5/10
Philandering Within the Production Code
1 May 2015
Hard-working, moral Jean Muir agrees to marry millionaire construction worker Warren Hull, but then has pal Beverly Roberts assigned as his secretary. The usual problems occur this decent but unremarkable Warner B. It shows signs of having been conceived as a Screwball Comedy, but never really gets silly enough. It has sexy elements, but while we get to see Miss Muir in her slip and Beverly Roberts examining a stocking with a run in it, there's no interior awareness of sex. It's a bloodless and rote example of the genres that depends more on melodrama than psychology. Even Harry Davenport is subdued.

I blame a muddled script, which seems to indicate that Crane Wilbur had seen Claire Booth's THE WOMEN on stage and had been ambitious, until Brian Foy had assigned a total four screenwriters, Frank MacDonald to the director's chair and set a decent but definitely non-stellar cast. Four years earlier, this would ave been a sexy, racy piece, but the Production Code had cut out the heart of the matter from the movies and had substituted shiny habit.
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