Friday's Old Fashioned: Wife vs. Secretary (1936)

The stars, the concept, even the poster, all of it would seem readymade to mark Clarence Brown’s “Wife vs. Secretary” as a hijinks-laden love triangle or even an of-the-era advisory of a lasivicious working woman demonstrating that her place is really the hearth and home. And yet.....that "Vs." of the title is so terribly misleading. It's like the film's marketers wanted audiences to assume it was "Bride Wars" 73 years before "Bride Wars" was released. They wanted it to sound like a rom-com styled OK Corral Shootout. "Only ONE woman can wind up in Gable's arms. Who's it gonna be?!" They wanted to emit the air that it was another in an eternal supply of Hollywood confections that employ their brightest and best females as a means to be reductive to women, to put forth the antiquated idea that where there are two women there is bound to be claws and catfights.

Ah, but "Wife vs. Secretary", bless its forward-thinking soul, knows all this and subverts it, skillfully and successfully. Why it even goes one further and how asks how we look at others and what we see when we look at them and how quick we are to not only judge but to be influenced by scattershot opinions of the masses.

As the film opens, all seems tranquil with the principal trio. Van (Clark Gable) and Linda (Myrna Loy) are happily married and Van's magazine publishing company is running smoothly due in large part to the eternal efforts of his secretary, the unfortunately named Whitey (Jean Harlow). Really, truly, utterly, it's all hunky dory. But then "Wife vs. Secretary" conforms to the wicked stepmother stereotype as Van's mom (May Robson) points out to Linda, as if she hadn't noticed before, the natural effervescent attractiveness of her spouse's secretary. And later at a company party, so many wives of so many employees of Van tell Linda the same damn thing. They basically make Whitey out to be a strumpet because she's blonde and voluptuous and looks like Jean Harlow.

For the remainder of the film, Linda's viewpoint of Whitey is tainted by these baseless accusations. What she sees suggests nothing is amiss, but what she sees seems less than paramount to what she's been told, and so what she's been told becomes what she sees, not that a human being would ever fall prey to such an epistemological crisis. Ha! Take Whitey's boyfriend, this knucklehead named Dave (Jimmy Stewart). He doesn't think it's "natural" for a woman to be working. Natural! "Not made or caused by humankind." Like, on the ninth day God said, "The womenfolk don't work." And when Dave proposes to Whitey, partially out of love but partially out of "Because once you're wearing my ring I'll decree that you don't work no more", she rejects him.

Everything comes to a front at a conference in Havana that Van and Whitey attend as boss & secretary. Linda calls her husband's room only to have, sure enough, Whitey answer. Nothing was happening, but the instant Linda hears that nasally tart voice on the other end of the line every one of her misplaced suspicions comes true. And it's in the moments that follow when "Wife vs. Secretary" soars, putting Van and Whitey into the position where fulfilling carnal desire would be the obvious thing.

In my ongoing effort to watch every Harlow film, I dare say never has Harlean Carpenter been better. She sits on the end of Gable's bed, where his character sits drunkenly, with an impassive expression that still conveys a rolodex of emotion. It's as if every opinion everyone has ever formed of her, whether true or untrue, has been made to bear, dropped on her at once, and the toll the age-old weapon of innuendo can take is palpable. Yet in spite of the slander, she maintains her virtue, and perhaps "Wife vs. Secretary" would have done best to end right there even if various entanglements would have gone unresolved. Instead a little phony baloney is tossed on top, including Whitey getting back together with that tweedle-dum Dave and her awesome integrity is idiotically compromised. The film was smart enough to subvert sexual politics of the day, yet stupid enough to still fall prey to them.

Friday's Old Fashioned: Love Crazy (1941)

In screwball comedies, the male protagonist is often self-impressed, set in his ways, only to have, in a series of farcical hijinks, a tough-talking, no-crap-talking female upend his status quo and broaden his worldview while simultaneously making him do what he heretofore thought impossible and fall head over heels. In Jack Conway’s “Love Crazy”, however, the male and female protagonists, Steve (William Powell) and Susan (Myrna Loy) Ireland, are presumably already well past this stage. This is because the film opens on the verge of their fourth wedding anniversary celebration, not even the faintest whiff of marital discord in the air. It's as if the crumbling of Steve's self-impressed ways happened in a non-existent prequel and we are now catching up with him in movie #2 where he is full-grown and respectful.

Therefore, the status quo in “Love Crazy” that requires toppling is Love & Happiness, which means the gods of machine must intervene. And they do in an elongated sequence to open the film set entirely within the couple's apartment building that finds the husband in question stuck on an elevator with his ex-flame of many moons ago, Kimble Grayson (Gail Patrick), who, per fate, lives one apartment below her former suitor and conspires to get him into her apartment for a cocktail while her own oafish husband is out. Steve, of course, neglects to mention this to Susan. She, of course, ascertains this info anyway and instantly becomes so suspicious that she conspires to pretend to be having an affair with Kimble's husband only to, of course, wind up in the apartment of a pompous archer (Jack Carson) instead.

Conway handles this rigmarole with deft professionalism, though it requires Powell to generally forgo quick-witted repartee for more physical hijinks. He's Buster Keaton as opposed to.....well.....William Powell. Which isn't to say Powell can't do Keaton - or a version of Keaton, I should say - but that we go to the cinema turn on Turner Classic Movies to watch Powell be Powell, not Keaton, don't we?

