Wow - how beautiful Lila Lee looked, photographed to perfection by Benjamin H. Kline in fetching period costumes and stylistically filmed in slanting shadows. She plays Helen, starry eyed wife of carnival manager Buck Rankin (Jack Holt) whose honeymoon is over before it begins when he is sentenced to 20 years for killing a man in a side show brawl.Jack Holt was Columbia's most bankable male star and by the early 30s seemed to be in every other movie - usually playing in adventurous thrillers but this one was a hearts and flowers tear-jerker that still left room for some action. Desperate for Helen to get on with her life, he forges a letter from the prison governor in which he announces his own death - jumping into the whirlpool of water that no prisoner has ever survived, all the while serving out his sentence.Twenty years after shows him now free and with the help of his buddy (Allan Jenkins) has him going from strength to strength as a racketeer. He is all set to give evidence at a trial of one of his associates when Sandy enters the scene. Sandy is an eager reporter but also Rankin's daughter who recognizes him at once due to his picture always being prominent on her mother's dressing table. Although remarried she has never forgotten her first love!! Jean Arthur is just splendid as Sandy, never cloying or sentimental or full of recriminations for the past - she is just eager to spend as much time as she can with her dad. There is also a young man played by the moody Don Cook who, of course, jumps to the wrong conclusion when he sees them together!!Having started in movies back in 1923, by 1932 Jean Arthur realized she would need to go to Broadway if she wanted to be anything more than just an ingénue. She did and came back to Hollywood with a Columbia contract. As well as going blonde, she had emerged as a better actress and as Sandy she lights up the screen and along with Lila Lee, the real reason "Whirlpool" is such a success!!Very Recommended.

This will be of interest to classic movie fans interested, not only in Jean Arthur, but in seeing the transformation of her career from those fragile Paramount heroines to a few feisty young women in low budget RKO films of varying personalities. This started the most memorable stage of Arthur's film career, playing a series of career girls (usually reporters) who had motivations they didn't always reveal to the men they were using for various reasons. In this case, she's a reporter who goes to interview a powerful businessman (Jack Holt) after seeing his picture in the paper and wanting to find out his true identity. He's involved in criminal activities, having risen to the top of the rackets, and she believes he's an honest businessman. Of course, there's a back story, and that is the old "Enoch Arden" theme of "back from the dead".This starts off with the back story, of Holt's marriage to the pretty Lila Lee, and his subsequent incarceration for manslaughter. Lee is horrified to find out that he supposedly died in a prison escape attempt, but Holt arranged it so she'd be able to go on with her life and not wait for him. Twenty years pass and Lee is now re-married, ironically to the judge who sentenced Holt. He is overjoyed to find out he has a grown daughter and they begin to spend precious time together much to the chagrin of Donald Cook, Arthur's long-time beau. Of course, it's all innocent, but cosy lunches between the two spotted by Cook have him believing otherwise. Holt's enemies find out the truth and threaten to spill the beans. Not wanting to break his wife's heart a second time, Holt makes drastic decisions, bringing his whirlpool of a life full circle.Having seen a few films with Jack Holt over the years, I mainly recalled him from a few film stills which make him look pretty hard, not at all the typical leading man. He makes a crack here in regards to that, telling Arthur that he's not really photogenic. Lee, however, is very photogenic, and when Arthur surprises him with a picture of how his wife looks now, Holt is touched by her beauty. Other than the opening, however, Lee has only a few scenes with Arthur towards the end, the film changing its structure several times as it tells its familiar but well crafted tale. Allen Jenkins offers a lot of amusement as Holt's driver, especially as he re-accounts the traffic tickets he got from various policemen while waiting for Holt to finish his lunch with Arthur.A delightfully obscure film thankfully released on DVD with some other obscure Jean Arthur films I have been searching for over many years, "Whirlpool" is combination carny/crime/prison/parental love/soap opera. Columbia, other than its Grace Moore operettas and of course the Frank Capra films, was lesser known among Hollywood studios, and did turn out some little gems along the way. While this may not be an outstanding entry in their early 30's catalog, it is slightly better than average with some interesting performances, some sparkling dialog of pre-code nature, and a glimpse of the magic Arthur would soon achieve when she took on gangster Edward G. Robinson in that comedy gem "The Whole Town's Talking" and Gary Cooper in the brilliant "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town".

A Roy William Neill's movie, with the exception of Sherlock Holmes series, are hard to find, especially the silent ones, mostly lost, unfortunately. This Columbia Pictures film is rare too. But the scheme is very familiar to me, where a father meets his lost daughter twenty years later, after he was separated from her mother, after he was in jail. This scheme has been seen a couple of times before, all in thirties features. I don't remember the titles. And we did not see such topics anymore a decade later. This scheme seemed to be made only in the thirties. A melodrama mixed up a little with some noir accents.An interesting gem.

I probably never would have bothered with this were I not a big Jean Arthur fan; but even in her oeuvre this is rarely mentioned. That may be because "Whirlpool" isn't *quite* the quintessential Arthur movie (see "Easy Living," "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," "The Devil and Miss Jones," etc.--now!). Still, Jean's in full blossom here, and well on her way to her glory days. Either way, this is a remarkably entertaining little movie, told in a brisk, energetic, entertaining style that seems to have been practically unique in some ways to the Hollywood of the early to mid-30's. Jack Holt stars as an ex-con who is reunited by chance with his daughter (Arthur) after a 20-year stint in prison: He's high up in the underworld, she's a newspaper reporter. The plot machinations come fast and furious, and contrived though they may be, they are only so in the best way--the way Hollywood could pull this kind of thing off in the 30's. Good performances all the way around, but Holt--often looking very much like Brando's Don Corleone in "The Godfather"--and Arthur carry the show. (Another Godfather mention: Donald Cook, who plays Arthur's boyfriend Bob, looks quite a lot like Al Pacino!) Holt, in fact, really carries this picture, bringing to his Buck Rankin/Duke Sheldon a very sympathetic mix of no-nonsense tough guy and heart, and the relationship between him and Arthur is thoroughly convincing. I have to say that the opening credits had me worried: The "whirlpool" seems to be nothing more than water spinning down a sink! But this is mostly the exception: There's even one montage of father and daughter that's remarkably well-done, almost even poetic in its images and editing. Overall, I wouldn't call this a classic, but if you like Jean Arthur or the movies of the 30's in general, this is a better bet than you might have guessed.