kidboots ....if you and your kind are the decent ones"!!! This was one of the "Stanwyck Showdowns" that were becoming an essential part of her films. She had a few in this pot boiler but boy was she put through the wringer. If she only realised it, her earliest scene in the mining camp was going to be the happiest in the movie but just before her father dies (in a mining explosion) he tells her to get out of this town and make something of herself by any means available. First step up the ladder is her aunt and uncle's diner - her uncle is one of those types frequently seen in Bab's movies - the sanctimonious male, quick to berate her for being cheap and vulgar but equally quick to ogle her as well!! Showdown no. 1 - "your ideas could use some fresh air"!! But Kitty (that's Babs) needs all her artillery for the big one - the smother mother!! And Clara Blandick gives the role all she has - you know, the type who feign heart attacks when things aren't going their way!! Regis Toomey plays David, the bookish mother's boy who develops a backbone almost at the last minute. He played his part a bit too well - he just lacked the charisma to pull him out of the also ran actors!!They are all set to marry when Mrs. Livingstone has one of her turns, convinces David to accompany her to Europe and for the icing on the cake has Kitty thrown into a reformatory on a trumped up morals charge. Years pass and Kitty, with her aunt in tow (for all Zasu Pitt's billing she doesn't have much to do) is now the toast of Broadway and it is really nice to see Barbara in a revealing pre-code showgirl outfit and seeing that she was a showgirl before movies came along, it would have been nice to see her dance a few steps but oh well!!David looks her up, having heard a watered down version of what happened from his dear mother and is eager to start again!! Kitty can't believe it - nor can the audience, Toomey just sounds as though he has more pluck than the part requires - David Manners was really needed here!! Once again Kitty is talked around and once again Mrs. Livingstone comes gunning (literally!!) What will happen - who doesn't know!!!When Warners Bros. agreed, in 1932, to pay Barbara Stanwyck $50,000 a picture due to her increased popularity at the box office she asked Columbia to match it but Harry Cohn refused. When he finally did, her next two films weren't worth the effort. "Forbidden" was an overlong soggy soap opera and "Shopworn" was a trite programmer whose plot would not have been out of place under the Mayfair of Majestic banner.

audiemurph TCM recently featured Barbara Stanwyck as their star of the month, giving them an opportunity to show a good number of the numerous films she pumped out very early in her career with Warner Brothers and Columbia. It is fascinating to watch several movies with the same star immediately one after another, because this way you get to determine how good an actor really is: do they become tiresome, or do they have staying power?Barbara Stanwyck was the real thing. Thanks to her understated skills, I found myself appreciating her more and more, the more films of hers I watched. By herself she could pull even the weakest script into something worth watching. "Shopworn", a typical quicky, was one of the best from those early days. Her range of talent was immense, playing, within this one film, a poverty-stricken waif and a successful Broadway star, playing happy and sad, incensed and appreciative, kindly and outraged, always with a dignity and slight detachment that are wondrous to watch. Again, it is sometimes only by watching multiple films of hers in succession to these nuances start to really make themselves known.This is a strong film, with a very good cast. Regis Toomey is very likable as Stanwyck's love interest, and Clara Blandick and Oscar Apfel, as Toomey's mother and her consort, are deliciously manipulative and evil. Zasu Pitts adds a little mild comedy to the proceedings, providing a nice contrast.Look for some very brave and quite interesting camera angles and panning sequences; one particularly good shot was taken of Stanwyck reaching under her bed for a suitcase - the camera is at floor level, shooting the scene from under the bed! Very unique and perhaps a little experimental for the time.I highly recommend this fast-paced little film; and highly recommend seeking out early Barbara Stanwyck gems like this!

st-shot Working class heroine Barbara Stanwyck is tough as nails as she spits in "decent society's" face rather than buckle to bribe or threat as a waitress in an other side of the tracks romance with a med student in Shopworn.The son of an overly possessive mother, David Livingston falls hard for tip chaser Kitty Lane at a local greasy spoon. Clinging mom is not about to let this happen and she wastes no time in exercising her considerable pull in getting a big time judge relative to send her to the slammer for 90 days on morals charges. Upon release Kitty goes on stage and makes it big. Six years later she runs into David, now a doctor again along with his mother still intent on keeping a firm grip on him.There is some very ugly abuse of power that takes place in Shopworn as the son obsessed mother badgers the judge to do her corrupt bidding in getting Kitty out of the way. There are also swipes at law enforcement, the penal system and polite society, with Kitty being an ideal lynch pin for such actions. As Kitty, Stanwyck does an excellent job of vociferously exposing hypocrisy, especially in the scene where she is bribed and threatened as she throws the money in the judge's face and berates the police. The ending is contrived however and the sickeningly sweet finale is hard to swallow. Babs is too good for the lot of 'em. Mom and son (a wincingly woosie performance by Regis Toomey) don't deserve to be in the same room as her.

mukava991 This fast-moving film features Barbara Stanwyck in her early period when she usually played a tough, lower-class dame with a hot temper who stands fast to her principles. This character is virtually identical to the ones she played in NIGHT NURSE, LADIES THEY TALK ABOUT and BABY FACE. Here she is a waitress who falls in love with a rather bland medical student (Regis Toomey) whose nasty and snobbish mother (an excellent and truly scary Clara Blandick) schemes with a corrupt judge (Oscar Apfel) to separate the young lovers by sending Stanwyck to one of those reformatories that pop up so frequently in films of this era. The ever-fluttery Zasu Pitts is on hand as Stanwyck's aunt - what a comedown from GREED.In one scene Stanwyck, trying to memorize the dictionary as a means of self improvement, shows her suitor a list of words beginning with the letter "e" which she has written down. He reads them aloud, stops after "ejaculate," looks at her with some curiosity and says that even he would never use such a word. That moment immediately pigeonholes this film as pre-Code. The scene continues artfully with one-word exchanges all starting with the letter "e." Later, while Lucien Littlefeld is conversing about the Stanwyck-Toomey relationship with Oscar Apfel, a couple of lines are very clumsily overdubbed by other actors. Makes one wonder what was actually said. Late in the film there is an imaginative banquet scene in which the camera carefully pans the length of a dining table highlighting the place cards (each a little paper doll inscribed with a guest's name) while the corresponding but off-screen voices converse on the soundtrack; then the camera moves back to reveal the whole table and all of the people we have been listening to. The yard between the diner where Stanwyck works and the house where the owners live is well depicted: tattered laundry hanging on a line, overflowing garbage cans and kittens playing. The screenwriter Robert Riskin contributes some snappy and witty dialogue. He worked quite frequently with Frank Capra, penning the scripts for IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, MEET JOHN DOE, LADY FOR A DAY and MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN, among others. All of these films address the issue of "decency" – what truly constitutes decency? Saying you are decent or actually being decent?