Schluss mit den Frauen

Though the careers of Robert Montgomery, Joan Crawford, and her husband at the time, Franchot Tone's respective careers were not hurt by films like No More Ladies, this was the kind of stuff all three of these players were looking to get out of.

There was a truism at MGM back in its heyday. For films where the men wear tuxedos you first get Robert Montgomery. If he turns it down get Franchot Tone. If it's bad enough for Tone to turn it down God help him, Robert Young is stuck with it. So knowing the pecking order and knowing the billing, you can guess who Crawford winds up with.

Robert Montgomery plays another of those irrepressible womanizing playboys who's sowed enough wild oats to qualify for a farm subsidy. He's decided to settle down with society girl Joan Crawford who has certain ideas about infidelity and how wrong it is. Montgomery behaves at first, but when he uses their perpetually inebriated friend Charlie Ruggles as an alibi that doesn't hold up, Crawford decides on some revenge with Franchot Tone.

No More Ladies is harmless enough and when Edna May Oliver as Joan's grandmother is on the screen, always entertaining. But it was the stuff that MGM was grinding out in its dream factory. It was a case of Montgomery and Tone look great in tuxedos so cast them as urban playboys.

Well, both of them did look great, Louis B. Mayer wasn't wrong about that.

For sporadic moments of amusement "No More Ladies" is perfectly satisfactory. It has the MGM lusciousness and gleam that the other studios envied. Note the great looking costumes on Joan Crawford, Joan Fontaine, and Gail Patrick wear. The sophistication is showed by the ho-ho-ho jokes that are dropped by the likes of Crawford, Robert Montgomery, Franchot Tone, and Edna Mae Oliver. This is the type of film that has the hero with a name like "Sherry". People go to night clubs, and to fancy restaurants, and take drives in Central Park at night (it is, after all, the 1930s).

The film is a bore - it occasionally amuses because of the cast, but the dialog is brittle for the sake of brittle. It is Noel Coward's world but not the real wit he brought - Coward's best plays show a streak of harshness and mutual malevolence mixed with affection in his couples like Amanda and Elyot in "Private Lives". They also tend to be smarter than the characters here.

Also the characters are not all that amusing nowadays. Montgomery's cousin is Charlie Ruggles, who is constantly drunk. Ruggles is a favorite comedian to me, but here he was dull. Reginald Denny is around as a British version of Ralph Bellamy - an available alter-suitor to Montgomery for Crawford, and while Denny is elegant (in a skittish sort of way) he is not at all as amusing as Ralph Bellamy was in "His Girl Friday" or The Awful Truth".

After watching this film I stopped to consider the three leads. Montgomery was typecast for most of the 1930s (except for an occasional film like "The Big House") as a happy, amoral socialite. Nobody really played the upper-crust cad as well as he did, but he got bored by it, and fought for meatier parts - and after his brilliant Danny in "Night Must Fall" he got them. Crawford reveled in parts like the hard-working lower class girl fighting her way to happiness, but she did many "socialite" parts as well. Along came "The Women", and she played a villainous social climber. After that came the really hard-boiled darker parts of the 1940s and 1950s like "Mildred Pierce" and "A Woman's Face" and "Flamingo Road". Tone, in 1935, would start having roles like Bryam in "Mutiny On The Bounty" - like Montgomery he would play his wealthy cads, but he would be able to step into nastier, meatier roles like "The Phantom Lady" and "The Man On The Eiffel Tower". When one talks to their fans about the great work of these three actors, it is the films where they played characters with demons after them that are recalled. Few really recall a piece of meaningless cotton candy like "No More Ladies" regarding any of them.

The unoriginal plot, about a rich married couple dealing with problems of infidelity, is secondary here to the clever dialogue by Donald Ogden Stewart, who wrote the screenplay to The Philadelphia Story, and to a strong supporing cast. Joan Crawford is fine, but Robert Montgomery and Franchot Tone, fighting for Crawford's hand, wind up being nearly indistinguishable from each other, both in looks and in character. That leaves the supporting cast to rescue the film: Charles Ruggles has a fun bit as a slurring drunk and Arthur Treacher comes in at the end as a stuffy Brit who mumbles loudly and misuses American slang. Even Gail Patrick, who isn't normally given much to do in her man-stealing parts, is fine here. But the best is Edna May Oliver, playing the wise and witty matriarch--she steals every scene she's in and was the main reason I finished watching the movie.

This is a film that came between two of Joan Crawford's best work in the movies, while still employed by MGM, "Grand Hotel" and "The Women". This is a film seldom seen these days. Thanks to TCM we had the opportunity to watch it.

In fact, "No More Ladies", is an adaptation of a stage play. Even though George Cukor was not given credit for helping Edward Griffith with the direction, the adaptation can't circumvent the fact one is watching a theatrical play the way it unfolds on the screen. Donald Ogden Stewart, a talented screen writer is among the several people that collaborated with the script. The problem with the screen play is that if feels too artificial.

The film is worth a look because of the star turn by Edna May Oliver, who as Fanny, steals the picture from its principals. Although not a radiant beauty, Ms. Oliver makes her presence known from the start because of her wit and the lines she delivers with absolute conviction and flair. As Neil Doyle has commented in this page, Ms. Oliver is the best thing in the film.

Joan Crawford is Marcia, the rich girl in love with Sherry, a man who has an eye for beautiful women and who doesn't mind straying. Ms. Crawford, dressed by Adrian, shows she had a way to show herself at an advantage in front of the camera, who loved her features, but somehow she comes across as too remote and she doesn't seem to have too much chemistry with her co-star.

Robert Montgomery plays Sherry, the man who can't keep away from women, as is the case when he meets Theresa, an attractive girl about town who couldn't care less if he belongs to another. Mr. Montgomery was an actor well suited for this type of comedy. He is always effective in the characters he portrays in film.

The supporting cast is interesting. Gail Patrick is perfect as Theresa, a role she was always good at portraying. Franchot Tone and especially Charles Ruggles, are seen at their best. This film marked the debut of Joan Fontaine, billed as Joan Burfield, in a small part.

"No More Ladies" is a curiosity film made more enjoyable by the presence of Edna May Oliver.

In the past 24 hours, I watched two 1930s comedies -- MERRILY WE LIVE and NO MORE LADIES.

IDMB users seemed to like MWL far more than I did. Many of the actors brought little to their roles in that film, and there's not a snappy bit of dialogue in the whole picture.

NML, on the other hand, is very witty, very well-acted, and quite entertaining. Yes, it might have been even better with someone other than Joan Crawford in the female lead, but Robert Montgomery is very strong and this was the most enjoyable work I'd ever seen Edna May Oliver deliver.

And I don't think, as one reviewer suggested, the Code impacted this movie very much -- in fact, it comes as being quite Pre-Code in nature. If you didn't know when it was made, one might easily guess it was pre-, not post-, code.

In short, not a classic, but quite snappy and entertaining and well worth watching.