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Okay, the plot is sort of silly -- you have to accept that gorgeous society girl Constance Bennett, in a succession of clinging gowns, has difficulty attracting men. So much so that on a whirlwind trip to Paris, she hires penniless American Ben Lyon as a gigolo, if only to prove that she isn't a complete dud.

Bennett exudes her trademark seductive charm. But it's Lyon, as her romantic mentor, who bring the "Lady with a Past" to life. He gives a brash, breezy, effortless performance reminiscent of Melvyn Douglas at his best in the days of "Ninotchka" and "Theodora Goes Wild." Not many of Lyon's films, with the exception of "Hells Angels," have been seen in recent years. And I always had the idea that he was a stick-figure straight man.

It was entertaining to be proved wrong.

Audiences of 1932 must have been surprised to see la Bennett play an unassertive society girl who wants to be married, but who, despite her stunning looks and pots of money, is shunned by the bachelors. Although sister Joan would have been more believable in the role of Miss Unpopularity, the story gets interesting when our tongue-tied caterpillar goes to Paris and is transformed by fun loving Ben Lyon into a social butterfly with a half dozen suitors fluttering around her, including the shallow boy from back home. And now that she can pick and choose, who do you think she ends up with at the finale? No matter. This is a pleasant little film and it's fun to watch Bennett sip champagne cocktails and flirt with fortune hunters in one stunning costume after another. No wonder her fans loved her.

Constance Bennett is miserable. Despite having money and being a pretty lady, she is hardly noticed by men. Yet, at the same time, 'bad' women attract men like flies. For instance, one woman was acquitted for shooting her husband--and now men won't leave her alone! So, out of desperation, she hires a guy down on his luck to pose as her lover and create the impression she's a loose woman! He seems a bit worldly and indicates he knows how to make her attractive by making her mysterious and a bit trampy. The plan works pretty well--but, of course, by the end of the film several complications have occurred.

The plot is pretty clever and is carried off pretty well due to good acting from Bennett and Ben Lyon. Not a great film, but nice entertainment and worth your time.

What a surprising delight this film is. Constance Bennett plays a rich wallflower who just can't get the guys in her set interested. She's also has a crush on boozy and shallow David Manners. One night when he is drunk he asks her to marry him and meet him on a boat to Europe the next morning. Of course he sobers up, and she ends up going alone.

In Paris Bennett meets a charming and broke guy (Ben Lyon)whom she hires as her "gigolo" so that he can show her around and meet people. Lyon hits on the idea of making up stories about her "past" so that men will be interested. They get along great and their plan is wildly successful until a surprising event occurs.

Bennett is quite good underplaying her sympathetic role. Lyon is terrific as the cynical but honest guy. Manners is also good as the callous boozer. Cast also includes Nella Walker, Albert Conti, Astrid Allwyn, Don Alvarado, Blanche Frederici, Bruce Cabot, and Merna Kennedy.

The ending is quite a surprise.

This is a charming, subtle little pre-code in which everything is implied and little actually shown.

Constance Bennet is a good girl from a good New York family and no one finds her interesting. In Paris she finds Ben Lyon, an indigent American who bums a beer from her. She hires him as a gigolo and he shows her how to be fascinating to men, using frequent kicks to the shin to encourage her education.

Lyon is particularly good in his fast-talking role and Miss Bennet is at her most charming. The two have real chemistry together and Edward Griffith directs with a gracefully moving camera under the control of the under-rated Hal Mohr. All of these combine to produce a comedy that is knowing without being cynical.

In order to find this film believable, you have to buy the premise that Constance Bennett, one of the most beautiful and glamorous Hollywood stars ever, is unattractive to men. Does her character, Venice Muir (her parents honeymooned in Venice) wear glasses, frumpy clothes, have dull hair? Uh, no, she looks like Constance Bennett, it's just that she's playing an intelligent woman who likes to read. Meanwhile, the woman who may have poisoned her husband gets all the attention at parties.

One night, while roaring drunk, a man with whom Venice is in love, Donnie Wainwright (David Manners), proposes and wants her to sail with him to France to be married. The next day, he's sober. So Venice travels alone.

In Paris, she meets a man Buy (Ben Lyons) whom she hires as a gigolo to bring her to parties and get her into the right circles so that she can meet someone. He has the idea that if he creates a "past" for her, she will be more exciting to men.

