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"Third Finger, Left Hand" 1940 with Myrna Loy and Melvyn Douglas
Every so often, I watch a movie and I think, "they've run out of ideas;" this was one of those times.
Owing to the production code, every combination of confused, but basically, innocent dating and matrimony was tried in movies (lost wives or husbands, people acting like they are married or single when they weren't for some silly reason, everybody thinking his or her spouse is cheating on them when they weren't, etc.) and sometimes it just got stupid, like in this movie.
Here, Loy plays a very successful magazine editor (in a very large Art Deco office) who fakes having a husband that no one has ever met (not even once) - because he travels the world (uh-huh) - so as to deter male suitors at work and to prevent their wives from getting jealous of her (in this movie, anyway, that is averred to work).
It's funny, though, as I've seen several period movies where the woman is all but fired for getting married, but here it was given a job-security halo. This is not to make light of the genuine difficult situation career woman had in that day (it was hard, but many overcame it), but it is to make direct fun of the shifting assumptions movies made to justify their over-engineered plots.
With Loy's silly ersatz-marriage construct in place, Douglas' character enters as a struggling mid-west artist whose career Loy inadvertently hurts. They flirt/date a bit afterwards until he learns she is married (to her fake husband, but he doesn't know this) causing him to back away hurt. However, he then learns of her fake-husband scheme and - to take the silliness up several levels - decides to pose as her husband (remember, nobody has ever seen the husband) while showing up at her house to live.
Oh the hi-jinx. It's all too much plot architecture for not very witty dialogue and very little Loy-Douglas chemistry. Douglas is, IMHO, one shy of a true leading man, but an enjoyable actor as the number-two guy, etc. Here, he just doesn't have enough to convince you Loy is crazy about him or to cause you to forget all the plot nonsense going on. And that's the issue, a silly plot requires everything else to work - dialogue, chemistry, characters, etc. - which it doesn't here, so all you are left with is the thought: "They've run out of ideas."
Oh, and for all the vaunted MGM money and excess - and despite having top-name stars - this is a pretty low-budget affair with, mainly, cheap sets, obvious models and fake background shots. But at least Loy looks cute as heck.
Every so often, I watch a movie and I think, "they've run out of ideas;" this was one of those times.
Owing to the production code, every combination of confused, but basically, innocent dating and matrimony was tried in movies (lost wives or husbands, people acting like they are married or single when they weren't for some silly reason, everybody thinking his or her spouse is cheating on them when they weren't, etc.) and sometimes it just got stupid, like in this movie.
Here, Loy plays a very successful magazine editor (in a very large Art Deco office) who fakes having a husband that no one has ever met (not even once) - because he travels the world (uh-huh) - so as to deter male suitors at work and to prevent their wives from getting jealous of her (in this movie, anyway, that is averred to work).
It's funny, though, as I've seen several period movies where the woman is all but fired for getting married, but here it was given a job-security halo. This is not to make light of the genuine difficult situation career woman had in that day (it was hard, but many overcame it), but it is to make direct fun of the shifting assumptions movies made to justify their over-engineered plots.
With Loy's silly ersatz-marriage construct in place, Douglas' character enters as a struggling mid-west artist whose career Loy inadvertently hurts. They flirt/date a bit afterwards until he learns she is married (to her fake husband, but he doesn't know this) causing him to back away hurt. However, he then learns of her fake-husband scheme and - to take the silliness up several levels - decides to pose as her husband (remember, nobody has ever seen the husband) while showing up at her house to live.
Oh the hi-jinx. It's all too much plot architecture for not very witty dialogue and very little Loy-Douglas chemistry. Douglas is, IMHO, one shy of a true leading man, but an enjoyable actor as the number-two guy, etc. Here, he just doesn't have enough to convince you Loy is crazy about him or to cause you to forget all the plot nonsense going on. And that's the issue, a silly plot requires everything else to work - dialogue, chemistry, characters, etc. - which it doesn't here, so all you are left with is the thought: "They've run out of ideas."
Oh, and for all the vaunted MGM money and excess - and despite having top-name stars - this is a pretty low-budget affair with, mainly, cheap sets, obvious models and fake background shots. But at least Loy looks cute as heck.
