LOVE HONOR AND BEHAVE (1938)

This odd little B-comedy/drama presents some strange lessons in child rearing, sportsmanship, and "wife taming," most of which would be seen as rather scary lessons today. The film is presented in two distinct "acts": the first sets up the disintegration of the marriage of Thomas Mitchell and Barbara O'Neil. They seem happy, but we see that O'Neil is a fairly passionless person, very concerned with calm surfaces and not willing to fight for what should be hers, in sports (where she's consistently happy to take second place) or in her marriage. Mitchell has just cut things off with his current mistress, Mona Barrie, but O'Neil catches him in a compromising position with Barrie and assumes the worst. Mitchell gets mad at his wife for not being madder at him, seemingly not willing to fight for him, and they split, with O'Neil getting custody of their son. The second act begins ten years later with the son (Wayne Morris) a pre-med tennis player at Yale--we're to think he's *too good* of a sport when we see him deliberately throw a tennis match because of what he thinks is an unfair call in *his* favor. After the game, he rekindles a friendship with Priscilla Lane (Barrie's daughter) and the next thing you know, he lets her talk him into leaving Yale, getting a quickie marriage, and going into business for himself by buying a washed-up soap manufacturing company. Things spiral downward for Morris, to the point where his wife slips into an affair with her ex-fiance (Dick Foran) and his own father won't give him a job after his soap company fails. In the end, Morris (with the tacit permission of virtually the entire cast) gives Lane a black eye and a ferocious spanking, which, of course, she likes (and has been angling for) because it shows her that her man is finally really a man!

Even though the domestic violence of the last scene is played mostly for laughs (with Lane fighting back and blacking Morris' eye as well), it's still a creepy and jaw-dropping scene; the spanking takes place in front of all the assembled parents and in-laws, and clearly Lane, who was just about to indulge in some extramarital sex with Foran, wants some passion out of Morris. In a way, of course, it's a clever reversal of the scene that ended Mitchell's marriage, but it still leaves a bad taste and makes it difficult to recommend this film for today's audiences. Morris is handsome and hunky, and it's a relief that even though his character is supposed to be a mama's boy (with O'Neil flat-out accused of breeding the manhood out of him), he isn't played as sissified or gay or weak, just confused and misguided. Barrie has a passing resemblance to Kay Francis, who would have been good in the part. John Litel is Barrie's patsy of a husband. It is fun to see Mitchell and O'Neil paired up here, just a year before they would play Scarlett O'Hara's parents in GONE WITH THE WIND. As with many B-movies, the writing could be stronger; the parents are built up fairly well, but Morris and Lane's characters are both inconsistent, acting the way they do just because the script calls for it. One funny line has Mitchell expressing anger over the family's passive style of arguing: "There won't be any fight--this is just a family affair--adverbs at 20 paces." [TCM]