True Confession

Brilliant blend of screwball and black comedy with Carole Lombard at her best playing a compulsive liar married to a scrupulously honest lawyer, Fred MacMurray.

She gets duped into accepting a secretarial job that seems to good to be true. It is. She wrestles with the man, punches him in the stomach and leaves. Later that afternoon she goes back to retrieve her hat with pal Una Merkel. But just as they get up their courage to sneak in a get her things, the police show up because the man has been murdered.

In jail she concocts a scheme to say she killed him to defend her honor. MacMurray will defend her, free her, and become famous. All their troubles will be over. But in a bar sits a man, John Barrymore, who has ideas of cashing in on the murder case.

A flop in its day, but a terrific comedy with top performances by all. Lombard is totally wonderful as the liar who dreams up stories in the blink of an eye. MacMurray is solid, but Barrymore is great as the "world's preeminent criminologist." Supporting cast includes Lynne Overman, Porter Hall, Hattie McDaniel, Richard Carle, Fritz Feld, Edgar Kennedy, Tom Dugan, Irving Bacon, and Gary Owen.

Lombard and Barrymore are tops!

I think a whole lot of people don't really get this film from the reviews I'm reading. Carol Lombard who likes to spin tall tales of exaggeration is married to poor, but honest lawyer Fred MacMurray and tries her best to help.

The key scene here in True Confessions is right at the beginning when Lombard fetches MacMurray a client who happens to be guilty. Someone should have told Fred that only Perry Mason can afford to represent innocent clients only. So when he declines to be a lawyer for a man who will pay him out of the stolen hams he swiped from a butcher shop, Carol decides that he needs a name acquittal to gain him clients.

When she goes for a job with lecherous millionaire John Murphy who later winds up dead and circumstantial evidence points to her, she 'confesses' kind of, sort of to exasperated police detective Edgar Kennedy. It's enough to get her arrested and her husband his first real client.

It's all kind of dumb, but Lombard's scheme is right out of the Lucy Ricardo playbook. The trial is one for the books as well with District Attorney Porter Hall letting victory slip through his fingers.

Another character pops in to almost upset the applecart. John Barrymore who was cast in the part at Lombard's request to repay the debt she owed him from Twentieth Century plays a 'criminologist' down on his luck who comes across some key evidence that could upset everyone's plans. Sadly though Barrymore does a great job in the part, he's really not acting at all. The role is a caricature of what Barrymore had become. But it was a payday and I'm sure he was grateful to Lombard somewhat.

Playing Ethel to Lombard's Lucy is Una Merkel, a role she'd done before and would again. Lombard's 'True Confession' scene with Kennedy is a priceless one.

I'm sure Fred MacMurray felt in this last of four films in which they were paired that Carole had a lot of 'Splaining to do'.

A witty, original black comedy made at the height of the screwball comedy era of the 1930's. Carole Lombard's role originates the wacky wife that became a staple in films and television. Her efforts to make her husband (Fred MacMurray)a successful lawyer offer a still-relevant critique of what Americans tolerates of people "making it" and "getting ahead" in American society, in addition to sharp, witty comments on the meaning of celebrity in American society. The playing of MacMurray and Lombard as husband and wife is vibrant, sexy, wholly believable. They radiate a sense of joy playing off each other. The teaming of MacMurray, Lombard, and John Barrymore makes for one of the most memorable screen teamings ever. Una Merkel is sharp as Lombard's best friend. Beautiful, sunny, often noirish photography enhances the beauty of the stars and the black aspects of the plot.

Aspiring writer and compulsive liar (Carole Lombard) is married to scrupulously honest defense attorney (a mustachioed Fred MacMurray). Because he won't defend anyone who isn't innocent, his law practice is unsuccessful. So his wife must take a job to help them pay bills. When her lecherous boss winds up murdered, Carole's accused of the crime. Despite being innocent, she confesses to the crime and it's up to Fred to represent her in court.

Lombard and MacMurray are both terrific. John Barrymore has a field day as a nutty blackmailer. Una Merkel is fun as Carole's friend. Edgar Kennedy's a hoot as a blusterous detective. Porter Hall funny as the prosecutor. In addition to being the last of four films Lombard did with MacMurray, this reunites her with her Twentieth Century costar, John Barrymore. It's interesting that in just three years Barrymore's career had declined enough that he was playing a supporting role instead of the lead. This is a riotous comedy with great stars in top form. Leonard Maltin's film guide gives it one and a half stars. Clearly he saw a different movie than this.

... and he's pathologically honest. In fact, Kenneth Bartlett is an attorney who will only take innocent clients. Someone should break it to him that the ethics of his profession - and the production code for that matter - only require that he not break the law himself and not suborn perjury. You're perfectly free to take guilty clients. They need counsel too.

As a result, the Bartletts don't have much money because Kenneth Bartlett can't get any innocent clients. His wife Helen (Carole Lombard) is a novelist, but she wants to get a job to help out with the lack of funds. Ken tells her not to, but she finds one anyways that only requires that she work three hours a day five days a week and pays 50 dollars a week. But when she shows up her employer, Otto Krayler, turns out to be a wolf and attacks her. She hits him with something and runs away. When she later tries to sneak back into the house to get her purse and hat, the police show up at the same time because Krayler has been murdered. She is arrested for the murder, and Ken ends up defending her. Somehow, after talking to Ken, she figures the only way she can get out of this is claim she did kill Krayler, but it was because he was assaulting her.

Helen is acquitted of the killing, and suddenly her fiction is in high demand and Ken starts getting more (innocent?) clients than he knows what to do with. They buy a large home on a lake. But then a monkey wrench gets thrown into all of this when an absurd criminologist (John Barrymore) shows up at the Bartlett home demanding a princely sum for Krayler's wallet - proof that he killed Bartlett. Complications ensue.

Yes, Lombard's character does some wacky things like going through with being a defendant in a murder trial when she had nothing to do with the killing, but Ken told her that to claim anything other than what she did could lead to the death penalty. So Ken gets annoyed at her when she wants a job because they don't have enough money to live due to his pickiness with clients, he tells her to plead not guilty would lead to her execution so she lies and pleads self defense, and then he gets annoyed at her later because she seems to be enjoying their prosperity even though it came at the expense of Krayler's life - she knows it did not.

I still rate this one pretty highly because the idea is a unique one and well executed, even if one major character is an unlikable drip.