“Carole Lombard! The Idol of Women! The Desire of Men! What Clothes! What Beauty! What Box Office!” So boasted the promotional material for Alexander Hall’s Sinners in the Sun (1932). Given the sheer volume of films produced during Paramount’s Golden Age, it’s inevitable that a few titles would fade into obscurity. Yet, the sheer starpower alone should warrant this pre-code melodrama another day in the sun.
Lombard stars as Doris Blake, a “living mannequin” at a high-end dress boutique whose effortless poise makes her the envy of her peers. Doris routinely inspires affluent clients to purchase haute couture directly off her back, yet she returns each evening to the overcrowded tenement she shares with her family. After tasting the forbidden fruit of luxury, she realizes she is naked and longs to be clothed—not merely in fabric, but in silk, diamonds, and pearls.
Drunk off her sip of the high-life, Doris’s relationship with Jimmie Martin (Chester Morris), a garage mechanic eager to “make an honest woman” of her, begins to fray. Disquieted by the prospect of a future governed by financial anxiety, she rejects Jimmie’s marriage proposal. True love, however sincere, cannot overcome the weight of poverty. When “very rich and very eccentric” client Claire Kincaid (Adrienne Ames) airily claims she would gladly renounce her fortune to live in a hut with the right man, Doris delivers a swift rejoinder: “That’s because you’ve never lived in a hut.” Serendipitously, Jimmie soon finds himself as Claire’s chauffeur, drawing both working-class protagonists into the orbit of the ultra-wealthy.
Swept up in a whirlwind of glittering evenings, Doris carries on with the married millionaire Mr. Eric Nelson (Walter Byron) while Jimmie weds Ms. Kincaid. Jimmy finds neither camaraderie with his new peers (fellow gigolos) nor intimacy with his new wife; his mind bends only toward his lost love. Meanwhile, Doris experiences a brutal awakening when another wealthy admirer (a pre-fame Cary Grant) attempts to purchase her affection. Horrified by the realization that she’s become a luxury commodity herself, she trades opulence for manual labor, reducing the body once cossetted in couture to an unadorned machine.
However hollow the trappings of wealth may be, the film is happy to luxuriate in them. The visual centerpiece of the film is a resplendent fashion parade orchestrated by the legendary costume designer Travis Banton. Lombard and 11 handpicked models float across the screen, promenading bias cut silk, polka dots, and sable stoles. Banton's contribution to Hollywood’s Golden Age—the subject of Howard Gutner’s recent monograph, Banton of Paramount—is on full, luminous display here.
Sinners in the Sun screens this evening, May 27, at Film Forum on 35mm. Howard Gutner will be in attendance to introduce the film.
