Some would call ten cents a bargain.

It’s not every day that you dust off a 1931 pre-code Barbara Stanwyck film because of a ’90s-era Cheryl Ladd TV movie, but I wouldn’t mind if it happened more often. While toiling on an upcoming post about Ladd’s Dancing with Danger (1994), in which she played a taxi dancer, I was reminded of Stanwyck’s turn as a woman in the same profession in Ten Cents a Dance.

Stanwyck is my favorite American actress. This is a play on the possibly apocryphal Clifton Webb quote about her (“My favorite American lesbian,” discussed more below), but it’s also the truth. Behind my desk is a framed original insert poster for There’s Always Tomorrow, and I own nearly all of her films that have been released on DVD. When, years ago, I cheekily volunteered to die for assorted femme fatales, Stanwyck didn’t make the list. That’s because I would’ve been a comically dazed Henry Fonda in her presence, not a Fred MacMurray.

Barbara Stanwyck with Ricardo Cortez in Ten Cents a Dance.

Ten Cents a Dance is one of her least scandalous pre-code films, and has strange origins. It is, as the credits note, “based upon the popular song by Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers.” Stanwyck plays Barbara O’Neill, a young woman with dim prospects employed at the Palais de Dance. When a crude, tobacco-chewing sailor asks “What’s a guy gotta do to dance with you gals?” Barbara replies with half a sneer, “All you need is a ticket and some courage.” Her irritation is palpable as he drags her across the floor.

While she changes shoes backstage, her boss, Mrs. Blanchard (Blanche Friderici), approaches for yet another lecture about her poor attitude. (Is anything in cinematic history more thrilling than a Stanwyck character with a bad attitude?) “I’m sorry, Miss O’Neill, if you don’t like our patrons. Possibly they don’t compare with the gentlemen you know,” she sniffs. “What do you mean?” Barbara asks. “I mean you mustn’t let your private life interfere with your work here,” she is told. “Private life?” Barbara snaps. “I’ve got no more private life than a goldfish.”

Barbara Stanwyck with Blanche Friderici and Sally Blane (sister of Loretta Young) in Ten Cents a Dance.

“Your work used to be the best on the floor,” Mrs. Blanchard continues. “You took an interest in it, but you don’t anymore.” She accuses Barbara of lacking animation and rhythm. “If I get any more rhythm I’ll dislocate a hip,” Barbara protests. With some finality, Mrs. Blanchard notes, “The gentlemen liked rhythm. I don’t want to speak to you about this again.” Blanchard’s demands sometimes confuse the dancers, like nervous new girl Molly (Sally Blane), who gets the hang of the business soon enough.

“She told me to be very careful, and yet she sort of gave me the idea she wanted me to be not-so-careful,” Molly confides to Barbara. “She told me to be, well, intimate, but ladylike. Now whaddaya make out of that?” The veteran dancer appreciates the fine line her supervisor must walk at the Palais. “Oh, she’s got the toughest job,” she observes to a smitten repeat customer, Bradley Carlton (Ricardo Cortez). “She’s the matron. She’s gotta keep the place hot enough to avoid bankruptcy and cold enough to avoid raids.”

Ricardo Cortez (in hat) and Monroe Owsley (in thought) in scenes from Ten Cents a Dance.

Carlton’s a business magnate who recently tipped Barbara $100 (adjusted for inflation, that’s just over $1,900), but she can’t figure him out: “You’ve been here three times and you haven’t propositioned me once!” He’s interested in romance but she asks him for a favor: a job for Eddie (Monroe Owsley), the none-too-bright guy she’s sweet on, though she conceals her crush from an obliging Carlton.

At the boarding house where they both room, Eddie’s preparing to run away and sleep on a park bench; he’s $60 delinquent on rent. His impulse to flee from his mistakes raises no red flags for Barbara, who gifts him her generous tip. She advises, “You know, Eddie, there’s only one way to beat a hardboiled town like this. It ain’t how hard you can sock, but it’s how hard you can take it on the chin.” And she reveals she got him a job.

Barbara Stanwyck with soap, and Ricardo Cortez, in Ten Cents a Dance.

Eddie’s a putz, but it’ll take Barbara a lot of heartache before she catches onto that. There are his late nights out, compulsive gambling and gallivanting around town with another woman—but most cutting of all is how he speaks to her at home. Having barred her from working at the Palais (“I don’t want you in a place where anyone with ten cents in his pocket can take you in his arms and dance with you”), he does nothing but denigrate their apartment and her skills as a homemaker. When he bothers to show up at all, it’s to cause a scene so he can leave again.

Inevitably, Eddie gets them into another jam, one that could land him in jail, and Barbara must take action. Having already swallowed her fair share of pride, she seeks out Carlton to request another favor. Owsley’s vain cad is not particularly appealing; you can’t imagine his wormy softness would be anything but a turnoff to a determined woman like his wife. The dapper Cortez (born Jacob Krantz) is a worthier suitor in comparison, but also rather bland.

Jo Swerling’s screenplay lacks bite away from the dance hall, except for one final, savage domestic showdown between Eddie and Barbara. In only her fifth credited (and fourth starring) role, Stanwyck already showed an astonishing range. Her fierce grit (“I did the best I could and you slipped me a dime!”) was already prodigious in her early twenties. And she already exuded a big-time sensuality, to borrow a phrase from Björk, that still feels modern 91 years later. The direction of Lionel Barrymore and Edward Buzzell may have lacked tension, but she brought plenty of her own.

Streaming and DVD availability

Ten Cents a Dance is available on DVD as part of the Columbia Pictures Pre-Code Collection. You can also look for it on YouTube.

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… But wait, there’s more!

Here we’ll return to the aforementioned Clifton Webb quote calling Barbara Stanwyck his “favorite American lesbian.” If memory serves, that quote is best known from a Boze Hadleigh book. I briefly covered my thoughts on Hadleigh in the “…But wait, there’s more!” section of this Lady Scarface review, in reference to Judith Anderson. In short, if the (very funny) Webb quote originates with Hadleigh, I’d take it with a grain of salt. If the attribution belongs elsewhere, OK, that’s a different conversation.

The longstanding Stanwyck rumors suffer from the same problem as the Anderson chatter, which is a surfeit of discretion. Do I think that much smoke indicates the presence, somewhere, of fire? Sure. But you’re going to have to show me something more substantive than Hadleigh’s interview with Stanwyck herself, which sounded at least partly, if not mostly, fabricated. There were high hopes that the first volume of Victoria Wilson’s Stanwyck biography, Steel-True, would shine more light on her reputed bisexual relationships, but Wilson mysteriously avoided the subject. I’ve seen nothing well-sourced elsewhere.

I suspect an intrepid author will spill more details eventually. In the meantime, Stanwyck left behind a very large, and sometimes rather gay, body of work for our enjoyment. And if anything in Hadleigh’s Stanwyck interview was true, I fervently hope it was her quote about Joan Crawford (who also once played a taxi dancer): “It would have killed Joan to be called lesbic by that daughter of hers.” That passage has entertained me greatly since I first read the book as a teenager, and my (probably annoyed) wife can attest that I reference it all too frequently, often adding, “Child abuse, sure, she could have lived with that. But that vile lesbic accusation was simply a bridge too far.”