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New Year's Eve in New York City, the resolution is for the socialite (Gloria Swanson) to dump the cad (Monroe Owsley). "A man must live," he protests after she plucks a rival's hair from his tuxedo, "I've often wondered why it was necessary in some cases," she shoots back. (She sends him packing in a gag revised in The Philadelphia Story, the revelers outside seem to cheer her on.) "Just a modern girl with an old-fashioned conscience," smitten with the author of Obey That Impulse (Ben Lyon) and concerned with the younger sister (Barbara Kent) scooped up by the ex-beau. The integers ricochet freely, the soapy and the screwball leak surprisingly into one another, already Leo McCarey hallmarks. In a shower robe with her mane loose, Swanson warbles like a teasing mermaid: "What good is this, that or the other, if you haven't got love?" Her perfect partner here is not Lyon but Arthur Lake, with his hayseed grin and gangling gait as the suitor who scotches the engagement by hinting that there's "a teeny weeny dash of insanity in the family." The heroine follows suit at the posh luncheon, buttering toast so furiously it snaps, having sugar cubes sans coffee, and sneezing into the salt. (As the wry aunt acquainted with Buffalo Bill, Maude Eburne contributes her own rambunctious pantomime.) "Order a straitjacket," huffs the host. A run-through for The Awful Truth, in other words, quite pleasing. Characteristically, the climactic reunion aboard the ocean liner is both grand romantic gesture and lovely slapstick routine. With Henry Kolker, Nella Walker, and Sam Lufkin. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |