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This film, "We Were Dancing" from 1942 is a combination of two Noel Coward plays, and neither one was his best work.

The film stars Norma Shearer and Melvin Douglas, with a good supporting cast including Gail Patrick, Lee Bowman, Alan Mowbray, Connie Gilchrist, Norma Varden, Reginald Owen, and Marjorie Main.

Norma Shearer, with a blondish wig, plays Princess Victoria 'Vicki' Wilomirska who, when she gets excited, spouts outrageous Polish. At her engagement party (she is to marry the Lee Bowman character), she dances with Baron Nicholas Prax (Douglas) and they fall in love immediately. She breaks her engagement and marries the Baron.

The profession of these two is that of houseguests. They wander from place to place staying in the homes of socially ambitious people, usually Americans, who like the pedigree.

It's the usual break up to make up scenario.

Norma's big problem was that she couldn't get out of the '30s, and without her husband around, she couldn't choose films either. She obviously was concerned about her age and unfortunately, she had a right to - at 40, she was about 10 years past the age where most leading ladies in those days actually were leading ladies and not character actors. It's a shame, because she would have done so well in other films more appropriate for her.

This film has the same problem as "Her Cardboard Lover" - it came out at the wrong time, when this type of film had come and gone, and people were looking to more serious films or films that put the war into the story: "Mrs. Miniver," "The More the Merrier," "A Yank in the RAF," etc.

Norma Shearer was a hard-working, dedicated actress, but her ego got in the way of her final film choices. If only she had stopped with the wonderful "Escape" -- but she didn't.

For me, the plot of "We Were Dancing" is a very hard sell. I think that I am unique about this, as I didn't notice this same problem in other reviews. Here's the problem. Melvyn Douglas and Norma Shearer play people who are hard to like at the onset--at least for me. They are both nobels with no income and spend their lives sponging off people...as professional houseguests. The notion of them being, essentially, well-bred leeches was a very difficult thing...I automatically disliked them and felt they should be slapped and told to get jobs! I know...not everyone had that reaction to the movie. Perhaps you will not.

When the story begins, Princess Wilomirska (Shearer) breaks off her engagement to a rich man in order to marry a guy she just met, Baron Prax (Douglas). Neither has an income and although they marry, they pretend to others they haven't in order to keep themselves 'available'--hence ensuring suitors will let them stay in their homes! This is pretty awful....and eventually their ruse is discovered*. As a result, they might have to find another way to live as choice invitations to stay begin to dry up. Could this mean, horror of horrors, actually getting jobs and living like the common people?!

This is a well acted and highly polished film from MGM. It's slick and well made...and also a film I just didn't like because the people starring in it played parasites. Sorry...just not a film I can endorse.





*The reveal is VERY post-code. They are caught in a bedroom in SEPARATE beds...not exactly naughty nor realistic...but also due to one of the sillier requirements of the Production Code era.

The combination of Norma Shearer, Melvyn Douglas, and their troop of solid MGM cast mates plus newbie Ava Gardner, make this sophisticated romantic comedy by Noel Coward a delight. The plot is supposed to be silly and fun, with witty banter and the butter smooth interaction of all the cast, doing total justice to Coward's brilliance.

Norma is always at her best but she is particularly relaxed and excellent and Melvyn is perfect as her playboy husband. No wonder so many actresses were envious of Norma's talent, she was truly and deservedly the Queen of Metro for many years. Oh, and by the way, MGM is unequalled for Art Direction by the brilliant Cedric Gibbons and his staff. The sets are noticeably fantastic and fully in the beautiful, authentic MGM style.

This movie marks the end of a never-to-be-regained period of sophistication, elegance, and paradoxically innocence, before the shattering war experience changed American tastes. This is a late and overlooked masterpiece in a genre that postwar filmmakers and audiences could never again do or enjoy so well.

We Were Dancing was one of the small playlets that Noel Coward wrote for his show Tonight At 8:30. Two years earlier Coward told anyone who wanted to hear how much he disliked what MGM did to his production of Bittersweet when Jeannete MacDonald and Nelson Eddy starred in it. MGM must have had the rights for this show before that because Coward said that he would never allow another of his shows to be filmed in Hollywood.

Back in the day Norma Shearer and Robert Montgomery did Coward's Private Lives back in 1931 to good acclaim. It's the only reason I can think of why Shearer chose to do this film as opposed to Mrs. Miniver which she was also offered. Other than Greta Garbo, Shearer as Mrs. Irving Thalberg had first refusal on any part there. Of course it was Thalberg who did the choosing and he was gone.

Whatever possessed the folks at MGM to take Coward's British based story about a pair of titled individuals who make a living as permanent party guests and bring it to an American setting we'll never know but through séance. Occasionally you'll hear some flashes of Coward's witty dialog, but it only shows how mediocre the rest of the words are.

Norma Shearer and Melvyn Douglas do get a solid supporting cast of decent players, but the whole bunch can't lift this film above average.

For all the new scholarship about this neglected actress, people still need to see her in action. Yes-- let's accept the fact that, by 1942, Norma Shearer was past caring about a career in the movies, and let's take this romp for what it is: fun, vibrant, and a showcase for Norma. Her penultimate film brings out her exquisite comic timing, and her bursts of Polish round out the very amusing character of Vicky. Realize that Norma is winking at the camera and her public all through this film, asking only that we accept it on its terms: a fun exercise to help finish out her career (though there is evidence that she, in retrospect, didn't care much for it).