role. I find similar problems with BLESSED EVENT: the comedy just has nothing to play against.

Joan Blondell (fresh off of FOOTLIGHT PARADE) and Glenda Farrell con their friend for ticket fare to Havana, in hopes of landing some rich sap. That's a good start, but even these two formidable talents cant put over the unfunny script, which wants to be saucy and naughty but cant seem to figure out how. In fact, there is only a little pre-Code pleasure to be found here, and by the end we descend into a pretty desperate slapstick finale.

This film is rarely shown (it was released on MGM/UA's laserdisc FORBIDDEN Hollywood VOLUME 2, but not on VHS), but there are occasionally copies to be found on ebay.

Hilarious pre-code comedy

[sideways8 · 10/10 · 30 June 2003]

Blondell & Farrell are excellent. Blondell was edible. This was very funny and I laughed often throughout it. Great dialogue and its loaded with wisecracks. I could've watched it for hours. Tremendous fun to watch.

Weak script undermines charming leading ladies

[gbill-74877 · 4/10 · 29 November 2018]

Gee what do you know, another film from the 1930's about women who are gold-diggers. This one is for Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell fans only - they're charming, and seeing Blondell in a variety of eye catching outfits was probably the only real highlight. The script is weak and not all that funny, including a couple of perpetually drunk male characters who get annoying quickly, and various flailing such as a chase through a hen house. Thin on charm, but mercifully short at just 62 minutes.

Joan & Glenda... like Lucy and Ethel

[ksf-2 · 8/10 · 15 December 2019]

SO many fun things going on here... Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell had already made Three on a Match together, so they already had the gal-pal chemistry. Guy Kibbee is the fall guy in this one, the rich old guy they try to take to the cleaners. co-stars Allen Jenkins (the mug) and Frank McHugh (the drunk). The story itself is ALMOST a bit convoluted, with insurance fraud, forgery, "breach of promise", when women could sue if the groom backed out. or at least make some easy money if they could trick the guy into hushing up any scandal. So they are all off to Havana, where this all takes place. It's a ton of fun, and is directed by Ray Enright, who had made EIGHT films with Joan. almost like watching Lucy and Ethel get in and out of jams. good stuff.

Very Disappointing

[bensonj · 9 December 2004]

So who's right, Variety ("rapid fire laughs, all legitimately gained and inescapable") or Hirschhorn's Warner Brothers book ("a computerized comedy... formula film-making at its manufactured worst")? The opening shot of a burlesque marquee featuring "Iwanna Shakitoff, direct from Russia" might portend well, but shouldn't that be Ivanna? The scene where the burlesque manager tells Joan Blondell to do a stag show in Passaic, "and give 'em something to stare at" has a certain realism, but that's the last you see of anything that could go by that name. Even as the chorus girls swap wisecracks while they're dancing, one can tell there's a problem. The lines are flat and aren't delivered off-the-cuff, but more like a series of Laugh-In blackouts. Soon, the Warner regulars are walking through scenes that somehow arrive at the denouement by way of an obvious structure that reminds one of a matinée-western, and with clever or perceptive dialogue notably absent. It is from Warners, and before the Code, but there's not a moment that could be called "legitimately gained," nor is there an unexpected one. Very disappointing, especially considering the cast.

Harmless fluff

[jaykay-10 · 3 July 2003]

The intended humor is broad, rather than clever; familiar, rather than original; flat, rather than funny. All the ingredients of classic farce are here, except the wit that makes such farce classic. Allen Jenkins offers his usual dumb-dumb character. Frank McHugh does the supposedly comical screen drunkard - swaying, staggering, falling. Guy Kibbee...well. suffice to say that he plays the same role he did in practically every other picture. That leaves our leading ladies: chorus girls on the make Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell. A promising duo, but comedy teams work best when the performers are opposites, and here the girls play virtually identical characters. Their wisecracks don't have much snap, but then neither does the picture overall. Joan radiates her cheerful charm, as usual, despite being called upon to chew gum throughout. I think she removed it to eat, and during her wedding scene.