Así es el amor

Ameche and Loy are playing roles not unlike more brilliant performances in more brilliant movies during the 1940's. That doesn't make So Goes My Love any less enjoyable despite the unnecessarily esoteric title. A more appropriate title would have been The Unconventional Hiram Maxim - a British-born inventor who lived in Brooklyn and, according to this movie, was fond of eschewing dignity. Loy is as successful here in engaging her co-star in remarkable chemistry and holding her own on the comic front (her smoking of a cigar is hilarious) as she was to be in her upcoming masterpieces Life with Father and Mr. Blanding Builds His Dream House. Ameche, fresh off Heaven Can Wait - one of my personal all-time favorites - and having perfected the inventor biopic in his essay of Alexander Graham Bell, is ideally cast as Maxim and has excellent chemistry with Loy. Add in highly competent support by Bobby Driscoll as Loy and Rhys WIlliams as an equally eccentric portrait painter and you have a highly amusing if episodic 80 minutes of entertainment.

Myrna Loy and Don Ameche star in this excellent comedy/drama based on stories about real-life inventor Hiram Maxim's life. Episodic storyline has Loy leaving her rural pig farm and heading to the city to marry a rich man. Instead she meets and marries a poor would-be inventor and raises a family.

Loy looks great and is excellent as Jane. She gives a warm and funny performance. Ameche is also good as Maxim, the slightly off-center inventor who marches to his own drummer. His inventions are mentioned in passing but show that he becomes a famous and wealthy man. The real story of Maxim and his legal problems with women and many failed inventions is not told.

Bobby Driscoll gives a solid performance as son Percy (who would eventually write the stories the film is based on), a boy definitely in the mold of his father. Others in the cast are Molly Lamont as the cousin, Richard Gaines as blowhard Josephus, Rhys Williams as the artist, Sara Padden and Renie Riano as maids, and Howard Freeman as the committee chairman.

Excellent period production sets and costumes and two star performances make this one a unknown gem worth looking for.

Since I'm partial to almost any Myrna Loy film, I recorded "So Goes My Love" with the intention that I might watch the first 10 minutes and then hit delete. However, to my delight, this quirky comedy based on the early married life of Hiram Maxim (Don Ameche) turned out to be thoroughly enjoyable.

Loy and Ameche made a wonderful screen pair. Always elegantly coiffed and dressed, they are a very attractive couple with perfect chemistry. They both play the "straight man" which makes the humor very subtle and underplayed. It is the opposite of the screwball comedies that I so dearly love. Its quirkiness makes most every scene tongue in cheek funny more so than laugh out loud funny and it works well. I particularly enjoyed the casting of the extremely talented Loy and Ameche as well as a young Bobby Driscoll who plays their son, Percy, with such a natural talent that even he could underplay the humor appropriately.

The movie is actually based on the 1936 book by Percy called "A Genius in the Family." The book was a series of family anecdotes that Percy recounted from his early life. The plot is actually the tying of each anecdote together to make a precious story. There is little focus on what Hiram was inventing as that was not the point of the film since it is really more of a family film. Further reading (which I easily found on the Internet) is necessary if you really want to learn more of the actual Maxim family history. Meanwhile, if you want to relax and enjoy a cute film that was probably laced with lots of Hollywood glamour and fiction, then I recommend this enjoyable gem.

Jane Budden (Myrna Loy) has decided to leave her farm and move to the big city in order to find a husband. Unlike some women, Jane is very open about wanting a successful husband and why she ends up marrying the far from successful Hiram Maxim (Dno Ameche) is perplexing. However, over time, this crackpot inventor actually turns out to be very successful. This film is about their life together and the family. Interestingly, unlike many other films of the era, this one is relatively uneventful--more a slice of life film instead of one with any great events or crazy happenings. Instead, it's just a nice little showcase for two actors away from their home studios (Loy with MGM and Ameche with 20th Century Fox) and doing a film for Universal. Nothing great, nothing bad about this one...just a nice story and nice acting.

Based on Hiram Percy Maxim's memoir, 'A Genius in the Family,' this film attempts, rather poorly, to explore the comedic aspects of Maxim's relationship to his father, Hiram Steven Maxim. Taken by itself, it's a rather superficial film about the man who revolutionized the machine gun, by inventing the version that operates on the power of the bullets' expelled gases. Maxim's accomplishments are hardly mentioned, instead depending on the fictionalized relationships between his wife and son. The younger Maxim, by the way, founded the American Radio Relay League, the national organization of radio hams. While he he is famous to that particular fraternity, he is virtually unknown elsewhere, and even his father's fame is now largely forgotten.