THE GREAT GARRICK (1937)

Known for Universal horror pics laced with humor (FRANKENSTEIN; INVISIBLE MAN; BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN), British-born James Whale was no one-trick pony as director.  WWI pics; women’s mellers; the classic 1936 version of SHOW BOAT; and here, that rarest of genres, historical farce.*  An unusually sophisticated project for Warners (Whale on loan from Universal after THE ROAD BACK/’37 was butchered in post.), Ernst Lubitsch regular Ernest Vajda wrote the fanciful story about 18th century London stage titan David Garrick going to Paris where he’s been invited to play DON JUAN.  But when Le Comédie-Française hears (mistakenly) that Garrick plans to teach them all how to act, the company is honor-bound to avenge the slander!  And playwright Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais (Lionel Atwill) has just the comeuppance, a play for players.  They’ll trick their guest star into making a fool of himself.  But since it takes an actor to catch an actor, Garrick will find them out even as he himself is tricked when he falls in love with the one ringer in the story: an enchanting lady he doesn’t realize is not a member of the troupe!  This charming little fable, well staged by Whale on Anton Grot’s marvelous sets, is pacier, in the Warners’ manner, than Whale’s somewhat bumpy Universal films.  Always fun, if not as funny as it thinks it is.  Especially in the first two acts.  Only the last two reels fully coming to life with a faked riot outside his lodging room; a masterclass in acting from Garrick after he’s found them out; and a final stage speech to woo the lady.  Teenage Olivia de Havilland is tops as the confused non-actor; Edward Everett Horton leads the typically tasty Warners’ support, and Brian Aherne (tall and slim where the real Garrick was short and squat) tries for John Barrymore panache.  Four years back, Barrymore would have done it himself, but by 1937 Aherne’s facsimile will have to do.

DOUBLE-BILL:  *Gregory La Cava’s THE AFFAIRS OF CELLINI/’34 another example of historical farce.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: New at Warners, composer Adolph Deutsch, noting playwright Beaumarchais in the cast, uses Mozart’s DON GIOVANNI to back the DON JUAN production.  Good call as Beaumarchais’s Marriage of Figaro was the preceding Mozart opera.