The Impatient Maiden

What an odd film for James Whale to follow up "Frankenstein" with!

This is a strange little romantic drama, about a woman in love with a young doctor. Because he can't support her financially he leaves her,and she becomes a "kept" woman when she takes up with her wealthy lawyer boss.

At once cynical and romantic, it's hard to work out what the point of the whole thing is. Una Merkel is lots of fun though, and Ethel Griffies nearly steals the picture. And the young and beautiful Lew Ayres is lovingly filmed by Whale. The film also demonstrates what a fine actress Mae Clarke was, and how she deserved better material as she grew older.

In all an unusual and entertaining film from a great director, but also a baffling one.

Clara Bow, the famous sexy flapper, was on her way down as a movie star. Universal was able to arrange with Paramount to get her on loan. Universal had bought the rights to a novel, 'The Impatient Virgin", which, back then, was very juicy, practically pornographic. (It wouldn't be now). Universal expected to make a fortune with that combination.

When she saw the script, La Bow bowed out. Too sexy. The script was made especially for her. Bow was a oner. Exeunt Bow, exeunt the story.

When the script, which followed the book closely, was submitted to the MPPDA, the self-censoring body of the major studios, the organization immediately banned the word 'virgin'. They suggested 'maiden' instead.

They advised against nearly the entire script. The film was assigned to two other directors before James Whale was forced to direct it. He didn't want to, he wasn't interested in it.

The Hays office, which is the MPPDA, advised them to take the heat out of the script. They did. It became a different story, and there was not a single scene in it which was actually hot. (There is a seduction. I won't say if it came off or not).

Whale didn't get along with the star, Lew Ayres. Ayres had made a bunch of movies in the last two years, but he still didn't know his craft. Whale never gave him any advice. He hardly spoke to Ayres.

Still the film garnered some friction. A censor board cut out the main part of the appendectomy scene. It said the seduction was all right.

The film died a quick death, did not get much business in the big city venues, was not re-released, and never made it into Europe.

The review from the New York Times, titled 'A Naive Melodrama', by A. D. S., March 4, 1932 says in part:

Everything it has to say is in the title.

On the whole there seems nothing James Whale, the talented director of "Frankenstein" and "Journey's End," could have done about this one.

This film starts out with legal secretary Ruth Robbins (Mae Clarke) on her way to the subway to work. Along the way she hears one woman viciously henpecking her husband. Another man says that four years of marriage is enough for any man and walks out on his pleading pregnant wife. Then she gets to work and she is taking dictation in a divorce case where the woman has had enough of her milquetoast husband and is demanding a divorce. This is just another workday though, as her attorney boss is a divorce lawyer. This has, not surprisingly, left Ruth cynical concerning matrimony.

Then, when the pregnant woman who was dumped by her husband attempts suicide, Ruth meets Dr. Myron Brown (Lew Ayres) when he shows up in an ambulance. They are immediately attracted. They don't have your standard dates as Myron invites her to the hospital for an X-Ray and to a medical lecture. Maybe his lack of a blatant come on gets her guard down and she grows to care for him. But he does pop the question. Ruth tells him about all that she has seen and about how all couples start out with high hopes and good intentions and then how their love dies with the death of a thousand cuts. She suggests living together. He angrily refuses and they break up. Meanwhile, Ruth's boss , played by the dapper John Halliday, is waiting in the wings with an offer of being a kept woman. At first I thought this film was going to waste Halliday, but he does show up in this important role towards the end.

Una Merkel does here what she always did so well - provide humorous contrast and a loyal friend to the leading lady as Ruth's roommate. Andy Devine is the male nurse and friend of Ayres' character who takes a shine to Merkel. They have a disastrous pseudo first date that involves Devine's new invention - a zipperless straight jacket. Oh - and he's also very judgmental and moralizing. How does this all turn out ? Watch and find out.

The film has Whales's usual interesting visual style, even for a bunch of mundane settings. Oddly enough, this was the first time Ayres played a doctor, and he said he had the feeling that director James Whale thought him wrong for the part, although one of his early claims to fame was playing the title lead in the Dr. Kildare series over at MGM.

Mae Clarke works as a secretary to divorce lawyer John Halliday. When her apartment mate Una Merkel smells gas, Miss Clarke finds that the pregnant woman in the next apartment, who has been abandoned by her husband has tried to kill herself. Miss Clarke smashes the window and summons an ambulance. Doctor Lew Ayres shows up and they soon fall in love, but he's years from being able to marry, and she's seen too much of failed marriage, so they part.

It's a depressing soap opera for the Depression, and everyone hits the right notes. Director James Whale seems to have been trying for a British stiff-upper-lip attitude among the characters, but it offers an air of anomie and helplessness, as does the decision to have DP Arthur Edeson run a lot of traveling shots right through walls in a god-like and uncaring fashion. Perhaps it's that dispassionate attitude that made this movie less than compelling; if the characters viewed their own lives as machines to be run for optimal living, regardless of how they felt, how can the audience invest anything more than a vague pity in these poor fools?

Although I have always thought Lew Ayres was a fine actor, here he's one of his worst films...mostly because the script is rather second- rate. I also found Una Merkel (again, someone I usually like in films) played a rather annoying character. As a result, I think it's a movie you could easily just skip.

When the film begins, Ruth (Mae Clark) and her dopey friend (Merkel) meet a dopey ambulance driver (Andy Devine) and a young doctor working on his internship at the hospital (Ayres). The Doc and Ruth fall for each other...but their relationship later sours. Towards the end of the film, Ruth is dying and apparently there's no one else in the entire hospital who can operate on her other than her ex-boyfriend, the Doc (it was JUST an inflamed appendix)!! Will she pull through...and will we care?

Una is clearly there as comic relief and her character just comes on way too strong with the stupid act. Fortunately, she's mostly in the first half of the film. As for Devine, he's actually pretty restrained and much better in the same sort of role. But the plot is so soapy and silly that I never found myself caring much about what happened to Ruth or any of them. A misfire.