This film, "We Were Dancing" from 1942 is a combination of two Noel Coward plays, and neither one was his best work.
The film stars Norma Shearer and Melvin Douglas, with a good supporting cast including Gail Patrick, Lee Bowman, Alan Mowbray, Connie Gilchrist, Norma Varden, Reginald Owen, and Marjorie Main.
Norma Shearer, with a blondish wig, plays Princess Victoria 'Vicki' Wilomirska who, when she gets excited, spouts outrageous Polish. At her engagement party (she is to marry the Lee Bowman character), she dances with Baron Nicholas Prax (Douglas) and they fall in love immediately. She breaks her engagement and marries the Baron.
The profession of these two is that of houseguests. They wander from place to place staying in the homes of socially ambitious people, usually Americans, who like the pedigree.
It's the usual break up to make up scenario.
Norma's big problem was that she couldn't get out of the '30s, and without her husband around, she couldn't choose films either. She obviously was concerned about her age and unfortunately, she had a right to - at 40, she was about 10 years past the age where most leading ladies in those days actually were leading ladies and not character actors. It's a shame, because she would have done so well in other films more appropriate for her.
This film has the same problem as "Her Cardboard Lover" - it came out at the wrong time, when this type of film had come and gone, and people were looking to more serious films or films that put the war into the story: "Mrs. Miniver," "The More the Merrier," "A Yank in the RAF," etc.
Norma Shearer was a hard-working, dedicated actress, but her ego got in the way of her final film choices. If only she had stopped with the wonderful "Escape" -- but she didn't.
