Pre-Code Blogathon: "Love Me Tonight," or Some People Call Me Maurice

This is part of the Pre-Code Blogathon sponsored by Danny at Pre-Code.com and Karen at Shadows and Satin. Please visit either and/or both of them for more offerings. 


The 1932 film "Love Me Tonight" lets you know you are in for something special from the very beginning:

You haven't heard a word of dialogue, but the first few moments of the film set the stage perfectly -- Paris, morning, people waking up, a friendly man jauntily walking to his tailor shop and greeting his neighbors ("Hello Mrs. Bendix! How's your appendix?").

When it comes to modern life, I'm a firm believer in what Lily Tomlin once said: "No matter how cynical you get, it's never enough to keep up." And I love the cynicism of so many pre-code movies -- I think it's a period of filmmaking that mirrors the tenor of the times like no other.

But when I watch a movie like "Love Me Tonight," I happily park my cynicism at the door. It doesn't come easily to me, but the movie deserves sincere adjectives that I usually use sarcastically -- "delightful," "thrilling," "enchanting." It's a witty, lovely fairy tale with a prince named Maurice and a princess named Jeanette. It's not just one of my favorite pre-code movies -- it's one of my favorite movie musicals, period.

The pairing of Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald brings to mind what Katharine Hepburn is alleged to have said about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers -- "he gives her class and she gives him sex" -- but in reverse. MacDonald's regal bearing (even when she wasn't playing a princess) and cultured soprano is perfectly counterbalanced by Chevalier's good humor and growly, untrained voice.

Their paths cross when Maurice pursues Charlie Ruggles as a deadbeat vicomte (French for "viscount," if you care) to his family castle, where the women -- Princess Jeanette and Countess Valentine (Myrna Loy, sexy as hell) -- are literally wasting away from lack of love. See for yourself:

Aunts in your plans of 1932.

The lord of the castle, the stern Duke (C. Aubrey Smith), keeps everyone in line, or so he thinks, and three maiden aunts (Elizabeth Patterson, Blanche Frederici and Ethel Griffies) are a Greek chorus commenting on the action. Princess Jeanette's only suitor is a hapless count played by the Hapsburg of the hapless, Charles Butterworth.

We are introduced to Princess Jeanette in one of my very favorite film moments -- the Rodgers and Hart song "Isn't It Romantic" travels from one singer to another, beginning on the lips of the hero and ending on the lips of the heroine:

This, to me, is exhilarating filmmaking -- storytelling in a style that still seems contemporary and clever. Taking a score by Rodgers and Hart consisting of songs that are spoken as well as sung, director Rouben Mamoulian worked with screenwriters Samuel Hoffenstein, Waldemar Young and George Marion, Jr. to shape the story around the music.

Truthfully, the story is the weakest part of "Love Me Tonight," but it's more than enough to carry the score and the performances. Maurice is a tailor. The viscount owes him money. He goes to the castle to get paid. Princess Jeanette is nearby, riding in a carriage and combining the lyrics of "Lover" with commands to her horse (I wish I had a clip to share with you) Maurice meets Princess Jeanette and falls in love.

She resists his advances and runs away. They meet again at the castle, where the viscount passes off Maurice as a baron. Everyone else in the castle loves Maurice as much as the princess dislikes him. How do we know? After he arrives, they all wake up the next morning singing "Mimi" -- even C. Aubrey Smith in what is undoubtedly his most joyous moment on film.

"Trust me. I'm a professional."

The princess finally comes around, falling in love with Maurice and then realizing, as he's fitting her for an impeccably-made riding habit, that he's a tailor. "Love Me Tonight" seems a little anticlimactic after that, though the plot turn does cause one character to say/sing, "I'd rather throw a bomb at her than have her wed a commoner."

Despite its atmosphere of sweet romance, "Love Me Tonight" does have its share of pre-code spice, including scenes of Loy and MacDonald in lingerie and other revealing outfits, some of which were trimmed during the movie's original release. And one raised eyebrow from Maurice Chevalier is worth a million double-entendres.

Here is the film itself (with commercials; sorry):

"The Life of the Party," or Lightner Up

The 1930 film "The Life of the Party" begins in Times Square, where there are massive crowds even though there's no TGI Friday's or Olive Garden.

Right in the middle of this teeming humanity is the Acme Music Store, where Flo (Winnie Lightner) and Dot (Irene Delroy) charm the customers and try to sell sheet music. Within the movie's first five minutes, Flo manages to plug songs from every current Warner Bros. musical release -- "The Show of Shows," "Show Girl in Hollywood," "Hold Everything," "Fifty Million Frenchmen," "Gold Diggers on Broadway" -- and then she performs a little something called "(He Got a) Poison Ivy (Instead of a Clinging Vine)." See for yourself:



You have just witnessed the only song left in "The Life of the Party."

Originally filmed as a musical, and in two-strip Technicolor, "The Life of the Party" lost its numbers in the great nobody-likes-musicals-anymore scare of 1930, which also caused the film version of "Fifty Million Frenchman" to lose most of its score . On top of that, no prints of the Technicolor version seem to exist, so "The Life of the Party" is a musical comedy with no color, very little comedy, even less music and a whole lot of Winnie Lightner.

