Three Cornered Moon

Claudette Colbert leads a strong cast in this tale of a once-wealthy family adjusting to life after the family fortune has evaporated.

Mary Boland is excellent as the widowed mother—not really equipped to manage finances, she put all of their money into a failed mine called the Three Cornered Moon and doesn't quite know how to tell the kids they are broke. Colbert is her daughter, engaged to a rather useless aspiring novelist but not afraid to go out and find a job herself.

There are also three grown sons, most notably Wallace Ford in an admirable performance as an earnest go-getter with girl trouble who spouts great lines like, "From now on, I'm gonna be absolutely independent of everybody. That reminds me, I gotta ask Mother for some money."

Richard Arlen has a key role as a doctor friend of Colbert. Hearing of the family's troubles, he moves right into their house to help them out by contributing some rent…and also, it seems, to be around Claudette more.

It's a mildly silly comedy, for the most part, but has a couple of serious moments, especially the scene where Colbert finally sees through her deadbeat writer boyfriend (Hardie Albright): "You've failed me!" she gasps, devastated, when he returns home late one afternoon having skipped a job interview and bought her flowers instead.

Charming rather than side-splitting, it's a very entertaining family comedy, thanks to excellent characterizations from all.

This movie is indeed astonishing: it starts out like some silly, light comedy about an upper-class Brooklyn family, living, without a care in the world, in a big house with servants and everything, exclusively on money from their stocks. BUT then the Depression reaches even their home: practically overnight, they find themselves flat broke. And, having lived for so long in their 'castle in the skies', they just haven't got any idea about what to do at first.

And then they start waking up: the only way out for the three grown boys and the girl is - to FIND A JOB! And that's what they do, and where they first meet with the difficulties of REAL life; and so, one by one, they wake up to reality - and they finally discover that they LIKE it: from being lazy parasites, they've become useful members of society...

Of course, it's by FAR not as 'educational' a picture as this may sound - anyway, it's a pre-Code movie, and it's got lots of frivolous and funny moments to provide first-class comedy entertainment. The cast is great, from Claudette Colbert as the daughter of the house who's got to choose between a daydreaming writer and a down-to-earth doctor, to Mary Boland as the 'lady of the house' who just doesn't seem to know at all what's happening, to Lyda Roberti, no less - the seductive 'Million Dollar Legs' beauty from the 1931 W.C. Fields movie - , who plays the Polish cook here who never seems to understand a word in English, but stays with the family nonetheless, even without pay; a real proof of her great acting range!

And yet, the message is there, even amidst all the hilarious fun - and it's MOST up-to-date, too: today, there are breadlines and people on the dole everywhere again, and formerly well-to-do families who now have to WORK for a living; and once you've got used to it (and have been as lucky as to FIND a job), you UNDERSTAND. You understand that it feels GOOD to be a useful member of society instead of an idler that lets others feed him... QUITE a message for a 'simple' comedy that's pretty much underestimated today in comparison with many of its other, much more forgettable contemporaries!

