VOGUES OF 1938 (1937)

This is an odd little mishmash: part musical revue, part romantic comedy, with both taking a back seat to the Technicolor fashion show which seems to be the movie's reason for existing. Warner Baxter plays the head of a ritzy fashion house; his wife (the wonderful ice queen Helen Vinson) is desperate for Baxter to back a Broadway show in which she wants to star, but she doesn't know that the company is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Enter Joan Bennett, a socialite from a family whose finances are also in bad shape; her family pressures her to marry the rich and older Alan Mowbray, but she leaves him at the altar and winds up taking a job as a model for Baxter. Bennett sets her cap for Baxter, though being a Code-friendly faithful husband, he stays cool until the end, when Vinson's show flops and she, angry that he won't sink any more money into the show, gets a Reno divorce. There are other promising subplots that don't pan out. One involves a rival designer (Mischa Auer) who marries one of Baxter's assistants, hoping to get a corporate spy in the family. Another centers on Baxter's second-in-command (Alma Kruger), who, in a set-up used to better effect in 1935's ROBERTA, gets sick on a European tour; her eventual death proves to be a wake-up call for Baxter to finally take control of his business and his life. In the end, Baxter uses the sets from the failed musical to produce an eye-popping fashion show that saves his career.

Every time the plot and characters get interesting, the movie stops for a musical number or a fashion show. I'm not a fashion connoisseur, so I can't say much about the dresses except to note how colorful and creative they are. The numbers are OK, though only one song, the Oscar-nominated "That Old Feeling" really stands out. One number had some unintentional (I assume) humor, as it extols the virtues of strolling models as "ladies of the evening, ladies of the night." There is also a striking number set at the Cotton Club in Harlem. Baxter is good, even better than he was as the beleaguered director in 42ND STREET, and Bennett (looking and sounding just like Myrna Loy) and Vinson are both fine. Jerome Cowan has a small role as the director of the flop that Baxter backs, and Penny Singleton (later Blondie in the movies) appears briefly doing her squeaky-voiced thing. Enjoyable, if not a classic, and the print shown on Turner Classic was restored and in great shape. [TCM]