The economic boom of the Roaring Twenties came to a screeching halt with the stock market crash of October, 1929, throwing the world into economic depression. It's impossible to overstate the hardship and uncertainty people endured during The Great Depression, when nearly every industry was struggling after the crash. This seemed not to be the case in Hollywood, however, as studios reassured the public that their industry was stable, even booming.

Insiders confided to the trades that cinema was impervious to the economic woes suffered by other industries, and that escapist fare was an almost patriotic necessity for a country in financial turmoil. As Thomas Patrick Doherty explains in Pre-Code Hollywood, many in the biz were in a 'steady state of denial about the true magnitude of the crisis.' Privately, however, a few studio execs noted all too well the sharp decline in their bottom line; these few could hardly have been surprised to hear The Hollywood Reporter's single-word response to the claims that Hollywood was fiscally sound: 'Bunk.'

As a new, less stable reality took hold in the wake of the stock market disaster, entertainment changed to reflect the times. The subject matter of films had already begun to mature prior to the financial crash, and though some late silents such as West of Zanzibar and The Racket (both 1928) can be considered proto-pre-Codes, it wasn't until the early talkies of 1929 that the genre we recognize today as pre-Code really came into being. Films released in the first half of 1929, such as Jeanne Eagles' star turn in The Letter and Roland West's expressionistic triumph Alibi, contain almost prophetic social commentary, seemingly in anticipation of the enormous cultural shift to come.

As expected, economics and business were popular topics in pre-Code films. In cinema, the details of the business world are necessarily vague -- this is entertainment, not a boardroom review of the third quarter financial statements -- but a business setting still provided a solid narrative foundation from which all manner of social and cultural issues could be examined. A large corporation in pre-Code films often represented a microcosm of society, where business executives were essentially politicians, usually corrupt, always manipulating society via backroom deals and lording their power over the working men and women beneath them.

There was no actor better at portraying the business-minded scoundrel than pre-Code stalwart Warren William. Early in his career at Warner Bros., the studio took advantage of his commanding presence and fine, authoritarian speaking voice, and cast him in a series of cynical, corrupt and occasionally even repulsive characters, though it was difficult for anyone to be truly repulsed by a man who could ooze such easy charm from every pore. Though he was well on his way to being typecast as the quintessential cad by the time he starred in The Dark Horse (1932), it was when William was on loan-out to MGM for the now-classic Skyscraper Souls (1932) that his reputation was solidified.

Skyscraper Souls began life as the Faith Baldwin novel Skyscraper, serialized in Cosmopolitan Magazine and rights acquired by MGM. They assigned one of their biggest directors of the day, Edgar Selwyn, fresh from the Academy Award-winning The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931), to helm the adaptation. Selwyn appreciated the script's adherence to the idea of busy New York corporate life as a metaphor for artistic and personal success, and announced in interviews that he planned to construct a film that revealed only small segments of various peoples' lives, then 'unite them in one great cataclysm.'

And that's exactly what he did. The denizens of the enormous, fictitious Dwight Building of Skyscraper Souls run the gamut from models and working girls to New Women, working alongside desperate young men trying to earn a buck, established and wealthy businessmen, and above them all, David Dwight, charismatic and ruthless CEO of Seacoast Bank. Dwight (Warren William) has taken 0 million of depositors' money and used it to build this monument to modern architecture, a skyscraper that towers over the Empire State Building and serves as the fabulous art deco manifestation of his own enormous ego.

But that 0 million can't be covered by the bank anymore, and no one is willing to loan him the money, as everyone in the industry, if not the public, is aware of his fiscal transgressions. Dwight launches a devious scheme to protect his investment and prevent him from being ousted from Seacoast, a scheme that means betraying the very bankers who had helped him achieve his dreams in the first place.

Warren William is as unsteady as a Barrymore in Skyscraper Souls, his performance as Dwight a perfect storm of manipulation and talent, his business deals as much seduction as they are displays of economic prowess and drive. He's a dishonest and cruel man, not only in the boardroom but in his personal life as well. Dwight revels in his greed, crowing to all who will listen about his own dishonesty while he slithers and connives and hints, every handshake as meaningless to him as his own marriage, his devoted long-time girlfriend, or the beautiful new secretary Lynn (Maureen O'Sullivan).

Aided and abetted throughout his career by his trusted secretary and girlfriend Sarah (Verree Teasdale), Dwight has slashed and burned his way to the top, ultimately plotting to artificially raise the prices on his own business' stock only to let it crash, wiping out his competitors. This scheme wipes out the innocent too, not that Dwight concerns himself with such things. Audiences must surely have felt a familiar panic when the everyday denizens of the Dwight Building, all with dreams that just needed a little funding, begin to buy up the stock as it rose to extraordinary heights. But that which rises also falls, and as all the little people find themselves broke or worse, Dwight cheerfully celebrates his success by dumping his 40-something secretary for the innocent Lynn and heading out for a lengthy vacation.

