The First Hundred Years

The First Hundred Years from 1937 is a dated film starring Robert Montgomery and Virginia Bruce Directed by Richard Thorpe, it's sure to annoy most women.

Bruce plays Lynn Conway, a highly successful theatrical agent in New York City. Her husband is shipbuilder David, who has just been offered a job in New Bedford for $15,000 a year. Im 1937, this was the equivalent of $334,000 today.

He expects Lynn to give up her job and move to New Bedford with him. She refuses and suggests they can be together on weekends. He will not agree. They divorce, and she is ordered to pay him $400 a month. So you can imagine what she's making.

This is 1937. Why go into details. This can only end one way. There's a slight twist that makes no difference as the end would still be the same.

No point in being aggravated. There are couples with successful weekend marriages but probably not many in 1937.

It's a good cast, including Binnie Barnes and Warren William. It's just not much of a film.

Robert Montgomery has gotten his dream job, managing a ship yard in New Bedford. It's a very handsome salary, so he can afford to take care of his wife, Virginia Bruce. She's been doing all the taking care up to now. She's a theatrical and dramatist's agent, and she's been the one paying the majority of their expenses, including good clothes and an elegant apartment with two live-in servants. And she doesn't want to give it up. Montgomery's job is too far away for commuting. So they decide to try a separation. After a judge gets his hands on it, he awards spousal support of $400 a month -- for Miss Bruce to pay Montgomery. Conniptions ensue.

It's a very dated handling of a problem we still have, thanks to the modern prevalence of two-income marriages. It's cut down on peoples' ability to move to a new job when the spouse has one that keeps him or her tied to a location, just as here. I doubt there are that many women paying alimony to ex-husbands, but I have seen a lot of instances of women shocked by having to pay child support.

More than that, there's a general grouchiness to this MGM comedy that goes a long way to explaining their general failure with screwball comedy. That's despite a good collection of farceurs who include Warren William, Binnie Barnes, Alan Dinehart, the always welcome Harry Davenport, and Torben Meyer.

I thought I'd be watching a Robert Montgomery comedy. Instead this is a dramatic filmm, obvious from the start. Perhaps in 1937 the topic of a husband demanding his wife give up her career because his being the breadwinner in the family was an ironclad rule, but it is so painful to watch it play out here, that the film is all but unwatchable. Yes, it has wonderful performers, but they are wasted in all this tedious nonsense. The film is plodding and tedious. Who could EVER describe it as a comedy? It AIN'T a comedy, it's just a stinker. (Two stars for the performers themselves -- and that's it!)