SMALL TOWN GIRL (1936)

Janet Gaynor, one of the few top stars to ride the silent-to-sound transition with nary a bump (1925 - 1937) in a rare loan out from home studio FOX to M-G-M.  She’s wonderful, the film . . . not so much.  Best in its opening act as grocer’s daughter Gaynor watches in wonder as a flood of Ivy Leaguers cruise thru her town on their way to the Yale/Harvard football game.  Young, rich, beautiful, well-dressed, carefree and car endowed; she can only dream.  So when handsome young alum/brain surgeon Robert Taylor asks her for a way around the traffic jam, she’s open to an adventure with the smart set that turns into a boozy over-nighter, blessed at dawn with an unlikely spontaneous Justice of the Peace marriage and a car crash finale.  The comic drunk driving no longer looking so comic, instead, instantly curdling the tone with Taylor sobering up into a mean-spirited louse who imagines Gaynor was really taking him for a ride, and a quick annulment payoff.  Taking her to his parents’ home in Boston, Dad Lewis Stone tells his undisciplined boy the only way for him to keep his reputation and save his career in staid Bean Town is to have Gaynor agree to a nine-month sham marriage before divorcing.  Plenty of time (surprise, surprise) for Taylor to notice he’s accidentally stumbled upon a gem, especially in comparison to the status loving socialite he’d long been engaged to.  The film warming up considerably as Taylor starts to melt.  Taylor at his handsomest, but without the necessary stylized delivery to let us see the underlying charm behind his shitty behavior before his redemption.  And director William Wellman, who handles the townie opening well (Gaynor’s extended-family dinner scenes excellent), is no help at all to Taylor.  Meanwhile, the multiple scripters on M-G-M’s rewrite staff are forced to turn his old fiancée into one prime bitch so Taylor can come 'round.  On the other hand, M-G-M managed to make this a hit and knew enough to bring in legendary lenser Charles Rosher who could light Gaynor so she seemed to glow from within. At her best, in silents under Murnau, Borzage, Ford, and in sound films like STATE FAIR/’33, A STAR IS BORN/’37 or even this, you can’t miss seeing how Gaynor’s charm & gentle decency still take hold of an audience.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: With the same head-writer (John Lee Mahin) and young James Stewart in the same backup boyfriend role, it’s easy to see how this was originally envisioned for Jean Harlow to follow her underrated WIFE VS. SECRETARY out earlier the same year.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/wife-vs-secretary-1936.html   OR:  A musical remake in 1953 takes little but the title.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2010/12/small-town-girl-1953.html