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Cup of tea and melting pot: "Come on in. Mix." The irresistible satire of Jamesian clashes begins naturally in Paris, the British valet (Charles Laughton) is the prize in a poker game between Old and New World, the muttering Earl (Roland Young) loses him to a couple of nouveau-riche Yanks. "Quite an untamed country," America, boisterous millionaire (Charles Ruggles) and pretentious wife (Mary Boland) embody it proudly. A bit of liquid courage unleashes the gentleman's whoop, suddenly Laughton is aglow, playing giggly Stan Laurel to Boland's mortified Ollie. "Too dern polite," he finds himself in Red Gap, Washington, emboldened enough to return a snob's kick in the pants. "An anarchist!" "An assassin!" More like a colonel, a malentendu that gets the town's attention, including the fluttery widow (Zasu Pitts). Leo McCarey the slapstick Whitman, his touch at once rowdy and delicate. Frozen in shock to be asked to sit at the same table as his master, the bowler-hatted émigré who blooms at the Silver Dollar Saloon with the Gettysburg Address warm in his memory. "From that heritage of service, miraculously comes a man." The former owner arrives for a visit and has his own transformative journey, falling in love with the dancehall girl (Leila Hyams) over the drumbeat of "Pretty Baby." The beauty of a nation still unformed, frank and slangy and welcoming in McCarey's democratic medium-shots. "It's a mess, isn't it?" "It's wonderful." The passion for cooking at the heart of free enterprise, the singalong at the Anglo-American Grill. Butlers are free, cowboys are henpecked, and everybody ends up a little more human. "If I might say so, you're all a bit of okay!" My Son John is its cracked mirror. With Maude Eburne, Lucien Littlefield, and Leota Lorraine. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |