A Precode That's Hotter Than Hot

Why Don't We See More of She Had To Say Yes? (1933)

I would argue this to be the raunchiest of all Warner precodes, more so than missing Convention City, which may be better off that way for preserving its repute as hottest of the hot. Nobody mentions She Had To Say Yes, and I haven't noticed it headlining precode festivals, or maybe it's just me not attending them. The set-up promises what the picture delivers: girl stenos drafted as "escorts" for visiting buyers to spike their bosses' sale ledger. There's no disguising virtual prostitution this amounts to; when have movies been so frank re politics as played at worksites? Such would later be termed sex harassment, and treatment today would mete punishment to characters engaging it, but this was 1933 when drop from office high wires had not safety netting installed since. Play ball with the boss or face a breadline is reality Loretta Young faces here, and deals with. She gets hard-boiled in a hurry and must choose between Lyle Talbot and Regis Toomey, or "the lesser-of-two evils" as she puts it, an accurate phrase as neither are sugarcoated or anything other than on-the-make. Busby Berkeley directed She Had To Say Yes, perhaps a reward for making hits of his musicals, but frankly, any of staff sweeping floors could have done as much what with tart dialogue and ideal casting already in place. A humdinger, and there's a DVD from Warner Archive.