This year
I have watched Joan Blondell in a bunch of her Warner Brother's films of
the 1930s and been more and more impressed with her. Mainly in comedies but
a few dramas as well. She wasn't at the top of Warner's choices of female
actresses for the prestigious films - those were Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland,
Kay Francis, Barbara Stanwyck - but if the role called for spunk, sex appeal
and fast repartee, then Blondell was at the top of the list. This is an enjoyable
by the numbers Depression romantic comedy but there was one scene in particular
that made me love Blondell. She is a chorus girl at the Folies Bergère
in Paris. How a Brooklyn girl ended up in Paris is never explained. An ex-King
of some nameless country - Gibraltar perhaps - is interested in her when
he sees her performing and he asks his two court hanger-ons to invite her
to dinner. This develops into them going out and Blondell falling in love
with him but the hanger-ons tell her that he can only marry royalty and it
is time for her to ease out of the relationship. She agrees and tells him
she is engaged to a man from Brooklyn. So, she has told him goodbye and when
he comes knocking on her door the delight she expresses as she bounces out
of bed at the speed of light to go to the door is as pure as any emotion
in film. She knows she can't have him, but just to have him on the other
side of the door is all she needs.
A charming piffle for a few interesting aspects other than Blondell. One
of the three credited script writers is none other than Groucho Marx - the
only non-Marx Brother film he contributed to. Hard to know exactly what was
his but I suspect some of the standalone jokes. Blondell's love interest
in the film - the King - is played by Frenchman Fernand Garvey with his name
changed in Hollywood to Fernand Gravel. Warners was going through a publicity
blitz for him but since I imagine none of us has heard of him, it didn't
work. He went back to France where he was a big star and when the Germans
took over, he continued to work but was also in the French Resistance and
considered a hero at the end of the war.
Here he plays a King who has lost his Kingdom, though from his level of comfort
- a huge apartment and a yacht - he came out with a lot of money. He has
become an alcoholic, women chaser and general layabout sleeping all day.
His two hanger-ons - the delightful Edward Everett Horton and Mary Nash -
are worried that he will drink himself to death and so when he shows a spark
of interest in Blondell they talk her into going out with him. Later when
she tells them that she has fallen for him, they express sympathy - oh dear
- that will never happen - go back to Brooklyn. She does on a luxury liner
that strangely has no other passengers - but one. Appearing also is Alan
Mowbray as the fake fiancé and Jane Wyman and Luis Alberni as her
two friends at the restaurant. The film does what it is meant to do. A few
laughs, a little romance and a couple numbers from the Folies Bergère.
Directed by Mervyn LeRoy.
