When Ladies Meet (1933 and 1941)
Yesterday marked the 80th anniversary of the release of When Ladies Meet, MGM’s 1933 adaptation of Rachel Crothers’ 1932 play, one of Broadway’s “sophisticated” explorations of the so-called modern woman. MGM had such a good time with the material that they brought it back eight years later for a second go-round, with two different “ladies.” The 1933 version, made in the pre-Code era and only one year after the play’s debut, is the better of the two, still rather good though “talky” in a manner that can’t help but announce its stage origins. Its modernism is obviously dated, but the material nonetheless remains adult, absorbing, and amusing.
Myrna Loy plays a novelist in love with Frank Morgan, her married publisher. (This movie is so old that Morgan, soon to be a white-haired character actor, is still plausible as a romantic interest.) Robert Montgomery is a journalist in love with Loy, while top-billed Ann Harding, who enters at the half-hour mark, is Morgan’s wise, if somewhat long-suffering, wife, very much aware of his ongoing infidelities. Loy wants Morgan to be hers, even suggesting that they openly live together. She hopes they can all be grown-ups and deal with their romantic complications in an up-front, broad-minded manner.
From its swanky New York opening, the film settles down for a weekend in the country at the plush yet cozy home of a delightfully ditzy widow (Alice Brady.) All four leads eventually make their way there for a series of confrontations. The problem with the film, which is supposedly a movie about strong and intelligent women, is that it’s Montgomery who has all the answers, the one smugly pulling the strings and rearranging things, all in the apparent name of knowing what’s best for everyone. Montgomery was a skillful light comedian, but that very smugness, which so often appears in his work, makes him an unlikable version of Cary Grant. On the positive side, the two women genuinely bond, sustaining their connection even after the details of the Morgan-Loy affair are revealed. And so this is not the bitchy comedy you expect, but, rather, a refreshing comedy-drama about women (who, yes, happen to be rivals) understanding and respecting each other. It’s Morgan who has caused all the trouble. Has Harding finally had enough of his shenanigans? Has Loy at last seen that she’s just another of his flings? Observing from the sidelines and ready to pounce, Montgomery swoops in for the too easily rendered fade-out.
Directed by Harry Beaumont (The Broadway Melody), the film offered good roles to Harding and Loy, both of whom are solid but had been even better (especially Loy) in The Animal Kingdom (1932), another literate screen adaptation of a hit play. As for Morgan, he is low-key, smart, even attractive in his straight role, without employing a single one of his trademark comic stammers. Put this on his exceedingly long list of impressive screen performances. Stage star Alice Brady, in her talkie debut, set the standard for all her hilarious matrons to come, in classics like The Gay Divorcee (1934) and My Man Godfrey (1936). She’s daffy, energized, and always welcome company. Here she has an apparently gay companion (Marvin Burton), an escort who has designed her house, arranges her flowers, and plays her piano.
Just prior to MGM’s remake, Joan Crawford starred in the film version of another Crothers hit play, Susan and God (1940), which certainly shouldn’t have served as any encouragement for her to attempt a second. Her 1941 When Ladies Meet is, like the original, chic and high-minded, but it’s such a yawn, feeling more like a flat-out soap than the earlier version. And, because it had to deal with the Production Code, it is far less risque. Gone are the lines about the novelist wanting to live unmarried with her lover. The loss of all its tangy, suggestive pre-Code dialogue makes the remake feel even more dated, relying on glamour above all else.
Crawford is the writer, while Greer Garson is the wife. (The off-screen arcs of the two pairs of actresses are reversed: in ’33, Harding [wife] was in decline while Loy [author] was about to burst into stardom; in ’41, Crawford [author] was fading while Garson [wife] would soon be queen of the lot.) The husband is Herbert Marshall, and Robert Taylor has Montgomery’s role. If you thought it sounded hard to believe that Myrna Loy and Ann Harding could both desire Frank Morgan, well, that was a cinch compared to accepting that Crawford and Garson could both want Marshall, here at his absolute dullest and most amorphous. (In 1933, Harding and Morgan had two children; in ’41, Garson and Marshall are childless.) Perhaps Marshall was exhausted: it couldn’t have been easy to co-star with Crawford and Bette Davis (The Little Foxes) in the same year.
Crawford starts off well, very relaxed and looking wonderful, but she soon grows tiresome, mired in that overaffected speech she often seemed to equate with real acting. Her performance feels like a forerunner to Natalie Wood’s in Sex and the Single Girl (1964), another movie about a modern female author who apparently knows far less than she thinks she does about man-woman relationships.
Robert Taylor’s role closely follows Montgomery’s smug intervention, though Taylor seems less comfortable than Montgomery in this world of highbrows. (Montgomery played a journalist, but Taylor floats through his movie without any discernible professional identity.) There’s a terrible new scene of Taylor and Garson going sailing, providing Taylor with some unfunny slapstick (to beef up his peripheral part?). Garson comes off best, injecting the proceedings with sparkles of wit and a touch of elegance. The director, Robert Z. Leonard, had just directed Garson in Pride and Prejudice (1940), having showcased one of her very best performances.
In an unsual twist, it’s Spring Byington in the Alice Brady role. Why “unusual” when Byington played even more addled ladies than Brady? Well, it was Byington who created the role on Broadway in 1932, then lost it to Brady in 1933, and then regained it in 1941. Now that’s unusual. And she’s not as memorable, as funny, or, oddly enough, as theatrical as Brady.
The film makes its way to the same ending, if less plausibly. And it does retain the core of female bonding, with Crawford and Garson liking each other and standing up for each other. But, mostly, it just wants to be a scintillating high comedy, which is ultimately too much to ask. Ironically, the Norma Shearer tag of ”First Lady of MGM,” so coveted by Crawford, would soon belong to Garson thanks to Mrs. Miniver (1942). Finally, what can you say about a movie produced by someone named Orville O. Dull?
