Repent at Leisure

Wendy Barrie and Kent Taylor star in "Repent at Leisure" from 1941.

Barrie plays Emily Baldwin, the daughter of a department store magnet who is about to marry a prince and runs out on him. She hops on a bus and meets a man, Richard Hughes (Kent Taylor) who gives her a dime for the bus. Naturally he's curious as to what she's doing in a wedding gown. She tells him she was a model at a store and quit abruptly.

She is interested in meeting a different kind of man from what she has in the past, and he's it; they also have similar goals. She has nowhere to go so he offers her a separate part of his apartment.

It turns out he works at her father's department store - she doesn't mention it's owned by her family - and the next day, all the single men are fired. They have to cut employees and they don't want children to suffer. Try pulling something like that today.

Richard says he's married and has been for the past year. His boss then invites Richard and his wife over to play bridge.

Emily offers to be his wife for the evening. They not only wind up getting married for real, but they go to a foundling home and adopt a beautiful baby boy. All goes well for a while.

This is a good film with a nice performance by Wendy Barrie and the rest of the cast. Charles Lane, who died at 102 in 2007, is Richard's curmudgeon boss and gives his usual nasty performance; and George Barbier is Emily's kind and helpful father.

Enjoyable.

Thanks largely to the insouciant script by Jerome Cady, the well-done comic direction by Frank Woodruff (who'd scored at the same studio a year before with the similarly themed "Cross-Country Romance") and the charm of Wendy Barrie in the female lead, this is a better-than-average "B" with some genuinely imaginative moments. It's basically an "It Happened One Night" knockoff, but with variations that give it a unique appeal. Kent Taylor's queeny performance as the young store clerk obsessed with "success" books (including those Harold Lloyd/Clark Kent glasses!) is a bit odd but has its own charm; George Barbier is for once subtle and genuinely moving as Barrie's father (a department-store owner who helps his daughter escape a mismatched marriage to a stuck-up fortune-hunting prince, well played by Rafael Storm), the plot has some quite unexpected twists (courtesy of writers who obviously didn't take this assignment overly seriously), and only the racist so-called "comedy" of Fred "Snowflake" Toones mars it.

"Repent at Leisure" (1941) is about as logical a title for this little 66-minute B-grade film as the sequence of events depicted in it flow from plausible logic. However, that's not to say the film isn't enjoyable, because it actually is, up to a point. And that point is the drawn-out final scene, which to me was as much without merit as it was without defensible premise. It just isn't good when the final scene leaves one heading for the exit in a disagreeable state of mind.

But the movie is light and airy and pretty much a feel-good flick in general, with the department store owner (George Barbier) and his daughter (Wendy Barrie) involved in a series of comical concealed and mistaken identity concerns. How things came to this compounding familial difficulty requires the viewer to take a few leaps of faith along the way, which is acceptable because there is some fun to be had here. Kent Taylor as the leading man chosen by Wendy really has nothing going for him in the way of charisma, and it is hard to see why we should find him appealing, let alone Wendy. It is obvious this film was very cheaply done but does pass along some enjoyable moments, but please... just don't expect too much from it.

This is a variation on the runaway bride plot. Wendy Barrie, generally not a favorite of mine, is likable as said lady. She runs out on her would-be groom as the movie is opening. Her goal is to meet a man not interested in her department store-owner father's money. Enter Kent Taylor.

Taylor is rather wooden. But his character is meant to be stolid, though honorable. They make a cute couple, through ups and downs.

The supporting cast is uniformly good. And the plot doesn't seem forced. It has plenty of variations on the standard theme and is a nice way to pass some time.

I enjoyed much of "Repent at Leisure" but also must point out that the plot really makes little sense.

When the story begins, Emily Baldwin (Wendy Barrie) is about to marry some prince who is twice her age and not a particularly nice person. Emily realizes this and runs from the wedding. She hops aboard a bus and meets Richard (Kent Taylor). They agree to meet later for dinner.

When Richard goes to work at the Baldwin Department Store, he learns that the company is having financial trouble and they are firing all the single men. When Richard talks to his supervisor about this, on the spur of the moment he tells the boss that he IS married! So, the boss tells him to bring the wife by to play bridge with him and his wife. Emily agrees to marry Richard (yes, they just met)...but the night turns out to be a disaster. And during that night, they mention that they have a baby. So, to keep up the lie, they go to the orphanage and they bring home a cute little boy.

If most of this makes no sense, it only gets worse. During the next few months, Richard is advanced quickly through the department store and he doesn't realize this is because he'd married the boss' daughter. Now you'd THINK Emily would introduce her to her parents and tell him who she really is...but she doesn't.

When Richard eventually finds out the truth, it seems everyone at Baldwin's knew who he's married...and they all knew before him. At this point, Emily does her best to make Richard feel like dirt and because of the lies, he walks off...leaving Emily. Now he's working for Baldwin's competition and doing a darned good job of it. What's to come of all this?

The actors in this one are pretty good (though Kent Taylor is a tad bland)....but the material just makes little sense. And, I am pretty sure as you read my summary you, too, are confused. Why marry a guy you just met? Why not tell him who your family is? Why have a fight and leave when up until then, you'd both been very happy together? The questions are numerous and show that the writing was just pretty sloppy.

Overall, the film has merit even though it's illogical. Watch it and just turn off your brain!