Frankie and Johnnie

• Watchlist

• 1936
• 1 hr 6 mins
• Drama, Music

• Watchlist

• Watchlist

From the long-famous ballad of Frankie and Johnnie, which, told with weighty vocalization the story of Frankie's meeting with Johnnie, the manner in which he "done her wrong," and how she made him pay the price, has been made a film which, after having passed through successive processes of renovation with an eye on the production code, emerges as ineffectual fare. The film was produced about two years ago at and by the Biograph Studio in New York, under the direction of Chester Erskine. With Helen Morgan and Chester Morris as Frankie and Johnnie, respectively, and the veteran, Florence Reed, as the befriending Lou, the story is set against a background of the St. Louis of 1870, and the dance hall run by Lou. The bare facts of the story indicated above tell the whole thing, the only addition being the manner in which William Harrigan, in love with Frankie, stands by her through her fight to hold the love of the gambling, two-timing Johnnie, and offers her his loyal affection after she kills Johnnie. For the most part the film somehow lacks the pace it might have been expected to possess, moving at a laggard rate, only gaining a bit of speed as it nears the conclusion, when Frankie, finally convinced against her will of the duplicity of her man, finds a gun and goes in search of Johnnie. Miss Morgan, it would seem, has not been given sufficient opportunity to exercise the talent for a special style of singing which she unquestionably possesses, and in some fashion her voice throughout registers poorly.