Bed of Roses is another pre-code comedy/drama about moving between classes by director La Cava (see my post of March 12). Constance Bennett (a Miriam Hopkins lookalike) plays Lorry Evans and Pert Kelton (a Mae West soundalike) plays Minnie Brown, two prostitutes just getting out of prison; Minnie picks up her next customer just outside the prison gates. They try to steal money from two "ump-chas" (as Minnie calls them) on a steamboat and Bennett jumps in the river to escape the authorities, where she is picked up by cotton barge owner Dan (Joel McCrae). She steals money from Dan and seeks out the wealthy Stephen Paige in New Orleans, where she impersonates a reporter. interviews Paige (John Halliday), gets him drunk and then blackmails him into putting her up in an apartment, where she lies in a bed covered with fabric roses. Dan finally tracks her down and proposes to her; she leaves Paige but fears that Dan will find out her past and goes to work in a department store, though eventually reconciles with Dan.
All this and much more takes place in a brisk sixty-five minutes, as Lorrie moves from poverty to wealth and eventually to the working class, while Minnie marries one of the chumps they had met on the boat. The witty and sometimes bawdy script is by Wanda Tuchock and the cinematography is by veteran Charles Rosher, who had started photographing films in 1915 and continued for fifty years. Incidentally the crew on Dan's barge are all African-Americans and treated with dignity, as is Mildred Washington as Lorrie's maid. La Cava's film benefits from his lively direction as well as the dialogue he contributed to the script.
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