Théodora devient folle

I'm not sure how Theodora Goes Wild would be viewed today because of changing demographics. Some of those small New England towns like Lynnfield are not bastions of conservatism any longer. Today the home of a well known author like Irene Dunne would be a tourist attraction.

But back in the Thirties, this still was the New England of Calvin Coolidge and descendants of the town founder just don't go writing romance novels. But that's what Irene Dunne is doing only its under a pseudonym, lest the good people of Lynnfield make life uncomfortable for herself and her two maiden aunts.

Irene's cover will be blown though when she meets her illustrator at her publisher. Melvyn Douglas is quite smitten with her and he follows her back to Lynnfield from New York and persuades her that she ought to live life a little and not just vicariously through her novels.

Dunne takes his advice with a vengeance after he's thoroughly embarrassed her. But when Theodora Lynn does go wild she takes no prisoners. Coming out in public under her pseudonym of Caroline Adams, Dunne gets fame and notoriety confused. Today she would be big time tabloid fodder and pays Douglas back in a way he can only blame on himself.

It's charming pair of leads with a delightful supporting cast that play their roles to perfection. A particular favorite of mine is publisher Thurston Hall who gets to do a drunk scene with Dunne, something the very proper Mr. Hall didn't often do.

Irene Dunne got one of her five Oscar nominations for playing Theodora Lynn aka Caroline Adams, but lost in the big sweepstakes to Luise Rainer for The Great Ziegfeld.

I'm not sure how you could do Theodora Goes Wild today though. I can see the town billboard on the Massachusetts Turnpike: Welcome to Lynnfield, Home of Caroline Adams.

This is one of my favorite screwball comedies -- a very smart movie with a sharp screenplay that never lags. In the same subversive spirit as Miracle of Morgan's Creek (another favorite film) - and builds to a similar stunning, hilarious, code-breaking climax. The script is beautifully structured and the performances are all terrific -- it's Irene Dunne's best film, and Elizabeth Risdon is wonderful in a smaller role as the aunt. Very underrated, don't miss it (check out James Harvey's insights on the film in his marvelous book, "Romantic Comedy").

Irene Dunne plays Theodora Lynn, a proper New England girl. She also happens to go by the name of Caroline Adams. Secluded all her life with her two prudish aunts and the other puritans of the "highly regarded" Lynn Literary Circle, she sublimates her revolt as the secret author of a tantalizing best-selling novel. This is her sublimation of revolt. The movie illustrates the makeover of an allegedly homely and introverted girl into the most wild and high-spirited lady. And it marks a difference between wild and silly, as Uncle John says, "A Lynn may go wild, but never silly." See title for more info on how Theodora goes.

She lives in Lynnfield, named after the Lynn family, whose only legacy are Theodora and her two aunts, Elsie and Mary. "The two oracles," says Thomas Mitchell, editor of The Lynnfield Bugle, the "pulse" of the town. It's an enticing note for the movie to start on, a brassy Thomas Mitchell carving out the lovable, spirited personality he'd bring to Stagecoach, fending off puritanical spinsters protesting that the titillating novel he's featuring is not fit to print. Indeed, the members are single-minded not to allow "sexy trash like this come right into our homes and corrupt the morals of our youth." When Mitchell gets to have a word, he blames the community for denying social progress. But the group deems it their obligation to keep Lynnfield the one pure, God-fearing place left in the world.

We chuckle knowingly when the action then cuts to New York, where a publisher reads an irate wire from Lynnfield. Theodora is so frantic she thinks Caroline Adams is depraved. Was he raised in a small town by two maiden aunts? Has he lectured Sunday School or played church organ for years? Categorically not. Undaunted, he knows that nobody dumps an audience this big, a career this sensational, due to scruples. That's the reality, one curtailed by Hollywood soon after. But the censors were new and hadn't yet learned to keep its right up, so here we have a forgotten early-sound keepsake of silver-screen censure of moral censorship, frivolous and wacky, but by god not silly.

It's this uncensored rebellious energy that I think lends itself to a creative stylishness rare to early American cinema. Short-lived Russian immigrant director Richard Boleslawski brings a particularly effective and stylishly economical editing and visual direction to this appropriately fast-paced early rom-com. Like all the "early rom-coms," its time played a big role in not just its plot but its attitudes, which on the one hand make Theodora Goes Wild refreshingly irreverent but on the other still outmoded in certain varying personal ways. Theodora meets her dapper illustrator, in the form of Melvyn Douglas. Here's a persona who bursts into the movie mugging, blustering and making a domineering nuisance of himself. Theodora opposes his idea of a writer who ought to live life, and so he enlists himself to liberate her. And yet judging this behavior as extraordinarily narcissistic, overbearing and cocky against the alpha male fantasy in romantic comedies of the era would be judging one against a homogeneous crowd.

