... as he did in "Power of the Press" (1928), "It Happened One Night" (1934), and this 1931 film.
The very wealthy Schuyler family is embroiled in a scandal with a chorus girl who holds six embarrassing love letters from the son of the family and is holding out for big bucks to release them. Enter reporter Stew Smith (Robert Williams) to get the story for his paper. This is how he meets the Schuyler daughter (Jean Harlow as Ann). The two begin to see each other, fall in love, and elope. Smith's friends (and his employer) make cracks about how he'll become a kept man. Ann's family is apoplectic because they see all unmoneyed outsiders as leeches and mercenaries.
Smith says that he and his wife will live on his salary in his apartment, but Ann turns out to be more controlling than he bargained on, right down to his garters, which he never wore until he married Ann and she insisted. Complications ensue.
This film continues the strange practice of 30s films of having men and women in their 20s appear to have mothers in their 60s. Louise Closser Hale, who plays Ann's snobby mother, is 40 years older than Jean Harlow and looks it. Loretta Young plays Gallagher, the girl reporter who loves Smith from afar and is heartbroken when he marries, yet the guy is clueless.
This is a somewhat forgotten entry in Frank Capra's catalog, perhaps because leading man Robert Williams died from peritonitis and a burst appendix days after the film opened. He's hard to describe, but he has the looks of Wallace Ford, the cheek of Robert Montgomery, and a bit of the good natured growl of Gable. This was easy target shooting for Capra in 1931. During the depths of the Great Depression, I'm sure audiences were more than happy to have the very rich painted as shallow and paranoid control freaks, unaware of their own privilege. And although Capra's working man in the person of Stew Smith is humorous and good natured, he's hardly painted as the courageous go-getter, preferring drinking with his reporter friends and goofing off to putting in a hard day's work.
I'd recommend this one. It doesn't boil down to anything unique, but it is a very fun watch.
The very wealthy Schuyler family is embroiled in a scandal with a chorus girl who holds six embarrassing love letters from the son of the family and is holding out for big bucks to release them. Enter reporter Stew Smith (Robert Williams) to get the story for his paper. This is how he meets the Schuyler daughter (Jean Harlow as Ann). The two begin to see each other, fall in love, and elope. Smith's friends (and his employer) make cracks about how he'll become a kept man. Ann's family is apoplectic because they see all unmoneyed outsiders as leeches and mercenaries.
Smith says that he and his wife will live on his salary in his apartment, but Ann turns out to be more controlling than he bargained on, right down to his garters, which he never wore until he married Ann and she insisted. Complications ensue.
This film continues the strange practice of 30s films of having men and women in their 20s appear to have mothers in their 60s. Louise Closser Hale, who plays Ann's snobby mother, is 40 years older than Jean Harlow and looks it. Loretta Young plays Gallagher, the girl reporter who loves Smith from afar and is heartbroken when he marries, yet the guy is clueless.
This is a somewhat forgotten entry in Frank Capra's catalog, perhaps because leading man Robert Williams died from peritonitis and a burst appendix days after the film opened. He's hard to describe, but he has the looks of Wallace Ford, the cheek of Robert Montgomery, and a bit of the good natured growl of Gable. This was easy target shooting for Capra in 1931. During the depths of the Great Depression, I'm sure audiences were more than happy to have the very rich painted as shallow and paranoid control freaks, unaware of their own privilege. And although Capra's working man in the person of Stew Smith is humorous and good natured, he's hardly painted as the courageous go-getter, preferring drinking with his reporter friends and goofing off to putting in a hard day's work.
I'd recommend this one. It doesn't boil down to anything unique, but it is a very fun watch.