Alias Mary Dow (1935) review: A deliciously messy 1930s melodrama

If you love old-school melodramas where people make incredibly bad life decisions in the first ten minutes, Alias Mary Dow is absolutely worth your afternoon. It's a quick, weirdly emotional B-movie that anyone who loves old Hollywood family secrets will eat right up. But if you need logic or plots that make actual sense, you should probably steer clear of this one. 🚕

The setup is just wild. This poor rich mother is basically on her deathbed because she can't get over her daughter being kidnapped nearly two decades ago.

So what does the desperate husband do? He goes to a sketchy dance hall and hires a "taxi dancer" named Sally to play his missing kid.

Honestly, Sally Eilers is the main reason to watch this. She has this great, tired look in her eyes that makes you believe she'd actually agree to this bizarre gig just for a warm bed and some decent food.

There is this one scene early on where she's trying on the missing girl's old childhood clothes. It's supposed to be heartwarming, but it actually feels kind of creepy and ghost-like. 😳

Ray Milland shows up too, looking incredibly young and slicked-back. He plays a wealthy suitor, but he honestly doesn't have much to do except look handsome in a tuxedo.

It reminds me a bit of how they handled family drama in A Girl of the Limberlost, but with way more city grit and blackmail.

Speaking of blackmail, things get messy when Sally's old, sleazy associates from the dance hall find out where she's living now.

There is this one guy who shows up and just sneers his way through every scene. His mustache deserves its own acting credit, honestly.

The movie is only about an hour long, so everything happens at breakneck speed. One minute she's crying over a piano, the next she's getting threatened by gangsters.

I love how the movie doesn't even try to explain the legalities of any of this. Like, surely somebody would of noticed the kid doesn't look like her baby pictures?

But the mother, played by Katherine Alexander, is so deep in denial she just accepts it instantly. Her performance is super theatrical, almost like she is still acting in a silent film.

It is a stark contrast to Eilers, who feels much more modern and natural.

Some of the camera work is surprisingly nice though. There is a shot through a rainy window that looked way too good for a movie that was probably shot in six days.

If you liked the moody, crime-adjacent vibes of Shadow of the Law, you will find some of that same cheap, fast-paced charm here.

The ending is incredibly rushed, though. It feels like they realized they only had three minutes of film left in the camera and had to wrap up a massive kidnapping fraud plot.

But hey, that is the beauty of these mid-30s quickies. They don't linger.

It is not a masterpiece, but it is a hell of a lot of fun if you like your drama fast and slightly ridiculous.