This is a nice film, but I didn't believe it for a second. Venice has intelligence, money, glamor, beauty, and guys want to date a woman who might have killed her husband? If it had been another actress, someone like Anna Lee, Sylvia Sidney, good-looking but perhaps not a knockout, it would have been more realistic.

For Constance Bennett fans. She is always a joy, and the performances are good, particularly from Ben Lyons.

To consider what Lady with a Past (LWAP) might have otherwise looked like, you must go back to 1931 and have viewed an early comedy success made by Frank Capra at Columbia titled Platinum Blond (PB). In PB, a neophyte film actor named Robert Williams (who did however have an extensive Broadway resume) absolutely nailed his role as a breezy and charismatic newspaper reporter. He so impressed audiences and critics alike that Williams was uniformly being identified as an up and coming major comedy star. In PB he literally stole the film from his much better known co-stars Jean Harlow and Loretta Young. He was only 37 years old, and seemed destined to have a film career of the first rank.

Before his sensational performance in PB was ever seen by the world, Williams was assigned to RKO to co-star with the glamorous beauty Constance Bennett in her next film--LWAP. During pre-production rehearsals, Williams began to experience severe abdominal discomfort. He was rushed to a hospital where the problem was diagnosed as appendicitis. Before the surgery was concluded, Williams's appendix burst. He then developed peritonitis and subsequently died on Nov.3, 1931. Four days later, PB went into general release--and a star was born! Alas, that star burned out before its light could be shared with the wider public. The death of Robert Williams was one of Hollywood's great tragedies. It ranks along with the premature demise of actors like James Dean, Mario Lanza, Tyrone Power and Laird Cregar as yet another example of a lost career "that might have been." It is quite easy to imagine Williams playing the Clark Gable part in It Happened One Night, and doing so by possibly achieving even greater acclaim and distinction.

As for LWAP, the studio enlisted stalwart Ben Lyon to replace Williams in the film. Lyon had a track record as a reliable if rather undistinguished leading man (see e.g. Hell's Angels, Night Nurse, etc.). Probably most informed moviegoers would not have considered him to be in the same acting league as Williams. Whether Williams could have succeeded in making LWAP a better movie vehicle is difficult to determine. But to get an idea as to how you might answer that question, check out PB and imagine Ben Lyon in the Williams part. Would PB then be recalled with any unique fondness today other than as perhaps one of Jean Harlow's lesser early efforts? And as it is, LWAP exists today just as a typically enjoyable Constance Bennett film from her early 1930s period that paired her with a leading man who did no harm to her performance. To her many fans who delighted in just seeing Constance Bennett on the screen---LWAP will not prove to be a disappointment. But with Williams as her co-star---things could have been decidedly different---and for the better!

This isnother take on the time tested - what mothers tell their little daughters (at least used to) - Gentlemen may prefer Blondes but they marry brunnettes. (in fact in the famous flick too, the gentleman married Russel, the one that went with Marilyn was as blonde (mentally) as her (no disrespect to hair colour) Here too the Brunette, Venice, makes a mistake and tries to ape the Blonde, Ann, with help from a trainer, Bryson. Naturally Dannie, wouldn't marry a blonde and tries to shy off post the bleaching. Not a very bad movie, despite the short length, which made things to hurry up a bit more than would have been good. Some times these hurried up things don't seem too much, when they specify "weeks or months have passed like this" but that needs some expertise.

Interesting thing of this is - this flick is very similar to another movie of the same year "Careless Lady". That won't have been strange but for the fact that the female lead in it was Constance's kid sister Joan. Didn't she monitor the roles the Kid sis was being offerred ? (BTW, this one is better than careless lady in almost all aspects).

In a recent biography of the Bennetts, the author implied that Constance Bennett was in movies only for the money with which to lead a luxurious lifestyle. However, her work in this film would make one believe that she really could act.

In this film, the usually glamorous Bennett convinces you that she is a wallflower, despite looking just as attractive as ever. Perhaps it's the way she carries her body, or the inflection in her voice.

The film may have been fresh in its day, but now seems trite and contrived. Nevertheless, if you're a Constance Bennett fan, you'll enjoy this film.

"This is the story of a boring woman who inspires no interest with the insipid, rich party-goers of her social circle. To make her mark, she hires a wing-man in Paris to create a facade that people might find interesting.

Constance Bennett looks really good in some of her gowns, particularly the black number she wears on her big night out in Paris, but that may be the only reason to watch this movie.

