Favorites List --- Warren William and Employees' Entrance



Exhibit A For Print Ads Salacious As Precodes They Sold

Go whole hog enough on precode and you may wind up wanting to be Warren William's Kurt Anderson, or in the women's column, Ruth Chatterton's Female. Both are seductive role models for moderns yoked by social, sexual, and political proprieties re-writ since characters like these grazed on a (lots) more raffish culture. How many men bound in corporate or business chains would trade at least their souls to be an Employees' Entrance kind of boss? Current-day Mad Men is but 21st cent opportunity to quietly envy males rampant in what we're assured were bad old days thankfully past. Of course, Warren William makes even these look like lace doilies, for unlike Mad Men (and certainly us), there's never any hauling to account for Kurt Anderson, nor do we want him busted by Act Three rulebooks meekly applied since to preserve status quo. You need watch few movies or television today to recognize production codes still in place, even as same goes undocumented. It's one-of-a-kind disavowal of chalk-lines we walk that gives Employees' Entrance ongoing power to shock.



Recreate Kurt Anderson's Office From This Set Still --- Then Go Be Him!

I've seen Employees' Entrance enough times to know where best parts are. A hair trigger remote zipped me past "nice" characters Loretta Young and Wallace Ford to get back with precode oracle Warren William, whose best (dirty) work this has to be. It's challenging to speed-forward footage and stop on the dime of his face. Not an ideal way to watch movies, but once committed to memory, precode faves often repeat–play best shorn of virtue's valiant effort to overcome wickedness. I always exit Employees' Entrance right after WW drops the dog in his wastebasket --- who needs to know (or care) that less engaging Young and Ford got back together?



The Chiseled Cad --- They'd All Exit The Stage Eventually

 So where do we come off judging hard products of that hardest 30s school, depression society at large or 18 hour day classes taught at WB? A lot of Kurt Andersons must have graduated from the latter, for bastard that his characters tended to be, you don't get a sense of Warner scribes disapproving the Warren William persona any more than those of fast shufflers Lee Tracy, William Powell, Cagney ... how else but to deal off bottoms for a roof and meals? Smash Or Be Smashed was no more William's credo than that of many who figured gentility for weakness or at the least a straighter route to bread lines.




Two From Kurt Anderson's Harem: Loretta Young and Alice White




The Breakthrough --- WW Featured in WB's 1932 Product Annual

 College film study should begin with Employees' Entrance. It would surely open pores and disabuse assumption of what constituted old movies. Kids look at a Kurt Anderson and wonder, shouldn't he be punished?, as liberal art recipients are taught surely he must, for lustily engaging in every -ism they're conditioned to deplore. (Kurt but half-kiddingly suggests, Why don't you kill her?, when an Employees' colleague bemoans blackmailing trollop Alice White) Moderns imagine they know from bad-boy screen behavior, but look closer and there's always a reckoning for alpha dudes violating Unwritten Codes to take liberties far less egregious than William's. Mel Gibson divines innermost thoughts and learns What Women Want, but after brief middle-section of his enjoying it, we know he'll pay and dearly for invading that gender's private space. Was ever a leading man so broken and humbled, and in a comedy yet? (What Women Want's 3d act is as funny as Death Of A Salesman) Had such levelers been applied to Warren William's precode conduct, we'd not have an Employee's Entrance half so much fun.



Mock-Up a New York Skyline with a Penthouse View --- and Your Next Warren William Is Ready To Roll



It's known enough by now that William was best essaying business scoundrels and short-sellers, but who are ones (if any) that paced later his feral tracks? I enjoyed for a while Michael Douglas all Warren-ish at Me-decade scalawagging, and there was Alec Baldwin and James Woods (when cast right) to remind us of precode similars having once trod the earth. Trouble was these having to die or get jail time for perfidy from which Warren William often emerged scot-free. That unwritten Code again. Class-warring as practiced now was mirrored in William's prime. Inherited wealth is a badge of dishonor so far as Employees' Entrance portrays it. To have descended from James Monroe and Benjamin Franklin, plus unearned prosperity, amounts to three strikes and you're out. Self-made Kurt Anderson alone deserves his haul. Whatever ruthless else he does, Kurt won't live off the fat of estates, and that made him fundamentally OK to patrons also denied silver spoons.



Denton Ross' Office: Trophies, Golf Clubs, and Ancestor Portrait Reflect His Getting Rich The Easy Way --- Sure Cues For Patron Laughter and/or Disdain.



Then-published ads reveal clearest Employees' mission. They'd expose shop counters and office pools as so much brothel space, with Kurt Anderson A Man Who Can "Make" Or Break More Women Than Any Sultan. Note parentheses around "Make," its sexual connotation unmistakable. Youth got worldly fast just reading newspaper promotion in those days. Employees' Entrance was further opportunity for showmen to heat things up. Girls "Selling Their Souls" for a job "At Any Price" said it all, but as opposed to cries for reform a prisoner on chain gangs elicited, these plights apparently shared by working women were mere stuff of titillation. Has the depression brought about bargains in love? was less expression of indignation than helpful tip-off to store merchandise more alluring than mere piece goods.



The Stable Home and Wife Didn't Have To Be Faked --- Offscreen WW Was a Straight Arrow




Dog Lover William Often Posed With Pets

 The wolf's head that was Warren William had to be cleaved. PCA enforcement crowded him into corners WW could only farce his way out of. He and movies suddenly occupied a fairy-tale world. Plain diminishing was this actor in screwball mode after tours of precode duty, the chairman of Anything Goes' board donning lampshades on his head. William became a rakish uncle who's promised to stop telling ribald jokes around the children. Back as office lothario in 1939's Day-Time Wife, he's so gelded as to pose anything but a threat to Linda Darnell's secretary. This de-fanged wolf seemed less Warren William than Lester Matthews, just a face among mustachioed cast listings in support.

Code Enforcement Made William a Safe Date for Linda Darnell in 1939's Day-Time Wife

Contemplative at Home --- Was He Inventing Something at That Desk?

Most of us saw William first in The Wolf Man. By then, he was Universal's idea of past-glory (and got cheap) marquee adornment, someone to confer class upon a disreputable monster movie. WW got shoes muddy in U westerns where his credit read beneath lighter weights Franchot Tone and Bruce Cabot, less a shark than a dandy in period dress. The Lone Wolf series meant steady pay packets for OK mysteries, made so purely for his starring. Offscreen Warren William invented (useful) things and kept wire terriers. He was probably more of a renaissance man than we'll ever appreciate. A wife and stable home life wouldn't have seemed in the cards, but there his was, proof again that screen images are purest illusion. Health problems that took William at age 53 (in 1948) must have been lingering, for he seemed prematurely aged final appearing in The Private Affairs Of Bel-Ami, where George Sanders applies a verbal rapier to this weakened opponent who in his prime would have been more than a match, even for GS.