Women were to be rescued, shown the way, wisened up to the real world. And consistent with that role, Theodora is finally inspired by this dashing leader-of-the-pack type to run amok, even exceeding him in mischief and cheek. She now exhibits what he's urged on her so winningly. She relates with dignity how she told the town off: It's a free country, she's an adult and phooey to anyone who judges her for what she does. Indeed, Theodora woos infamy, summoning one outrage after another. But, to her disappointment, beneath his supposedly freethinking facade, Michael is as soft and repressed as she was. Michael is ensnared in a hateful marriage on behalf of his father's political livelihood, and Theodora guarantees to return his favor with a taste of his own juice. Usurping into Michael's apartment, she dresses in feathers and gives shocking interviews to the tabloids. They rotate. Now it's Theodora's task to free him from his bourgeois sense of decorum.

Regardless, all that good stuff is just decoration. Actually, it's foundation, but there is a definite, sublime enchantment in its star, Irene Dunne. She played more kinds of roles in more kinds of movies than most of her female peers, and yet is arguably more natural, spontaneous and memorable than any of them. In fact, Theodora Goes Wild is her first comedy. She walks right into it, fully and effortlessly possessed of herself and manages to both be better than all of her female comedy contemporaries and completely different from all of them as well. I'll even go as far as to say that the movies owe more to Dunne than Claudette Colbert, Carole Lombard and Myrna Loy put together. Her Theodora became the forerunner of copious romantic comedies like The Awful Truth and Ninotchka, all anchored in similar principles: the enchanting transformation of their female protagonists. The Awful Truth made a star out of Cary Grant. And in his later co-stars, were looking for Dunne-like qualities. This is her show, and like it always is in such cases, absolutely no one else could've compared.

Irene Dunne breaks out of small town conventions in "Theodora Goes Wild," a 1936 comedy also starring Melvyn Douglas, Thomas Mitchell and Spring Byington. Dunne plays Theodora, who lives a sterile life with her two aunts in a small, Puritan, judgmental town. However, she's got them all beat because she's living a double life - in New York City, she's Caroline Adams, a hot romance novelist who put the capital L in LOVE. Her scandalous best-seller is in the process of being banned by the town literary society. While in New York visiting her disapproved of uncle, she meets a friend of her publisher's, the flirtatious, irreverent Michael (Douglas). He doesn't know her real name or her literary alter ego so to prove to him she's no prude, she gets drunk and goes to his apartment - of course, she leaves screaming - but in doing so, drops a few papers that tell him who she is and where she lives. He soon shows up in her home town as a down on his luck man seeking work and she's more or less blackmailed into giving him a job as the family gardener.

This is a delightful comedy buoyed by the marvelous acting of Irene Dunne and Melvyn Douglas. The points are hit a little too hard, however, so that both characters come off as very annoying and exasperating at times. The fault lies in the script, because I don't think those two actors ever made a wrong move. Douglas, who in later life would prove himself one of the great actors of all time, sails through this film as he sailed through so many others in roles that gave no hint of his enormous abilities. Here he's charming, smooth and attractive, inspiring Theodora to take some risks - though he's got a few skeletons he fails to mention to her. Dunne is great as the staid spinster who becomes the talk of New York with her wild outfits, saucy attitude, and smart remarks.

Underneath it all, of course, it's a love story some innuendo you don't find in a lot of '30s comedies, which adds to the fun. Highly recommended.

Irene Dunne plays Theodora, a straight-laced young woman living with her two spinster aunts in a prudish small town, who just happens to be the secret author of a scandalous and best-selling series of romance novels. When the illustrator for her books, played by the always engaging Melvyn Douglas, figures out her secret, he blackmails her into giving him a job as gardener just so he can be close to her. When the town's gossip mongers become too much to bear, and Douglas takes off after her declaration of love, Theodora decides she's tired of being straight-laced and goes wild.

Dunne and Douglas have a lot of chemistry in this, and even if the movie overall doesn't make much sense (what screwball romance ever did?), the two of them keep it fun and energetic. I'm not sure Dunne's performance warranted the Oscar nomination she received, and I don't know what in the world the Academy was thinking to nominate the movie for its editing, but it's a solid comedy from the old days.

Grade: B+