MAN-PROOF (1938)

Myrna Loy, daughter of romance novelist Nana Bryant, is staying at her mother's house on Long Island, anxiously awaiting the return of playboy Walter Pidgeon from a trip to Palm Springs, assuming that he will propose to her. Instead, she gets a telegram that Pidgeon will be marrying heiress Rosalind Russell, and she has been invited to be a bridesmaid. (I should say right here that one of this movie's faults is that we get very little backstory or character development so it's never clear if Pidgeon was leading Loy on or if he really had made promises to her.) Reporter Franchot Tone, a good friend of Loy's mother, thinks that Loy is better off without Pidgeon; Loy goes into a funk anyway, but manages to get it together to attend the wedding. At the party that evening, Loy gets quite drunk and warns Pidgeon to stay away from her because she will continue to try and win him over. In order to help Loy get over Pidgeon, Bryant and Tone get her a job at his newspaper as an ad artist. Things are quiet for a while until Pidgeon and Russell get back from an extended honeymoon. Loy seems to be genuine about wanting to remain friends with Pidgeon; he agrees, and then asks her to go to the fights with him because Russell is sick and can't go. Of course, one thing leads to another and the next morning, Loy calls Russell and says that she and Pidgeon are in love and he'll be getting a divorce. (Pidgeon's feelings about this are unclear.) Eventually, Loy, Pidgeon and Russell have a confrontation during which Russell admits that Pidgeon doesn't really love her but likes her money and her understanding nature, and that Pidgeon is probably incapable of love. Eyes are opening all around, and guess who finally realize they belong together?

This is an odd duck of a romantic comedy in the sense that the tone is light throughout until suddenly in the last 15 minutes, things get rather heavy and all the energy is sapped from the proceedings. It's an interesting twist but the screenwriters weren't quite up to making it work. Loy is the only character who we feel we have gotten to know. Pidgeon's feelings are obscure all through the film, and Tone is a cipher—we figure he'll end up with Loy but only because Loy and Tone are top-billed, and that's the generic expectation. The characters don't come off as very round, and oddly it's Russell (pictured) that I felt the most sympathy for in the final tangle. The acting helps with the movie's appeal. Loy steals the show, and her drunk scene is one of the best ever in a Hollywood movie because it feels real and not exaggerated for comic effect. Russell is fine acting all noble and understanding. Tone and Pidgeon are not my favorite classic-era leading men. Pidgeon is pretty good, light on his feet and not as plodding as usual. Tone is boring and I honestly wasn't rooting for him to win out, partly because he has no personality. (You'll notice I barely mention him in the summary because he really doesn't have much to do.) Bryant underplays what might have been an annoying role. I enjoyed John Miljan as Tommy, Pigeon's best man and good friend to Loy; in a later era, he probably would have been the gay best friend. There are plot threads and themes and visuals that would be better presented by MGM in THE WOMEN and THE PHILADELPHIA STORY. Watchable mostly for Loy. [TCM]