Watch Operator 13 For Free

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

You can get the plot details somewhere else, bub. Marion Davies plays the part of Gail Loveless, who becomes a Union spy, and once in Confederate territory disguises herself as a black slave. She goes undercover as a slave, performing the services of a maid, doing laundry. She somehow passes for a biracial woman. To disguise herself she wears a lightly toned blackface. She looks like a woman with a spray tan. Her blackface makeup never wears off—Never! —Not when she washes clothes, not when she is splashed by water as a horse stomps in a creek, not when tears roll down her cheeks. The only thing worse than Marion Davies's blackface is her black-voice. It makes you cringe. I had a strong urge to turn the TV off, but I watched on.There are many black actors in the film and the Mills Brothers perform the best musical acts, although, the songs they sing have racist lyrics. During Jungle Fever, the black actors, who portray the black folks in the town, look saucer-eyed, tranced and spooked, as they dance and jive to the music—it will make you queasy. And like many movies of that time, the black characters are happy and content (what could be wrong?), laughing and smiling, whether they are singing, dancing, cooking, serving, doing laundry, or helping a bride with her wedding dress. Don't they know there's a war on? The North won the Civil War and Hollywood made movies like Operator 13, which makes you wonder about what kinds of movies they'd have made if the South had won.

SPOILERS -- Annoying. Some annoying things in this film... I'm sure some of that is the black-face, the white person imitating a black person in such a racial, stereo-typed manner. But it's a little insulting that just everyone buys into the silly make-up and silly accent on Marion Davies, as she plays Lucille, the black maid, who is really a spy. As someone else pointed out, they break into song every couple of minutes. ( "Sleepy Head" by the Mills Brothers is actually quite well done.) The plot here is secondary... every now and then they stop singing to pretend the the Civil War is going on around them. Dramatic scene where "the maid" has to give evidence against a fellow spy, her friend, in the name of duty. Gary Cooper is in here, ostensibly co-starring. Some other fun cameos in here -- Sidney Toler, Hattie McDaniel, Sterling Holloway, Curly Howard. There's a skeleton of a plot in here, but I wish they had used more plot and less music. Davies, singing "Once in a LifeTime" as she swings, is just ridiculous. She did successfully jump from silents to talkies, but only made a couple more films after Operator 13. Much debate over whether the Hearst connection actually helped or hindered Davies' career. This one is okay. I was pretty surprised at the high rating, but it is only the result of 1000 votes so far. Gets better as it goes along. Directed by Richard Boleslawski, who died young a couple years after making this.

We all pretty much know that Marion Davies will always be known as the "kept" girl of William Randolph Hearst but for a fleeting time she had a basic acting career...and not even Hearst's oodles of money could have made her big.To be fair, Davies was actually a fairly good comedienne. Try Cain and Mabel and see. In this she gets to show off both sides...Comedy and Drama...but in the end this film is just pretty ordinary.The plot itself is a pretty interesting premise. The northern Spy network during the Civil War decides to try out a young actress as a spy in a Southern area. She decides to dress in black face and play a light skinned black slave girl. Her partner in this caper is a seasoned actress who has done a few jobs for the network and they both are sent to the South to steal enemy troop placements. They succeed but Davies falls in love with a Southern Spy master played by Gary Cooper.Your not gonna be real surprised by anything in this old and dated film but the real treat is seeing the Mills Brothers sing. They have a couple of amazing numbers in this. Seeing Marion Davies playing black-face isn't too huge a deal but she does her best. Gary Cooper is as wooden as he always was.Watching this you'll see why Ms. Davies decided to skip acting altogether and let her sugar daddy take care of her. Knowing what we all know now, it was a wise move.

I'll give this move one thing-- it's pungent enough to cease being background noise and have me watch it. Other reviewers have explained the not-at-all intricate plot so I won't rehash it here (I'm a spy for the union, but I've fallen in love with a rebel!) but suffice to say, it's 80 minutes of disposable dialog and wooden acting interspersed with songs about "jungle fever" and "darkies in de Congo." Oh, and Marion Davies' terrible blackface disguise and scenery-chewing acting.This is a fine example of the time when movies were churned out like stamped sheet metal. It has worth if one considers using it as a part of a larger effort to explore historical depictions of race in American cinema, but otherwise it's a waste of time-- and an offensive one at that.