Joel McCrea and Ginger Rogers generate enough chemistry to power a small town in this screen adaptation of a stage play.
Rogers lives in a slum with her floozy of a mother and boozy father. She dreams of something more but doesn't know how to get it. She meets McCrea and they marry, but problems arise when he realizes she's been lying to him about her origins.
The first half of the movie is delightful. Rogers and McCrea fire one-liners back and forth at each other like they're playing verbal ping pong, and Rogers is adorable as usual. The second half sags though. I know the movie needed some dramatic conflict, but this is one of those stories where the conflict could easily have been resolved if the two characters just talked to each other, but they don't, so we get 45 minutes or so of Rogers being glum and morose, and the spark goes out of the movie. It comes back for the last 5 minutes, but the damage has been done and the film overall is a bit marred. Still, this one's worth a viewing for fans of either McCrea or Rogers.
I might never have been compelled to watch this film at all if it weren't for my curiosity to see Marjorie Rambeau in the role that won her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress as Rogers' ill-fated mother. She's pretty good, but she had stiff competition that year -- Jane Darwell in "The Grapes of Wrath" and Judith Anderson in "Rebecca" -- and the Academy made the right decision to pass her over.
Grade: B
Rogers lives in a slum with her floozy of a mother and boozy father. She dreams of something more but doesn't know how to get it. She meets McCrea and they marry, but problems arise when he realizes she's been lying to him about her origins.
The first half of the movie is delightful. Rogers and McCrea fire one-liners back and forth at each other like they're playing verbal ping pong, and Rogers is adorable as usual. The second half sags though. I know the movie needed some dramatic conflict, but this is one of those stories where the conflict could easily have been resolved if the two characters just talked to each other, but they don't, so we get 45 minutes or so of Rogers being glum and morose, and the spark goes out of the movie. It comes back for the last 5 minutes, but the damage has been done and the film overall is a bit marred. Still, this one's worth a viewing for fans of either McCrea or Rogers.
I might never have been compelled to watch this film at all if it weren't for my curiosity to see Marjorie Rambeau in the role that won her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress as Rogers' ill-fated mother. She's pretty good, but she had stiff competition that year -- Jane Darwell in "The Grapes of Wrath" and Judith Anderson in "Rebecca" -- and the Academy made the right decision to pass her over.
Grade: B