Imagine getting punched right in the jaw by your
employee. Oh, wow. Yeah, in a private room at
a nightclub and deciding that your best possible
response is to give her a massive promotion.
Right, which in the modern world is just a fast
track to a massive corporate lawsuit. Exactly.
But in 1935, that wasn't an HR nightmare. It
was literally the inciting incident of an actual
feature film. It perfectly captures. this very
specific, incredibly strange era of storytelling,
where absolute shock value just completely overruled
any semblance of human logic. Welcome to the
Deep Dive. Today, we are going on a bit of a
rescue mission into the dusty, chaotic back alleys
of film history. We really are. Because our mission
today is to explore a totally forgotten piece
of media. It's a 1935 American black and white
indie film called $20 a week. Such a great title,
honestly. It is. And we are taking the surviving
documentation of this 80 minute movie, mostly
it's Wikipedia article, and we're just pulling
it apart for you. Because on the surface, you
know, this is just another obscure melodrama
lost to time. Right. But when you actually dig
into the details, it becomes this hilarious,
chaotic time capsule. We're talking about whiplash
-inducing narrative choices and a production
schedule that genuinely defies the laws of physics.
Oh, the timeline is completely wild. And it also
reveals a fascinating mystery about how human
history is actually recorded and how easily it
decays. Which is something we don't think about
enough. No, we really don't. OK, let's unpack
this. because the plot of $20 a week is basically
a master class in absolute chaos. It genuinely
moves at a speed that barely leaves you time
to process what you just watched. So let's dive
into this narrative. Our protagonist is Sally
Blair. Right. She's she's a stenographer and
she works for an insurance agent named Mr. Warner.
And Mr. Warner makes it very clear that he wants
to be, you know, more than just her boss. Classic
1930s setup. Totally. Now, Sally actually has
a date lined up with the new salesman at the
company, a guy named Peter. Okay. But for reasons
that already feel a little shaky, she completely
ditches Peter and accepts a date with her boss
instead. Which immediately establishes Sally
as this really pragmatic, if slightly ruthless,
character for 1935. Yeah, she knows what she's
doing. Exactly. I mean, she is navigating a workplace
dynamic where the boss holds literally all the
cards. So she decides to play the game. Right,
until she violently flips the board over. Literally.
Because Warner takes Sally out to a nightclub.
They end up in this private room and Warner makes
his move. He tries to kiss her. And Sally retaliates
by punching him squarely in the face. A completely
understandable reaction. Absolutely justified.
But the consequence of that punch is where the
script just completely severs its ties with reality.
Yeah, it really goes off the rails here. After
getting clocked in the jaw by his stenographer,
Warner's reaction is to promote her. Makes total
sense. Right. She instantly becomes his personal
secretary. There is no disciplinary action, no
awkward tension, just an immediate bump in pay
and status. It's incredible. And the movie just
keeps barreling forward without looking back.
Later on, they are all attending a wedding. Right.
The pacing is just breathless. Exactly. And Peter,
the salesman she ditched earlier, suddenly corners
Sally and proposes to her. With virtually no
romantic buildup to justify a lifelong commitment,
by the way. None. But before she can even process
the proposal, Peter's mother pulls Sally aside.
She tells Sally to stay away from her son and
accuses her of being a gold digger who is only
after Peter's money. Now, in a traditional story,
this is the part where the protagonist tries
to prove her pure intentions. But Sally just
operates on pure spite. She really does. In Defiance
of the Mother, Sally and Peter just go ahead
and get married anyway. The end. That's the movie.
Roll credits. I mean, it's basically an absurdist
modern day HR training video. You punch the boss,
you get a promotion. I have to ask you... Looking
at the sheer speed and absurdity of this, why
would the writers Rob Eden and L .V. Jefferson
think this makes any narrative sense? Like, is
this supposed to be comedy or drama? Well, what's
fascinating here is how the historical categories
try to label this chaos. Right, because it's
hard to pin down. It is. The records list $20
a week as both a 1930s melodrama and an American
comedy drama. Which feels like a contradiction.
