Should Ladies Behave

After attending a New York play, six romantically challenged characters gather at the Riverdale, Connecticut home of flighty Alice Brady (as Laura) and her grumpy husband Lionel Barrymore (as Augustus "Gussie" Merrick). Twenty-five years married, Ms. Brady and Mr. Barrymore snap at each other frequently and seem ready to separate. Lonely and bored, Brady enjoys visiting playboy painter Conway Tearle (as Max Lawrence), believing he's an old lover returning to sweep her off her feet...

Unbeknownst to the gushing Brady, Mr. Tearle is having an affair with her sister, Katharine Alexander (as Winifred "Winnie" Lamont). But Tearle prefers Brady's flirty 19-year-old daughter Mary Carlisle (as Leone Merrick), who is looking for the experience young boyfriend William Janney (as Geoffrey "Geoff" Cole) wants. An obvious solution exists. The unpleasant premise (don't repeat the older couple's mistake?), clever ending (by writer Paul Osborn) and likable ensemble are a mixed bag.

***** Should Ladies Behave (12/1/33) Harry Beaumont ~ Alice Brady, Lionel Barrymore, Conway Tearle, Katharine Alexander

Lionel Barrymore largely made a career out of playing gruff, grumpy anhedoniacs; Alice Brady made hers out of playing flighty upper-class twits. Both were capable of other things, but in this pleasantly pre-Code romantic comedy from a Paul Osborn play, both drag out their usual bags of tricks. He harrumphs and lets his facial muscles sag and crosses his arms, and she giggles and defies logic. They're an unhappily married late-middle-age couple whose daughter is about to be swept up by the cad Brady remembers loving 20 years ago, who is now having an affair with her sister. It's pretty frank about all the adultery, and there's a bracing twist ending. One wants a more dashing rake than Conway Tearle, but Katharine Alexander is amusingly tart and Eve Arden-ish as the sister, and Mary Carlisle is fine as the naive young miss. Casual racism and an insipid Freed-Brown song dot this fun nonsense, and there are serious moments of actual truth scattered about it--loved the scene where Brady finally must Be a Mom, and she steps up to the plate admirably.

I rewatched this after seeing it at least 10 years ago, when my great pre-code TCM love-affair began. As a student of European culture, I think this movie is important. As indicated in other reviews, the sexual revolution has already happened, yet because it is 1933 (rather than post-1950s), this Anglophonic elite is still trying to observe the pieties of conventional morality, all of which have since been self-consciously discarded except among the religious. Here you have affirmation of why these conventions are important and why we abandon them at our peril. Katherine Alexander has a more touching part that what was usually afforded Eve Arden in that she expresses wistful regret for what might have been (none of that in Arden) had she been a little less unconventional and is genuinely moving in her relatively small part. Conway Tearle is unconvincing as a Picasso-like mensch (perhaps if Leone had been a young man?), but he is but a foil, so his fey performance becomes irrelevant. What really matters is Alice Brady, who in the previous favorable reviews is still not getting the due I think she deserves. There is liberated (no better illustrated than in the braless Adrian gown noted in an earlier review) soul in Alice, and her character, while appearing to be two-dimensional, is truly rich, and Alice affirms, throughout and at the end, how happiness is achieved in this compromise we call life. And Lionel is three-dimensional from start-to-finish, fully engaged in his part as a man with clear interests for his own happiness and that of his loved ones. The lessons of this play (for it is a play) are timeless, but are given with that teaspoon of sugar (comedy) so necessary to really impart them, and Brady's, Barryomore's, and Alexander's performances make this great.

Some call this a screwball comedy. Well, the only screwball is Laura Merrick (played by Alice Brady). At the beginning of the film, we think that her husband, Augustus (Lionel Barrymore), is a cantankerous meanie, but it does not take long to realize that he is remarkably tolerant when it comes to his loud, obnoxious wife.

Most of the action of the film is about their daughter, Leone (Mary Carlisle), who at age 19 laments her lack of experience and decides to remedy the situation by getting involved with a man more than twice her age. A young, more suitable suitor is Geoffrey Cole (William Janney), but his feelings towards Leone seem rather lukewarm.

"Should Ladies Behave" has a charm that most pre-code films possess, and the acting is fine. But it has the distinct feel of a play adaptation. That does not ruin the film, though, especially if you are interested in films of this era as representative of their time. They all play a game of Twenty Questions that is a glimpse into the past and perhaps the funniest part. Rate this film "pleasant".

William Janney tells Mary Carlisle she's too unworldly to marry. So when her aunt Katharine Alexander visits with her 'friend' Conway Tearle, she proposes to run away with him, much to the displeasure of her parents, Alice Brady and Lionel Barrymore.

There are many witty lines in this movie, and Miss Brady offers her usual delightful nitwit. However the show's theatrical background shows, particularly in Miss Carlisle's performance. Tearle remains the answer to the question no one asked, to wit "What if you needed Conrad Nagel, but bulkier?", while Barrymore's performance consists of him being disagreeable mst of the time. He result is a pre-code movie in which much i talked about, mostly unpleasantly, with enough bright spots to maintain interest.