This is the sort of story that just can't be told anymore. When P. G. Wodehouse died in 1975 his style of comic novel - of country houses, London posh private clubs, eccentric English and American millionaires, and no notice of the other classes except as pawns in the stories - died with him. Although country houses have appeared in films since then, they are serious studies of life in the 1930s in England with all the class warfare going on like in THE REMAINS OF THE DAY or GOSFORT PARK. They are rarely taking a kindly, humorous look at the struggles of upper-class twits to retain their social position. This is part of the plot of MAN OF THE MOMENT.
Wodehouse was actually a dramatist, and wrote parts of the scripts of many musical comedies (many with composer Jerome Kern), and also wrote them with his partner Guy Bolton. It is Bolton who wrote the story here that was turned into a play by Yves Mirande, so it has the same flavor as a typical Wodehouse story too.
Laura La Plante is a secretary in a small business in London. She secretly has a crush on her boss, but discovers (much to her personal humiliation) that he has been dating the other secretary in the office, and is demoting La Plante to promote his girlfriend. La Plante quits, and in wandering around hears that another girl drowned herself over a boyfriend near Windsor, in the Thames. She goes to the spot, and clumsily falls into the river. But a sports car driven by Douglas Fairbanks Jr. stops, and he rescues her (despite her protests). Fairbanks takes her to his country home to get her out of her wet clothes, get some warm toddy into her, and put her to sleep in an upstairs bedroom. Reluctantly she agrees.
In a twist, typical of Wodehouse's school, Fairbanks is going to be married to Margaret Lockwood the next day. She is a pretty young woman, and the daughter of a millionaire (Peter Gawthorne) who has little patience with Fairbanks. But the latter promises he want to reform, and get a job in "the City" (London's financial center) in a firm - but needs to raise 5,000 pounds (1935 pounds - like $25,000.00 in today's money). Gawthorne (still dubious) agrees to do it if Fairbanks truly reforms.
What Fairbanks does not know is that Lockwood too has ideas of changing his ways - get him from drinking and smoking and even keeping his dog Smith. She tells this to Fairbanks best friend/best man (Claude Hulbert), who seems to question if Fairbanks will willingly do what she wants.
In typical Wodehouse style, La Plante manages to crash Fairbanks' final bachelor party dressed as one of the boys (she shortens her hair and wears his younger brother's dinner jacket). Both end up sleeping on the floor, with the other guests (including Hulbert). When Lockwood and her father come, they find LaPlante. The father says that the marriage is off (Lockwood is humiliated and crying, but did not give her agreement to this). Fairbanks, now sober, decides to go to Monte Carlo with La Plante - he has 300 pounds left, and if he wins the money he'll reform. If he doesn't, he will join La Plante in drowning themselves in the Mediteranean.
There are plenty of lovely bits in the film. A young, but recognizable Charles Hawtrey is a cheeky office boy in the opening of the film. The head clerk is a pompous ninny who tries to make a case for LaPlante to look in his direction as a love interest as they are both doomed to be failures. Hulbert (a well known comic in British films of the 1930s and 1940s - see his comedy with Will Hays MY LEARNED FRIEND), has a nice idiot part as an aristocrat ("Lord Rufus") who flies a noisy plane that deafens him. He does not care - when we last see him in Monte Carlo with Fairbanks he is demanding the return of his airplane which Fairbanks flew with LaPlante.
Lockwood's crying scenes is wonderful as they wear down Gawthorne's sensible resolve that she could do better. Also note Donald Cawthrop as Fairbanks butler in the mansion. Best recalled as the feisty little man confronting Robert Newton and Robert Morley at the Salvation Army Center in MAJOR BARBARA, Cawthrop is playing it for laughs here with a dry wit, punctuated by little bits (when Fairbanks throws away his cigarette to find LaPlante, Cawthrop picks it up after he leaves and smokes it!).
