Women Are Like That

Kay Francis is excellent in this 1938 comedy with a dramatic streak. She plays a woman whose husband (Pat O'Brien) has a secret (not revealed here) at the office. She tries to help out by landing a difficult advertising account and smashing her marriage. He goes on a round-the-world trip while she becomes a successful business woman. Not as grim as the plot sounds. This is a zippy Warners comedy with nice performances all round. Francis and O'Brien are lively and it's a shame they were so underrated; both of them zing the comedy lines like true pros, but when the action turns dramatic they are equally as good. Thurston Hall is hilarious as the philandering father, and Joyce Compton, Grant Mitchell, Sarah Edwards, Georgia Caine, Ralph Forbes, Gordon Oliver, Josephine Whittell, Cecil Cunningham, and Melville Cooper are all fun. And Renie Riano and May Boley have a nice scene as hotel maids. Good film.

Kay Francis and Pat O'Brien star in "Women are Like That," a 1938 film also starring Thurston Hall and Ralph Forbes. Kay plays Claire, who on her wedding day to Martin (Forbes) runs off instead with Bill Landin (O'Brien). They start off well enough, but then Claire's dad (Hall) runs off, cleaning out the bank account of his advertising agency, where Bill and Martin work. Bill gives the other officers his stock in exchange for Claire not finding out about her dad and continues to work for the company. Unfortunately, now he's in the hands of the penny-pinching Martin, and they slowly start to lose clients. Bill has one more chance, Bel-Ami Cosmetics, but after drawing up the proposals, he trashes them since he knows Martin won't pay for a splashy presentation. Claire resurrects the drawings and sells the campaign to Bon Ami. Her husband promptly dumps her.

This is a pleasant comedy/drama, helped by the fine performances of Francis, O'Brien and Hall especially. This was made at the end of Francis' time with Warner Brothers, where she held on by her teeth until the end of her lucrative contract. In the end, she elevated the trash Warners gave her with her intelligence, sophistication and glamor. "Women are Like That" is a bit uneven - it's hard to believe that with Claire obviously trying to help her husband, he turns on her as if she's done something awful. It's not like he even TRIED to sell the campaign. The question is, do they have enough going to reconcile. Since she doesn't know what he spared her, it will be that much harder for them. You can guess the rest.

Francis is always worth seeing, and it's O'Brien in a rare lead - not quite an A film, and if it was intended as a second feature, the presence of Francis and the production values elevate it.

with nice performances by Kay Francis and Pat O'Brien, but it's old vet Thurston Hall as Kay's father who steals the show as the lewd and carefree old rogue. Kay wears a couple of truly hideous outfits but otherwise looks great as usual. Lots of supporting players help spark this breezy film: Grant Mitchell, Sarah Edwards, Georgia Caine, John Eldredge, Gordon Oliver, Josephine Whittell, Joyce Compton, and even the usually stuffy Ralph Forbes.

In a sense Women Are Like That is at least three years ahead of its time. I say three years because it was in 1941 that Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn made their team debut in Woman Of The Year. The story her about a husband and wife team of advertising executives would have been perfect for them with a bigger budget.

The film starts out with Pat O'Brien as the man who joined the advertising firm as an office boy marrying Kay Francis who is the boss's daughter. One of the two bosses is Thurston Hall, Kay's father and the other is Ralph Forbes who was O'Brien's rival.

After the honeymoon though the boom really gets lowered when Thurston Hall confesses he's used most of the firm's cash assets to speculate on the stock market. To save him and to save embarrassment for his wife, O'Brien gives up his stock and embarks on an austerity program at his firm. But with Forbes now running things, it gets a bit too austere to make any profit.

O'Brien's carrying his troubles home with him and it's not long before he and Francis split. She then goes into the business and proves to have a knack for it. Soon O'Brien and Francis are at rival firms.

If you're a fan of Tracy and Hepburn you'll know exactly how this harbinger film ends. For a B film it's given some good production values and an excellent supporting cast. Thurston Hall is really good as Francis's old roué of a father. He's an embezzler, but he's so charming that you can't help, but like him.

Two performances really to treasure are those of Grant Mitchell and Sarah Edwards, the glass manufacturer from Peoria and his very prim and proper wife. To land that account, Kay works on the husband and O'Brien on the wife and the results are memorable.

Ralph Forbes is interesting too. For the life of me I can't figure out how this guy got in the advertising business, he has the imagination and personality of a gnat. I can understand how things went with O'Brien and Francis in the film, but this isn't my idea of a rebound man. Ralph Bellamy in these kind of roles has more going for him.

Though the film is a B comedy/drama, it still has quite a lot going for it and maybe Jack Warner made a big mistake consigning this story to his B picture unit.

The general mediocrity of this amiably sexist movie leads me to muse on the enigma of Kay Francis, a skilled, intelligent actress who, following 'Trouble In Paradise", could be spotted in a decent film about as often as good sushi on a menu in Billings Montana. Why was that? Could it be that Ms. Francis, whose best roles were as sexy, sassy gals defying conventional society and morality, was, like her sexy, sassy contemporaries Mae West and Joan Blondell, simply not able to make the transition from pre to post code? Perhaps. But my guess is that the answer, like so many things in Hollywood, lies in the director's chair rather than the Hays Office. Simply put, Ms. Francis, for whatever reason (there are hints of prima donna-ism in her personality so maybe she was hard to work with), was not able to hitch herself to a great director the way Dietrich did with Von Sternberg, Wayne did with Ford, or Hepburn did with Cukor. Instead, following her brilliant stint with Lubitsch, Ms. Francis worked with a veritable cargo ship full of directorial dullards, journeymen, and hacks whose names I won't bore you with but none of whom could hold even Mervin Le Roy's view finder. Like this film, for example.

In other words, most of TCM's Kay Francis SOTM this Jan. Is excruciatingly dull.