I think Kay Francis is an acquired taste that I am still acquiring. This film is not a great vehicle, but oddly, I liked Kay in this role better than I do most of her films. Her character is usually very long- suffering. But here she plays "Grace." She is an aging gold-digger rapidly reaching the point of no-return, and she realizes it. Yet she doesn't respond with melodrama, but with a plan to sponsor a protégé, passing on her "wisdom" in exchange for a share of the young woman's "earnings." Despite the rather seamy subject matter, however, this film and Francis' role are both much lighter than most of her vehicles.
It provides a very predictable, formulaic plot and very few laughs. But the two best scenes are humorous, even if not hilarious, and make this film worth seeing. Early in the film, Grace is coaching her protégé, Ellen, before her first date with her first "mark," Nigel Bruce. It is as if they are rehearsing a play, with Kay assuming Nigel's role. In her coaching, she not only anticipates every line, verbatim, that he later uses for real, but she gives a very funny imitation of Bruce's very distinctive British accent.
In a later scene in a steam bath, Bruce assumes Kay's persona in describing to another intended "mark" how the two women fleeced him in Chicago. Straight into the camera, he quotes Kay as she had addressed him: "If you want to make her vewy, vewy happy, get her a mink coat." I wondered whether it was an ad lib or it was scripted. But what I really wondered was how Kay, herself, took the spoof. Her difficulty pronouncing the letter, "R," was legendary. Yet she seems so upbeat in this movie that it leaves the impression that she must have been a good sport about it.
I fault the ending not because it was a fairy-tale wrap-up, but because it was abrupt and rather disjointed. The central focus of the movie is the romance between Tom and Ellen, but the central character is Grace. When the movie ended with the off-screen reconciliation of Tom and Ellen, and Grace's anticipating a happy ending with a completely unknown man, I felt like I had been deprived of seeing the resolution of either the film's central story or its central character.
The character of Tom's uncle should have been a larger role, bringing him into a slowly growing relationship with Kay. After all, she spends most of her time lounging around in a negligee while Ellen and her beaus are out on the town. Giving the uncle a larger, continuous presence would have provided greater continuity and a nice sub-plot. As it is, Kay's presumptive happy ending is diminished, since it is with a virtual non-entity. We have seen him only once in the early part of the film, riding in a boxcar with Tom and some horses to Chicago. I don't recall whether he even has any lines. In the end, we never see him. He's in the lobby of Kay's apartment while she delightedly prepares to meet her "last" man. Neither one is apparently even on the other's radar screen. I would have liked that relationship to have been developed for the fairy-tale. I also wanted to see Tom and Ellen reconciled in person. These changes might have resulted in a non-musical romantic comedy in the mode of the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers/Edward Everett Horton-Helen Broderick foursome in some of the Astaire-Rogers films. It would have been far more satisfying and really improved this film.
It provides a very predictable, formulaic plot and very few laughs. But the two best scenes are humorous, even if not hilarious, and make this film worth seeing. Early in the film, Grace is coaching her protégé, Ellen, before her first date with her first "mark," Nigel Bruce. It is as if they are rehearsing a play, with Kay assuming Nigel's role. In her coaching, she not only anticipates every line, verbatim, that he later uses for real, but she gives a very funny imitation of Bruce's very distinctive British accent.
In a later scene in a steam bath, Bruce assumes Kay's persona in describing to another intended "mark" how the two women fleeced him in Chicago. Straight into the camera, he quotes Kay as she had addressed him: "If you want to make her vewy, vewy happy, get her a mink coat." I wondered whether it was an ad lib or it was scripted. But what I really wondered was how Kay, herself, took the spoof. Her difficulty pronouncing the letter, "R," was legendary. Yet she seems so upbeat in this movie that it leaves the impression that she must have been a good sport about it.
I fault the ending not because it was a fairy-tale wrap-up, but because it was abrupt and rather disjointed. The central focus of the movie is the romance between Tom and Ellen, but the central character is Grace. When the movie ended with the off-screen reconciliation of Tom and Ellen, and Grace's anticipating a happy ending with a completely unknown man, I felt like I had been deprived of seeing the resolution of either the film's central story or its central character.
The character of Tom's uncle should have been a larger role, bringing him into a slowly growing relationship with Kay. After all, she spends most of her time lounging around in a negligee while Ellen and her beaus are out on the town. Giving the uncle a larger, continuous presence would have provided greater continuity and a nice sub-plot. As it is, Kay's presumptive happy ending is diminished, since it is with a virtual non-entity. We have seen him only once in the early part of the film, riding in a boxcar with Tom and some horses to Chicago. I don't recall whether he even has any lines. In the end, we never see him. He's in the lobby of Kay's apartment while she delightedly prepares to meet her "last" man. Neither one is apparently even on the other's radar screen. I would have liked that relationship to have been developed for the fairy-tale. I also wanted to see Tom and Ellen reconciled in person. These changes might have resulted in a non-musical romantic comedy in the mode of the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers/Edward Everett Horton-Helen Broderick foursome in some of the Astaire-Rogers films. It would have been far more satisfying and really improved this film.