There is more time capsule in a film like this. Made again at Teddington Studio for Warner Brothers - First National, it has great shots of the Parliament Buildings and Windsor Castle in the distance in the age of Ramsay MacDonald and Stanley Baldwin, and of Monte Carlo when Grace Kelly's husband Prince Rainier was a little boy. So the period adds to the film. It is a nice little film, and worth looking at for an hour or two's amusement. Like reading Wodehouse.
Wodehouse was actually a dramatist, and wrote parts of the scripts of many musical comedies (many with composer Jerome Kern), and also wrote them with his partner Guy Bolton. It is Bolton who wrote the story here that was turned into a play by Yves Mirande, so it has the same flavor as a typical Wodehouse story too.
Laura La Plante is a secretary in a small business in London. She secretly has a crush on her boss, but discovers (much to her personal humiliation) that he has been dating the other secretary in the office, and is demoting La Plante to promote his girlfriend. La Plante quits, and in wandering around hears that another girl drowned herself over a boyfriend near Windsor, in the Thames. She goes to the spot, and clumsily falls into the river. But a sports car driven by Douglas Fairbanks Jr. stops, and he rescues her (despite her protests). Fairbanks takes her to his country home to get her out of her wet clothes, get some warm toddy into her, and put her to sleep in an upstairs bedroom. Reluctantly she agrees.
In a twist, typical of Wodehouse's school, Fairbanks is going to be married to Margaret Lockwood the next day. She is a pretty young woman, and the daughter of a millionaire (Peter Gawthorne) who has little patience with Fairbanks. But the latter promises he want to reform, and get a job in "the City" (London's financial center) in a firm - but needs to raise 5,000 pounds (1935 pounds - like $25,000.00 in today's money). Gawthorne (still dubious) agrees to do it if Fairbanks truly reforms.
What Fairbanks does not know is that Lockwood too has ideas of changing his ways - get him from drinking and smoking and even keeping his dog Smith. She tells this to Fairbanks best friend/best man (Claude Hulbert), who seems to question if Fairbanks will willingly do what she wants.
In typical Wodehouse style, La Plante manages to crash Fairbanks' final bachelor party dressed as one of the boys (she shortens her hair and wears his younger brother's dinner jacket). Both end up sleeping on the floor, with the other guests (including Hulbert). When Lockwood and her father come, they find LaPlante. The father says that the marriage is off (Lockwood is humiliated and crying, but did not give her agreement to this). Fairbanks, now sober, decides to go to Monte Carlo with La Plante - he has 300 pounds left, and if he wins the money he'll reform. If he doesn't, he will join La Plante in drowning themselves in the Mediteranean.
There are plenty of lovely bits in the film. A young, but recognizable Charles Hawtrey is a cheeky office boy in the opening of the film. The head clerk is a pompous ninny who tries to make a case for LaPlante to look in his direction as a love interest as they are both doomed to be failures. Hulbert (a well known comic in British films of the 1930s and 1940s - see his comedy with Will Hays MY LEARNED FRIEND), has a nice idiot part as an aristocrat ("Lord Rufus") who flies a noisy plane that deafens him. He does not care - when we last see him in Monte Carlo with Fairbanks he is demanding the return of his airplane which Fairbanks flew with LaPlante.
Lockwood's crying scenes is wonderful as they wear down Gawthorne's sensible resolve that she could do better. Also note Donald Cawthrop as Fairbanks butler in the mansion. Best recalled as the feisty little man confronting Robert Newton and Robert Morley at the Salvation Army Center in MAJOR BARBARA, Cawthrop is playing it for laughs here with a dry wit, punctuated by little bits (when Fairbanks throws away his cigarette to find LaPlante, Cawthrop picks it up after he leaves and smokes it!).
There is more time capsule in a film like this. Made again at Teddington Studio for Warner Brothers - First National, it has great shots of the Parliament Buildings and Windsor Castle in the distance in the age of Ramsay MacDonald and Stanley Baldwin, and of Monte Carlo when Grace Kelly's husband Prince Rainier was a little boy. So the period adds to the film. It is a nice little film, and worth looking at for an hour or two's amusement. Like reading Wodehouse.