The Guardsman

... because seeing it today it seemed as creaky as a rusty swing set. Yet the leads were nominated for Best Actor and Best Actress for that year. Some Oscar decisions do not age well.

The plot is about a stage actress (Lynne Fontaine) and a stage actor (Alfred Lunt) who are constantly bickering after just a short time of marriage. The actor believes his wife is now looking to replace him, and he thinks that she would prefer a soldier type, because she seems to scan the audience for such men. Several days latter a Guardsman - he instead looks like the doorman at one of your better New York hotels pre pandemic - begins sending flowers and then asks if he can come and see the actress. She says yes. Perhaps the husband is right and he is about to be replaced. Watch and find out what happens.

The leads here were famous stage actors of the 20th century, and furthermore they actually were married and made very few film appearances. Their next one after this wasn't for another twelve years in 1943. But if they bickered in real life it must have all been in good fun because they were married for 55 years until death separated them in 1977. I thought it odd that they were making the actress 29-30 years old, because in 1931 that was approaching middle age, and the plot is also painting her as a great beauty, but I just couldn't help noticing she had a matronly figure. Fontaine's actual age at the time of the production was 44 years old. Husband Lunt was five years younger than that. Actually, during her life, Fontaine kept the year of her birth such a secret that her own husband thought she was ten years younger than she was. Quite a trick.

Actually, these two characters - actor and actress - are both behaving insufferably, and are very vain people, so it's easy to laugh at them but very hard to like either of them. What's fun in it? Zasu Pitts as a servant because Zasu is always lots of fun in that deadpan way of hers. Then there is Maude Eburne as "Mama", a kind of lady in waiting to the actress. This is rather funny because at the beginning of the movie the married acting couple are in a play about Queen Elizabeth and Queen Elizabeth had a nurse for 23 years who acted as a substitute mother to her. This might be just a coincidence but I enjoyed it. Finally there is Roland Young as a theatre critic who pals around with the acting couple and gives them great reviews. Great shades of Citizen Kane isn't this a conflict of interest?

By the way, I call the leads "actor" and "actress" because that is how they are billed. I never heard any of the cast call them by their actual names. I would mildly recommend this one.

Many people seem to regard this film as important simply because it is a living testament to Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontaine's acting. After all, it is the only preserved sound performance in which they have starring roles. In reality, however, the film is not only historically important because of the legends in it; it is one of the most fresh and funny films to emerge from the pre-Code period. The story is irresistible: a vain acting couple constantly insult and tease one another. In order to test his wife's fidelity after a bout, the Actor (Lunt) disguises himself as a foreign guardsman, goes out of his way to meet his wife in disguise, and furthermore goes on to try and seduce her. After he succeeds, he reveals himself, furious at her perfidious attitude. The Actress (Fontaine) begins laughing, claiming that she knew all along. At first dubious, the Actor is eventually convinced that his wife was playing along with him, and the two romantically embrace. The Actress looks at the camera and gives the most priceless look, letting the audience know that she may not have really known all along... Lunt and Fontanne make this film come to life. There dominating presence creates a satirical and realistic portrait of what an egomaniacal acting couple's life might really be like.

In addition, there are some priceless supporting roles: Maude Ebourne as a sarcastic maid, Zasu Pitts as a strange (to say the least) servant, Roland Young, and always-reliable Herman Bing as "a creditor." Sidney Franklin, perhaps the most unjustly forgotten of all screen directors (his classics include Private Lives, Smilin' Through, The Good Earth, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, and The Dark Angel), adroitly guides the ensemble, allowing the acting to take center-stage but never neglecting the details so important to cinema. In all, this short, fast-paced romp with two bona fide legends of American stage history is an essential lesson in screen comedy and romance. Although the Lunts, when asked to do later film work, replied "We can be bought but we can't be bored!" there is absolutely no sign of unenthusiasm on screen here. Each earned an Oscar nomination for their performance in The Guardsman, and they left their indelible stamp, albeit only for a short eighty some-odd minutes, on American motion picture history.

The Guardsman is now one of my 10 favorite films. Thanks to Turner Classic Movies audiences can continue to see the brilliant performances of Lunt and Fontanne in this hilarious play made into a film. The performances of the support cast are excellent, especially that of Roland Young.

The Guardsman does what a good comedy should do. It should make us laugh, give us insights into the human condition, and keep us wondering what will happen next to characters that we care about.

I laughed out loud and watched the unpredictable plot move through scenes of witty, fast paced dialog that led to an ending that lived up to everything that preceded it. If you carefully watch Fontanne in the ending, you will be certain of the meaning of her character's smile.

The names Lunt and Fontanne to this day signify greatness in acting. This famous stage couple has a theater named after them in New York City. To see some of these "great names" perform, though, can prove to be the shattering of illusions. Today's acting styles are so different than they were back then, and one sometimes expects to see hammy gestures, trembling voices, and over the top melodrama.

I am thrilled to report that Lunt and Fontanne live up to their reputation and are as wonderful today as they were back then when they filmed their hit play, "The Guardsman." It's a silly story -- a husband and wife theatrical couple spar at each other, and the husband believes his wife is unfaithful. To test her, he disguises himself as a Russian guardsman and attempts to seduce her.

Lunt and Fontanne were a very attractive couple and absolutely charming. Their performance in a scene from "Elizabeth the Queen" at the very beginning of the film had me hankering for more. I wish they had made other films, but they refused, finding it too boring.

A real treat.

Although Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne did do several television plays that have been recorded for posterity, The Guardsman represents the only sound filmed record we have of them at the height of their fame as America's leading thespian couple.

Years ago I read a joint biography of the Lunts and the two of them felt quite strongly that live performance was the only true test of acting ability. They also felt it was important to bring theater out to the hinterlands. Rather than be on a sound stage in Hollywood, the Lunts made many road show tours of their Broadway hits and other plays in a tremendous amount of small theaters. The problem for posterity is that those who remember seeing the Lunts on stage are getting older and fewer.

No doubt they took The Guardsman on the road after its 248 performance Broadway run in 1924-25. Given their aversion to film, it's a wonder that Irving Thalberg got them at all for a film.

This work has a play within a play, in fact the inner play in this is Maxwell Anderson's The Private Lives Of Elizabeth And Essex. It opens with the Lunts doing the final scene from that work and to tumultuous applause as the curtain closes, we find these two bickering incessantly as Alfred is almost insanely jealous of every attention his wife receives from admirers. What to do?

So poor Alfred hatches a cockeyed scheme where with heavy makeup and costume he makes himself out to be a Russian Cossack guardsman who is quite willing to ignore marital conventions for the pleasures that Lynn can offer him. And he puts on a big campaign to win Lynn away from himself.

Ferenc Molnar's play was remade by MGM ten years later in The Chocolate Soldier which was the operetta within the play as Nelson Eddy and Rise Stevens played the roles the Lunts originated. The prose of Maxwell Anderson is replaced by the songs of Oscar Strauss from his operetta The Chocolate Soldier. But Molnar's The Guardsman plot remains the same.

The play was a tour de force for the Lunts and I don't think it was an accident that the Academy gave its only recognition of this film with Oscar nominations for Alfred and Lynne as Best Actor and Best Actress. It really is quite the personal vehicle.

By the way Herman Bing has a small role as a creditor who is trying to get a bill paid from Alfred. In the end he really deflates the pretentious Lunt and you have to see how he does it.

One of the other items there is a filmed record of is a Hallmark Hall of Fame production Yankee From Olympus that the Lunts did live for television in the Sixties. It's very good and I did do a user comment on it.

But for a chance to see the Lunts at their height, The Guardsman is the one and only vehicle for that.