Free and Easy

Shiftless father and son (Nigel Bruce, Robert Cummings) are looking for rich women to marry. The son falls in love with a woman (Ruth Hussey) but she's as broke as he is. What in the world will happen next? Predictable but easygoing comedy. Short runtime and good cast helps. Bob Cummings is fun. Ruth Hussey is lovely and charming. Change of pace roles for Nigel Bruce and Judith Anderson. Both are great. It's especially nice seeing Judith Anderson playing a light-hearted character. I'm used to seeing her play characters more like the one she played in Rebecca. There's nothing here you haven't seen before and better but it's a pleasant enough way to kill an hour.

An absolute little comic gem of a film running at only 55 minutes. It's essentially a B movie or support feature but has a wonderful cast of Robert Cummings, Ruth Hussey, Judith Anderson, C Aubrey Smith, Nigel Bruce & Reginald Owen (Anderson, Bruce and Smith had all been in the classic Rebecca the year before) . Bruce is billed fifth as Florian Clemington but is very central to the action as a wonderfully roguish but charming father to Cummings.

Free And Easy which starred Robert Cummings and Ruth Hussey had its origins from an Ivor Novello play The Truth Game which after a run in London made its American debut on Broadway and ran for 107 performances in the middle Depression years of 1930-31. Novello was like Noel Coward both as a performer and creator and he starred in the original Broadway and London run.

The film does have a Noel Coward like quality to it and with a bit of his wit, the proceedings might have been livened up. Robert Cummings is also a bit to American and that stands out in this cast that was mostly of the British Hollywood colony.

Cummings and Nigel Bruce play a father and son team of free wheeling bounders looking to marry wealthy. Cummings sets his sites on American widow Ruth Hussey who looks like money and to Europeans all Americans do. But she turns out to be looking for a second and wealthy marriage herself. Cummings then moves on to the plain Jane daughter of Sir C. Aubrey Smith played by Judith Anderson who gives a very touching performance, so far removed from some of the Gothic horror roles she's mostly known for. Still Cummings can't get Hussey out of his mind nor she him.

Next to Anderson the best performance in the film is that of Reginald Owen as the wealthy blustering oaf Hussey does have her cap set for. Owen steals the film whenever he's on screen.

There was an earlier screen version of The Truth Game called But The Flesh Is Weak that MGM did back in 1932 with Robert Montgomery. Not having seen it I can well believe that Montgomery who is as American as Cummings would have been far better cast in the lead. Free And Easy is an all right screen comedy, but could have used a much wittier script for the kind of film it is.

Many big names in this early shortie from MGM... Robert Cummings would go on to be a pretty big star. Aubrey Smith was always the uncle, the father, the judge, the priest in SO many black & white films. Nigel Bruce played Doctor Watson SO many times. Tom Conway was "the Falcon" in the many chapters of the detective films. and of course, Donald Meek in an uncredited role. R. Cummings is Max, son of Florian (N. Bruce). They are both on the prowl for rich society women, and make no secret of it. What's annoying is how easily Max flits from woman to woman, even going back to the same women, for various reasons. and they put up with it. Max makes no secret of what he's doing (at least some of the time...) and why he's doing it, but it doesn't seem to bother the women. He's like a bee, sniffing around every flower, and when he goes back to the previous flowers for whatever reason, they seem to accept it. Nigel Bruce is just in here for the comedy. Max happens to share a room with his father, but the plot would have been the same if Max lived by himself. they kind of justify having the father live with Max, but the story would have been exactly the same without dad in the storyline. dad cracks some pretty funny jokes here and there. I also thought Cummings has a stilted manner of speech; clearly he is very well educated, but seems to work extra hard to sound like the common man. he spoke like that in so many films. just a little odd. the film is pretty solid if you buy into the storyline. I guess it's a reverse on how so many women of the day were gold-diggers, it was un-usual to see that the men could also be treasure-hunters. probably a rarity back in the day. ony 150 votes on imdb so far. I LOVE Judith Anderson... was Oscar nominated for Rebecca, just the year before! Directed by George Sidney.. had worked with Judy Garland on numerous films. and Elvis.

Robert Cummings and Nigel Bruce play a pair of son and father social climbers who prey on gracious but rather plain English lady Judith Anderson in this second feature from MGM in 1941. Of course, Cummings falls in love with another socialite, the prettier Ruth Hussey. This leads to a series of romantic complications when Anderson actually falls for Cummings.

This was just a year before Anderson and Cummings worked together in the Warner Brothers classic "King's Row". Anderson, who had made a splash the year earlier as the villianous Mrs. Danvers in "Rebecca" (receiving an Oscar Nomination), played against type in this and another MGM comedy, "Forty Little Mothers" with Eddie Cantor. In "Free and Easy", Anderson gets to wear some glamorous outfits, although her rather dowdy suit at the ballet where she meets Cummings downplays her characterization as one of the world's wealthiest women, especially with a stodgy monacle attached. She is also a lot more lighthearted in this film than she was in any of her other movies or any of her Broadway shows where she was considered one of the great ladies of the theater. She was actually quite capable of pulling this off, playing a sort of younger version of her character in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", where her Billie Burke like performance overshadowed a strong and determined woman underneath.

Cummings, on the other hand, was not one of the more talented leading men of Hollywood's golden age in spite of the amazing list of credits he left behind. While not a bad actor, he had a very limited range. Even the so-called leading ladies men such as Herbert Marshall and George Brent added more spice to their weakly written parts. Nigel Bruce, always entertaining, and also from "Rebecca", just simply puts his on-screen son to shame in the acting department. C. Aubrey Smith, who had a small part in "Rebecca", appears here as Anderson's uppercrust father, and delivers his always commanding performance. As the love interest, Ruth Hussey is blander than she was in "The Philadelphia Story", which gave her an Oscar Nomination against Anderson. (Ironically, Anderson would appear in the Warner Brothers film "All Through the Night", which also starred Jane Darwell, who won the Oscar that year).

According to "The MGM Story", this was a remake of a 1932 Robert Montgomery film entitled "But the Flesh is Weak". Hopefully both will be shown together on Turner Classic Movies (where I saw "Free and Easy") to compare the two. Montgomery, it should be noted, was one of Hollywood's best leading men in the 1930's. His range was much greater than Cummings who did better in frivilous comedys like this rather than dramas such as "King's Row" and "The Lost Moment". At 56 minutes, "Free and Easy" is easy and free to watch on cable, especially for the presence of the supporting players.