A Secretaria Particular

The plot for "His Private Secretary" is a good one. It's a variation on a common theme for later films about a rich father who rues that he has a son who has been spoiled. Only, the screenplay for this film is not very good. It has holes in places and isn't tightly put together. The quality overall is crude and rough.

The film was made by Mascot, one of the Tin Pan Alley studios of the time. It's an early John Wayne film – one of the first in which he is credited and has a lead. Even then, Evalyn Knapp is billed ahead of him. But like so many other players from Tin Pan Alley, she never went much further in film and was forgotten by the 1940s. Wayne is one of a small number of players who got a start in the bottom rung of movie makers but who climbed to the highest rung and stardom.

The acting is so-so here, but it does show that Wayne had some talent and early on was comfortable in front of the camera. He would go on to make many more films of various genres, including a host of dime Westerns before the 1939 John Ford film, "Stagecoach," that caused his star to rise.

During a time when John Wayne was doing some B westerns and appearing in a few other films for Warner Brothers, he was apparently lent out to an independent outfit called Showmen's Pictures where he was the male lead in a comedy called His Private Secretary.

I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised with this one. Granted that the film doesn't exactly have the production values that one would have associated with the major studios and it can't get a better rating from me because of that. Still the performances were not bad and the Duke did a fine job in this one.

John Wayne plays the young playboy son of banker Reginald Barlow and all he has on his mind is chasing women. He's the despair of dear old dad who would like the Duke to just settle down in the family business. When he agrees to come to work, his first assignment is to get some deadbeat to cough up his loan money or foreclose.

Remember this is the Great Depression and a lot of people were in similar circumstances. But in this case the deadbeat is minister Alec B. Francis who has a pretty granddaughter Evelyn Knapp and with the Duke it's always pleasure before business.

Because Knapp doesn't immediately fall for his line and shows a serious side he's not seen in many women, Wayne is really taken with her. I think I need not say more because if you've seen thirties type comedies you know where this is heading.

The interesting thing to speculate is if this film had been the product of one of the major studios and had been given production values and a distribution level commiserate with same, what kind of turn John Wayne's career might have taken.

This is one of those movies that a person is going to have to make several allowances for in order to enjoy it. First, this movie was very short (60 minutes). Along with that, it seems to be filmed in segments and doesn't flow smoothly from one to the other. Quite choppy. Now, part of the reason for both of these aspects is probably to contain costs. And I fully understand that in lieu of the fact that this movie was produced during the Great Depression. However, these factors really stood out and gave the entire film a rather cheap feeling to it. Fortunately, there are a couple of good things going for this movie too. For one, it has John Wayne ("Richard Wallace") as the leading actor. Granted this is one of his earliest films and he doesn't quite have the screen presence he commanded in his later years. But that's only to be expected. Another good thing was the performance of Evalyn Knapp (as "Marion Hall"). She was really special. Be that as it may, these two ingredients couldn't quite overcome the weaknesses I mentioned earlier. As such, while the movie is definitely cute, I have to give it an average rating.

Though the quality of the film is not too great (hey, it IS from 1933!), it is a good little movie, and the entertainment value exceeds the quality (at least in the version we watched).

It is fun to see John Wayne in this atypical role. He plays the part of a fun-loving rich playboy, whose father wants him to settle down and start working in the family business. When he does the ultimate in settling down, by getting married, his father is convinced the wife is a gold-digger. How she convinces him otherwise is clever and well done, and shows the value of being a positive person with initiative.

MOST of the other comments on this movie say it so well, but I wanted to add one more very positive comment for the film.

If you are a John Wayne fan, you should definitely watch this movie.

Nice old movie tho it feels a bit short. My only complaint was not with the movie but the DVD I rented via Netflix. Westlake Enterainment's 2007 DVD shows little if any care was taken for improving the quality of movie during transfer to DVD. The transfer was horrible even considering the age of the film it should have been handled much better and cleaned up both visually and sonically. At times the faces seem almost like glaring white ghosts on screen. Scratches and obvious film damage abound as well.

John Wayne out of his boots and six gun was nice to see and he did well here playing the male romantic lead. Seems odd to see the Duke in a movie without gunfights and horse chases. If you want to see Wayne in a better romantic comedy tho I still suggest you watch "The Quiet Man" instead.