She Had to Say Yes (1933)

She Had to Say Yes is a 1933 American Pre-Code film directed by George Amy and Busby Berkley. It was Berkley's directorial debut. Loretta Young stars as a secretary who receives unwanted sexual advances when she is sent out on dates with her employer's clients. The film was promoted with the teaser, "We apologize to the men for the many frank revelations made by this picture, but we just had to show it as it was filmed. The true story of the working girl."

According to pre-Code scholar Thomas Doherty, it was part of a series of movies that drew inspiration from the "real-life compromises working girls made to get and retain employment" during the Great Depression. A repeated theme in women's pictures in the Depression was the "threat of sexual violation" and the "hard necessity of risking virtue to keep a paycheck". Women of that time were often subjected to sexual harassment, and had to endure indignities in a highly competitive job market. The film received a negative review in The New York Times when it was released.

Synopsis

Sol Glass (Ferdinand Gottschalk) owns a clothing manufacturing company struggling to survive in the midst of the Great Depression. Like his competitors, Glass employs "customer girls" to entertain out-of-town buyers. However, his clients have become tired of his hard-bitten "gold diggers" and have started taking their business elsewhere. Tommy Nelson (Regis Toomey), one of his salesmen, suggests that they use their stenographers instead. Glass decides to give it a try.

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