Carole Lombard delivers the goods in this modest romantic-dramedy from Columbia Pictures that takes an uncomfortably dark turn in its third act, unbalancing the tone even as it adds interest. Carole’s your standard-issue rich spoiled heiress, a Depression Era favorite, who meets-cute with Lyle Talbot’s self-made man on her way back from scandalizing Europe. He disapproves/she’s intrigued. (Talbot at his most appealing in one of 11 features he made in 1932.*) Technically engaged to some minor Euro-Prince, she drops all plans, and dissolute ways, to pursue real love with this regular guy. But hits a bump back home when banker dad Walter Connolly needs a bailout from Grandpa C. Aubrey Smith, the guy who’s really pining for that royal title. Elegantly shot by Joseph August and smartly paced by director Walter Lang, it never quite hangs together. (Presumably, Lombard’s early comic action added late in the game.) But the film finds some unusually delicate atmosphere on the rich & mighty while generating plenty of heat between Talbot (normally a bit faceless) and Lombard, showing yet again that she was a force to be reckoned with years before Howard Hawks claimed to have taught her how to act in TWENTIETH CENTURY/’34.
DOUBLE-BILL: *Like Talbot, character actor Walter Connolly made his feature debut this year. This is only his third film and he’d work again with Lombard in two classics: TWENTIETH CENTURY/’34 and NOTHING SACRED/’37.
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