Yeah. But to really understand why this script
got greenlit and why it was structured this way,
we have to look at the psychology of the depression
-era moviegoer. Okay. In 1935, audiences buying
tickets to a low -budget B -movie. were not looking
for deep psychological realism or subtle character
arcs. They just wanted a distraction. They wanted
raw escapism, and they wanted it delivered at
a breakneck pace. And they probably wanted to
see the wealthy boss get exactly what was coming
to him. Precisely. The visual of a working -class
stenographer literally punching her wealthy,
entitled boss in the face was incredibly cathartic
for an audience struggling through the Great
Depression. Oh, I bet people cheered in the theaters.
I'm sure they did. The writers knew that the
punch was the selling point. The logical fallout
of the punch didn't matter. Right. Who cares
about HR protocols in 1935? Exactly. They needed
a reason to keep Sally in the boss's orbit for
the rest of the film. But they also needed her
to have more power. So they simply invent the
most convenient outcome possible. The promotion.
It's basically narrative duct tape. Huh, exactly.
You just slap it on the plot hole and keep the
machine moving. You don't have time to write
a nuanced three -episode arc about workplace
negotiations. You just write, punch, promotion,
next scene. Narrative duct tape is the perfect
way to describe it. Yeah. And they apply that
exact same adhesive to the romance. Oh, right.
The spite marriage. Yeah. They need a dramatic
climax for the third act. They have a wedding
set available. So Peter proposes, the mother
objects, and boom, we get a spite marriage. Every
single emotional beat is compressed into its
most extreme, explosive version. Because they're
racing against the clock. Exactly. And that race
against the clock on the page brings us to the
actual physical reality of making this movie.
Because here's where it gets really interesting.
Oh, boy. The production timeline. Yes. If you
think the plot of $20 a week moves fast, the
real -life production timeline is just an absolute
logistical impossibility. It's hard to even wrap
your head around. Let's look at the timeline.
It's November 1934. An independent producer named
Burton L. King buys the rights to Rob Eden's
story. His plan is to make the film independently
and distribute it through an entity called the
Ajax Distributing Corporation. And he announces
to the press that this will be the first of four
planned pictures. Which is a pretty standard
ambitious goal for an indie producer trying to
establish a foothold. Sure, but the ink is barely
dry before everything shifts. Later that exact
same month, still November 1934, King seemingly
pivots. He forms his own distinct production
house called Four Leaf Clover Productions. OK,
so a rebrand already. Right. And under this new
banner, he manages to sign and establish actress
Pauline Stark to star in the film. A great get
for an indie film. Huge. Then we cross into December
1934. Suddenly, the production company's name
has changed again. It is no longer Four Leaf
Clover. Now it is Ajax Pictures. Another pivot.
and those four planned films. That number vanishes.
Bertinelle King announces that $20 a week is
actually the first of 10 films planned by his
company. A staggering escalation of promises.
Staggering doesn't even begin to cover it. But
the wildest part is that by the end of December
1934, filming on $20 a week is completely finished.
Wow. And the movie officially hits theaters on
February 2nd, 1935. Now I have to push back on
this entire operation. Please do. Because I am
trying to understand the basic cash flow and
logistics here. Wait, they went from buying this
story to a finished film in under two months.
Yes. And changed their company name mid -stride
and suddenly promised 10 movies instead of four.
Wasn't this destined to be a complete mess? Well,
if we connect this to the bigger picture, the
answer lies in a very specific, ruthless business
model from that era called state rights distribution.
OK, what is that? So the record showed this film
was distributed via the state rights market.
Burton L. King wasn't operating a major studio
like MGM. He didn't own a chain of theaters and
he didn't have a massive vault of studio cash.
Right. He was a pure independent. Entirely. And
in the state rights system, producers didn't
sell their movie to a national distributor. They
had to hustle and sell the exclusive rights to
exhibit the film territory by territory. Wow.
That sounds exhausting. It was. You literally
sell the state rights for Ohio to one guy. the
rights for Texas to another guy, and the rights
for New York to someone else. Which means your
entire revenue relies on convincing regional
businessmen to take a gamble on your specific
product. Exactly. Now, put yourself in Bertinelle
King's shoes. You walk into a room with a regional
distributor in Chicago. If you say, I have one
cheap movie about a stenographer. That distributor
might not even take the meeting. Right. There
is no long -term value for them. But if you walk
in and say, I am launching a massive new studio
called Ajax Pictures, and I have a slate of 10
fully -produced feature films coming down the
pipeline. Suddenly, you look like a titan. You
look like an institution. Ah. So the announcement
of 10 films wasn't a reality. It was a bluff.
