by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2011 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved
When Charles and I got home — again in a driving rainstorm!
— we ended up watching another movie. Last night TCM was broadcasting a rather
interesting film called Maybe It’s Love,
based on a 1927 play by Maxwell Anderson (!) called Saturday’s
Children — this was when the work week was
5 ½ days instead of 5, with people making their dates on Saturday afternoons
and evenings. TCM’s guest host Donald Bogle (the African-American film
historian who’s filling in for Robert Osborne after having joined him as guest
host when the network did an “African-Americans in film” series) explained that
this was the first film Gloria Stuart did after she left Universal and signed
with Warner Bros. (in line with the confusion between the “Warner Bros.” and
“First National” corporate identities, the opening credits announce this film
as a Warner Bros. production while the closing credits claim it for First
National!). Bette Davis eventually prospered after making the same switch in
studio affiliations, but it didn’t help Stuart; from quality roles in Universal
films like The Kiss Before the Mirror, The Old Dark House and The Invisible Man (for director James Whale) and Air Mail (for John Ford, who would ultimately direct Stuart in
what’s probably her best film, The Prisoner of Shark Island, at 20th Century-Fox) she went to lead
roles in this nice but uninspired comedy and then as Dick Powell’s rich
girlfriend in Gold Diggers of 1935
(a great movie, but nobody watches it for Gloria Stuart; people watch it for
the two big Busby Berkeley numbers at the end, especially the proto-noir “Lullaby of Broadway”). First National had already
filmed Saturday’s Children under
Anderson’s title in 1929 with Gregory La Cava directing and Corinne Griffith
and Grant Withers as the leads; later Warners would make it a third time,
reverting to the Saturday’s Children
title, in 1940 with Vincent Sherman directing and Anne Shirley and John
Garfield in the leads.
This version was the directorial debut of William
McGann, a competent but hacky director who remained pretty much in the “B” salt
mines his entire career, from a script by Jerry Wald (future producer) and
Harry Sauber, and though it’s not a world-beater it’s a charming romantic
comedy with a quite nice plot line about love among the young and poor. Stuart
plays Bobby Halevy, who works as a secretary for an import-export company owned
by Adolph Mengle (Joseph Cawthorn), a malapropistic, thickly accented character
so reminiscent of producer Sam Goldwyn I couldn’t help but wonder if Cawthorn
was deliberately made up to look like him and given some of the caricatured
“Goldwynisms,” since he’s malapropistic throughout the film. Bobby is dating
Rims O’Neil (Ross Alexander), a tall, gangly clerk in the Mengle operation, but
he’s anxious because he doesn’t have enough money to support her and won’t
unless he can get Mengle to appoint him to run the company’s Havana office,
which will mean a raise and will force him to go alone for a bit, but when he
gets there he can raise the money from his increased salary and send for Bobby.
Meanwhile, the boss’s son, Adolph Jr. (Philip Reed), ends up at the office
because his dad wants to break him of his wastrel ways and teach him how to
work for a living, and instead of sending Bobby to Havana Sr. assigns him to be
Jr.’s keeper, making sure he doesn’t cruise the help or use the office
telephone to make dates with girls. Of course Jr. falls in love at first sight
with Bobby, who works as Sr.’s secretary, and in order to eliminate the
competition Jr. talks his dad into offering Bobby the Havana assignment after
all. Rims is ready to take it and even arrives at the ship, ready to sail, only
Bobby comes to see him off and, following some ill-advised advice from her
sister Florrie Sands (Ruth Donnelly) — it’s been established that Bobby lives with
her entire family, including her dad (Henry Travers, a year after he played her
father in The Invisible Man as
well), her mom (Helen Lowell), her brother-in-law (Frank McHugh at his most
annoying Frank McHughishness) and an aunt (Dorothy Dare) — Bobby gets Rims to
come back to her even though it means abandoning the boat and the Havana job
and getting married that very night.
The next day at the office Mengle, Sr. not
only says Rims isn’t getting the Havana job after all but he’s being fired, and
Rims gets another job but at less pay (which plays hell with Bobby’s attempts
to budget for them) until their financial problems and the continued inundation
of their apartment by Bobby’s relatives get to him. Rims buys a used car and
his brother-in-law takes over the driving, throws him out and crashes it. That
breaks up the relationship, and Bobby returns to her old job as Mengle, Sr.’s
secretary, while Rims returns to Mengle’s and begs for another shot at the
Havana job — more to get away from Bobby, whom he’s ready to divorce so Jr. can
have her, than anything else — only Jr., who seems to have seen The
Front Page, loans Rims his car so he can
make his ship on time, then reports it stolen, so Rims is arrested, he misses
the ship, but he and Bobby reconcile after she says the key to their happiness
is to behave as lovers rather than as married people. This isn’t exactly the
world’s freshest plot line, then or
now, but it’s charming and it succeeds precisely where a lot of modern movies
fail: it makes us like the characters
and want to see them prevail.
Though Rims’ rambunctious nature — he looks like
a go-getter who’s trying just a little too hard — and gangly, almost
uncoordinated body make it seem like he’d be a trial to live with (at times I
wished Warners would have given this role to their ace tap dancer, Hal LeRoy),
we like him, we like Bobby, and we want them to be together — and we want Bobby
to spurn the advances of the spoiled rich kid even though he’s drawn as a more
complex character than the second leads in most rom-coms of the period,
basically decent despite his wastrel ways, unwilling to go after Bobby by
overwhelming her with gifts Rims can’t match, and a good loser in the romance
game at the end even though sometimes the body language between Philip Reed and
the real-life Bisexual Ross Alexander makes one wonder why the poor guy doesn’t marry the rich guy instead! Maybe
It’s Love is one of those little movies the
studio system was so good at turning out that wasn’t going to be a world-beater
but was reliable entertainment,
and it had some charming (that word again!) supporting performances by J.
Farrell McDonald as a philosophical patrolman and the marvelous Maude Eburne as
the landlady of a boarding house Bobby moves into during her temporary breakup
from Rims towards the end.
