Why Hot Saturday (1932) is the ultimate pre-code gossip party

If you have 73 minutes to spare tonight, you should absolutely put on Hot Saturday. It is the perfect watch for anyone who loves messy gossip, cheap gin, and pre-code Hollywood before the censors ruined all the fun. 🍸

But if you need logical character decisions or a tidy, morally upright ending, you are going to absolutely hate this.

The plot is basically high school drama but with adults who can legally drink. Nancy Carroll plays Ruth, a sweet bank clerk in a dusty town who just wants to have a little fun on her day off.

She ends up at the lake house of Romer Sheffield, played by a ridiculously young Cary Grant. He is wearing a silk scarf and oozing so much charm it is actually kind of hilarious.

Naturally, some jealous losers see her leave his place in the morning and immediately tell the whole town she is "ruined." The speed at which this rumor travels is faster than modern Twitter, I swear.

What makes this movie work is how mean everyone is. It reminded me a bit of the frantic energy in The Whirlwind of Youth, where young people just make terrible choices because they are bored.

Randolph Scott plays the "good guy" boyfriend, Bill, but honestly? He is kind of a drag.

He gets so angry about the rumors that you just want Ruth to run back to Cary Grant's mansion. Bill has this stiff, angry way of standing that makes him look like a wooden post.

There is a great, super awkward scene at a dinner table where Ruth's mother is just staring at her, waiting for her to confess. The silence in that room is so heavy you can almost hear the soup cooling down.

And then there is Grady Sutton. He plays this annoying, nerdy guy who starts the rumor, and he has this face you just want to slap with a wet fish. 🐟

Odd things I wrote down in my notebook:

• Cary Grant's character keeps a literal bar in the back of his car. That is peak 1932.
• The way Nancy Carroll rolls her eyes when men talk to her is a work of art.
• The ending is wild. It does not punish her for "sinning"—it basically says, "Well, if they think I am bad, I might as well go be rich and bad."

The movie definitely rushes through the third act. It feels like they realized they only had ten minutes of film left and just threw everyone into a room to yell at each other.

But man, it is a blast. It is short, dirty, and does not care about being respectable.