Lady with a Past

Audiences of 1932 must have been surprised to see la Bennett play an unassertive society girl who wants to be married, but who, despite her stunning looks and pots of money, is shunned by the bachelors. Although sister Joan would have been more believable in the role of Miss Unpopularity, the story gets interesting when our tongue-tied caterpillar goes to Paris and is transformed by fun loving Ben Lyon into a social butterfly with a half dozen suitors fluttering around her, including the shallow boy from back home. And now that she can pick and choose, who do you think she ends up with at the finale? No matter. This is a pleasant little film and it's fun to watch Bennett sip champagne cocktails and flirt with fortune hunters in one stunning costume after another. No wonder her fans loved her.

In order to find this film believable, you have to buy the premise that Constance Bennett, one of the most beautiful and glamorous Hollywood stars ever, is unattractive to men. Does her character, Venice Muir (her parents honeymooned in Venice) wear glasses, frumpy clothes, have dull hair? Uh, no, she looks like Constance Bennett, it's just that she's playing an intelligent woman who likes to read. Meanwhile, the woman who may have poisoned her husband gets all the attention at parties.

One night, while roaring drunk, a man with whom Venice is in love, Donnie Wainwright (David Manners), proposes and wants her to sail with him to France to be married. The next day, he's sober. So Venice travels alone.

In Paris, she meets a man Buy (Ben Lyons) whom she hires as a gigolo to bring her to parties and get her into the right circles so that she can meet someone. He has the idea that if he creates a "past" for her, she will be more exciting to men.

This is a nice film, but I didn't believe it for a second. Venice has intelligence, money, glamor, beauty, and guys want to date a woman who might have killed her husband? If it had been another actress, someone like Anna Lee, Sylvia Sidney, good-looking but perhaps not a knockout, it would have been more realistic.

For Constance Bennett fans. She is always a joy, and the performances are good, particularly from Ben Lyons.

A woman as beautiful, rich and well-read as Constance Bennett's character can't get any men to pay attention to her???

If true, she should have dumped her social circle and found a new one.

From the audience's perspective, who was sitting around in The Depression, eating soup made of unwashed socks, thinking, ''What I really want to see this Saturday for my 5c is a rich, beautiful, smart woman mope around because the dopey men around her don't appreciate her charms."

And then to escape to Paris to work up a reputation as a sk2nk?

Puh-lease.

It's insidious garbage like this that taught a generation or more of smart women to hide their brains and flaunt their inner floozy to attract a worthless man.

Now THAT'S depressing.

Constance Bennett is miserable. Despite having money and being a pretty lady, she is hardly noticed by men. Yet, at the same time, 'bad' women attract men like flies. For instance, one woman was acquitted for shooting her husband--and now men won't leave her alone! So, out of desperation, she hires a guy down on his luck to pose as her lover and create the impression she's a loose woman! He seems a bit worldly and indicates he knows how to make her attractive by making her mysterious and a bit trampy. The plan works pretty well--but, of course, by the end of the film several complications have occurred.

The plot is pretty clever and is carried off pretty well due to good acting from Bennett and Ben Lyon. Not a great film, but nice entertainment and worth your time.

"Lady with a Past" is Constance Bennett as an unlikely bookish wallflower who sails from New York City to Paris where she engineers a fake sex scandal hoping it will make her the talk of the town by the time she returns and thereby attract the attention of young men who find her literary chatter a big bore. She also talks to herself and pretends to be singing out loud when caught in the act.

Her co-conspirator in Paris is the golden voiced Ben Lyons whom she picks up at a sidewalk café after he tricks her into paying his food and drink tab. But her heart really belongs to David Manners, a handsome member of her social set who is looking for someone more exciting.

If this all seems terribly unexciting, it is. Then why watch? Miss Bennett, of course. They don't make 'em like that any more. In the pre-production publicity it was said that Miss Bennett was being fitted for 17 gowns to wear in the film. I didn't count, but she probably did.