Ladies of Leisure was Barbara Stanwyck's first film with Capra, who wrote in his autobiography, The Name Above the Title, “Underneath her sullen shyness smoldered the emotional fires of a young Duse, or a Bernhardt. . . . (T)his chorus girl could grab your heart and tear it to pieces.” Stanwyck plays a role she was later to perfect, if not epitomize: the wisecracking adventuress, a gold-digger par excellence, who is transformed when faced with true love. In this film she inserts herself into the yachting crowd; when asked to pose for a society artist, she begins to reveal her softer side, but the artist's snobbish family will have none of that. Ladies of Leisure is permeated by Stanwyck's Camille-like mood of despair, though its clever script by Jo Swerling allows for Lowell Sherman's highly verbal drunk and the bons mots of Marie Prevost's plump party-girl (“You can't weigh sex appeal”). Capra and cinematographer Joseph Walker's film technique is remarkable here, retaining the visual fluidity of the silents in an early sound film.