Norman Krasna won an Oscar nomination for his original story and script for this film – and he must have been fond of it because he reused many elements later in his career. It’s a reverse Cinderella story: the richest girl in the world (Miriam Hopkins, orphaned when the Titanic went down) is never sure if guys are in love with her or her money, so when she falls for Joel McCrea, she pretends to be her own secretary (Fay Wray) – and tries to push McCrea together with her Fay Wray who pretends to be the riches girl in the world. (Krasna used a similar set up, i.e. rich people go undercover and find true love, in The Devil and Miss Jones and Let's Make Love.)
This is a creaky piece that shows its age (slightly stagy setting, muffled sound, etc) but is very sweet. I’ve never liked Hopkins in much before this but she’s very engaging, full of good humour, intelligence, and wistful longing. Krasna makes the character very winning on paper too – the first scene we see her in she gets dumped by her fiancée and takes it well. There’s a very sexy scene where Joel McCrea puts his head in her lap in front of a fireplace - Hopkins does some marvellous acting looking at him while he’s telling a story; her love for him is very convincing and sweet.
McCrea is a good romantic lead (even if it's unfortunate they turn him into a cave man at the end) but Fay Wray strikes a wrong chord as the secretary – she look too evil, and doesn’t do much with her character. For all Krasna's talent, the script ignores a large number of potential story avenues - we never see McCrea find out about the deception, there's never any complications to Wray's life (romantic or otherwise) out of what she does, the parts of Hopkins' friends and family (including Henry Stephenson) are undeveloped. But as I've said I did enjoy it.
No comments:
Post a Comment