Mama Steps Out

Mama Steps Out (1937)

** (out of 4)

Alice Brady plays a wife from Indiana who drags her husband (Guy Kibbee) and daughter (Betty Furness) to Europe so that they can catch up on what she believes is proper society. To her horror the daughter falls in love with an American musician (Dennis Morgan) but he isn't quite as affectionate to her. MAMA STEPS OUT is pretty much a comedy version of DODSWORTH, although it's certainly not as good as that Oscar-winning film. I think there are a few nice things scattered among the 63-minute running time but in the end there's just not enough laughs to make it a complete winner. What makes the film mildly amusing are the performances, which are all extremely good. Both Brady and Kibbee give it their all and I think they make for a wonderful couple. The two of them are amusing as they play off one another and I especially liked the way Kibbee played his typical brain dead character with a little twist. There's a sequence where the wife wants him to keep going to a bar to meet the "proper" type of people and he gives a little speech about becoming a drunk and the actor delivers it perfectly. I also thought both Furness and Morgan were good in their parts but there's no question that the entire love story just really drags this thing down as it's pretty silly and predictable. Gene Lockhart plays a brief supporting role and is fine too. The screenplay starts off with some nice dialogue and situations but it quickly falls apart when the story goes from this mid-West family crashing Europe to a predictable love story. Fans of the cast will still want to check it out but others will want to skip it.

The whole thing was played at top-pitch, without mercy; "over-the-top" pitch, actually. As with most of the 1930s "Screwball" comedies, they assumed that LOUD is funny - but it's just idiots yelling at each other.

It's also impossible laugh at anyone you'd rather strangle; the Mama is a driveling moron who spends the entire European trip in their rented house. Go outside and look around! When a Guy Kibbee character is the most intelligent in the whole film, you're in trouble.

Based on a 1930 Broadway play adapted by Anita Loos ("Gentleman Prefer Blondes") for the screen, this MGM film starts off as a delightful satire of Innocents Abroad with snappy dialogue and memorable comic performances by Alice Brady as the socially-ambitious mid-western housewife who aspires for European culture but only ends up with a trio of bohemian phonies, and Guy Kibbee, perfectly cast as her good-hearted but bumbling husband, who finally has enough of the free-loaders sponging at his rented Antibes villa. Unfortunately, the high-jinxs are pulled down by a vapid and predictable love story featuring Betty Furness and Dennis Morgan, then known as Stanley Morner. Only a year after singing "A Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody" uncredited in The Great Ziegfeld, Morgan, groomed for stardom as MGM's answer to Paramount's Bing Crosby, looks wonderful, croons exquisitely in a tenor voice, but acts stiffly and self-consciously. Brady and Kibbee, however, manage to be both absurd and touching in comic character roles they were to repeat in many a film.

I caught this movie on Turner Classic Movies, not expecting much, but was surprised to find one of those classic daffy family comedies of the 30's, where a bunch of disparate people come together in a household and play out their lives amid what seems like chaos. Think of HOLIDAY. Guy Kibbee and Alice Brady provide the broken eggs to bind everything together.

Betty Furness, well before her Westinghouse commercial days and NBC Today duties, provides the ingénue role opposite a very young Dennis Morgan who would exercise his vocal chords in MGM productions.There's a Russian character around who makes you think of Micha Auer in MY MAN GODFREY and some characters who are reminiscent of those in the much later YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU. A well timed servants strike helps to bring matters to a close. So, a revolution helps? Well, that's all a subtext.

Those of you familiar with Kibbee's screen appearances with Aline MacMahon might be delighted at seeing how he plays against a ditz (Alice Brady) instead of a capable woman (Aline). Kibbee blusters well, as we know he can, but here he has to become a virtual drunkard to match up with an actress whose dithering and screen stupidity make Marion Lorne look like a TV parody. (Aline, by the way, for those not all that familiar with her can be seen in many a Kibbee film. Her consummate role, repeated many times, was that of the rock bottomed "mater" of the family who provided the ballast while Dear Old Dad, sailed about).

The movie's enjoyable, but catch it during a time when you need a brief and pleasant diversion from bombs bursting in air and the blood and gore films, and are not expecting an AA award nominee.

reworking of "Dodsworth" but with comedy and less impact once again, a flighty woman wants to be accepted by the smart set in Europe

One of the very best (and underrated) films of the 1930s was "Dodsworth". It was a sad tale written by Sinclair Lewis in 1929 about an industrialist who has sold his company and did what his wife always wanted--move the family to Europe to soak up the culture. Unfortunately, instead of bringing the family together, this trip ended up exposing the truth about the marriage--that Mrs. Dodsworth was a selfish and shallow jerk. "Mama Steps Out" is a very, very similar story and is based on a play that debuted in 1930 and was filmed here in 1937 (a year after "Dodsworth"). The plot is essentially the same in many ways but instead of a drama, the film is played for laughs--and thereby loses so much of the impact of "Dodsworth". Now this doesn't mean it's a bad film but it's as if this reworking of the plot only produced a much more shallow and forgettable film.

Ada (Alice Brady) is sad because so far during their European trip, they've met no one and she desperately wants to fit into society. So, she instructs her boob of a husband, Len (Guy Kibbee) to bring home interesting people--with little success. Ultimately, Ada finds a bunch of folks--folks who are phonies and leeches. Not surprisingly, Len soon gets sick of them and throws the out--announcing that they're going home to America. Ada vows to stay in Europe. What's next?

If I had never heard of "Dodsworth", I would have probably enjoyed "Mama Steps Out" much more. But the problem is that "Dodsworth" is such a great story that the other can't help but seem like a very pale imitation. The edge and depth of "Dodsworth" is missing and instead "Mama Steps Out" is a light comedy--and loses much of the social commentary and depth in the process. It also provides a kooky ending--one that is rather bland. Now I am NOT saying "Mama Steps Out" is bad--it is still a nice and inoffensive time-passer.