Someone at MGM must have been working overtime to come up with a wild and wacky screwball comedy which is a breath of fresh air when compared to the many mediocre misfires they made. Other than a few Myrna Loy & William Powell/Katharine Hepburn & Spencer Tracy pairings, MGM's strongest suit was not in comedy, but a few, this included, managed to break that streak.
Lana Turner, desperate to get out of her small Hudson River Valley town (which seems to be as crowded as Manhattan) fakes a suicide note and ends up faking amnesia due to a hysterical circumstance beyond her control when she tries to place an advertisement in a New York City newspaper. This leads her to getting involved in an old kidnapping case where she convinces brittle Walter Brennan and his long-time nurse Dame May Witty that she is the long lost daughter that was kidnapped as a child. However, her former boss, Robert Young, recognizes her picture in the newspaper, and having been accused of causing her to apparently commit suicide, follows her to the Big Apple, threatening to reveal all and have her jailed on charges of fraud. This creates more confusion and some wacky situations, resulting in of course, that tried and true MGM plot twist: romance.
Turner takes on the type of role that Deanna Durbin was doing over at Universal, playing basically a trouble-maker whose schemes somehow seem to work in her favor and fix everybody's problems. Not known for comedy, Turner proves herself to be quite adept, and it is a shame that for the majority of her next decade at MGM, she was cast mainly in glamorous dramas, obviously considered too much of a lady to slip on banana peels or commit other various pratfalls. Young, adept in both comedy and drama, is also very funny, with portly Eugene Palette in fine support as the newspaper magnate who is determined to find out Turner's identity at any cost. Florence Bates and Almira Sessions have nice bits as well.
This is memorable for a sequence where Turner makes a banana split blindfolded, and later when Young goes into a Harold Lloyd bit, almost falling off of a balcony at Symphony Hall. I attribute to the comedy here working because of the presence of a rather forgotten master of the genre, Wesley Ruggles, who sets up the zany plot line, builds up the romance, and ends with a bit of drama that is never cloying.
Lana Turner, desperate to get out of her small Hudson River Valley town (which seems to be as crowded as Manhattan) fakes a suicide note and ends up faking amnesia due to a hysterical circumstance beyond her control when she tries to place an advertisement in a New York City newspaper. This leads her to getting involved in an old kidnapping case where she convinces brittle Walter Brennan and his long-time nurse Dame May Witty that she is the long lost daughter that was kidnapped as a child. However, her former boss, Robert Young, recognizes her picture in the newspaper, and having been accused of causing her to apparently commit suicide, follows her to the Big Apple, threatening to reveal all and have her jailed on charges of fraud. This creates more confusion and some wacky situations, resulting in of course, that tried and true MGM plot twist: romance.
Turner takes on the type of role that Deanna Durbin was doing over at Universal, playing basically a trouble-maker whose schemes somehow seem to work in her favor and fix everybody's problems. Not known for comedy, Turner proves herself to be quite adept, and it is a shame that for the majority of her next decade at MGM, she was cast mainly in glamorous dramas, obviously considered too much of a lady to slip on banana peels or commit other various pratfalls. Young, adept in both comedy and drama, is also very funny, with portly Eugene Palette in fine support as the newspaper magnate who is determined to find out Turner's identity at any cost. Florence Bates and Almira Sessions have nice bits as well.
This is memorable for a sequence where Turner makes a banana split blindfolded, and later when Young goes into a Harold Lloyd bit, almost falling off of a balcony at Symphony Hall. I attribute to the comedy here working because of the presence of a rather forgotten master of the genre, Wesley Ruggles, who sets up the zany plot line, builds up the romance, and ends with a bit of drama that is never cloying.