Tenderloin Reviews

A melodramatic part-talkie, Curtiz's first, which stars Costello as a cabaret dancer who gets entangled with gangster Nagel. He thinks that she is concealing $50,000 in stolen bills which is his and tries to befriend her in order to learn if she really has it. She insists, truthfully, that she doesn't have the money. Lewis, another thug and a colleague of Nagel's, tries to force the money out of her in a secluded mountain cabin. Before the situation gets ugly, however, Nagel breaks down the door and beats Lewis senseless. Nagel then realizes how much he loves Costello. TENDERLOIN was written by Darryl F. Zanuck under one of his three aliases, Melville Crossman--the name he specifically designated for his classier pictures. He also wrote under two other names, Mark Canfield for melodramas and Gregory Rogers for comedies. This picture is generally regarded as the first real dialog film, in which the actors actually spoke their characterizations. It also initiated many of the hallmarks of the later Warner Bros. gangster films in cinematographer Mohr's somber shots of mean streets and bleak interiors. Not a critical success at its premiere, the film was re-released with some of the talking sequences cut.