It's interesting to note that the vagueness of the business deals engaged in by the men in Skyscraper Souls is in direct contrast to the details of the women's lives. Sarah, for instance, is an exceptional secretary, more knowledgeable about the building than Dwight himself. She's the quintessential New Woman, the product of the 1920s women's movement that lead to women attending college in record numbers and working outside the home in non-domestic jobs. Middle class, unmarried women were often allowed white collar jobs of the kind Sarah and Lynn hold in Skyscraper Souls, while women of lesser classes were relegated to careers such as modeling, just as Lynn's friend Jenny (Anita Page) is forced to do. When a kindly jeweler in the building shows Jenny interest, she makes it clear she's also in business -- or rather, in the oldest profession, a necessity for this uneducated woman during the economic downturn.

Regardless of job, class or status, however, the women of the Dwight Building all look out for each other, and in doing so engage in what could easily be considered business deals of their own. They are as concerned with financial stability as anyone else, which for women in the 1930s meant getting a man. While the men around them get suggestive massages in the steam room as they make power deals, the women subsidize each other with a few bucks here and there, give each other advice and weigh their matrimonial options; though unspoken in Skyscraper Souls, it's clear the film sees the women's deals to be just as important as Dwight's crooked merger, and far more ethical.

But this theme turns chilly at the finale, when Lynn's seduction away from the virtuous life and Sarah's ultimate sacrifice turn these New Women into fallen women. All women in Skyscraper Souls,  whether secretaries or models, are not paid for their knowledge or ability but for their bodies, and only marriage can save them; thus, the only redemption for a woman of any socioeconomic class is to get married, eschewing career and freedom for the safety of homemaking. Though the villain of the piece gets his comeuppance at the hands of a woman, Skyscraper Souls declares the world of business is only for men  by making certain all the featured female characters have been chased out of the Dwight Building by the finale, one way or another.

Truth be told, as edgy as it was, Skyscraper Souls was always a slightly-polished MGM version of the kind of gritty fare Warner Bros. was famous for. When Warren William proved to be a hit as the scoundrel audiences loved despite themselves, his home studio immediately cast him as a Dwight-esque character in both Three on a Match and The Match King (1932). This was followed by Employees' Entrance (1933), a film with so many similarities to Skyscraper Souls that it reads very much like Warner Bros.' direct reply to MGM, reminding them just how a proper, earthy pre-Code film is done.

Employees' Entrance features William as Kurt Anderson, supervisor of a large New York department store. He is a man without a single redeemable quality, yet critics and audiences of the day often found much to praise about Anderson; Warner Bros. had come to be known as the studio with a social consciousness, and some critics felt Employees' Entrance was indeed truer to reality. Employees' Entrance 'sticks closer to the facts of life,' read the review in the Hartford Courant, a chilling commentary considering Anderson is known as a tyrant who will fire employees for single, unimportant mistakes. He also preys upon the women working at the store, especially Madeline (Loretta Young), taking advantage of her on multiple occasions and plotting to break up her marriage, not out of love or desire, but because he has a sociopathic need to control the lives of everyone around him.

A raw and often disturbing film, Employees' Entrance was not content to use the vague business rhetoric other films relied on, and the script treats the audience to actual corporate planning and business room brainstorming. The result is unexpectedly fascinating when Martin West (Wallace Ford, who also co-starred in Skyscraper Souls) suggests revitalizing sales by placing men's underwear near women's clothes, knowing women were the ones in a household who bought undergarments for the family. It's not only a plausible idea, but similar to a successful tactic used by Sam Walton in his first five and dime in the 1950s. To be sure, the discussion of underwear in Employees' Entrance was to provide some standard Warner Bros. pre-Code jollies, but it was also a solid business practice.

Employees' Entrance takes a strange right turn in the second act and suddenly shows Anderson as a man of the people concerned with saving the jobs of his employees, the same people he would fire on whim in other scenes. It's at this point that Anderson insists his harsh behavior was only an attempt to make people strong in tough times, but the strength, contrary to what Anderson (or the film) wants you to believe, was actually greed. Above all, it was manipulation, and the idea that the head of a corporation could control the miniscule details of the lives of everyone with less money and power held a disturbing resonance with audiences in the early 1930s.