We also want to watch Loy be Loy, and yet she comes across more in this film like a supporting character than a co-star. The suspicions regarding her spouse’s infidelity drives the plot and, okay, yes, sure, there is something suspicious about discovering your husband of four years was just in the apartment of the woman to whom he was once engaged and that he purposely neglected informing you. But, I submit that Loy, in all her Loy-ness, would be able to ferret out the truth with but a few pointed questions.

Still, the greatest irony of “Love Crazy” is that splitting up Powell & Loy is not simply its singular weakness but also its singular strength. Because upon being split up, Powell is forced to resort to all sorts of wacky measures to win his way back into her heart, which includes an accidental detour to an asylum (“Love Crazy”) and him dressing up like a woman, because, you know, sure, amongst numerous other hijinks. It is a strength precisely because there is something whimsically reassuring in knowing that even when the universe conspires against his character to eradicate their courtship, he is willing to go such lengths to re-establish it.

Of all the uber-glorious romantic pairings of the Hollywood’s Golden Age, no one worked side-by-side as often as Powell & Loy, teaming up thirteen times in fourteen years, and kicking up some of the most entertaining sparks the silver screen ever saw. Yet only when the pairing is taken away midstream did I suddenly realize how much I took it for granted, how much I chose to watch this specific film to see them together. Absence only makes the cinephile's heart grow more desperate, and so by the end, I was rooting for the inevitable in spite of that very inevitability.

Friday's Old Fashioned: Libeled Lady (1936)

As I watched "Libeled Lady" I could not stop thinking of Will Smith and how he claimed to have turned down the title role of Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained" specifically because the role was not, to use his words, the lead. A theory that gets posited an awful lot is that the movie star - and all that glorious term contains - is "dead." That really is not true, however, partially because Hollywood is still so insistent on attempting to manufacture movie stars and, in turn, shove them down our throat.

Consider romantic comedies of today. They generally require a couple stars that get top billing and then a bunch of hangers-on for support who cannot, under any circumstances, be allowed equal footing of those stars. The art of the ensemble, in other words, often seems to be lacking. Even in a movie like "Ocean's Eleven" with a great many talents there is still a clear hierarchy - Clooney and then Pitt and then everyone else.

"Libeled Lady", director Jack Conway's delightfully rabble rousing screwball rom com from 1936, on the other hand, opens even before the opening credits with its quartet of high voltage stars - William Powell, Myrna Loy, Jean Harlow, Spencer Tracy - dressed up and strolling arm-in-arm. That is telling.

I dare say that if a cinematic sabermetrician (God help us) was assigned to the case, he/she would deduce that William Powell was the principal of "Libeled Lady." Ah, but then look at the poster. Whose name comes first? Why, it's Harlow's, not Powell's. Granted, Powell and Harlow were married at the time and perhaps Powell, nobly, conceded top billing to his better half. But there have been legendary conflicts in Hollywood over top billing and, thus, I don't think this is should pass by unnoticed. Even so, Harlow, despite being Powell's real life better half, did not play his better half on the screen in order to capitalize on the "Thin Man" chemistry of Powell and Loy. Harlow is instead Tracy's better half even though she ends up feigning as Powell's better half while Powell is attempting to feign as Loy's better half.

Tracy is Warren Haggerty, editor of The New York Evening Star, who, unbeknownst to him, has just splashed a scandalous headline involving socialite Connie Allenbury (Loy) on its front page. Thus, he is forced into the office to deal with accusations of libel made by Allenbury's father (Walter Connolly). This is made more problematic because to do so he neglects his marital ceremony scheduled for that day to Gladys Benton (Harlow) who, in a stone cold classic moment, storms into his office still in her bridal gown and, in that hard-charging but mellifluous Harlow voice, lets him have it.

Oh, but it's gonna get worse, dear Gladys, because Warren calls upon an ex-reporter, the wily Bill Chandler (Powell), to help him out of this jam. The scheme: Bill will sail home from England aboard the same vessel as Connie and her father, pretend to be married to Gladys, woo Connie with this William Powell-ness and then, at a delicate moment, have Gladys walk in on them. Voila! Libel begets Libel!

You can see where this is going. But can you? Well, sort of. Connie will fall for Bill, of course, but Loy, thankfully, was never one to play second fiddle to Powell - they played co-first fiddles - and so her title as "socialite" betrays her true nature as a thinking, feeling human being. She can see what Bill is up to and is only eventually drawn in for real at the same time that he is being drawn in for real. Gladys, meanwhile, is forced to deal with her dolt of a fiancé forcing her into a sham marriage to protect his own reputation. Harlow plays the part reluctantly but not as a pushover and, in time, falls for her pretend husband on account of his William Powell-ness.

The film is a dizzying array of ruses and double crosses and best laid plans, as good a time as the actors on the screen seem to be having simultaneously. It concludes with a lengthy, kicky scene in a hotel room between our quartet as the upper hand continually switches from person to person/couple to couple in the face of revelation upon revelation. In his review of "Before Midnight" the don't-call-me-a-contrarian Armond White wrote: "No doubt this talkathon appeals to indie geeks who haven’t realized that cinema is a visual medium." Oh, Armond, you perturbed bastard, I guess Jean & Will & Myrna & Spence were just a bunch of indie geeks then several decades before the term "indie" even came into being since this scene is nothing much more than a spectacular talkathon with a camera that just happens to be rolling.

It is such a perfect coda because it subtly refuses to shine the spotlight on any one person and lets it rest on all of them instead. Warren seems set to get the best of Bill & Connie until they seem set to get the best of Warren until Gladys seems set to get the best of all three of them until......on and on it goes. It ends with all four of them talking over each other at once.

The whole ensemble wins.