Three Loves Has Nancy

Janet Gaynor plays a Thirties version of Tammy in Three Loves Has Nancy and her three guys are Robert Montgomery, Franchot Tone, and Grady Sutton. Want to take odds on who she winds up with?

Montgomery plays a popular author who Gaynor meets at a book signing and later on a train to New York. She's going because her fiancé Grady Sutton left her at the church and she's off to New York to find him. With a country innocence that belies a certain amount of country common sense she involves herself in the lives of Montgomery and his next door neighbor and publisher Franchot Tone in her search for the jilting Sutton.

Somebody had to have seen this film before creating the Tammy character that Debbie Reynolds made popular in the Fifties. Gaynor has the whole thing, accent and all, uncannily down. Montgomery and Tone play the same roles that they both did in so many films for MGM, the debonair man about town. I leave it to you as to who looks better in a tuxedo.

I wish there had been more of Gaynor's family, especially Guy Kibbee as her father and Charley Grapewin as her grandfather. The film would have been better for it.

Three Loves Has Nancy is all right entertainment, but nothing new here. Nothing that hadn't been done before or definitely would be done again later.

"Three Loves Has Nancy" is a frustrating film to watch. This is because it has many wonderful moments...but also some bad ones where the characters struggle very hard to make it work...and it doesn't. It's because the film sometimes tries just too hard to be goofy. I really think the film would have been better had they just allowed the film to have some quiet moments and trust the film to work. But, it's all loud and forced.

The film finds Robert Montgomery playing a novelist. In a funny scene, he meets the rather oblivious lady played by Janet Gaynor. And, from her on, Montgomery and Gaynor's paths keep crossing--and in each case, Montgomery comes off on the losing end! It's quite cute--and reminiscent of another 1938 comedy, "Bringing Up Baby". However, once Montgomery brings Gaynor home, the film really loses direction. Having the love triangle of Montgomery, Franchot Tone and the unseen George just doesn't work--I would have just concentrated on Montgomery and Gaynor. In fact, Tone really wasn't necessary at all--and from here on the film is a bit of a disappointment. Worth seeing? Probably....but understand the film is highly uneven.

Three Loves Has Nancy with Janet Gaynor may not be on the same level as Lady Eve with Barbara Stanwyck but it comes close. I was laughing so hard that my son in the next room yelled out to me, "What's going on in there?" Franchot Tone simply stole the picture and Bob Montgomery was a close second. I couldn't believe the scene in which they were in bed together, stealing the one cover back and forth from each other. It had me in stitches. How could the Hollywood production code state that a married couple on screen couldn't sleep in the same bed yet these two men were allowed to do so? Did the censors simply miss out on the innuendo in 1938? Just too funny for words, perhaps even funnier than a similar scene made today, because this film was made in the age of innocence in Hollywood.

Janet delivers her lines flawlessly, and she is very sweet, but Tone and Montgomery made more with their material here. I rate this delightful film 9 out of 10. Don't miss it when next it airs on TCM.

Delightful comedy. I found myself laughing out loud. Robert Montgomery, as usual, has comic timing down to a fine art. Franchont Tone plays his usually sophisticated drunk to near perfection. Funny characters and a funny plot with just enough sexual tension to hold your interest.

Janet Gaynor is charming and funny as Nancy, a southern girl who gets left at the altar and decides to go to New York City to find her intended. En route she runs in snooty author Robert Montgomery, who shares a swanky apartment in NYC with his publisher, Franchot Tone. Montgomery is on a book-signing tour to elude predatory Claire Dodd. Nancy is of course a walking disaster area and ends up moved in with the guys, where she cooks and looks after them. They both fall in lover with her and the fun begins. Great cast in top form. Gaynor is very funny, and Montgomery and Tone are a great team. The art deco apartment is fabulous, too. Also in the cast are Charley Grapewin, Guy Kibbee, Mary Forbes, Cora Witherspoon, Emma Dunn, Reginald Owen, Grant Withers, Marie Blake, Carol Tevis, Elise Cavanna, Charles Lane, Grady Sutton, Sarah Edwards, and Grace Hayle. Great line by Claire Dodd to Robert Montgomery: "I've had a lovely evening, but this wasn't it!"