Consolation Marriage

New York reporter Steve "Rollo" Porter (Pat O'Brien) returns to find his longtime girlfriend Elaine had married someone else. Shopkeeper Mary Brown (Irene Dunne) is heartbroken with her beloved marrying a rich woman. The two left-behind souls encounter each other in a restaurant.

The meet-cute needs to be cuter. Getting arrested is actually a pretty good turn. They get to bond over some fun banter. The other two don't have enough screen time to matter to the audience. The movie is trying for a love quadrangle. Those are hard to pull off at the best of movies. I do like Steve and Mary together. The romance gets bumpy and I am disagreeing with them as much as agreeing. I really don't like the pulling apart after they had the baby. It's hard to pick sides in this one.

Man, this thing is old. Old in years, yes, but a film can be old and still fresh and relevant. This is old in that it's melodramatic and irrelevant, and dated.

"Consolation Marriage" is from 1931 and stars Irene Dunne, Pat O'Brien, Myrna Loy, John Halliday, and Lester Vail. Dunne is Mary Brown Porter, who loses her childhood sweetheart, Aubrey (Lester Vail) to a rich woman. Mary tends to be a fairly understanding woman. Or else she's masochistic.

She meets Steve Porter (O'Brien), another jiltee, and they decide to get married, even though they aren't in love. There's an understanding that Steve is still in love with the girl of his dreams, Elaine (Myrna Loy), but they keep breaking up. Mary again goes along with this arrangement.

When I saw that Myrna Loy was supposed to be playing the other woman, I thought it was a mistake when I saw her. She did not look remotely like herself. Later I realized it was indeed Loy, who made a dazzling blond, beautifully gowned and coiffed.

Steve and Mary get a dog and have a baby, but Steve slips away often to be involved with Elaine. Then Mary gets her big chance with Jeff (John Halliday). Will she take it? And will Steve ever leave her for Elaine?

It's the rare woman who has the other woman over to her house and helps her dress.

This is a movie about class distinction, a big topic in the old days, so it has a certain formality found in the theater and film before the Depression brought in the working man playwrights.

I always liked Pat O'Brien, but I've never quite understood why he was used as a leading man in these romantic movies. Comedy, certainly. However, unlike the other character actors who became leads - Bogart, Robinson, Cagney, etc. - O'Brien was not as successful.

Irene Dunne is lovely in a difficult role, that of a woman being walked all over, putting up with it, and keeping her dignity.

John Halliday refers to himself as an "old man," and I thought to myself, "I'll bet he's 40" - you know how differently age was perceived in those days. Turned out he was 50.

This is one of Dunne's first films, and if you're a huge fan, you may want to see it. I don't recommend it. At around 90 minutes, it seems like it's four hours long.

Shopkeeper Irene Dunne (as Mary Brown) is in love with pianist Lester Vail (as Aubrey). Sports writer Pat O'Brien (as Steve Porter) expects to marry his high school "Juliet" Myrna Loy (as Elaine). Alas, Ms. Dunne and Mr. O'Brien lose their lovers to more well-heeled partners. Then, Dunne and O'Brien meet, get drunk, and bond in friendship as a cut-rate "Bonnie and Clyde" during a wild evening. Thinking any reconciliation with their true loves is impossible, Dunne and O'Brien decide to get married. Their "Consolation Marriage" is agreed to be an "open" one, but a child keeps O'Brien home and sober more often. Then, the marriages of Mr. Vail and Ms. Loy end - and, they want Dunne and O'Brien back... Predictable and unattractive, with some emphasis on the latter.

**** Consolation Marriage (10/13/31) Paul Sloane ~ Irene Dunne, Pat O'Brien, John Halliday, Myrna Loy

Pat O'Brien and Irene Dunne seem distinctly not made for each other in this odd romance, where she, a coffee shop proprietress, and he, a sports writer, are jilted by their respective fiances, meet cute, get a nice friendship going, and decide to get married. The open-marriage conceit feels daringly modern for 1931, but the dialog's pat and the plot coincidences are hard to swallow. Their respective true loves, Myrna Loy and Lester Vail, each come back from failed marriages at about the same time, and Dunne and O'Brien each leaves his/her spouse to pick up the pieces. It's hard to see why, when Loy is playing such a vain bore, and Vail such a needy weakling, and Dunne has an uncomfortable speech where she says goodbye to her baby daughter--her baby daughter!--to run off with an old lover. We all know the leads are going to discover they really love each other, but it's done so perfunctorily, with O'Brien just remarking to Loy, "Wouldn't it be funny if we turned out to be just friends?" and bolting upstairs to Dunne just in time for the happy fadeout. That's another thing--she can't make a great deal of money running a coffee shop, and he's unemployed more often than not, yet they have a gorgeous New York townhouse. Dunne's skill is somewhat evident, and O'Brien's fast talk is always entertaining, but he's not an ideal romantic lead, and this is not a credible romance.

This mawkish stilted chick flic from the 30s is concrete proof that they made them as bad back then as they do today (for a lot more money and with a longer shooting schedule). On the face of it Consolation Marriage is about a pair of progressive adults burned by love in the past who enter into an open marriage to protect themselves but find it hard to extricate themselves from it when both ex-beaus come a calling again.

Consolation Marriage might have had a chance to resonate with its controversial theme if its bohemian protagonists didn't project such middle class personas. Irene Dunne's Mary makes a sorry attempt at being care free especially when she's deciding to jettison her 18 month old. Pat O'Brien in the meantime comes across cold and unemotional as if listening to confessions. A blond Myrna Loy looks alluring enough but not when she's reduced to fluttering her eyes and mouthing sappy lines like "Oh darling look at this glorious night, it was made for us" to a champion of the Catholic guilt complex.

Director John Sloane does little to inspire his actors who morosely deliver their lines in two shot filled with pregnant pauses and embarrassed looks. Sloane manages to zap the energy out of nearly every shot while his clumsy cuts from scene to scene plays havoc with time and place.

If there is any consolation to Consolation Marriage it is that Ms. Dunne at times rises above the material and Pat's anemic passion to project an effective and ideal portrait of a modern woman in turmoil. Thing is she does it just as well in better pictures.