Lightner began in vaudeville and signed with Warner Bros. in the late 1920s. After making a big hit in "Gold Diggers on Broadway" and performing "Singin' in the Bathtub" in "The Show of Shows," her screen character was established -- a brash but likable schemer out for a sugar daddy. In this film she and Delroy (who only made another movie or two before disappearing completely) are good-hearted gold diggers, and their target is the sputtering Frenchman LeMaire (Charles Judels). He runs a high-class dress shop staffed by the worst models in the world, who stare at the camera and arch their backs to show how chic they are.

LeMaire gives the girls his choicest frocks, thinking he will see them that evening for some ooh-la-la. But they hightail it to Penn Station and give him the slip. (Get it?) That night, he comes to see the girls with a friend, and -- quel disappointment!



The first few minutes of Judel's furniture-breaking act are kind of funny. Unfortunately, he does the same bit several more times during the movie, with steadily diminishing returns.

The girls end up in Cuba, where Flo meets the eccentric Colonel Joy (Charles Butterworth), who raises racehorses. When Flo discovers that a soft-drink tycoon (Jack Whiting) is also visiting their hotel, she tries to set him up with Dot. Dot, in turn, falls for another guy who in reality is the soft-drink tycoon, because Flo messed up.

Then we're off to the races, where Colonel Joy discovers his jockey is drunk. Despite her heft, age and total lack of ability, Flo ends up riding the Colonel's thoroughbred, and that is not a euphemism.

In the finale, Flo finally figures out who the real tycoon is, and she and Dot stage the old reliable -- a fainting spell -- to get his attention. They do this a lot -- "I've been flat on my back on every floor in this hotel," Dot says. The unwanted Colonel keeps showing up, offering a glass of water.



All's well that ends well -- as for Lightner, she made a few more films at Warner's. Then she married director Roy Del Ruth (who directed this film) and disappeared from the screen by the mid-1930s.

"Penthouse," or Loy Meets World

I bow to no one in my admiration for, and possibly creepy love of, Myrna Loy. That little pug-nosed, round-faced, level-headed, wry-humored vixen was sexy, smart and sweetly funny -- the perfect screen wife. Who cares that in real life she was married four times -- this is why movies are awesome!

Loy's true breakthrough role came in 1934's "The Thin Man," directed by W.S. Van Dyke and with a screenplay adapted by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett. Van Dyke, Hackett and Goodrich are also all on board for the 1933 film "Penthouse," so you have to wonder if Loy's performance in this film served as a kind of screen test for "The Thin Man."

In "Penthouse" Loy plays Gertie, a call girl whose roommate, Mimi (Mae Clarke), is shot in the first five minutes of the movie. Gertie wants to find the killer, and so does hotshot defense attorney Jack Durant (Warner Baxter). Durant's interest is personal -- Tom, the accused murderer, (Phillips Holmes) is in love with his ex-girlfriend Sue (Martha Sleeper, whose last name describes her performance), who has begged Durant to take the case.

As the film opens, Durant has just won acquittal for his client, mobster Tony Gazzotti (Nat Pendleton). In this case, at least, Gazzotti was genuinely not guilty, so Durant is a hero. But not to girlfriend Sue. He shows up to greet her on Long Island in his best white flannels and a pimpin' hat, but she gives him the cold shoulder:



Durant goes on a drunk, and the next day he's debriefed on the previous night's events by loyal butler Layton (Charles Butterworth):



(Charles Butterworth should be every butler in every New York City apartment in every 1930s movie.) 

Ex-girlfriend Sue then comes to Durant for help, because Tom has been accused of murdering Mimi, his old girlfriend. And Durant goes to work, with the help of Gertie. They've been introduced by Gazzotti, who adds "she's the kind you can take home to dinner, and no hard feelings if you don't stay for breakfast." Gertie is attracted to Durant, and she accompanies him to his apartment to spend the night -- her place, which she shared with the dead Mimi, gives her the heebie-jeebies. Gertie is ready for Durant to put the moves on her, and she's a little baffled when he doesn't.

Gertie: Say, are you still in love with someone, or are you just decent?

Durant: Maybe I think you're decent.

Gertie: A girl who comes into a man's apartment at night?

Durant: Well, you might have come here just to look at the Chrysler Building.

There are certain faces in 1930s movies that mean bad news from the get-go. For instance, never do business with C. Henry Gordon (aka evil Fred Astaire). Here he is mobster Crellimen, the man behind Mimi's murder. And as Gertie and Durant team up to nab Crellimen, Durant realizes he's falling in love with Gertie. This dawns on him in a scene where Baxter and Loy have a nice dialogue that echoes "The Thin Man":


 

Loy really does shine in this film -- at this stage in her career she was finally leaving behind the oriental temptress roles she played in movies like "Thirteen Women" and "The Mask of Fu Manchu" and within a few years she'd be the queen of the MGM lot -- after "The Thin Man" came such hits as "Libeled Lady" and "Test Pilot." She plays her role here simply and realistically, without the histrionics of Joan Crawford or the melancholy of Garbo.

Baxter doesn't fare quite as well -- even when he's playing a streetwise character like Durant, he can't shake his tendency toward leading-man pomposity. He looks especially uncomfortable during the romantic clinch in the final scene, when Loy musses his hair, and why any man should object to Myrna Loy mussing his hair is beyond me:


Here are the complete credits for "Penthouse," and a trailer: