Pre-Code Hollywood

A Broadway agent and later columnist named Paul Jawitz said that Libby's voice, quote, "Had the strange quality of a bass violin string stretched across the mouth of a French horn." And yet, with the success of Merry-Go-Round, Libby was signed to her first recording contract by Brunswick Records.

In 1928, she was cast in a show called Rainbow, set amidst the gold rush, with future pre-Code Cinema second banana Charles Ruggles.

Rainbow included a song that Vincent Youmans and Oscar Hammerstein had written specifically for Libby to sing called I Want a Man.

Critics were impressed by Libby's voice, putting her in a lineage of white blues singers, beginning with Ruth Etting and extending to Helen Morgan and Helen Kane.

in that manner.

Um, that definitely felt like pre-Code, if you know what I mean.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You have to have a happy ending for these characters, even though he's a thief.

Yeah, the pre-Code.

Yes, true.

But the Code-

... of gangster, but that's where you're get- They also were talking about Robert Montgomery, W.C. Fields, and they couldn't get any of them.

They said, "No, Columbia, you can have Warren William." And for people who don't know who Warren William is, War- Warren William was, had the nickname of King of the Pre-Codes, uh, because he really typified this kind of cunning, kind of amoral character that was very prevalent in early sound.

And one critic said, "No other actor embodied the classy mix of charm and sleaze like Warren William." And it's absolutely true.

Warren William, uh, to a T, he's this character.