Get Your Man

Get Your Man is a great silent starring Buddy Rogers. This was his second co-starring with Clara Bow, the first being 1927's Wings. Set in France, the tale starts with a young Buddy at a betrothal ceremony to a young French girl. Then, when they've grown up and are getting ready for the big day, Clara the American girl shows up. After falling in love with Buddy, Clara starts an elaborate plan to 'get her man'. Overall, it is a light, cute comedy.

This movie is basically a trite variation on the "Ruritania" romances that were still popular at the time, and unfortunately so, because the wonderfully modern and very American Clara Bow was bound to seem out of place amidst aristocrats of the Old Country. "Get Your Man" is set there to provide the plot with its necessary mechanism: Arranged marriage between nobles, an outdated concept even then that provides the necessary conflict here, as Clara learns she must liberate her newfound French love from pre-arranged imminent nuptials. Neither he or his intended really want to go through with it, but they both feel obligated to follow their titled parents' wishes to unite the family trees.

Clara is pretty unlikely as a wealthy American socialite "touring the Continent," but then the equally all- American Charles "Buddy" Rogers is no more credible as a French baronet or whatever he's supposed to be. There's nothing wrong with making such leaps in a movie as frivolously escapist as this one. But the problem is that the "refined" setting means Clara has to be relatively restrained, getting few opportunities for the kind of ebullience that is her trademark. Late in the movie there's a bit quite obviously shoehorned in to provide at least one opportunity for her natural physicality, when she wildly throws things about her guest bedroom in order to fake some sort of amorous abandon that others will hear (thus creating a scandal that will free Rogers from his wedding). And indeed it's the highlight here.

Otherwise, this is a pleasant enough but forgettable vehicle cranked out on the Paramount assembly at a time when Bow was making one movie after another--six in this year alone. Significant chunks of it are presumed permanently lost, and those gaps are filled in by a combination of titles and production stills.

Unfortunately, that includes most of what was obviously intended as the standout novelty sequence, in which the two leads find they're been locked overnight in a creepy Madame Tussaud's-style wax museum. Seeing Clara assume the same comical "I'm scared!" expression in multiple, very posed-looking publicity stills does not, alas, give much sense of how the gags would have played out in the complete original sequence. But hey, we'll take what we can get with what survives of her movies.

Can Clara Bow do anything wrong? This perfect French farce, beautifully directed by Dorothy Arzner, sees Clara as an American in Paris. She falls madly in love with the utterly gorgeous Charles 'Buddy' Rogers (and who wouldn't?). Trouble is he's a nobleman betrothed since childhood to another woman. So Clara devises an elaborate plan to "get her man". Clara is just delicious, playing with comic perfection, and very sexy to boot. The scenes when she seduces the old Marquise, played brilliantly by Harvey Clark, are hilarious, and the final stage of her plan is so outrageous you'll hardly believe the film-makers got away with it. How sad that there is some bad nitrate decomposition and some missing footage on the one surviving print. But even this can't stop that Bow glow! 10 out of 10!

Clara Bow is the only reason for watching this picture: She is as vivacious, charming and funny as anyone could be on silent film. In all other respects, the thing does not really work. The plot is incredibly contrived: An arranged marriage between French aristocrats (didn't they have that revolution some time ago?) provides the background; Clara agrees to marry the father of the bride on condition that he releases his daughter from the engagement - her aim being to free up the bridegroom whom she wants to marry herself... It is all rather silly. What's more, Clara's character would not come across as particulary likeable if she was not Clara, whom it is impossible to dislike. The plot is so poorly constructed that you hardly notice that two out of six reels of the film are lost. Says it all, really.

Clara Bow was the "It" girl and the epitome of a Roaring 20's flapper. Bow lit up the screen; she was vivacious, exuded sex appeal, and, with the flash of an eye and the glimpse of a leg, let the audience know she liked men and sex. Whenever she was on screen, all eyes were fixated on her. Well, almost all eyes; in "Get Your Man," the boyishly handsome Charles "Buddy" Rogers has his own charisma, and viewers will be riveted when the pair share the same frame. Unfortunately, "Get Your Man," adapted by Hope Loring from a play by Louis Verneuil, is a lackluster vehicle for the dazzling co-stars, who, like Norma Desmond, definitely "had faces then." Set in a sound-stage French château, Rogers is Robert Albin, son of the Duke of Albin, and he has been betrothed to Simone de Valens, daughter of a Marquis, since he was in short pants and she in diapers. Seventeen years after the betrothal arranged by their respective fathers, Robert and Simone are to be wed. Enter Clara Bow as Nancy Worthington, an American from New York, who quickly sets her eye on Robert, betrothal or no betrothal. After Robert and Nancy meet in Paris and spend some quality time together in a wax museum, Nancy manages to wangle a stay at the Albin château, where ostensibly she is recuperating after a car crash at the gates to the estate. Continuity during the first half of the movie is choppy, because two reels of film have been lost; the action jumps from reel 1 to reel 4, although viewers can easily fill in the gaps. Unfortunately, even the surviving footage is in poor condition at times. Especially distressing are handwritten notes that the characters read; only a few frames of them exist, and they flash by. Viewers must freeze the image to read them.

Beyond the allure of the two stars, "Get Your Man" is a dated production that is generally static and stagey; although made in 1927, the film does not reach the heights of the great movies of the late 1920's, which was the apex of the silent era. The contrived situations are not convincing, such as Nancy's silly flirtation with Simone's father or the nonsensical reason for her staying at the château. Bow and Rogers re-teamed later that same year in the classic "Wings" to much better effect. However, the film does have historical import in that the director was Dorothy Arzner, Hollywood's only female director during the "Golden Age." With but 20 directorial efforts to her name, Arzner was nevertheless the first woman to become a member of the Directors' Guild, and any of her films merits attention.

Patient viewers able to tolerate a partially deteriorated silent film with two reels missing will be rewarded with the glow of two enduring stars, Clara Bow of the flashing eyes and Charles "Buddy" Rogers of the boy-next-door smile. While the theatrical shenanigans on screen belong to a world that vanished nearly a century ago, the film offers the opportunity to sit in the dark and bask in the glow of bygone glamour and discover the work of a pioneering female director.