His Private Secretary

During a time when John Wayne was doing some B westerns and appearing in a few other films for Warner Brothers, he was apparently lent out to an independent outfit called Showmen's Pictures where he was the male lead in a comedy called His Private Secretary.

I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised with this one. Granted that the film doesn't exactly have the production values that one would have associated with the major studios and it can't get a better rating from me because of that. Still the performances were not bad and the Duke did a fine job in this one.

John Wayne plays the young playboy son of banker Reginald Barlow and all he has on his mind is chasing women. He's the despair of dear old dad who would like the Duke to just settle down in the family business. When he agrees to come to work, his first assignment is to get some deadbeat to cough up his loan money or foreclose.

Remember this is the Great Depression and a lot of people were in similar circumstances. But in this case the deadbeat is minister Alec B. Francis who has a pretty granddaughter Evelyn Knapp and with the Duke it's always pleasure before business.

Because Knapp doesn't immediately fall for his line and shows a serious side he's not seen in many women, Wayne is really taken with her. I think I need not say more because if you've seen thirties type comedies you know where this is heading.

The interesting thing to speculate is if this film had been the product of one of the major studios and had been given production values and a distribution level commiserate with same, what kind of turn John Wayne's career might have taken.

This would be worth watching if for no other reason than to watch John Wayne in a romantic comedy, and it's a decent movie in its own right. While its not as funny or as moving as the best films of this type, the story is good and is usually at least mildly amusing.

Wayne plays the carefree son of a rich man. His Father disapproves of him and his lifestyle, and after giving him one last chance, rejects him and the woman he has married (Evalyn Knapp). His wife decides to take matters into her own hands, with a creative scheme intended to bring the cold-hearted father to his senses. It's a fairly interesting scenario, and most of the possibilities are realized. The acting is generally good, and Wayne does well in a role much different from those he would later become famous for.

Wayne's fans should enjoy seeing how he performs in this atypical role, and fans of old-fashioned romantic comedies should also find this worth a look.

Though the quality of the film is not too great (hey, it IS from 1933!), it is a good little movie, and the entertainment value exceeds the quality (at least in the version we watched).

It is fun to see John Wayne in this atypical role. He plays the part of a fun-loving rich playboy, whose father wants him to settle down and start working in the family business. When he does the ultimate in settling down, by getting married, his father is convinced the wife is a gold-digger. How she convinces him otherwise is clever and well done, and shows the value of being a positive person with initiative.

MOST of the other comments on this movie say it so well, but I wanted to add one more very positive comment for the film.

If you are a John Wayne fan, you should definitely watch this movie.

Yes, John Wayne is actually in a Romantic Comedy, and this is it! Evalyn Knapp (top billed!!!) is his love interest who tries to prove herself by getting a job in John's dad's company without papa knowing who she is. It's pretty well done, and certainly worth viewing just for the curiosity of seeing the Duke out of his element. He actually does pretty well! A SOLID 8!

The plot for "His Private Secretary" is a good one. It's a variation on a common theme for later films about a rich father who rues that he has a son who has been spoiled. Only, the screenplay for this film is not very good. It has holes in places and isn't tightly put together. The quality overall is crude and rough.

The film was made by Mascot, one of the Tin Pan Alley studios of the time. It's an early John Wayne film – one of the first in which he is credited and has a lead. Even then, Evalyn Knapp is billed ahead of him. But like so many other players from Tin Pan Alley, she never went much further in film and was forgotten by the 1940s. Wayne is one of a small number of players who got a start in the bottom rung of movie makers but who climbed to the highest rung and stardom.

The acting is so-so here, but it does show that Wayne had some talent and early on was comfortable in front of the camera. He would go on to make many more films of various genres, including a host of dime Westerns before the 1939 John Ford film, "Stagecoach," that caused his star to rise.