Take a Letter, Darling

It's too bad that director Mitchell Leisen wasn't working today and making Take A Letter Darling. If he did there would be a whole lot more explicit gender bending in this one.

Not that this film isn't good. In fact it's witty and bright and shows Rosalind Russell at her best. In her autobiography Russell describes this film as the first in her career woman roles. I'm supposing she isn't counting His Girl Friday, I guess Russell thought that Hildy Johnson had a job as a reporter as opposed to a career. After all she was trying all through the film to get away on her elopement and honeymoon with Ralph Bellamy.

But in Take A Letter Darling, Russell is a partner with Robert Benchley in an advertising agency. She can't keep a secretary and for good reason, she's got some specific night work requirements for a secretary and she demands the male gender as requirement number one.

In the gay world that Mitchell Leisen was part of, it's called hiring a beard. So many did it back in the day when the closet ruled. Many of the gay stars were always paired with public female dates lest there be any whispers about their sexuality. I'm sure it was the same in the business world.

Russell hires free spirited artist Fred MacMurray to squire her around and keep jealous wives at bay and to deter husbands from getting any ideas about some after office frolicking. In fact she sends MacMurray out to a favorite men's shop of hers where she gets him outfitted the same way Gloria Swanson took care of William Holden in Sunset Boulevard.

In real life Russell would have hired a gay man for her purposes, but since the mere mention of gay was out of the question, the heterosexist MacMurray is hired. They double team husband and wife George Reed and Margaret Hayes to land one account.

But an even bigger challenge presents itself with brother and sister tobacco heirs, Macdonald Carey and Constance Moore. Carey's been married four times already and Moore is a mint julep sucking southern belle who looks at MacMurray like a Virginia ham.

Take A Letter Darling holds up very well today although a knowledge of the mores of the times would certainly help younger viewers. This is definitely a film that could stand a remake, a more honest and explicit film about the practice of bearding.

I've never seen MacMurrary of Russell give more nuanced performances than in this screwball comedy about a successful woman executive who hires a male secretary to appear conventional on social outings. What is completely surprising is the outcome isn't one that consigns either character to a rigid, gender-defined role. Sly wit and great performances throughout, albeit marred by unfortunate racial stereotypes of the time.

1942's "Take a Letter, Darling" is a fun look at life in the '40s, and no one could play a career woman like Rosalind Russell. Tough, intelligent, sophisticated and glamorous, she fits easily into a man's world. In this film, directed by Mitchell Leisen, A.M. MacGregor (Russell) is the active partner in an advertising firm with Atwood (Robert Benchley), but she has both man and woman trouble. Men make passes and wives are jealous. To get around this, she hires a male secretary, Tom Verney (MacMurray) who in reality is an artist trying to save money to move to Mexico and paint. He takes notes, does research for her and, most importantly, poses as her fiancé at business dinners.

Verney is wary of the job from the beginning and plays along reluctantly. When A.M. learns the often-married Jonathan Caldwell (MacDonald Carey) is looking for a new advertising company for his tobacco company, she also learns he hates women. She maneuvers a meeting but learns that his sister (Constance Moore) has to approve the campaign. Enter Verney - but when the sister turns out to be young, beautiful, and invites Verney to the southern plantation - A.M. finds she's jealous.

Good movie, good fun, terrific cast, if somewhat predictable.

ROSALIND RUSSELL and FRED MacMURRAY have seldom had their flair for light comedy seen to better advantage than in TAKE A LETTER, DARLING in which the battle of the sexes involves Russell's career woman falling in love with her male secretary--really more of a personal assistant here and one she hires to make deals with clients and their wives.

MacMurray comes to resent the position he's placed in and there's some genuine wit and satisfactory situations resulting when Russell uses him to make her various deals. Predictably, she falls in love with him and it takes the whole story for the two to finally meet on common ground after a series of misunderstandings and plot complications involving MACDONALD CAREY and CONSTANCE MOORE as a brother and sister team who are both schemers who can match Russell any day.

It's all very brisk, very '40s style in the way the situations are resolved. ROBERT BENCHLEY has a more subdued role than usual in comic support.

But the chemistry between MacMurray and Russell is what keeps the whole thing bubbling along to a predictable enough conclusion.

MACDONALD CAREY has one of his better roles as "the other man" who has already had four wives and decides Russell should be his fifth.

Summing up: Amusing and well worth your time with a clever script by Claude Binyon.

'Take a Letter, Darling' has both great actors (Fred MacMurray, Rosalind Russell) and a fun, timeless plot [this film could easily be applied to the here-and-now]. It relates a touchingly humorous story of love and jealousy and is a tribute to the romantic notion that true love never runs smooth. Elegantly done and a pleasure to watch.