Directed by Raoul Walsh. Written by Sydney Boehm
Class divides, prejudices, the indomitable spirit and crushing insecurity mingle in The Revolt of Mamie Stover, the story of a sex worker who starts over in Hawaii, hellbent on changing her fate and overcoming the obstacles both the underworld and high society put in her way. A bigger obstacle emerges, however, overshadowing society’s narrow-minded opinion: Can she accept herself?
What’s easy for us to accept is Jane Russell as Mamie. Russell’s ability to portray self-possessed women who men fall for hard is familiar, but Mamie Stover introduces a greater vulnerability that in flashes lets Russell lower her guard. As driven and cynical Mamie is, as hard does she crumble when she feels her deepest insecurities are validated. It’s a humanizing role for Russell, all things considered.
Director Raoul Walsh knows what he’s got in Russell. The very opening shot sees Mamie step out of a police car to board the ship that’ll take her to Hawaii. Russell walks up, pauses, then turns to stare dead in the camera as if to tell you she knows she’s the reason you’re watching in the first place. Immediate needs satisfied, the title announces itself with big band fanfare. Then followed by Russell’s name as if you needed telling. It’s a quaint, old Hollywood act of mythmaking, and there are precious few stars that could warrant such an introduction today.
On Hawaiian soil, a romance forms with Jim Blair (Richard Egan) that gets off to a slow start. Egan’s wealthy, (somehow, he writes small fiction pieces for magazines) so he lives on the hilltop amongst the other elites. Mamie’s consigned to the brothel dorm downtown, forbidden to date anyone who’s not paying for the privilege. Will the world keep them apart? Or will they themselves do the withholding?
Mamie Stover isn’t blessed with stellar writing and much of it is only so-so with its story dragging in places. There seems to simultaneously be a need for more time to adequately cover all it wants to depict, yet it also has plenty of filler that makes you feel Boehm’s script is afraid to pursue its central themes. The worst of both worlds.
Russell and Egan never really find each other, leaving their supposed romance tepid and far from the sweeping affair it’s intended to be. Much of this is down to Blair’s character as it’s written and Egan’s restrained performance. If you’re going to stand up to society’s lame rules, you’ve got to have a little more passion.
Seen with modern eyes, it also has the unfortunate trait of the time where rich White monoculture paints the entire movie in its image, and the indigenous characters devotedly live and breathe in the shadow of their White employers, a little simpler and a little more subservient. Not a great look.
Yet, Mamie Stover does attains a new interesting angle in light of the modern discourse surrounding sex work. The battle cry “sex work is work” has bolstered the world’s oldest professions’s claim to be exactly that, but hypocritical moralism still sees its practitioners judged and looked down upon. The consensus seems to be that society might begrudgingly accept you, but never accept you in their midst, and Mamie’s story is an evocative example of that.
What’s more, Mamie’s denigrated for behaviour that would flatter a man in the public eye, as she comes off as egotistical doing things that capitalism celebrates. Taken together, Mamie’s a compelling centerpiece in an otherwise unremarkable romance that’s not very romantic and whose drama also fails to stir things up. All in all, far from a revolt. I’d call it a civic unease.
Mikkel Frederiksen 