During 1930-31 Loretta Young churned out 14 films, none of them were that good and her acting bland at best. She once said of these movies - "I was coasting on my youth and I knew it" and the titles tell the tale ie "Loose Ankles", "I Like Your Nerve", "The Truth About Youth" etc. "Loose Ankles" was a film considered so trivial that it didn't even rate a New York review - Loretta may have been the star but the film only came alive when the supporting players were given the spotlight. That included bouncy Inez Courtney who introduces the jazzy song "Loose Ankles" at the film's start and even though the first shot was of Young's rather loose ankles being massaged, the film didn't live up to it's racy start!!The film starts off when beautiful Ann Harper (Young) finds the only way she can capture her inheritance is on the death of her husband but being a carefree flapper she doesn't even have a steady beau!! The real kicker is that if she finds herself caught out in a public scandal the whole estate will be given to a dog and cat home!! Of course because she has no interest in money she immediately sets about to get her picture in the papers!! She advertises for a handsome but unscrupulous man and it is instantly seen by a trio of male escorts!! This is when the fun starts - as Eddie Nugent takes centre stage, with his mad mugging and eye rolling, he is a riot!! Sure, he'd love the job but he decides to offer it to young Gil (Douglas Fairbanks Jnr.) a decent chap who is down on his luck job wise!!Wouldn't you know it, it is love at first sight for Ann and Gil and after a farcical bit containing lost pants and hiding in closets, helped immeasurably by Daphne Pollard's resourceful maid - everyone heads to the Circus Café. Ann has now engaged the services of one of the other escorts, Lin, who is big on unscrupulousness but small on niceness. She is hoping to meet up with Gil because she found the tickets in his pants - the only problem is, they weren't Gil's. After a pretty bizarre circus/cabaret dance routine along comes third billed Louise Fazenda as straight laced Aunt Sarah and most of the rest of the movie consists of that old faithful "drunk routine"!! You know the one, where two maiden aunts of the "lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine" variety proceed to get well and truly plastered and claim that they can do the dance better than the two professionals out on the dance floor!!The film really opens out at the club which has a very similar look to some of the sets from "Gold Diggers of Broadway" but the film betrays it's stagey, early talkie origins when the whole cast gathers to pair off at the finale!!

Based on a successful play and moderately pre-Code, this look at 1930 Flaming Youth has Loretta Young as a not-that-interesting heiress and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., looking younger than I've ever seen him, as the nice boy forced to pose as a gigolo by his roistering buddies. There's some amusing pre-Code clucking about overnight guests of the opposite gender, and a lot of footage given over to Louise Fazenda, as a too-prim aunt unwittingly given some liquor and turning into a loose woman; this was the era when alcohol was still automatically hilarious. Warners peddles its own contemporary hit songs in the background ("Am I Blue?", "Painting the Clouds With Sunshine") and there's some clunky choreography in the nightclub sequence, but the focus is mostly on Loretta and Doug, who are quite charming together. His lack of experience shows, but he's convincingly a young man in love, and what young man could wish for a lovelier conquest than Loretta. An undemanding time capsule, with sufficient spirit.

I was really looking forward to this one. Ted Wilde directed my all-time favorite Harold Lloyd picture, Speedy (1928), and another of my top five Lloyd bests, namely The Kid Brother (1927). So I've always been curious about the other three features he directed before his early death in late 1929, namely Babe Comes Home (1927) – Babe Ruth that is, of course – Clancy in Wall Street (1930) and Loose Ankles. Now Loose Ankles proved a little disappointing for me first time around, but, oddly, it improved a lot on a second viewing. I particularly enjoyed young Loretta Young's performance on both occasions, but I thought young Doug Fairbanks' more subtle playing improved no end on my second view. Interestingly, Loretta had acted with young Fairbanks in a Clayton's murder thriller – the murder you have when you don't have a murder – The Careless Age (1929) in which young Doug was the star and Loretta's role of little importance (even though she was billed fifth). Getting back to Loose Ankles, Otis Harlan's stagey over-acting seemed even more superficial on a second viewing. And the same goes for Louise Fazenda. Although obviously filmed on a tight "A" budget, nevertheless the movie's attractive costumes and bright photography were both impressive. Available on an excellent Warner Archive DVD.

... but overall it was a delightful little precode with Loretta Young seeming much more mature than her 17 years would have you expect. The film opens with a close up of Loretta's ankle swaying to the beat of the title song "Loose Ankles" her foot is wearing only an ankle bracelet as a man's hand caresses her leg and foot. The camera pans back and we see that the man is just a pedicurist surveying his work. That's the fun about precode. Nothing has to happen. By today's standards nothing really does. It's the possibilities and the implications.The back story here is that Grandma Berry has just died and her already wealthy relatives are drooling for more on this, the day of the reading of her will. Ann Harper Berry (Loretta Young) turns out to be the recipient of the lion's share of the estate, but she must marry and also bring no scandal - as in nothing in the newspapers - to the Berry name in order to fully inherit. To incentivize the rest of the family, they cannot inherit their portion of the estate until Ann marries. Ann rebels against the entire set-up and puts out an ad for a "young unscrupulous man" to compromise her and cause a newspaper-worthy scandal so she and her greedy family will be barred from the inheritance. Gil Hayden (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) is the man who applies for the job at the cajoling of his male escort roommates who are trying to get him back into the workforce, and Ann is under constant watch by the rest of the family to make sure she causes no scandal. The scene in her bedroom as an inexperienced Ann tries to figure out the actual mechanics of creating a scandal with Gil with the help and advice of her obviously quite experienced maid is worth the price of admission. This film runs 69 minutes and probably would have been better paced if it had been about 15 minutes shorter. It features a nightclub scene that drags on way too long with not much going on during a large portion of that time. Louise Fazenda is a hoot as one of Ann's aunts, but it is odd that Warner Brothers had her dressed up as a bit of a vixen the year before in "On With the Show" and here she is playing a woman in her 50's - she was only 35 at the time. It's obvious they have her wearing some kind of body suit to make her look much heavier and older than she is.The dancing act in the nightclub - "The Circus Cafe" - is unique among nightclubs with lots of toe dancers and clowns doing acrobatics. It's not every day that you see circus themed entertainment in a Prohibition era speak easy, and quite frankly it was very reminiscent of the final scene in "Gold Diggers of Broadway".If this one was a little faster paced I'd give it an eight, but as it is I give it an entertaining seven as it makes the excellent point that people are neither as wild or as tame as they might seem on the surface or as they imagine themselves to be.