MY LOVE CAME BACK (1940)

Farce & romantic comedy rarely found the sophistication & delicate touch needed at hard-driving Warner Brothers.  The studio comic sensibility, fast, loud & obvious, funny stuff only to the humor-challenged, often relying on ‘Mickey Mousing’ musical scores to point up jokes like a laugh track.  Yet now & then, Olivia de Havilland got everyone to calm down just enough to allow situations to play out naturally, content to win smiles rather than guffaws.  You can see the effect in THE STRAWBERRY BLONDE, PRINCESS O’ROURKE, and in this modest charmer that works without over-egging the pudding.  It ain’t Lubitsch, but it ain’t bad.  ‘Kurt’ (later ‘Curtis’) Bernhardt made his Stateside debut with this remake of an Austrian hit, EPISODE/’35, bringing a lighter hand than Warner regulars like Lloyd Bacon or Archie Mayo would have given.  Still, for post GONE WITH THE WIND de Havilland, it must have been a disappointing assignment*, featherweight nonsense as a cash-strapped student violinist, unaware that her special scholarship money comes from music mogul/would-be Sugar-daddy Charles Winninger, but on the expense account of his second-in-command (bland Jeffrey Lynn).  Worse, Winninger son William Orr thinks this gives him just the dirt he needs to sully Lynn’s rep and leapfrog ahead at the office.  Worser, de Havilland’s musical BFFs, Eddie Albert & Jane Wyman ‘borrow’ the tainted money for union dues to get that society gig that will establish their Classical-meets-Swing band.  And guess whose grand house they’re playing in?  Yikes!  The sort of plot you expect to become too stupid for words; yet it never does.  Everyone playing mistaken identity/crossed-wires farce as sensibly as possible, and without embarrassment.  Note how quickly Spring Byington, Winninger’s sympathizing wife, figures the whole thing out without hysterics.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Bernhardt not alone making his Warners debut.  S.K. ‘Cuddles’ Sakall, in his third Stateside pic, steals all his scenes at the start of a long, productive Warners’ run.  He’s even passable as a symphonic conductor at the Academy.  No sure thing in Hollywood.

SCEWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *That generic title just one more reason for de Havilland to doubt GWTW had raised her position in the studio pecking order.  Valued as consort to Errol Flynn and . . . ?  On the other hand, she did get the great Charles Rosher lensing.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, STRAWBERRY BLONDE/'41; PRINCESS O’ROURKE/'43.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/07/strawberry-blonde-1941.html   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/06/princess-orourke-1943.html