ABCs at the Movies: The Doubles Round!

[MaineWriter]

==synopsis==

Relations between Dr. 'Brad' Bradford and ex-wife Paula are surprisingly romantic. They divorced because Brad hated being dragged into murder mysteries, to which mystery writer Paula is addicted. But through horse trainer Mike North, Brad is embroiled in the case of a jockey who died of "heart failure" during a race. As they pursue clues, Paula pursues Brad for remarriage, and assorted hoods pursue the Bradfords.

[southendmd]

Fritz Lang's first US film.

A very young Sylvia Sydney

[Ellemeno]

How's that for an interesting bend to a word?

As the “lost generation” returned from the trenches of World War I to civilian life, they faced a new kind of war: the war of the sexes.
It’s hard to realize nowadays the utter shock it must’ve been, for men who grew up alongside women in corsets and bustles, with huge flowered hats teetering on their long upswept tresses, to see them mutating into the cocktail-swigging, cigarette-smoking, car-driving, bob-haired, short-skirted breed Americans called “flappers” and the French, “garçonnes”. This second, much more telling designation (a feminization of the word for “boy” in French, “ garçon”), was popularized by the eponymous 1922 best-seller (700 000 copies) by the French author Victor Margueritte. With its liberated heroine’s sexual escapades (including a lesbian affair), La Garçonne was deemed so scandalous that Margueritte was stripped of his Légion d’Honneur…
http://perfumeshrine.blogspot.com/2007/12/leather-series-7-garonne-leathers-of.html

[MaineWriter]

==comment==

That "gorgeous" Robert Taylor shows up again (remember him from "The Crowd Roars") along with his bare chest. By all accounts, this sounds like a completely ridiculous movie. If you want a chuckle, read some of the comments on IMDb. Interesting trivia: Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck fell in love while filming this and married afterwards. Their marriage lasted 16 years. Of course, the rumor is that Taylor was gay and Stanwyck a lesbian, and this marriage was an arrangement that suited them both.

[southendmd]

From IMDb: 

This is a watered down version of Sinclair Lewis's 1920's angry screed "Main Street" with an especially inane title- I Married a Doctor.The town is the villain in the novel. However, in the movie,Lewis's point is blunted, almost as if not to offend the moviegoers who might be denizens of small towns like the one described. Even the name of the town has been prettified. In the book the town is called Gophers Prairie- here it is called benignly-Williamsburgh.

The most important character change is the small town doctor. Dr. Will Kennicot, in the book, is a stolid, dense man who never seems to understand his wife Carol who is sinking under the weight of the hypocrisy and vapidity of small town life. In the movie, Pat O Brian plays the Doctor, very well , I might add, and he is a sensible hero who says- the town isn't the problem-it's human nature that's the problem.Lewis doesn't much agree. Carol is a bit of an idiot in the book, but Lewis's sympathies are clearly with her.

Casey Robinson is the credited screenwriter and as usual he does a good job with his dialogue, much of which sounds natural and human. The movie is fairly well directed and the story, what little there is moves along. However, Lewis dark vision of American life would not be accurately portrayed on the screen until 1960's Elmer Gantry.

[memento]

From IMDB:

What's interesting about this piece is the pacing- which I suspect seemed very slow to American audiences, even at the time of its release (1936), if contemporary reviews found in books on Karloff are any indicator. Though some of it is indeed histrionic in content, there are only a few spots in the work where "over the top" acting disrupt its continuity. As a whole, of course, it's junk, but it's the junk of guilty pleasure. it's fascinating to watch Karloff breathe life into yet another tripped-up scientist characterization. His Dr. Sartorious is bitter, high strung, barely a note below fury at all moments, far from the characterizations of educated fruitcake benevolence that the actor is so often remembered for.

[MaineWriter]

==comment==

with Mae West

[Meryl]

[southendmd]

What more can be said?

[MaineWriter]

==comment==

with James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan