Along Came Love

"Along Came Love" is a very, very frustrating film to watch. At times, it's very enjoyable and fun--and other times, it's horrible and should have been severely re-written before being filmed. It's a shame, as much of the movie is very nice.

The film begins with an embarrassing segment where Emmy (Irene Hervey) goes to the planetarium and learns about the constellation Orion. This then inexplicably leads to her looking for her own mythic hero--a modern Orion. This aspect was 100% unnecessary and really detracted from the movie.

Later, Emmy meets a Dr. O'Ryan (Orion/O'Ryan...get it?!) and INSTANTLY decides he's THE man for her. So, she sets out to win his heart--even though O'Ryan is behaving about as unromantically as possible. He's obsessed with becoming an obstetrician and all he talks about is this...so Emmy borrows a baby to get his attention. In many ways, this is very much like the later film "Every Girl Should Be Married"--when Betsy Drake's character falls for a pediatrician and she harasses him unmercifully. However, in the case of "Along Came Love", the all-business doctor, out of the blue, instantly falls for her. The build up to all this is non-existent and was handled badly.

Later, just before the pair get married, Emmy's mother (an ex-Burlesque star) gets arrested in a police raid. WHY?!?! You might think they'd arrest her for bad singing but the film NEVER says why they arrested her and why this means the pair should break up!! Duh!! The bottom line is that although the setup was good and I adored the scene where Emmy was caught making fun of her boss, the film just kept losing its way and seemed to need a HUGE re-write. A mess that SHOULD have been so much better.

Irene Hervey spots Charles Starrett and realizes he's her dream man. She pursues him, but he's so busy studying to be a pediatrician he doesn't see her, until he suddenly falls in love with her.

That's the way this movie starts, and that's how it goes on. It has eccentric characters, good performers (H.B.Warner, Doris Kenyon, Ferdinand Gottschalk), funny situations..... but every time a plot point comes up that blocks the inevitable happy ending of all romantic comedies, it takes about two minutes to solve it, because everyone is so gosh-darned nice. There's no dramatic tension at all. You can't make a story without some dramatic tension, some problem to be solved, and while they are offered up, every time it looks like something needs to be done, some one does something swell and the problem goes away. Once I realized that (after about ten minutes), there was nothing of further interest in the story.

Miss Hervey tries to play this like a naive Ginger Rogers and Mr. Starrett.... well, he simply seems to have done what the director said at the moment.

The surviving versions available for this movie appear truncated, perhaps for TV viewing or including as a shorter second feature. However, there is enough of it left to piece together the film. There are 3 reasons to watch this movie. First, Irene Hervey,mother of Jack Jones and wife of singer Allen, is always a first-rate actress. What she does here with fairly ordinary material is remarkable and her radiant beauty leaves one to wonder why with all her talent she wasn't a bigger star. Charles Starrett is more famous for holding the record for most movies in a western series ever made, as he portrayed the Durango Kid. Once the pride of Dartmouth College, he was handsome, muscular and a perfect Dudley Do-Right of a leading man as the legendary hunter Orion come to life. The scenes with Starrett and Hervey are cute and charming. Finally, there is one of the greatest of the vaudeville stars ever-- Irene Franklin. Chances to see Irene doing her stuff as one of the very very first female stand-up comediennes ever (ages before Joan Rivers was credited with pioneering this). We catch a glimpse of what she used to do in the 1910s here singing a bit of her early mega-hit Redhead, doing a bit of a dance and singing an absurd and funny (stop the film and listen to the lyrics carefully) about a cowboy who had a chest that was hairy but all he could think of was the prairie. For those who like to spend their nights watching the old stars and vaudeville and screen veterans, this one is a real charmer. Also watch out for scene-stealing Ferdinand Gottschalk playing the fussbudget floor manager where Irene works. And there's silent film star H. B. Warner as Charles Starrett's kindly father caught between the world of high society morality and his own kinder nature. And there's also a small role for Chicago's Queen of Radio of the 1930s Bernadene Hayes. Although micro-budgeted, this film has a lot more fun and humorous situations in it than many a high budget screwball comedy from the golden era. For those of us who like our films old, funny and rather gentle, this is a real find.