As it turns out the trivia surrounding Thirteen Women is more interesting than the actual movie. Due to some copious editing, two actresses’ roles were completely removed from the film leaving only 11 women on the screen. The book is apparently more lurid. One character begins the story as a virgin owing to her great beauty scaring all potential suitors off. Later she becomes a lesbian after the wife of her doctor seduces her. She then starves herself to death after being placed in a sanitorium due to her heartache over her lover abandoning her. That character (in a decidedly toned down part) was played by Peg Entwistle who famously killed herself not long after shooting this film, by jumping off of the “H” in the Hollywood sign.
The movie doesn’t live up to that hype. Not many movies could.
Thirteen sorority sisters all write to a psychic who sends them their futures via horoscope in a letter. All of their horoscopes predict doom. Soon after the girls begin dying, many from suicide. Suspicion falls upon the swami (C. Henry Gordon), but he’s secretly being controlled by another woman. I won’t spoil who she is or what her motives are but it hardly matters.
A lot of Pre-Code films are problematic in their depictions of…well just about everybody, and Thirteen Women is no different. The very white Myrna Loy plays a half-English/half-Javanese woman whom the film depicts sympathetically right before giving her mystic oriental powers.
Irene Dunne plays the hero and Ricardo Cortez plays the detective. Naturally, a romance develops between them.
It is a film that I wish had gone a little further in its Pre-Code possibilities. The descriptions of the book make it sound even more problematic than the film, but at least it sounds fun. The film tones it down so much there isn’t much to enjoy.
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