L'agente n. 13

Operator 13 (1934)

** (out of 4)

Extremely bizarre and rather choppy Civil War drama about actress Gail Loveless (Marion Davies) who goes to work as a spy for the Union. Once undercover, as a black maid, she begins to have feelings for a Confederate soldier (Gary Cooper). Once again Davies lover William Randolph Hearst put the money up for this production and half way through the making he had director Raoul Walsh fired even though he had made GOING Hollywood with Davies a year earlier. A new script was written and the rest is history but in the end this turned out to be one of the strangest dramas from this era. I might go even further and call the film a complete and utter embarrassment and a horrid excuse for entertainment but the thing is just so strange that you can't help but be entertained by it. The first thirty-minutes has Davies in some very bad blackface make up as she's undercover as a maid. Davies wasn't a newbie to blackface but the make up job here is so light skinned that you can't help but laugh at the thought that this make up job would be able to fool anyone in discussion with her and that includes Cooper's character. This is a drama yet Davies plays this maid role as some sort of comedy with the bad accent, which again doesn't sit well with what the film was going for. Not to mention that whoever was doing the make up forgot to paint her palms so they're constantly white. The second half of the film really doesn't get any better even though we do get a few battle scenes but none of them are all that interesting. Even worse are various musical sequences which come out of no where and will have you wondering if the Civil War was an actual war or just one big concert. Add in the bad direction and rather bland performances and you've got a movie that really needs to be rediscovered and held up as a cult classic. Even Cooper can't save this mess but he does add some charm to an otherwise crazy movie.

Marion Davies plays an actress recruited by the Union Army during the Civil War to be a spy. Gary Cooper plays an officer in the Confederate Army who is a spy in the north. Through a series of events they meet, but he doesn't quite know if she is a spy or not.

Davies' initial disguise is as a Black maid (she has fun with the accent and looks great in the black wig), but when her "mistress" (another actress from the north working as a spy) is discovered, she bails the South only to return as a famous northern sympathizer of the Confederate cause. Back in the South, she again meets Cooper.

Implausible story is made interesting by solid performances by the leads and some good cinematography (Oscar nominated). The battle scene montages are OK, but the ending seems choppy and hurried. Still, Davies looks great.

Big supporting cast includes Katherine Alexander (as a spy), Jean Parker and Henry Wadsworth (as young lovers), Sidney Toler, Douglas Dumbrille, Marjorie Gateson, Sterling Holloway, Clarence Wilson, Ted Healy, Robert McWade, and silent film villain Walter Long (as Operator 55).

Davies sings "Once in a Lifetime" and "The Colonel, Major and the Captain." The terrific Mills Brothers show up in a minstrel show and sing a few songs and are especially good with "Sleepy Head" and "Jungle Fever." There's a stunning scene where Davies is sitting on a staircase and crying; the long scene is shot from below looking up at her face. Another nice scene is with Davies on a huge swing, being pushed by Cooper.

After this film, Davies left MGM and moved to Warners, where she made four more films before retiring.

Well if you thought that "Batman" had a poor disguise, just wait to you see Marion Davies in this quite entertainingly predictable American Civil War adventure. "Gail" has been recruited by the original Mr. Pinkerton to act as a spy for the Yankees down amongst the Johnny Rebs and so blackens up, sports a washer-woman's garb and adopts an accent that is supposed to help her pass as a serving wench. Luckily for her, those she is spying upon are not the sharpest bayonets on the gun, and pretty swiftly she has ingratiated herself with their deadly foes but along the way taken a bit of a shine to "Capt. Jack" (Gary Cooper). When she returns for a second bite at this intelligence gathering cherry, only this time looking more like something from a Parisian ballroom, she realises that her enemies are not quite so thick as she'd thought. Can she escape in time? Can she ever be with her true love? Unless you don't actually know who won this particular conflict then there's precisely no jeopardy at all here, but along the way there are some daft escapades, a few musical numbers and just enough romance to give Cooper a chance to show he's not quite as wooden as the picket fences they are shooting from. Davies is game, especially at the start but like most of the rest of the cast here, is rather swimming against a tide of low-budget blandness and some 1930s racist stereotypes. These don't sit so well nowadays, but watching near century old films with modern day attitudes can often be unrewarding, so it's best to remember that if you're going to give this mediocre ninety minutes a go.

Civil war story with Marion Davis as a Confederate spy disguised as a slave. Not politically correct by today's standards ("Negroes always gossip" is one of the more controversial lines from the script), but it does prove that Marion Davies was a competent actress when given the chance.

Always liked Marion Davies in most of her films. She always played good-natured, cheerful parts in which you can root for her character. But I guess everyone's entitled to a clinker once in a while, and I thought "Operator 13" is hers. She is hard to believe as a Northern spy in blackface - she doesn't look like a black person at all, and in real life would fool no one. Her makeup as a white spy looks laid on with a trowel, and in addition she doesn't sing well when called upon.

The plot itself is a good one and is handled well by underrated director Boleslawski, who died too soon. The scenes of intrigue and espionage are very good, as are the few fight and battle scenes, but the picture goes downhill in the love scenes between Davies and Gary Cooper. The dialogue here seems forced and Davies tries too hard to play an ardent lover. Rest of the cast is excellent with several recognizable character actors, including Ted Healy (minus the 3 Stooges) as a Union Captain.