It's the trope of ultimate control and power that makes Warner Bros.' Female (1933), featuring Alison Drake (Ruth Chatterton) as a strong, driven and successful businesswoman, such an anomaly and a delight. Drake is as ruthless as any male businessman, but in a cinematic world where women were better off not even stepping foot inside a corporation, a woman running a business was a scary sight indeed. Female shares characteristics of both the business films and the fallen woman films of the era. Alison was a woman who had the same attitude toward men as the gold digger archetype, only with plenty of her own gold and no need for a man's. In this way, she was even more dangerous; if a gold digger wants a rich man, it follows that a woman who doesn't care about the money only wants a man -- a very serious breach of the Code, indeed.

Alison has made it her mission to remain unmarried, treating men as disposable, just, as she claims, men treat women. For much of the film, her character is so true to the pre-Code businessman archetype that she could be given a man's name and be played by Warren William. She is certainly as much of a cad as a Warren William character, just as driven to succeed, and unlike male businessmen in the pre-Code era, whose natty suits and fabulous art deco offices made audiences presume success, we see Alison working hard. As she manages her automobile manufacturing concern, she is always on the phone, with paperwork, in meetings, browsing other departments and supervising every step of production. The office sports an enormous deco mural of a car -- in case anyone forgets why they're there in the first place -- and not even Alison's conquests are given a respite from their work. Everyone is expected to earn every cent of their pay, and that includes Alison herself.

There is some well-placed comedy in Female that helps mitigate the intensity of Chatterton's performance, as well as dampening the audience's shock over a female executive. When Alison sets her sights on Cooper (played by the always affable Johnny Mack Brown), he doesn't understand he's being used, and his cluelessness is more than a little chuckle-worthy. Next, Alison shows some enthusiasm toward young Freddie Claybourne (Phillip Reed), who curiously shows very little interest in return; she, a woman of the world, understands immediately and sends him on a trip to Europe where he might find more to catch his eye.

The result is a clever spoof of the fallen woman film, especially in scenes when she first meets Jim Thorne (George Brent), the man who would eventually subdue Alison Drake. Brent was the Warner Bros. contract actor most likely to tame the wayward pre-Code woman, and in Female, he does so by mistaking Alison for a pick-up girl when he first meets her. This scene is the beginning of the take-down of Alison, the businesswoman whose mere existence was a threat, though a threat that Female had already softened somewhat by making it clear that she inherited the company from a man, her father, and that all the men around her knew what she was up to. Further, we know that once Alison finds the so-called right man, she will give the company to him.

Unlike so many other pre-Code films, Female doesn't linger on the scandalous as long as possible, but rather quickly defines Alison as trouble, a problem that needs to be solved, and jumps into its potential solution in the form of a husband. Still, there are some subtle jabs at the conventions of the time and limitations on what women could do, especially in the finale. Alison, as expected, decides to marry Thorne and give him control of the company. It's not a shocking, twist ending, of course, but rather the reaffirmation of societal norms. Yet as Alison tearfully declares she's going to resign as president of the company, her secretary (character actor Ferdinand Gottschalk) notes that women have inherent gender-based limitations and aren't able to handle work, stress or business. Her immediate reaction is to pick herself up and keep going, which can only be seen as affirmation that her own personal desire to marry and let her husband run the company is an individual decision, one not meant to be applied to all women, nor proof that women are too weak to succeed.

Female, though juggling a half dozen fallen women and women-in-the-workplace tropes, still managed to make sure the company was threatened with failure. This was the one near-constant characteristic of films dealing with businesses during the Depression, and you could always bet that the head of a corporation was a bad guy or, sometimes, a lovable, harmless goof, whose personal failings were about to cause massive public failure that would take down hundreds of innocent bystanders with them.

The microcosms of society that existed within the walls of those enormous urban skyscrapers were an easy way for films to represent the enormity of the big city with just a few sets and a hundred extras in the background. Businesses became neighborhoods, a place where all walks of life intertwined, conveniently ensconced in the fashionable and stylish art deco architecture pre-Code cameras loved so much. There was a clear social hierarchy which allowed studios to explore sociocultural issues in a way that was easily understood by the audience, who recognized the obvious political parallels, while allowing for enough distance from reality that these films could still be considered escapist fare.

And through all this, the roles of men rarely varied; they either were ruthless rich scoundrels or good-hearted Joes trying to earn a living. Women were more complicated, just entering the workforce but seen as either unsuited to business or too easily taken advantage of by unscrupulous men. The end result were a series of films exclusive to the pre-Code era as gender roles and finance collided, movies that today not only still entertain but give us a glimpse of a society in the midst of extraordinary change.

When not watching classic movies, Stacia Kissick Jones is writing about them, dreaming about them or complaining about them. Her ruminations are there for all to see at She Blogged by Night.