"The Lady Refuses" is in itself a good title. It indicates a woman has taken control of her own life and is not going to be pressured into anything. So often in the prewar movies we find that women never refuse, especially when it comes to marriage. I'd put "The Lady Refuses" on par with "Millie" for movies of that era starring an independent woman.
Our Lady in this flick is June (Betty Compson) and it's not marriage that she refuses. She was on the streets of England, on a rainy night, trying to get away from police when Sir Gerald Courtney (Gilbert Emery) opened his door for her. The indications were that she was a prostitute, but that word would never be uttered on screen in the 30's. They just use every silly innuendo to hint at a woman being a prostitute. Words like sex, or even euphimisms for sex, were never spoken, so sex for money was definitely out of the question.
So how could they indicate her profession? She's a common girl (not rich), walking on the rainy streets late at night, unescorted, and the police recognized her as a "new girl." The police, of course, would never say why they were after her, they just stammered with statements like "we thought she was a..." and the like.
Then you have June who told Gerald, "You see, this is my first night at that sort of thing... I was broke and I decided it was either that or the bridge."
Gerald followed with, "And just tonight you decided to put yourself...uhh... let us say... on the market?"
"I'm afraid I have," was June's reply.
June was a bit of a godsend for Sir Gerald. At the time his son was being seduced by an unscrupulous woman who was preventing him from fulfilling his goal of becoming an architect. Gerald offered June 1000 pounds ($5000) to woo his son, Russell (John Darrow), away from his current fling, Berthine Waller (Margaret Livingston).
June took the job and was wonderful at it so the expected happened: Russell fell in love with June, but June was in love with Gerald who was also in love with June. What a tangled web we weave. The web got even more entangled when June let Russell know that she was hired to "accompany" him. Russell thought he had something real only to find out that June was a professional. We'd see something similar decades later in the movie "True Romance," but in that movie Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette (the prostitute) fell in love with no secrets.
What's likable about this movie is that June held her own with the two men. She knew what she was and what she wasn't. Gerald, in particular, knew what she was, but she wasn't going to let Gerald bring her down. It was a rather unconventional love story for the times, but I think it was done better than similar love stories done later (I'm looking at you "Pretty Woman" and "True Romance").
