Difendo il mio amore

Private Number starts off strong and interesting and remains so until the near ending. It's one of those stories where all kinds of hubris, angst, and courtroom drama unfold simply because the two leads refuse to have a simple 10 minute conversation that could easily and readily clear things up. Yes, I know that is a device to create drama and tension but here it only served to annoy me. Especially when having that very brief conversation could improve your life so completely. Anyway, Young and Taylor are very good as the young lovers and Rathbone is excellent as the bad guy. Despite my issues with the near ending of Private Number it's still fairly entertaining and one worth checking out.

I caught this film for the very first time,as I can remember,on Fox Movie Channel.The lead actor was listed as Tyronne Power instead of Robert Taylor.I don't know whether the fault lies with TV Guide or the cable channel.Maybe both.

I enjoyed watching a young Loretta Young,one of my favorites.The storyline deals with a maid who falls in love,marries and has a baby for her employers son.Basil Rathbone,another one of my favs,plays the wicked butler who cooks up a devilish plot to have her arrested and and discredited in the eyes of her employers and fired.

This old black and white charm took me way back to my childhood days watching Ms Young's television show with similar stories.Released way back in the 1930's,it is a jewel of a picture.

Can you believe TV Guide even had it listed as a comedy?

This movie has its charms, but it cannot be a "Pre-Code gem," since it came out two years after the Code clampdown kicked in.

It's a little sappy, actually -- it'd have been much better if it HAD been made during the Pre-Code era.

But I do agree that Loretta Young's delightful in it.

"Private Number" is a most enjoyable film that may be largely unknown among most buffs of older films today. But it has a very pleasing cast , good dialog, beautiful sets and costuming, a dastardly Basil Rathbone, the beautiful voice of a young Robert Taylor, and the gloriously glistening eyes of Miss Loretta Young. How did they do that with her eyes? She was such a fine and watchable actress, her performance here nuanced and anticipatory in her give and take with the troupe, even though the production was likely on a conveyor-belt schedule. It isn't one of the all-time great films, but it is a very good and worthwhile one. The film's subject matter may have even made a lot of those in the 1936 movie audiences a bit uncomfortable.

Down on her luck "Ellen" (Loretta Young) arrives at "Winfield Manor" seeking a position. She's completely unqualified, but butler "Wroxton" (Basil Rathbone) takes a bit of a shine to her and so she gets a job anyway. Indeed, fairly swiftly she is the personal maid to the lady of the house - but it's the son "Richard" (Robert Taylor) who really catches her eye, and she his. What can they do though - she's a mere servant and he is from the bluest of New York blood? Well they pretend it's Elizabethan times and marry in secret, but that's not their biggest one of those and when the intensely jealous "Wroxton"" finds out, he proceeds to make things distinctly awkward for the couple and for his family. With the odds stacked against them, and misunderstandings galore going on, it's going to be tough for them to remember that they were/are/might still be in love! It's all a bit predicable as far as the story goes, but there's quite an effective on-screen malevolence from an on-form Rathbone, there's also an amiable chemistry between Young and a Taylor who looks much younger than his actual 25 years, and we've even a tiny slice of courtroom duplicity at the end to round things off. Never mind a woman scorned, worry about the butler...!