At one point in Escort Girl, Arthur Housman, a professional screen drunk, plunks his coin into an odd looking jukebox - the thing has a screen like a TV, and as the camera pans in to the screen it reveals a striptease act. The contraption in question is a Panoram, a 1940s era video jukebox. Bars had these things loaded up with short film clips called "soundies," and patrons could watch their favorite song on the screen, interspersed with burlesque and cheesecake scenes. Aside from preserving a 1941 strip show for posterity, this sequence also gives a rare screen nod to a relic of pop cultural technology now largely forgotten.

Housman had been a dapper actor in the silent days, who weathered the rocky transition to talkies by specializing in playing drunks-luckily not much of a stretch for the hard-partying thespian. He is one of three notable silent screen figures in the cast.

Wheeler Oakman had previously played pimps in such Depression-era sexploitation fare as Slaves in Bondage (1937) and Gambling with Souls (1936), and overall came just shy of 300 roles over a career that spanned from 1912 to 1948. He played opposite Mabel Normand in her 1918 comedy Mickey, and against Jackie Coogan in 1921's Peck's Bad Boy. The arrival of sound in movies found Oakman turning mostly to gangster and tough guy roles, including Texas Cyclone (1932) with John Wayne.

The most illustrious member of the cast, though, was Betty Compson, an outsize personality and inspirational figure. She started as a violinist in a Utah theater, still named Eleanor Luicime Compson. In 1916 she changed her name and entered the world of silent film, working with some of the greats of silent slapstick. She worked for comedy producer Al Christie, then Famous Players-Lasky, and starred with Raymond Griffith in his comedy feature Paths to Paradise (1925). By 1920, she was running her own company, producing her own starring vehicles, making her one of the few meaningfully powerful females in 1920s Hollywood. In 1924, she signed with a British company and found herself on the set of Woman to Woman, co-written by none other than Alfred Hitchcock! She earned an Oscar® nomination and racked up more credits before deciding in 1948 to switch careers completely, leaving the screen to support her (third) husband.

In describing the quintessential Betty Compson role, the actress could just as well have been speaking about her performance in 1941's Escort Girl in this 1928 interview: "My wickedness has kept me going. I wouldn't have lasted more than five years, possibly not that long, as an ingénue. Yet you cannot call my girl a stereotyped vamp. She has a business, a racket of some sort, whereas the vamp's only occupation consists of breaking up homes. My girl, unless moved by jealousy, doesn't stoop to such petty tricks. She never does dirty work just to be mean. She has no yellow streaks. Often she is a victim of circumstances. She is morally bad through love, or she is placed among crooks and knows no better life."

by David Kalat

Sources:
Tim Lussier, The Incomparable Compson, www.silentsaregolden.com