Baby Face

Baby Face is a 1933 American drama about Lily Powers, a young woman from a grim industrial town in the southern United States who has been used by men since adolescence while working in her father's bar. When a customer urges her to turn the tables and exploit men rather than be exploited by them, she takes the advice to heart. After her father dies, she moves to New York City and talks her way into a job at a large bank, where she works her way up the corporate ladder by seducing the men above her and discarding them once they are no longer useful.

Directed by Alfred E. Green, the film was released in July 1933 by Warner Bros. Pictures and runs 76 minutes. It sits in the middle of the features Green directed across the period documented here, between It's Tough to Be Famous (1932) and Sweet Music (1935). The screenplay is by Kathryn Scola and Gene Markey, with William LeBaron and Raymond Griffith producing. Barbara Stanwyck plays Lily Powers, with George Brent, Donald Cook, Alphonse Ethier, Henry Kolker and Margaret Lindsay among the principal cast; 43 performers are credited in all.

The film's reputation rests on its pre-Code frankness about sex and social ambition. On IMDb it holds 7.5 out of 10 from around 9,100 votes, and on TMDB 7.2 out of 10 from 162 votes, indicating a solid standing with viewers nearly a century after release.