Review of Kept Husbands

Last week I watched Joel McCrea turn in an absolutely stunning performance in Merian Cooper and Earnest Schoedsack's brilliant 1932 thriller, "THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME" and again he reminds me here of just what an underrated actor he was during the Golden Age of Hollywood. His natural blond good looks (he pioneered surfing during the sport's early days in Los Angeles) and extremely competent acting on the heels of his residency at the nearby Pasadena Playhouse stand out in stark contrast to other leading men in an era when Billy Haines, George Arliss and Ramon Navarro were still representing America's young marrieds getting into jams as they get on their feet in the early days of The Great Depression. Dorothy Mackaill has the tricky job of playing a spoiled brat who is also in many ways by 2004 standards a modern woman whose doting industrialist father isn't making her emancipation any easier--but she pulls it off, and we wind up liking her! Sounding a little at first like one of the most outlandish stars of the day, Paramount's Mae West knock-off Peggy Hopkins Joyce, Mackaill proceeds to give a spot-on performance that represents some of the most natural acting I have seen out of anyone from the early talkies era; her knows-what-she-wants character Dot is effected flawlessly. I forgot that I was watching an actress perform, so finely tuned is her sense of timing. An Ex-Follies girl who came to the US from England at the age of 18, she is at ease before the camera, apparently aware of the fine line she is walking in a part which few other performers from that shaky time in the industry would have been able to master with such seamless grace. I am surprised and disappointed that her film career was in its twilight and that soon thereafter she would be serving full-time as a caregiver to her disabled mother. The writing and direction are both deserving of praise here, as well. The intelligent dialogue (including the contemporary slang, which I find fascinating whenever I can find it) stands the test of time remarkably well: it is real, never banal or contrived despite the familiar conflicted Depression-era highbrow-working class storyline aspect. When Dot asks her father to pay her new husband $50,000 a year, the kindly industrialist explains that he cannot comply, reasoning quite correctly that "it would hurt the organization"--having served a hitch in B-school, I liked that wise old man and contemporary manager right off the bat! Motherhood receives a tender treatment and ever so effectively. The lighting has a definite early Warners'-First National look to it. Sound recording, almost always a liability in those days, is accomplished neatly, as is the makeup: lips appear to be real rather than painted on and during the proposal scene McCrea's wholesome tan face appears not only untouched but luminescent. Rarely have the actors of 1931 looked quite so good. Helpful Trivia: At the time of production, Miss Mackaill was 28; cowpuncher McCrea, 25.