... that premise being that Constance Bennett as Venice Muir cannot attract a man at all. Constance isn't some plainly dressed and drably made-up wallflower that physically transforms, which is the plot you'd expect. From scene one she is the glamorous looking woman she usually plays, yet we are to believe that because she wants to discuss the books she's read that men would chew through wood to get out of being in the same room with her? With her looks and bearing she should reasonably expect to recite the dictionary and yet be followed by suitors - men simply aren't that deep.

David Manners proposes marriage to Venice when drunk, slinks away when sober, and leaves Venice wondering what she'll have to do to change her luck with men. Her solution - hire someone (Ben Lyon) to be her "boyfriend" and tell tales about her lack of virtue and her exciting nature that in turn should attract some actual suitors. These things never work out as planned - I'll let you watch and see what happens.

"Lady with a Past" is Constance Bennett as an unlikely bookish wallflower who sails from New York City to Paris where she engineers a fake sex scandal hoping it will make her the talk of the town by the time she returns and thereby attract the attention of young men who find her literary chatter a big bore. She also talks to herself and pretends to be singing out loud when caught in the act.

Her co-conspirator in Paris is the golden voiced Ben Lyons whom she picks up at a sidewalk café after he tricks her into paying his food and drink tab. But her heart really belongs to David Manners, a handsome member of her social set who is looking for someone more exciting.

If this all seems terribly unexciting, it is. Then why watch? Miss Bennett, of course. They don't make 'em like that any more. In the pre-production publicity it was said that Miss Bennett was being fitted for 17 gowns to wear in the film. I didn't count, but she probably did.

One day I'll realise that the giant chicken standing on the Earth is a sign: it's a 1930s dreadful film alert. Constance Bennett does the same thing Constance Bennett always did in the early thirties and we instantly think: can I endure another hour of this bland, predictable drivel?

I don't get Constance Bennett - she can act and she's not unattractive but I can't think why she was THE biggest female star of 1931/32. The downside of super-stardom meant that she could do any old rubbish and her millions of fans would be guaranteed to flock to the cinemas ensuring that everything she did a smash hit.

The problem with this picture is that nothing happens and it has nothing to say. Miss Bennett goes to Paris to spice up her love life - that's it. An episode of FAMILY GUY did this story better - and in just twenty minutes. Heavens to Betsy, this is dull: this might just be the longest eighty minutes of your life. OK, Constance Bennett is a reasonable actress and she gives quite lively performance but with such a lifeless and uninteresting character and a mind numbing story, she has a real uphill battle. Ben Lyon adds a bit of life to this cadaver of a film but 'the other man,' dull-David dull-Manners seems like he's still suffering from being bitten by Dracula. What's even more unbelievable than Constance Bennett being so undesirable is that she could fall madly in love with Mr Dull.

Millions must have watched this and probably loved it but I can see nothing in this: story, atmosphere or insight into the age, to justify anyone watching it today unless for some weird reason you're a Constance Bennett fan.

Ahh, the fun, decadent days of pre code films! Rich girl venice (bennett) attends the parties that her friends throw, but she's quiet and awkward around the single men. So venice sails off to europe, and hires a gigolo ( lyon) to show her around town, and takes lessons on how to be popular with the jet set. Ironically, she has now become the woman that she previously scorned back home! Will it help her win a man? And which type of man does she want now? It's a good thing they made this when they did... in a mere few years, shenanigans and plain talk about fooling around and staying over would be banned by that hays film code. And for about the next twenty years, the censors would strongly enforce it. This one is fun, but predictable. Films where they sail off now and then seem to have a great sense of adventure about them. And venice is very self aware, not at all the silly, high-pitched-voice woman that were so prevalent in the films of the early 1930s. Fun. Directed by ed griffith. Had started in the silents. Made lots of films about sailing off to exotic places, and going on holiday. Based on the book by harriet henry. She had also written "bought!", an earlier novel made into film, also starring bennett and lyon!

A woman as beautiful, rich and well-read as Constance Bennett's character can't get any men to pay attention to her???

If true, she should have dumped her social circle and found a new one.

From the audience's perspective, who was sitting around in The Depression, eating soup made of unwashed socks, thinking, ''What I really want to see this Saturday for my 5c is a rich, beautiful, smart woman mope around because the dopey men around her don't appreciate her charms."

And then to escape to Paris to work up a reputation as a sk2nk?

Puh-lease.

It's insidious garbage like this that taught a generation or more of smart women to hide their brains and flaunt their inner floozy to attract a worthless man.

Now THAT'S depressing.