Synopsis
Caged Women! What would they do if they were turned loose for a day?
A reporter and a lawyer investigate a women's prison and help an inmate who does not belong there.
Convicted Woman
Cast
Rochelle Hudson Frieda Inescort June Lang Lola Lane Glenn Ford Iris Meredith Lorna Gray Esther Dale William Farnum Mary Field Beatrice Blinn June Gittelson Dorothy Appleby E. Alyn Warren Stanley Andrews Harry A. Bailey Don Beddoe Bruce Bennett Lynton Brent Willis Clare Dorothy Comingore Nick Copeland Helen Dickson Evelyn Dockson Jay Eaton Dorothy Fay Richard Fiske Roger Haliday Sibyl Harris Show All…
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Alternative Titles
Redemoinho da Vida, Infierno de mujeres, Prisão com Grades, Inspärrad
Releases by Date
Theatrical
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USANR
27 Jun 1940
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Mexico
10 Jan 1941
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Sweden
19 Oct 1942
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Portugal
Releases by Country
Mexico
27 Jun 1940
- Theatrical
Portugal
19 Oct 1942
- Theatrical
Sweden
10 Jan 1941
- Theatrical
USA
31 Jan 1940
- TheatricalNR
Popular reviews
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A Columbia B Movie. Rochelle Hudson was very striking.June Lang was beautiful and Glenn Ford was 24 in his 4th Film.
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Women-in-prison flick directed by Nick Grinde. It's a variation on the same raw material as A Woman Is the Judge, Columbia's crime drama and women's picture hybrid of the previous year, which also starred principled mother figure Frieda Inescort and world-weary unjustly accused Rochelle Hudson. Hudson takes the rap early and it becomes a tale of two prisons: an overtly disciplinary nightmare (and undertones of sadistic lesbian desires), until a change of staff, after which Progressivist reformer Inescort makes it a humane house of healing and self-government (and overt heterosexual desires for men in police uniform). Foucault could have written a book around that, but I'll just give you the quote when the women, grown accustomed to having their mommy issues exploited by abusive if tempting dominatrix June Lang, learn that men will be attending the prison dance: "Men!" "Men? Men, did you say 'men'?"
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Hollywood making jail time more sensible in 1940 than how the US does it today. Regardless of positive ideas, this isn't without suspense and decent dose of injustice, with Rochelle Hudson putting on a class performance as a woman continually getting screwed over. Frieda Inescort, June Lang and a early role for Glenn Ford also help make this a pleasurable programmer, reaching well above it's potential for such a overly optimistic prison reformer.
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Brisk Columbia women-in-prison B pleasurably hits all the familiar beats (you can sense writer Joseph Carole wishing he could pen some punchy, Ladies We Talk About-type pre-code dialogue), throwing in the novel twist of reform-minded lawyer Frieda Inescort becoming superintendent. The usually bland Hudson is really lively and hard-edged here, and casting Lola Lane, wryest and quippiest of the sisters, as another inmate significantly brightens the proceedings. Early Glenn Ford, too, and a surprising amount of him, given his distance down the cast list.
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Nick Grinde’s B-movie crime drama in which a guiltless woman referred to behind bars becomes the emphasis of a jail-reform movement. Starring Rochelle Hudson, Glenn Ford and Frieda Inescort.
The story concerns Betty Andrews (Rochelle Hudson), young, jobless and having bad luck, who is incorrectly condemned of shoplifting and referred to a women’s jail for one year.
Betty's caring lawyer, Mary Ellis (Frieda Inescort), and reporter Jim Brent (Glenn Ford) take a special interest in the unlucky woman's case and work to get her liberated, but while that is going on, Betty is left with no choice but to contend with both an aggressive female warden and the intimidation inmates who do her bidding in return for special treatment.
Rochelle…
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441: Looks like the last night of the TCM B-Movie series is prison movie themed and I’m all for it. This one finds poor Betty getting railroaded into a one year stint in a “Home for Girls” after getting blamed for shoplifting that she didn’t do. This one basically checks off the WIP tropes as Betty gets hardened by an abusive system. That sounds like a complaint, but this one hits the genre hard and with a pretty good pace. Add in Glen Ford in an early role as a reporter hot for Betty, and some of the most insanely lenient reforms by the do-gooder that I have ever seen and this one was a ton of fun.
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A wonderful supporting cast makes this b pic from Columbia an engaging watch, even if the story of a women’s prison is pretty far-fetched. Esther Dale, who often played society matrons, is in this film a nasty, sadistic prison matron. June Lang, looking so much like Grace Kelly, plays a stooge/trouble maker. Mary Fields, who I will always think of as the mousy heiress pining for Gary Cooper in Ball of Fire, here plays a tormented inmate who ultimately hangs herself. Frieda Inescort, so poised and refined, is the reformer who’s come to clean up the prison, and Lola Lane has fun as the wise-cracking best friend. The only performance that didn’t really work for me was lead Rochelle Hudson. The role has a huge character arc and demanded more range than the actress possessed.
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Betty Andrews (Rochelle Hudson) is framed and convicted of robbing a customer in a department store. The attorney assigned to her (Frieda Inescort) fails to prove her innocence and she's sent to prison. A reporter (Glenn Ford) becomes interested in Betty's case and wants to help her. But Betty has a chip on her shoulder and gets in trouble because of it. Just when she becomes convinced to accept the reporter's help to expose the bad conditions of the prison, the attorney that defended her becomes the new matron, complicating things further.
Though this was pretty lighthearted for a prison movie, save for the one scene that leads to Ford and Inescort getting more involved in Hudson's life, I enjoyed…
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For a B movie this hits all its notes well though everything is wrapped up a little too neatly with a big red bow at the conclusion. Good cast with Ford the only male player of importance doing well in an early part that has shadows of his future Big Heat role.
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Betty (Rochelle Hudson) is wrongfully convicted of a crime she didn't commit and she's thrown into a prison where abuse is the main way to handle folks. Betty's former attorney (Frieda Inescort) and a reporter (Glenn Ford) soon are trying to expose the prison for that abuse.
This here is a "B" film from Columbia that was obviously trying to copy the prison films that Warner had been turning out for the past decade. I was rather amazed at how "2023" this film was, which was made eighty-three-years earlier. I say that because if this film was released today it would get beaten as some for being "woke" while praised by many for being that.
I was really shocked to…
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It has its effective moments and it’s pretty cool to see such a modern idea of how prisons should be about reform and building skills of rehabilitation, not punishment. But the movie doesn’t ground itself in reality at all so the radical changes don’t amount to a powerful message as much as they do a quick, happy ending for the characters in the story. The movie also doesn’t trust its audience to root for complex characters, so every single inmate seems to be innocent and wrongfully convicted, which also weakens any weight the movie could have had.