Ms Kathleen's

Screen 20 of 26

By making him pick up the bundle of lewd photographs of her that he has spilled on the floor, Lola drives home the devastating point that sex is her business and she uses it as she will. From his smug and smiling contentment, shown in the way he smokes a fat cigar while he waited for his bride to emerge from behind the curtain, he is suddenly dumped into a strange state of shock and his illusions are knocked out from under him, and he finds himself stricken and helpless. The Professor becomes angry and states that as long as he has a penny to his name, she will not sell those postcards. Lola just smiles and says “We’ll see. Let’s keep them just in case”.

The screen fades to black and we next see Lola performing at a club while an emasculated looking Professor Rath is shown walking through the crowd of vulgar gentlemen admirers selling her postcards. This is the first scene in which the Professor is shown as being lower than the others in the group. He has gone from being an admired college Professor, whom the Manager of ‘The Blue Angel’ raved that a man of such social standing would grace his club, and whom the Magician and other performers looked up to, to being the emasculated husband of a cabaret performer, a man who sells provocative pictures of his wife to horny gentlemen in the crowd.