Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, and a young Olivia DeHavilland all compete to steal the show in this slick and sumptuous screwball comedy from 1937.
Howard and Davis play comically tempestuous lovers/actors whose quarrels sometimes continue while they're on stage. DeHavilland is a starstruck and lovesick ingénue who pursues Howard with great ardor; almost nothing deters her from the chase, not even when Howard, in a desperate attempt to repulse, breaks into her room and threatens to subject her to "a fate worse than death"; it only makes her passion flare up all the more, much to the poor fellow's dismay.
It's a shame it is not more remembered along with the likes of Bringing Up Baby (1938), Ball of Fire (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), and Twentieth Century (1934). If any 1930s comedy deserved rediscovery, then it would be this one.
Howard and Davis play comically tempestuous lovers/actors whose quarrels sometimes continue while they're on stage. DeHavilland is a starstruck and lovesick ingénue who pursues Howard with great ardor; almost nothing deters her from the chase, not even when Howard, in a desperate attempt to repulse, breaks into her room and threatens to subject her to "a fate worse than death"; it only makes her passion flare up all the more, much to the poor fellow's dismay.
It's a shame it is not more remembered along with the likes of Bringing Up Baby (1938), Ball of Fire (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), and Twentieth Century (1934). If any 1930s comedy deserved rediscovery, then it would be this one.