Private Affairs

Just daring to produce a film called "The Public Stenographer" deserves some sort of respect. But even if that very flat, unemotional title matches in some way the overall plot and editing of the film, there is still a lot to enjoy including a few rare scenes that really touch the heart.

Ann and her roommate Lucy both work at a posh city hotel dodging, or choosing carefully, the interests of wealthier men as they go about there independent and busy lives. But because of a simple mistake Ann comes to know one of the hotel patrons, Jimmy, in a different way. He is head over heels, but she is much cooler.

As the screwball sparring progresses, particularly in a series of incidents with Ann's and Jimmy's automobiles and the ever-present motorcycle cop, so too progresses a scam concerning a large public works project and lots of government money.

Ann gets tied up in the possible relationship as well as a possibly disastrous professional choice, all along comforted as well as tempted by her somewhat more worldly roommate. It is the relationship these two women have and their various interactions that make this film memorable, even while the love story and financial intrigue are relatively mundane.

This 1934 film was directed by western director Lewis D collins. Stars Lola Lane and William Collier Jr. This movie is basically a love story and how this guy "ridicules' and humiliates her to win her heart. Yes you heard that right. Now Im hearing this with my 21st century hears and saying what the? But I tried giving the movie a chance knowing 2 things. 1 its a different time period and 2 this motion picture is almost a century old everyone that has worked on this film has long gone. Not even half way into the film and it feels dull and then I realized I just had to stop watching. Lola lane did a good job in this film.

Lola Lane is a public stenographer at a Manhattan hotel. Her room mate, Esther Muir, runs the switchboard. Engineer Buster Collier likes her when she tries to grab the cab he's in, and he pursues her between trying to get a government contract.

Like many a Poverty Row movie, this has a strong opening scene, with the two girls walking home from a double date that went wrong, but the movie becomes rather dull after that. The actors give it their best, although the scene where Collier is teaching her to play golf, while realistic, is more about how he's annoyed with her inability to take to the game and to my 21st-century ear does not sound like a man trying to win over a woman.

Miss Lane was the oldest of the four Lane Sisters. She was born Dorothy Mullican in . After a start playing the piano in a movie house at 12, she got a contract with Gus Edwards and toured in vaudeville. Eventually she and her sisters got Warner Brothers contract, but while she gave some good performances, her leads never got out of the Bs and she retired from the screen in 1946 to round out her fourth marriage (to Roland West until his death) and Robert Hanlon (to hers) in 1981.