Affairs of a Gentleman

Affairs of a Gentleman is a mystery/romance, whodunnit style film about the mysterious death of a notoriously candid author from Universal Pictures starring a gargantuan amount of recognizable names from the '30s such as Paul Lukas, Leila Hyams, Patricia Ellis, Phillip Reed, Onslow Stevens, Lilian Bond, Joyce Compton and Dorothy Burgess. The film is told in flashback style and for the vast majority appears in the high-rise apartment building of our murder victim, the suave Victor Gresham (Paul Lukas), who has written a scandalous autobiography detailing his numerous affairs, with no regard to the feelings of the women involved. The police begin investigating these women and it all sets about during a publisher's party for the author. Therefore, several of Victor's ex-girl friends appear at the party and he smoothly entertains them.

For the most part, Edwin L. Marin's Affairs of a Gentleman is that of a b-grade murder mystery that possesses a somewhat stagey, artificial quality, though a plentiful of twist and turns to keep our curiosity engaged, as well as the characters being generated quite effectively, which in result the film is leisurely paced. Beautiful blonde Leila Hyams gets top female billing and is most certainly playing a far more edgy and boldly assertive character then one might be use to seeing her play. However, her screen time is rather limited and is quite possibly outshined by two other strikingly beautiful ladies in Patricia Ellis and Dorothy Burgess. With that being said, Affairs of a Gentleman is the probability of interest to fans of the films leading stars, particularly that of the women, and shouldn't garner much attention or interest to anyone unknowing of the films leading stars.

Without being familiar with the play by Edward Ellis and wife that is the basis of this film, I would hazard a guess that its fine screenwriters Cyril Hume and Peter Ruric (aka Paul Cain) were doing their best to humanize a shallow, formulaic kind of mystery play--and did not wholly succeed. The basic idea, an author who is a suave, elegant ladies man having to cope with a multiplicity of ex-mistresses, all worried about their reputations being tarnished if he detailed his affairs with them in his forthcoming book, is a good one. (Women must've been a lot more concerned about their "reputations" then than they are now.) Paul Lukas is, as always, very good in the principal role and the supporting cast of beauties are at least adequate, sometimes better than that. But it was done at budget-conscious Universal, obviously hastily made, and with particularly anodyne sets. (I doubt that art director Charles D. Hall designed anything new for this picture, likely reused standing sets.)

One can't help thinking the same story, with much the same script, would have been done better as an "A" picture at Paramount with William Powell in the lead and, say, Mitchell Leisen directing. Aside from having a more polished look and more elegant sets, it would, most importantly, avoid the rushed feeling we get here. It seems like director Edwin L. Marin was always conscious of the need to fit the story into a 60-minute running time, not wanting to dwell on any scene longer than necessary, so that the relationships between Lukas and the various women seem shallower and more transitory than intended. Of the actresses the standout is now unfairly forgotten Dorothy Burgess, portraying his most lasting love, a sensitive woman who appears to be recovering from a long self-pitying drunk. (Not spelled out, but that's the implication.) She has a couple of marvelous scenes and the most touching line in the movie: "Oh, why don't you send me to South America? No one has any nerves down there." ("Nerves" apparently meaning nervous breakdowns.) She says it so poignantly, it plays much better than it reads.

Of the other actors, the excellent Sara Haden is somewhat wasted as Lukas's self-sacrificing secretary. Patricia Ellis plays a rather naive young book jacket designer who thinks she is in love with the great man but who is upset, disillusioned to find--duh!--that Lukas has another girl friend. Her acting is unimpressive but her bosom is. Props to Universal's costumer Vera West for putting her in a dress that, while "tasteful," shows them off in all their abundance. Richard Carle amusingly plays Lukas's publisher, who harks back to an era when most publishing houses were essentially run by one man (outstanding examples: Alfred Knopf and Horace Liveright). Decisions about what they wanted to publish and how to market it were made without recourse to committee-think or numbers crunching. That era is of course long gone, though maybe still exists to some extent in some of the smaller niche publishers.

I don't think director Marin brought much to the movie; on the other hand, he did permit Dorothy Burgess's scenes to come through with all the actress's sensitivity intact, just as he did a decade later with Signe Hasso's scenes in the otherwise routine George Raft vehicle Johnny Angel. So give him credit for something. His only directorial mannerism that I noticed was a penchant for staging sort-of-romantic scenes with the woman standing with her back to the man (Lukas) and talking to him coquettishly over her shoulder. Some of the time it works, some of the time it's just a mannerism.

Paul Lukas has killed himself. Or has he? Inspector Charles Wilson asks why the successful author of novels of love affairs, based on his own, would commit suicide. The events of his last day appear on the screen.

This was released in May of 1934, with the NRA insignia to start it off, but without the Production Code, still not fully enforced. On July 7, the National League of Decency condemned it as "immoral and indecent." With its multiple affairs, marital infidelity, suicide, and light tone for most of its length, it's not not hard to see why. Paul Lukas is charming, witty and, for the first time in his life, actually in love, with book jacket designer Patricia Ellis. There's also a parade of his former lovers, all of whom took their affairs much more seriously than he, along with their husbands; some of them learn of the affairs for the first time at the surprise party thrown by his publisher to celebrate his next book. Lukas is having trouble with the last chapter.

Although the League of Decency would object to, and the Code forbid the goings on, blue noses missed the point of the movie: the regret and unhappiness caused by these events. Of course, this was an old trick of the movies; Demille would make a career of showing people having a great time sinning for six reels, and punish them severely for them in the last. The sinning looked like too much fun, the sinners too smart and admirable, just as here, the lines too witty, the punishment a license to rejoice at the end. This was the problem. The players are too handsome, the lines too witty, the environment too enjoyable the sinning is too much fun. If the movie was poor, none of it would have been threatening. What the League objected to was that the movie is too good.