The Marriage Playground

I am eager to see all of Fredric March's pre-1940 films. Some of them are brilliant. Others are just OK, but his performance is always top-notch, regardless of the material. Or so I thought. If this were the first time someone was seeing March, they would never know he was a professional actor.

Mary Brian plays March's college friend's daughter. A series of marriages and divorces has left a large collection of children in her primary care. She is only seventeen. After a whacky meeting on the beach, the young girl and the kids are all smitten with March. However, March's character is engaged to a widow he has allegedly loved for a long time. You see where this is going. The age difference is supposed to seem acceptable, though March initially protests, and viewers are left to see which woman he finally chooses to marry.

If you want to see young Mitzi Green, with her loud mouth, or young Anita Louise, you might enjoy this film. Lilyan Tashman always turned in a good performance when playing a villain. The delightful Kay Francis is less than enjoyable here though. Mary Brian is probably the best performer in the cast, but I didn't like her character. March's devotion to the children seems unnatural, and I couldn't see him as a believable husband to either woman. I came in wanting to like this film, but after viewing it, I don't understand the good reviews it got at the time.

... birth control, not so much. And thus the dilemma of this film. At a seaside resort Martin Boyne (Fredric March) meets 17 year old Judith Wheater (Mary Brian) as she is trying to corral her younger brothers and sisters. There are at least half a dozen of them, I had trouble counting them all. It turns out Martin knows the parents - Cliff and Joyce Wheater (Huntley Gorden and Lilyan Tashman). But he didn't know that they had previously divorced, remarried others, then divorced and remarried again, and in each union there were children. And now the Wheaters are arguing again and the many Wheater kids do not want to be separated when the Wheater parents inevitably divorce.

Martin agrees to get all of the parties together - and that includes all of the ex-spouses, their spouses, and future Wheater spouses, and try to figure out a way for all of the kids to stay together. But it is futile as they start sniping at each other and eventually lose interest in the entire conversation as they have a polo match to go to.

The complicating factor is that Judith is falling in love with the older Martin, but Martin has a dragon lady of a fiancee to which he is devoted. On Judith's side, though, is the fact that she and Martin are the only real adults in the room.

It appears Judith has spent her entire life caring for her younger siblings and has not even been properly schooled, because early on she writes Martin a note and misspells common words badly. The film makes a point of showing you this, so it must have meant something.

This was a unique concept for a film - I don't think I've seen anything quite like it before - parents of means who act like children having lots of actual children and emotionally neglecting all of them. But it does suffer from some common early talkie problems such as scenes that go on too long and the necessity of having a rather static camera. What is great about it is seeing the furnishings, clothing, and manners of the well to do at the end of the roaring 20s. Also, even a little of Kay Francis and Lilyan Tashman go a long way.

Huntley Gordon and Lilyan Tashman are out traveling the world and wrangling, leaving Mary Brian to raise her five step-brothers and sister by herself. A chance meeting with Frederic March leads him to promise to get all the parents, step-parents, prospective step-parents and former step-parents together to hash things out; the basic issue being that none of the children wish to be separated from the other. Meanwhile, Miss Brian develops a passion for March, who has his own fiancee to consider.

There are lots of fine performers in this, including among the children Mitzi Green, Phillippe de Lacy, and Anita Louise, and among the adults Kay Francis and Seena Owen. I'm afraid that the varying relations among the adults reached the point of bafflement for me, arousing a sense of frustration that might be parallel to those felt by the children. One of the good points about pre-code movies is that they were not afraid to tackle the issues of divorce, not only the occasional need for it, but the problems raised by it when so-called adults marry, have children, get divorced, and repeat, again and again, as if they and they alone must deal with the consequences. The rules of dramatic construction call for a neat ending, and there is one. Reality, alas, is not so simple.

It's still early days for talkies, which means that holdovers from the silents, like Miss Brian, sound unnatural with their lines, while newcomers like March are just fine.

The other three reviews thus far seem to be addressing a different film altogether. The pacing here is funereal, the actors don't act their lines, they speak them, slowly and haltingly, as if we were at a first rehearsal of a high school drama performance. There is no talent to speak of, even Kay Francis is subdued. Fredric March is embarrassingly bad. Some of the facial expressions are truly laughable.

I have not yet read the novel, THE CHILDREN, from which this is derived, but I doubt it was a comedy. Irresponsible playboy/girl rich adults behaving like children and leaving a wake of seven stepchildren in their entourage, constantly being torn apart, as the adults switch marriage partners, yearning to remain together as siblings - hardly stuff of comedy - perhaps it was a further indication of the distorted times during which the film was made that it was adapted in this fashion.

This was remade in France in 1990 under its original title, but the film is not available on DVD for comparison.

A real chore to sit through and a colossal bore to boot.

Big fan of the early talking pictures because of their historical purpose in the history of film. I love the shots of the beach and the clothes these people wear everyday as well as the furniture of the time. This film however besides its historical importance quiet dull to my eyes. What is intresting is the actors and actress of the early days of the talking picture and how their careers formed later on in the 30s-40s Mary Brian who plays judy stared in films with cary grant and james cagney. Lilyan Tashman is very intresting she starred in 3 lost pictures such as "no, no nanette" (1930), "gold diggers of broadway" (1929). And "the cat creeps" (1930). She was popular in her day and she passed in 1934. Fredric March would go on the be in "the best years of our lives" (1946). A young Anita Louise appears in the film and was famous to play along side Shirley temple. And even appeared in another sought after lost film called "4 Devils" (1928).