It was a total bluff. It was just a marketing
tactic to create an illusion of scale so these
regional distributors would open their wallets
and buy into the franchise. It was pure survival.
King needed their upfront cash to actually pay
for the first movie. That is wild. Yeah. And
the changing company names, from Four Leaf Clover
to Ajax, those were likely frantic attempts to
rebrand and look more legitimate, or maybe to
outrun previous debts. Just constantly staying
one step ahead. Exactly. It was all about generating
forward momentum. And when your entire business
model is built on a bluff, you cannot afford
a leisurely production schedule. Which explains
how they finished filming in a matter of weeks.
I mean, if you were burning through the cash
you just hustled out of a distributor in Ohio,
you don't have time for a second take. time for
anything. To shoot an 80 minute feature in a
few weeks, you are stripping the art of filmmaking
down to its absolute bare bones. How does that
even look on set? Well, you rent a sound stage
that already has a generic office or living room
set built for a bigger movie that wrapped the
day before. You bring your actors in, you set
up a massive array of flat bright lights so the
entire room is illuminated. So you don't have
to keep moving lights around for different shots.
Exactly. Which means you never have to waste
time moving the camera or adjusting the shadows.
You just point the camera, yell action, and whatever
happens, happens. Pretty much. If an actor stumbles
over a line but the scene still makes basic sense,
you keep rolling. Right. Film stock was expensive
and time was their most precious commodity. Wow.
That is how you go from purchasing a story in
November to having a locked edited film ready
for theaters by February. Which naturally leads
us to the final result of this high speed collision
of art and commerce. What actually happened when
this frantic two month hustle hit theaters? The
reviews were. Yeah, the contemporary reviews
paint a very clear picture of that rushed schedule.
The Film Daily reviewed the movie, and they were
not kind. I can imagine. They specifically called
out the director, Wesley Ford. They described
his direction as unnatural. Ouch. And they said
the cinematography was only fair. Unnatural is
the exact word you would expect. when a director
is functioning more like a traffic cop than an
artist. Right. He didn't have the time to help
the actors find the emotional truth of the scene.
He just needed them to stand on their marks and
deliver the dialogue before the lighting rental
expired. And regarding the only fair cinematography,
honestly, just keeping the camera in focus while
sprinting through a shoot like that feels like
a monumental achievement. Definitely. But amidst
all of this unnatural direction and rushed production,
there is a fascinating bright spot. Oh. The film,
Daily, explicitly singled out Pauline Stark,
the actress who played our feisty stenographer,
Sally. The star they signed under Four Leaf Clover.
Exactly. The review noted that her performance
actually rose to the level of excellent work,
completely defying the mediocrity of the film
around her. Which is a testament to her profound
professionalism. I mean, she had been working
in the industry since the silent era. She knew
what she was doing. She knew how to find the
camera, hit her marks, and project genuine charisma,
regardless of the chaos happening behind the
scenes. It reminds me of those brutal group projects
in college. Oh, no. You know the ones? You have
a team of five people. Four of them are just
desperately trying to scrape together a passing
grade before the midnight deadline. Right, just
copy and pasting, formatting. Cutting corners,
just trying to survive. But then you have that
one person, Pauline Stark, who actually cares
about the subject matter. The hero of the group.
Yes, she is doing all the heavy lifting, refining
the arguments, and basically carrying the entire
project on her back. She took a script made of
narrative duct tape and actually made the audience
believe in Sally's defiance. She elevated the
material purely through sheer force of will.
But unfortunately, even Pauline Stark's excellent
work couldn't save $20 a week from slipping into
total obscurity. Which is a shame. It is, and
this is where we get to the most compelling part
of our source material today. Because this film
is so obscure and the production was so fast
and cheap, the actual historical record we rely
on today is quite literally falling apart. It
really is. The Wikipedia page that documents
this film is full of glaring contradictions.
It becomes a physical demonstration of how history
decays. Yes. If you look at the credits listed
on the page, the main info box states that the
cinematography, that only fair camera work we
mentioned, was done by a man named Arthur Martinelli.
