Nel mondo della Luna

In the only film that they did together former married couple Henry Fonda and Margaret Sullavan teamed together for Walter Wanger in a nice screwball comedy The Moon's Our Home. Both come from different worlds and both use pseudonyms in their professional lives.

Sullavan is a temperamental movie star not totally unlike the real Sullavan was reputed to be. She was not a fan of the studio system of the day and wasn't shy about letting people know it. Fonda is a novelist who uses a pen name like Samuel Langhorne Clemens did. For this to work you have to believe that Sullavan wasn't much of a reader and Fonda disdained the cinema.

Both however had the habit of using their rather pedestrian real names of John Smith and Sarah Brown when they wanted to just get away. And the two do meet in a New York taxi under those real names and Fonda offers her a chance to go to a nice New Hampshire rural inn he always holidayed at. She takes him up and the romance begins.

It could happen that way. When Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe were courting it was a fact that Monroe knew he was an ex-ballplayer but had no concept of his legend in his field. We do lead compartmentalized lives and have our set interests.

The former marrieds get some nice support from Spencer Charters and Margaret Hamilton as the inn proprietors, Walter Brennan as a deaf justice of the peace, Charles Butterworth who is the silly playboy ever ready to marry Sullavan and Beulah Bondi and Henrietta Crossman as her aunt and grandmother respectively. Bondi has a classic scene with Butterworth as she gets him away from Sullavan. And Butterworth is always fun delivering those wonderful dead pan lines.

Whatever chemistry the stars had that made them both take the first steps to marriage and to each other, Fonda and Sullavan had enough left to turn out a good typical screwball comedy of the Thirties with The Moon's Our Home.

The Moon's Our Home is a fast moving, machine-gun fire paced romantic comedy from 1936. It is the story of the romance of Cherry Chester, a movie star, and Anthony Amberton, a travel writer. Ms. Chester, travelling under her birth name, Sarah Brown, can't stand the writings of Anthony Amberton. Amberton, using pseudonym John Smith, detests "marshmallow-faced" movie stars, most of all Cherry Chester. For better or for worse, however, Cherry and Anthony don't know the real names when they meet, and subsequently are able to fall in love.

The novelty of this film is that the two stars, Margaret Sullavan and Henry Fonda, were married and divorced by the time the production started. The fights (verbal and phsyical) seem wonderfully real and the love and chemistry seem genuine also. There is a bitter-sweet feeling with this bit of trivia, especially when the couple separates (a few times).

The cast, in addition to the leads, are wonderful. Especially Oscar-winner Walter Brennan, as the justice of the peace. In one of the best and funniest marriages ever to take place on the screen, Brennan recites the ceremony and Amberton and Chester have a fight. It just so happens, however, that each time the j.p. asks "do you take..." they just happen to say in their own conversation "I do." It's irresistable.

Although it rarely turns up, get your hands on this film by all means. Besides being a lot of fun, it is also the screwball comedy that has the most innuendo that seemed to sneak by the censors. Fonda's character "has conquered the highest peaks known to travellers." And a personal favorite, the fact that Cherry won't "mind the bumps" on a truck ride... Modern audiences may not get it, but to the keen ear, this film is a delight as well as to the eyes...

The Moon's Our Home is a classic example of Hollywood movie-making of a bygone era.

Pleasant enough but fairly run-of-the-mill screwball comedy. The chemistry between Margaret Sullavan and Henry Fonda is fine, and there's some funny moments here and there, but the film just feels lifeless and enervated somehow. Too many far-fetched things happen, and nothing really leads you from one scene to the next. All the elements are there for a classic except for a believable and memorable story. A bit of a slog to get through, but nice to check out just the once.

Wow, was Henry Fonda cute. And when I see him in these old films, you can see that Jane looks just like him.

In "The Moon's Our Home" from 1936, Fonda stars with his ex-wife, Margaret Sullavan, in this delightful comedy. Sullivan is Cherry Chester, a brat of a movie star who is summoned by her grandmother so that she can announce her engagement to someone she doesn't want to marry.

At the same time, a popular author, Anthony Amberton (Fonda) is being chased around town by people - women - wanting him to sign his latest book. Anxious to escape them, he jumps into a carriage transporting Cherry. The two hit it off, but he leaps off of the carriage again when it's safe. All she has to trace him is a card with the address of a place in New Hampshire.

Cherry escapes her family and goes there incognito, using the name Sarah Brown. She finds Anthony there too, incognito using the name Smith. Neither has any idea of the other's true identity.

Meanwhile the newspapers are full of Cherry's disappearance - was it a kidnapping? I found this interesting because I just finished watching "Agatha Christie: Her Life in Pictures" which dealt with the publicity surrounding her 11-day disappearance in 1925.

Cute screwball with engaging performances by both stars. I always prefer Henry Fonda in his earlier films - for me later on he became too internalized.

The supporting cast is great - Margaret Hamilton, Walter Brennan, Henrietta Crosman, and Beulah Bondi.

Very entertaining.

If you like, as I do, the romantic comedies from the thirties and early forties then this movie might be a good choice. It's definitely lightweight, but Margaret Sullavan is utterly charming as a movie star with a sophisticated and elegant public persona, but a decidely klutzy and ditzy offscreen personality. Henry Fonda is the bestselling author, who has to run away from adoring fans in Beatlesque fashion (about twenty five years before they had to).

When they meet, they have no idea the other is really famous, and the silliness ensues. Henry Fonda is always worth watching, and the supporting cast includes some favorites like the Wicked Witch of the West herself, Margaret Hamilton, Beulah Bondi and of even in a brief part it's fun to watch Walter Brennan.

You can easily picture Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant in these parts (all the way down to Sullavan's insistence on wearing pants). The resolution is a little weak, and at places the plotting tends to sag, but all in all, a fun time.