Jandy Hardesty’s review published on Letterboxd:
I was really hoping to like this film - I mean, Frank Capra/Barbara Stanwyck Pre-Code? What's not to like? Well, the story has Stanwyck as a call girl who gets picked up by a painter to be his model. She inexplicably falls for him even though he treats her like crap, until he finally does a complete 180 and decides he loves her too and is willing to give up his society family to marry her. It's completely unbelievable, and even worse, Stanwyck's character basically loses any shred of self-esteem she might've otherwise had in subservience to this jerkwad. Part of the problem is really stiff acting on the part of the guy playing the painter, but most of it is the writing. It's pretty clear Capra wasn't working with Riskin yet.
All that said, there are still glimmers of enjoyment in the film. Even though I dislike most of the script choices for Stanwyck's character, she sells it with all she's got, and her couple of big emotional scenes are golden taken out of context (i.e., if you can manage to forget what a worthless guy she's mooning over, they're great). The best friend played by Marie Prevost is a ton of fun, too. And Capra has already figured out how to make Stanwyck shine visually in their first collaboration - the pinlights in her eyes are perfection, and there's a backlit scene of her undressing that, well...let's just say this is why Pre-Codes exist.
How it entered my Flickchart:
Ladies of Leisure < The Parking Lot Movie
Ladies of Leisure < Bell Book and Candle
Ladies of Leisure > The Kissing Bandit
Ladies of Leisure > Abbott & Costello Meet the Killer Boris Karloff
Ladies of Leisure > Broom-Stick Bunny
Ladies of Leisure > Hellcats of the Navy
Ladies of Leisure > Conspiracy Theory
Ladies of Leisure > The ABCs of Death
Ladies of Leisure < Great Performances: Cats
Ladies of Leisure < It Could Happen to You
Ladies of Leisure < A Perfect Murder
Ladies of Leisure < Four Mothers
Final ranking of #2488 / 3300