Smarty

Perhaps too many folks are getting their things in an uproar about this zippy, fast-paced little comedy about the battle of the sexes. Yes, there are slaps in the film, but Blondell's character seems intent on getting them-- which to modern eyes seems bizarre indeed, and offensive in too many ways. But there is no indication that wife-beating is really the focus of this film, but instead the games people play when they discover relationship kinks that are not mainstream.

In many ways, this is a deeply cynical film (witness the running commentary from the two constant house guests) about public and private lives, the last gasp of pre-code comedy before the censors came down hard on creative expression of and shuttered them into the kitchen with their aprons for the next thirty years or so, when Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton exposed a more modern version of the S/M games that can develop when love is stunted by circumstance. This is not a great film by any measure, but viewed in an unusual context can be great fun.

Smarty has Warren William and Joan Blondell as a husband and wife. Joan is a vivacious tease and a flirt and William has limits on his patience. One night when she proves too much William belts her on the chin and Blondell files for divorce.

Johnny on the spot lawyer and neighbor Edward Everett Horton offers to be Blondell's divorce attorney and he marries her. But we're talking life with Horton and his fuss budget personality.

I think you can figure this one out. It's most dated because in this day and age no one slaps a woman without condemnation.

Still F. Hugh Herbert's script has quite a few laughs in it and Warner Brothers regulars Claire Dodd and Frank McHugh get their share also as neighbors and card playing regulars.

Funny at times, but most dated.

Interesting if bizarre dark comedy. This has been well reviewed by others. Two comments. The first is Warren Williams vacillating character, one minute dismissive of his ex-wife, then next expressing his undying love. This is not his most forceful or consistent role. The next is Joan Blondell and her motivation. She divorces her husband one minute and marries another shortly thereafter. Was she trying to make her husband more romantic, or was she living out her masochistic fantasies?

The dimpled Claire Dodd does a good job as the divorced friend of the couple. It was also nice to note Edward Everett Horton toning down his usual effete, fuss-budget persona.

A bored & beautiful SMARTY enjoys goading both of her husbands into fits of jealous rage.

This very bizarre little comedy from Warner Bros., which sneaked in under the wire before the imposition of the Production Code, actually espouses physical abuse as the secret ingredient needed in keeping the romantic spark alive in marriage. This distressful assertion is promoted by skillful players and smug dialogue, but to no avail.

Joan Blondell, as blonde & curvaceous as ever, is portrayed as an intensely annoying young virago with all the charm of an acid bath. Endlessly nagging, the script gives her one shrill note to play, which she does with unnerving tenacity. In most of her other roles of the period she played a smart & sassy gal who has to fight her way to happiness by final fadeout. Here, Blondell starts with everything and seems determined to claw her way to the bottom again. Must be some sort of mental aberration.

Patrician Warren William & nervous Edward Everett Horton supplied wonderful moments in dozens of Golden Age films. Here, as the two men caught in Blondell's web, although they make valiant efforts, they seem out of place in the rather sordid storyline.

Rounding out the cast as two friends seemingly without meaningful lives of their own, viewers will probably find Frank McHugh to be distressingly simpleminded and pretty Claire Dodd vindictive & catty. Neither exemplify the sort of friend one would want to have during a time of domestic crisis.

Perhaps it would be well to quote a single paragraph from celebrated journalist Harriet Hubbard Ayer's essay `What Not To Do,' published in CORRECT SOCIAL USAGE (The New York Society Of Self-Culture, 1903) `Don't nag; there's nothing in it but hateful thoughts for all concerned, and such thoughts are germs that breed deceit on one side and ungovernable temper on the other. At the end of the road is division of hearts, often a divorce court.' Blondell & Company should have paid heed.

This pretty amusing Pre-Code Hollywood divorce farce features an excellent cast and several very funny lines. It treats divorce as simply a part of the mating game, and treats the mating game as just that; it's one cynical movie. The script is certainly nowhere as witty as the first few Thin Man movies, and is actually disturbing if you put it at all within the real context of violence against women - the way the script treats hitting your wife as an element of comedy is downright shocking.