Women of San Quentin

Barbara Stanwyck plays, Nan Taylor, a wise-cracking tough convict in this movie drama where she seems to be in total command of herself and her new environment. After being found guilty for her participation in a bank robbery, she becomes an inmate of women's facility at San Quentin. It doesn't take long for her to know the ways of her new life and soon confronts the prison authorities about reforms, dignity, plight of women away from their families and children. The plot turns unconscionably melodramatic at the end, when her former partners in crime are on the other side of the wall in the men's section with an escape plan that turns fatal for them. This is a movie of 1932, a pre-code era drama, but critics and Hay's office carped about the moral issues of this film. The screenplay by Brown Holmes had some interesting exchanges between the inmates that can be rated as A+. After this movie, Warner Brothers studio's (WB) try to glamorize Barbara Stanwyck by adding an extra dose of feminine charm in her next movie "Baby Face," which was essentially WB's answer to MGM's 1932 classic "Red Headed Woman."

Reference: Ladies they talk about (DVD) starring Barbara Stanwyck