Danger - Love at Work

Thirties comedy tends to zanier-than-thou smugness, even in official classics like It Happened One Night and Bringing Up Baby. So it's a pleasant surprise to find Preminger already applying his lawyerly objectivity to a boilerplate screwball script, giving the zanies and the normals their due but not endorsing either. When Jack Haley asks Ann Sothern to elope and she protests, "If I don't have a wedding my family will never speak to me again" he shoots back, "That settles it!" and whisks her off - in effect a shotgun wedding between the two camps. A delightful tidbit that deserves reconsideration for the canon. (And the title song will have your toes tapping for days.)

Very gratifying to see that this very well-made film has gotten such excellent reviews on this site. Preminger himself, when interviewed, rarely tried to make a case for his films that were considered minor or unimportant, nor did he encourage looking back. Consequently, if foolishly, critics have tended to dismiss such films, and especially the few he made before "Laura." What a delight, then, to find that "Danger, Love at Work" is an especially effervescent and sophisticated screwball comedy. And it is a very legitimate example, based on the essential "crazy family" format. It completely ignores the social consciousness aspect of the classic screwball ("You Can't Take It With You" and "My Man Godfrey" are otherwise close relatives), and benefits perhaps from this narrow focus on plot and character. And what characters! Mary Boland, who can sometimes annoy, fits in here very nicely as Ann Sothern's mother; diminutive Etienne Girardot -- a fascinating and lively little actor (his nervous performance here, as in "Twentieth Century" is priceless) as her father (and has a charming counterpart -- equally diminutive -- in "Uncle Goliath," a "back-to-nature" type); brother John Carradine (as a "post-Surrealist" painter); Walter Catlett as a philatelist uncle -- all delightful. Miss Sothern herself is every bit as charming as Carole Lombard (and has a rather less annoying role than Lombard's) in "Godfrey," and, besides, has a lovely vocal duet with Jack Haley on the title song. She really can sing! And here we have Haley two years before "The Wizard of Oz" -- nicely done, though no Cary Grant of course. Edward Everett Horton is, as always, superb, though his straight-man adversarial role here doesn't point up his own best strengths. Even Benny Bartlett as an 11-year-old Princeton graduate, scores nicely. As is typical of Preminger, there is not a single bad performance ("My Man Godfrey," on the other hand, has its Gail Patrick - - ghastly). (In bit parts, we even have Franklin Pangborn and Elisha Cook, Jr.) So here we have, in this man's opinion, a screwball comedy truly worthy of entering The Canon (if such there be).

Back in the 1930s, a common sort of film was the wacky family comedy. They were very popular and usually seemed to star Billie Burke or Mary Boland as the family matriarch. Such pictures as "My Man Godfrey", "You Can't Take it With You" and "Merrily We Live" are among the more famous films of the genre.

In "Danger--Love at Work", a hunt club wishes to expand but cannot until they buy some property owned by the goofball Pemberton family. While the Pembertons are not against selling the land, they are collectively like a toddler who has a severe case of ADHD as well as an addiction to meth! In other words, they are so busy off doing their own strange hobbies and talking in circles that they never seem to sit still long enough to complete the business deal. After many months trying in vain, the latest representative of the hunt club has quit and they just appointed Henry (Jack Haley) to take over the case and complete the deal. Not surprisingly, he's at wits end trying to corral these idiots into one place and to be quiet long enough to do much of anything!

To me, the screwball rich family was an overused cliche of the era. It wasn't that the films weren't enjoyable, but there is a certain sameness to them that makes them easy to avoid after you've seen a few. Plus, there is a part of most of us who would love to slap the snot out of these rich dilitantes...and that makes seeing a steady supply of the films tough going. In other words, seeing a few is fun...seeing them all is exhausting and repetitive....so choose a few of the best and ignore the rest.

So is "Danger--Love at Work" among the best of these films? No...though it is enjoyable and I cannot rate it poorly just because there's the glut of similar films. My only real complaint is that this family is more annoying than most in the genre and I found myself wanting to collectively slap them all! The film really tries too hard to make them strange...perhaps too much so....and that's why it only receives a 6 (though I was close to giving it a 7).

There's no doubt that this is a funny movie. It's madcap mayhem much of the time. It has a plot that ties it all together. And, it has a very good cast, all of whom do well in their parts. So, why do I give it only six stars? Well, for starters, it's very zany and funny at times – but not laughably funny most of the time. The ingredients for the screwball comedy are there in spades – the love triangle. But it isn't really a triangle because E.E. Horton's Howard Rogers "masterfully" became engaged to Ann Sothern's Toni Pemberton. She doesn't love the guy and there's no conflict between two suitors. And, there is very little comedy between the two leads – Sothern and Jack Haley's Henry MacMorrow.

What distinguishes the great screwball comedies is the interplay between the two leads. The exchanges of witty lines, the riotously funny give and take between the two, the hilarious mishaps and slapstick. There is none of that in this film. After a short encounter in their first meeting, the two leads become friends with a common pursuit. Now it's just a romance with them. The film does have many weird characters, and they have some lines that strain at humor. But mostly, they are engaged in individual eccentricities that are funny but that soon grow tiresome.

"Danger – Love at Work" has the feel of watching a variety show with one comedy skit – or attempted one – after another. The incidents and scenes are amusing, but that's it. A couple of other reviewers have noted that it would have been a better production with a top-line director of the day. That might have been so, but only with a major rewrite of the screenplay. It has to start with the screenplay, and this one doesn't have what it takes to make great comedy.

Otto Preminger was alternating directing for the stage and the movies at this point and this beautifully cast comedy is played like a variation on YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU. Like the New York Legislature or a Marx Brothers movie, everyone talks very fast and very loud and no one listens to anyone else. As a result, Jack Haley, who is not playing his usual milksop, is very frustrated in his efforts to buy a farm and be wooed by a surprisingly sweet and predatory Ann Southern.

A look at the cast list will show a fine assortment of supporting comics and people who didn't get enough chance to play comedy, like John Carradine.

I don't think this movie did very well at the box office, since Preminger didn't direct another movie for five years and rarely tackled a comedy except to finish up a couple of them for a dying Ernst Lubitsch. Perhaps this movie simply exhausted him. In any case, it is a fine, obscure screwball comedy.