THE OFFICE WIFE turns Faith Baldwin's story about an advertising agency into one about a publishing house, complete with a butch lady author named Kate commissioned to write about "the office wife" phenomenon. Is Kate meant to be Baldwin herself? The film practically winks at us.

This 59-minute programmer marks Joan Blondell's first talkie, though she's not the lead - that honor goes to Dorothy Mackaill as Anne, the secretary who becomes indispensable to her married boss in more ways than one. The film is pre-Code as hell, from Blondell's morning bath scene (where she casually discusses workplace sexual harassment as a job hazard) to the surprisingly mature conversation between Fellowes and his wife about their mutual infidelities.

Baldwin's voice comes through in the women characters, who are not victims or vamps, but working professionals navigating a system where personal and professional boundaries barely exist. The wife character could have been a shrew, but she's given dignity. The secretaries aren't just typing machines but have inner lives and agency—even the dowdy one who has fallen in love with Fellowes and faints upon hearing, at the beginning of the film, that he is to be married.

The early sound limitations are obvious - no score, static camera work - but there's a snappy energy that keeps it engaging. That final parallel between two fainting secretaries—Anne swoons when she learns Fellowes is to be divorced—is a delicious bit of melodrama that Baldwin surely approved of.

[Part of the Adapted from American Women research project, documenting Hollywood's adaptations of American women writers 1910-1960. See the full list for more: letterboxd.com/nonmodernist/list/adapted-from-american-women-1910-1962/detail/on/tcm-us/]

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