Why Girls Leave Home
US (1945): Drama
Diana Leslie (Pamela Blake) is rescued from drowning by reporter Chris Williams (Sheldon Leonard). The latter believes it is an attempted murder rather than the suicide indicated by a note, since the girl had made an appointment to meet him at the dock. The story is told in flashback as Williams visits the people who know Diana. The parents (Virginia Brissac and Joel Friedkin) feel responsible as, against their wishes, Diana had accompanied musician Jimmie Lobo (Elisha Cook Jr.) to the Kitten Club and had gotten a job as a singer but they had not seen her following an argument when she came home that ended with her being slapped by her brother Ted (Fred Kohler Jr.). One of the Kitten Club showgirls, Flo (Constance Worth) tells Chris that when Diane came to the club for an audition, she incurred the wrath of the heavy-drinking featured singer Marianne Mason (Claudia Drake) and club owner Steve Raymond (Paul Gulifoye) delegated her to the hostess ranks of girls whose job was to steer customers to the illegal gambling. This led to a couple of suckers, Wilbur Harris (Walter Baldwin) and Ed Blake (Robert Emmett Keane), losing heavily in the crooked game with Harris committing suicide and Blake being killed in the the ensuing melee. (Les Adams, IMDb)
Is this a lost film? (31 July 2002)
It's extremely rare that a film from the forties could be lost, but it seems the case with this one. The Producers Releasing Corporation was a very small distribution company and most of its product seems to exist only as deteriorating prints owned by television studios. Les Adams' summary on this site was so extensive I contacted him but this detailed summary is all from memory of a viewing many many years ago. It does not exist in any archive holdings and seems to have disappeared. It was nominated for two Oscars in 1945 - Musical Scoring and Song. (Arne Andersen, IMDb)
2 nominations
· Music Scoring Awards (Scoring of a Musical Picture) 1945: Walter Greene
· Music Awards - Best Song 1945: Jay Livingston: Music; Ray Evans: Lyric - "The Cat and the Canary"