Working Girls

Dorothy Arzner offers a snappily entertaining, socially perceptive look at female solidarity in this Depression-era tale of young women striving to succeed in their careers and in love. Newly arrived in Manhattan from Indiana, small-town sisters Mae and June Thorpe (Dorothy Hall and Judith Wood) take up residence in an all-women’s boardinghouse, then set about searching for jobs—which they find, along with a host of romantic complications. As directed by feminist trailblazer Arzner, WORKING GIRLS crackles with pre-Code innuendo and displays a nuanced understanding of the interplay between gender and economic mobility in 1930s America.