This film is charming largely because of the lead Claudette Colbert, whose elfin presence makes it all come alive. The film itself never wholly overcomes its origins as a play by Gertrude Tonkonogy (died 1989) written for the stage rather than the screen, her play of the same title having opened in March of 1933 and been released in this film version within four months of that. Clearly the producers were looking urgently for a 'feel good' story which drew comfort from a cheerful survival of the hard times. The story features an eccentric family, the father of which is dead, named Rimpelgar, Colbert being the only daughter. The Rimpelgars live in a huge rambling house in Brooklyn, that part of New York which is not Manhattan and is on the wrong side of the river, and which in their day, the 1930s, was a fine place to live. (Today, that can only be said of patches of Brooklyn, though there is an ongoing struggle to make it regain its dignity.) They do not have Brooklyn accents because they are rich people, or were before the father died. Now the dotty mother (played by Mary Boland) has lost everything through being, well, an idiot, and letting a scoundrel take it all and invest it in a worthless phoney mine called Three-Cornered Moon. (This must have been clearer in the play, because in the film the reason for the title is pretty obscure and mentioned only in passing.) So they are all suddenly thrown out of non-work into hard work, the daughter and her three brothers. The eldest brother is played by Wallace Ford, and what a surprise it is to see him as he was before he became the grizzled elderly character actor that he played in so many films decades later. Yes, the times are hard, as it is the Depression. There are many times when they all have nothing to eat and sit at a grand dining table with only a little bread between them. But they 'smile through', and all ends happily, despite a great deal of worry, tension, and stress. There is a side story about Colbert being in love with a self-indulgent would-be writer who is always working on Chapter Fourteen of the great novel which is never finished. She puts up with him for most of the film, to our great disgust, until she finally is freed from her blind love, sees the light, and dumps him. There are a lot of jokes about the Polish maid (Lyda Roberti) who cannot speak English and calls flowers 'George', but although that may all have been funny in the 1930s, it isn't now. The film does not lead to grim fate but smiling through gets them through, and this must have been a tonic for a weary public struggling to emerge from the Depression which was supposed to be over but, like the one now, is not over at all except in theory or because some politician says so. Maybe as things go on getting worse, we can recommend this film to our friends and contemporaries today, and let them remember that in 1932 a great deal of Claudette Colbert and her family 'smiling through' took place, so that we ought to try a little of that ourselves. If we can force the smiles, that is.

This stagy adaptation of the Broadway play tends to drag. If director Nugent and editor Loring had sped things along it might have worked. In spite of such stellar talents as Colbert (in a role originated by Ruth Gordan) and Mary Boland, Three-Cornered Moon is only passable entertainment. The story, about the irresponsible off-spring of a wealthy-widow-now-broke (Boland), has its charm and enough funny moments to make it worthwhile for die-hard Colbert fans. However, it is difficult as to why it was selected to be part of TCM's Claudette Colbert Collection. The rowdy antics of Colbert's on-screen brothers chasing each other around the house border on the ridiculous. Wallace Ford was 35 years-old, William Bakewell 25, but only 20 year-old Tom Brown fits the bill for these kind of shenanigans. And poor Lyda Roberti isn't given much to do -- what a waste. Her part fell flat and should have been re-written for the screen adaptation.

THREE CORNERED MOON is an hard-to-find film but it is a fairly important movie given it's status as one of the first "screwball" comedies. In truth, however, it is as much a drama as a comedy but it does have many of the essential ingredients for the pending film genre with a family of wealthy eccentrics and a sensible if romantic heroine.

Mary Boland is the matriarch for a family of four young adults who still live in the family mansion. None of them work but are suddenly through into "real life" when Boland's misadventures on the stock market in 1929 come to a belated crash four years later for the family and they wind up with a total of $1.65 in the bank. Boland's three sons and daughter Claudette Colbert are forced to work for the first time in their lives.

Family friend, doctor Richard Arlen rents a room at the family estate to help them out financially while Claudette's longtime beau, unpublished novelist Hardie Albright also takes up residence though he still is not supporting himself and living off Colbert's assistance as he has been for years. While the male siblings tough it and work, "artist" Albright can't quite bring himself to working in (gasp) "an office".

Mary Boland is delicious as always in one of her very first screen roles as a dizzy-headed matron. Beautiful young Claudette Colbert, a year away from superstardom, is very much in her element as the young heiress who learns about the real world, complete with remarkably frank sexual harassment from her boss at the shoe factory. Blonde bombshell Joan Marsh is appealing as the longtime girlfriend of Claudette's brother Wallace Ford while Lyda Roberti has an eccentric role as the family's Swedish maid who understands no English. Richard Arlen is pleasant as the prince in an RX coat although he doesn't have nearly the screen time despite his billing as the pampered fiancée Albright or brothers Ford, Tom Brown, and William Bakewell.

THREE CORNERED MOON (named after the corporation that causes the family's fortune to dwindle) is a intriguing film that should be sought out by fans of thirties comedies and it's surprisingly clear-eyed view of how hard life was in the 1930's for many makes it quite unique among romantic films of the era.