Okay. But if you scroll down and read the text
detailing that film Daily Reception, it casually
states that Al Martin's cinematography was only
fair. Wait, really? Two different names. We have
two completely different names credited for the
exact same job on the exact same movie on the
same page. And the contradictions don't stop
behind the camera. No, they bleed right into
the cast list. The official cast breakdown highlights
an actor named James Murray playing the role
of Peter Douglas. The salesman who proposes out
of nowhere. Right. But if you read the timeline
of the production, it proudly notes that in January
1935, the studio revealed to the press that John
Murray was starring in the film. James Murray
or John Murray. Dr. Martinelli or Al Martin.
So what does this all mean? It's a mess. How
does a modern encyclopedic record end up cementing
these clashing facts right next to each other
as objective truth? Well, this raises an important
question about the physical reality of historical
archives. What do you mean? We tend to view history
as this solid, immutable bedrock of verified
facts. But that level of certainty is a luxury
reserved for massive cultural events or, you
know, blockbuster studio films where thousands
of people were taking notes. The big stuff. Right.
When you're dealing with an 80 minute independent
B -movie shot in a few weeks by a producer who
is changing his company name every other Tuesday,
the bedrock crumbles. Yeah. The primary sources
we have left aren't pristine studio ledgers.
They are decaying. Ephemeral materials? Exactly.
The historians trying to piece this together
today are relying on crumbling trade papers from
1935. They are looking at hastily typed press
releases that Bertinelle King sent out to regional
theaters. Which were probably full of errors
to begin with. Oh absolutely. Imagine a typesetter
at a local Ohio newspaper in 1935 receiving a
blurry telegram about the movie. He accidentally
types Al Martin instead of Arthur Martinelli
to save space on the page. Right. Or an editor
mishears James' John over a crackly phone line.
In 1935, nobody cared enough to issue a correction
for a B -movie. But 90 years later... that typo
is preserved on microfilm. It is the analog version
of digital rot. That's a great way to put it.
It's like trying to build a solid house out of
sawdust. Modern researchers find these contradictory
clippings, and because there is no surviving
master document to verify against, both the typo
and the truth get uploaded to the digital archive
side by side. The chaos of Bertinell King's production
in 1934 has literally transcended time to infect
the digital record of the present day. The hustle
left a messy permanent footprint. Which brings
us back to why we decided to explore this weird
little movie in the first place. For you, the
listener Why does $20 a week matter? Yeah, why
do we care? We started this deep dive looking
at a forgotten title, an 80 minute slice of 1930s
melodrama. But what we actually uncovered was
a frantic, deeply human endeavor. We found the
wild, almost delusional ambition of an independent
producer bluffing his way into a 10 picture slate
just to keep the lights on. And we examined a
bizarre narrative logic born not out of bad writing,
but out of absolute necessity. where a punch
in the face leading to a promotion was just the
fastest way to give an audience the catharsis
they craved. And we found a brilliant actor,
Pauline Stark, standing in the middle of her
rented set, dealing with unnatural direction
and chaotic pacing, giving it her absolute all
to deliver an excellent performance. She really
did. It is a powerful reminder that behind every
piece of media that history casually dismisses
as mediocre or just completely forgets, there
is a frantic story of human beings desperately
trying to make something happen. They were fighting
against time, budget and logistics to create
art. Even if that art only lasted 80 minutes
exactly and the fact that we can only view their
efforts today through a fractured lens of mismatched
names and single surviving reviews is Incredibly
sobering it really is which leaves us with a
critical thought to carry forward We currently
live in an era of absolute media saturation.
We are constantly scrolling, consuming, and discarding
content faster than ever before. If a fully funded
feature film from 1935, a project that required
physical film stock, rented sound stages, theatrical
distribution, and professional actors, if that
massive physical undertaking barely survives
in our public record today as a series of typos
and a single review calling it unnatural, What
is the fate of our current media? It's a scary
thought. Think about the endless stream of TikToks,
the countless hours of streaming filler, the
web series, the digital content we consume and
forget in a matter of seconds. What percentage
of that will even exist in 90 years? Probably
very little. How will future historians ever
be able to piece together the sheer overwhelming
chaos of our modern pop culture when the Museum
of History has already proven it only has so
much room on its shelves? next time you're scrolling
past something you think is just obscure disposable
filler remember $20 a week remember the dusty
chaotic back alleys of history and ask yourself
what parts of our world are destined to be hiding
in the dark