I Want a Divorce

Back when "I Want a Divorce" was made, the leads, Joan Blondell and Dick Powell, were married. What makes this ironic is that just a few years later, the pair divorced...and this movie has such a strong anti-divorce theme.

The film begins with Geraldine (Blondell) being called into court to testify at her sister's divorce trial. The sister insists on divorce, though she never indicated why she didn't want to stay married and her husband wanted her to remain his wife. Through this case, Geraldine meets Alan (Powell) and they eventually fall in love and marry. They are happy but through the course of their marriage, Alan loses sight of this...and begins working too much as, you guessed it, a divorce lawyer. Will this couple survive or are they destined to be just like Alan's clients?

The film is very strange to watch today...not so much for its anti-divorce theme but because of its PRO-domestic violence bent. Yep, several times, folks make light of this and seem to think that a man needs to smack his wife around now and again...just to let her know who's boss! Undoubtedly, this will ruffle a few feathers in viewers. IF you can look past this, the film is modestly enjoyable but not much more.

Both Dick Powell and Joan Blondell who were married to each other at the time this film was made and had multiple marriages in their lives star in this rather little known Paramount film from 1940 about the tragedy of divorce. No doubt about divorce is a tragedy and the premise of this film seems to be if there were no divorce lawyers there would be no divorces, that married people would just work it out. Both Powell and Blondell had left Warner Brothers where they were stars in the Thirties to freelance.

This film is terribly dated, but certainly in keeping with the Code which frowned on divorce at least in the abstract. Of course it's not so simple. Powell and Blondell meet during the divorce of Blondell's sister Gloria Dickson from Conrad Nagel each testifying at the proceedings under subpoena. Powell is in fact studying for the bar and when he passes it, he goes to work for high price divorce attorney Sidney Blackmer who was Nagel's counsel.

Powell and Blondell go through the usual married people problems and the thrust of the film is that people reach for the divorce lawyers too easily. And that they are a particularly bad group of bottom feeding shysters. Held up as an example of how married folks should deal with things is the 50+ years that Blondell and Dickson's grandparents Harry Davenport and Jessie Ralph have lasted.

The players are all sincere, but married life should only be as simple as I Want A Divorce makes it out. And five years later the Powells went and got one and married other folks.

This film rather meanders, but it picks up strength in the last half. That's mainly because the dramatic portions are its strengths and its comedic parts are its weaknesses, bordering on the inane at times.

The film opens on Gerry Brokaw (Joan Blondell) going to divorce court to testify against her sister Wanda's (Gloria Dickson) husband, David Holland (Conrad Nagel). You get the feeling - and you'd be right - that this is a rather trumped up divorce. That Wanda is determined to get a divorce she is not even sure she wants, and that her soon to be ex-husband is a nice guy and for sure doesn't want the divorce.

In the process of the divorce, Gerry meets Alan MacNally (Dick Powell). He is also there as a witness, and he is one of Wanda's "fast crowd" friends, although he doesn't act like one. Gerry has an instant dislike for him just because of that, but she gets to know him and of course they fall in love and get married. Problems crop up when Alan passes the bar and begins to represent people in divorces, which is something Gerry absolutely does not like, since she feels that puts him in the role of homewrecker. His legal reputation grows as does the gulf between him and Gerry. Meanwhile Wanda has discovered that she still loves her ex-husband, but that he has moved on. Pretty heavy melodramatic complications ensue.

I don't know why Joan Blondell and Dick Powell could not do comedy together. They had no problem doing it with anybody else. But when they tried doing it together you could tell it was an act. And to paraphrase what Spencer Tracy told a young Burt Reynolds - "Don't ever let them catch you acting". A real surprise here was Frank Faye as the MacNallys ' rather strange friend who is obsessed with fishing, yet always seems to be dressed in formal wear. He's really an asset to the film in this supporting role.

I'd say this is worth your time, especially the second half. It is just bit of a slog getting through the first half.

Joan Blondell testifies as to Conrad Nagel's cruelty to her sister, Gloria Dickson in their divorce -- off the witness stand she agrees with him. She then goes to a diner, where she dumps coffee on Dick Powell. Soon they are married and broke. Dick is a lawyer, but the only opening he can find is with Sidney Blackmer's firm,specializing in divorces, and Joan can't stand the idea. However, Dick helps out their friend, Frank Fay, and he has a real knack for it. He goes to work for Blackmer, earning excellent money. It all reaches a breaking point...

There's lots of talent on display in this Paramount movie, including the always-delightful Harry Davenport and Jessie Ralph as Joan's grandparents. However, this movie, under the direction of Ralph Murphy, never quite works. It's supposed to start off as a comedy, but never really achieves that. Instead, it starts turning towards drama, and never really achieves that. Miss Dickon, who is supposed to serve as an object lesson in the dreariness and despair of divorce, never does anything to gain our sympathy, to make her suffering palpable to the audience. Furthermore, while Blondell and Powell were married when they made this movie, there isn't the sort of on-screen chemistry to raise this out of the ordinary. The result is good -- with a cast like that, it's hard to make a dull movie -- but never more than ordinary.