A dry, tired voice and the look of a woman who has heard it all before. Minna Gombell spent two decades in Hollywood supporting parts as the friend, the wife or the nurse who knew better, and in Bad Girl she is the one to watch.
Fi1m perspective
Edna Driggs walks into a scene in Bad Girl (1931) and the scene gets better. Gombell plays her with a flat, worn-down delivery, every line coming out as if she has said it before to somebody who did not listen either. Sally Eilers, as the heroine, is asked to be hurt by other people for most of the film. Gombell is asked to be unimpressed by them, and unimpressed is far more fun to watch. We caught ourselves waiting for her to come back, which is not what a best-friend part is supposed to make you do.
She came to films late and knowing her trade. She had been on stage since 1912, in stock companies and then on Broadway through the 1920s under the name Winifred Lee, and she arrived at Fox in 1931, briefly credited as Nancy Gardner, at an age when most contract players were being let go. Roughly fifty pictures followed through the 1940s, with a last screen appearance in 1951. The parts tell you the type: Mimi Wynant in The Thin Man (1934), Nellie Chase in Make Way for Tomorrow (1937), Mrs Hardy in Block-Heads (1938), a hard-faced nurse in The Snake Pit (1948). Street-wise, tough-talking, usually blonde, usually third or fourth on the card.
What she did well is the thing that gets an actor employed and forgotten in the same breath. She was quick, she knew where the laugh was in an ensemble, and she could let a little warmth show under the wisecrack without slowing the scene down to do it. Frank Borzage, who directed Bad Girl, used her three times, and Ray Enright four, which suggests directors knew what they were getting. The limit is the one that goes with the job: the studios used her as seasoning and never handed her the plate. Her reputation, such as it is, amounts to a general agreement that she was underrated, and nobody seems to have written a bad word about her, which is what happens when you are good in parts that do not get reviewed.
We have published on only one of her films, so we will not pretend to a verdict on the other forty-nine. But watch Bad Girl for the courtship, as we suggested, and then notice where your eyes go when Eilers starts to cry. They go to the friend at the edge of the frame, waiting for the crying to stop so she can say something useful.
Biography
Minna Gombell was an American stage and film actress. Born Minna Marie Gombel in Baltimore, Maryland, she began her career in stock theatre and on Broadway in the 1910s and 1920s, appearing under the name Winifred Lee and in productions including Madam President (1913) and Mr Pitt (1923).
She made her film debut in Doctors' Wives (1931) and went on to appear in around fifty Hollywood films, often in supporting roles. Notable credits include Bad Girl (1931), The Thin Man (1934), Block-Heads (1938), High Sierra (1941) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). Gombell died in Santa Monica, California, on 14 April 1973.
