Dangerous Flirt on AllMovie

In between contracts with Universal and MGM, where he would do his best work, enigmatic director Tod Browning marked time with lowly Film-Booking-Office for two melodramas starring the smoldering Evelyn Brent, The Dangerous Flirt and Silk Stocking Sal. Despite an undeserved bad reputation, Sheila Fairfax (Brent), The Dangerous Flirt of the title, manages to land mining engineer Dick Morris (Edward Earle). But on their wedding night, Dick's embraces intimidate her and, disgusted with his bride's coldness, he leaves for South America. She follows tearfully, and they are reunited at the rancho belonging to Don Alfonso (Sheldon Lewis). Don Alfonso's nephew, José (Pierre Gendron), proves to be the villain who once ravished Sheila and Dick kills him in a duel. Realizing the root to her marital problems began with José and the subsequent attitude of her prissy aunt, Prissy (Clarissa Selwynne), Sheila manages to free her jailed husband and they escape to start a new life together. The dark-haired Evelyn Brent appeared in quite a few potboilers like this before being "re-discovered" by Josef von Sternberg. But for the rest of her life, Brent always credited Browning for starting "the Queen of the Underworld thing" that ultimately led to her playing Feathers McCoy, the quintessential gangster's moll in Underworld (1927).