Quatre femmes à la recherche du bonheur

"Ladies in Love" is a light comedy romance set in Budapest in the 1920s. The best thing about it is a cast loaded with talent of the day. Most of the cast were well established on the silver screen, but a couple were early in their careers. While the plot is light and just fairly interesting, the cast makes it worth watching. That's so especially for movie buffs, who know and recognize a considerable list of actors and actresses. This film affords an opportunity to see several of them in their early years of the sound era. And, most of the roles are good.

Janet Gaynor and Loretta Young give the best performances as Martha and Susie, respectively. Constance Bennett's Yoli Haydn has been on the party circuit with wealthy men who come to the city for short periods of leisure and enjoyment. She joins the other two so the three can pool their funds to afford an upscale apartment while they work and party with men until each finds her "mister right."

Yoli is waiting for the rich guy who will deck her with jewels, and while she is escorting one now, she doesn't want to bare her feelings toward him because he will be returning to South America and his mines in the wilds. Susie would like to be able to have her own ladies shop and then meet a Prince Charming who will sweep her off her feet. Martha is the more practical one who wants a man she can love and care for, who will love her in return, and provide a home and family.

A fourth woman enters the story in Simone Simon as Marie Armand. She's 26 years old but plays an older teenager. Simon made three dozen movies in America and Europe before she quit acting in middle age.

The story has some drama as well, but the light nature persists as these women meet the various men who will be in their lives - and then out of them for a couple. The best comedy by far occurs between Gaynor's Martha and two men in her life. Don Ameche plays a young psychologist, Dr. Rudi Imre; and Alan Mowbray plays a master magician, Paul Sandor. Paul Lukas has the largest male role as John Barta, the South American mining mogul, who has come to Budapest to find a wife. Tyrone Power is a young duke and acquaintance of Barta.

Surprisingly, most of this cast had a considerable portfolio by 1936. One of them had already won an Oscar - Janet Gaynor in 1929. Loretta Young was the youngest female of the cast - just 23, but she had more films than any of the rest to her credit - 65 since she began in silent films as a child star. She would win an Oscar in 1948 and add two Golden Globes and three Emmys to her career honors.

Two of the men would also win Oscars in their careers. Paul Lukas was the oldest member of the cast at 41, and he would win an Oscar in 1944. Don Ameche is one of the newcomers - having made just four films before this. But his star would rise fast and he would win an Oscar late in his career - in 1986. Of the remaining cast, Tyrone Power was in just his sixth film, and the 22-year-old within a year would become the leading male in all of his pictures, and a super star by the time of his early death from a heart attack at age 44 in 1958.

Power and Young would be in half a dozen movies together. Ameche and Young were in half a dozen; and all three where in two films. Another reviewer noted a sort of surprise ending for this film. Well, it's not the usual Hollywood happy ending, but it seems about right for the people here. It's not sad, but more down to earth and real.

Here are some favorite lines from this film.

Martha Kerenye, "What he does takes just as much science as raising rabbits." Dr. Rudi Imre, "I'm using these for experiments. That's not raising them." Martha, "Well, you started with only two and now you've got 24." Dr. Imre, "Well, that's only a biological coincidence."

Martha Kerenye, "And you're gonna try and explain my feelings to me!" Dr. Rudi Imre, "Well don't you wanna be able to understand your emotional responses?" Martha, "I do understand them." Dr. Imre, "Not thoroughly. See, what we have is a fairly common occurrence. Young woman - type B, with maternal instincts. Comes in contact with masculine type B - temperamental, but exotic personality. Result - young woman is dazzled. Her original drive to protect is transferred into romantic love. It's profoundly simple." Martha, "I am not dazzled." Dr. Imre, "Oh yes, you are. But you don't know it."

Star-studded cast with three complete story lines make this tiny gem a fast-paced and absorbing flick. Bennett commands all her scenes with her trademarked regal assurance, Young does her gushing little girl routine, with one quick quip about being independent of men at the beginning, almost as if there was a coded assumption that she was a feminist at heart who had to be proved wrong by the overwhelming righteousness of patriarchal adherence to the masculine preferences inherent in the typical happy ending. Gaynor does her variation on Young's innocent routine, only mixing in the eager submissiveness of the thoroughly indoctrinated practitioner of standard femininity.

The stories are set in Budapest, harnessed together by one of old Hollywood's most beloved artifices, the "three girls rooming together in poverty searching for husbands" plot. We are instantly thrown into the three romantic story lines, with the astonishing economy of old Hollywood that I fervently wish were still practiced today.

Bennett is engaged in a open, sensible affair with Paul Lukas, and is showily worldly and cynical, while using subtle cues to clue us into the real state of her heart. Young has a storybook romance going with a young nobleman, played by the preternaturally handsome Power, who could have used a bit more screen time, or so many of us might wish. Gaynor is in love with a irascible, jealous control freak doctor, Ameche, but is discharged by him when she starts to work for the pompous, self-centered Alan Mowbray, who is a conceited magician and who does a wonderful character turn in the typically delightful Mowbray style, which is to say, as gay as pink ink on scented paper.

I expected absolute fidelity to the standard Hollywood tropes and was pleasantly surprised to find the ending quite mixed. Young and Bennett reprise Young's comments about independence after being properly chastened by the absolute freedom enjoyed by the men in their lives, and Lukas is boldly tempted away from Bennett's side by Simon, playing a French schoolgirl who steals every scene she is in with her precocious grasp of the values of sexual audacity. There is a priceless moment, after she gets him to kiss her, a lingering kiss fraught with expectation and lacking in any visible restraint, where she looks at him in delight and barks a little laugh of knowing disdain and triumphant glee. Excellently put together and directed with great timing and sensitive performances, this film greatly exceeded my modest expectations.

Starting off with a bit of perhaps heresy to some, I have never understood the appeal of Janet Gaynor, and this did not help. However, though the long-shot and quirkiest character here, hers was the lucky ticket that paid off. It is interesting to see the former box-office dominating Bennett underbilled to Loretta Young, whose star was on the rise. They say Ms. Young's fan mail always abounded, something the execs kept a close eye on. Despite that, she has a thankless part here, the heir apparent to the young nobleman's second billing, having already been aligned with a worthy marriage candidate, likely by family design. With Young's character, he was shopping for the extracurricular interest in advance. However, it's more the personality type chosen for this character that did not fit Ms. Young, who seemed off balance playing off balance, being more effective as a more self-assured type. Ms. Bennett had the best part and did well enough. The screenwriter(s) did not play true to type and time here in that they only rewarded one of the three young hopefuls, the other two left to gracefully bow out of the venture at the end, perhaps some the wiser. The production values along with interesting players form the lifeline of this one, the script needing recessitation from the beginning, but never receiving it.

My husband and I watched this movie last night and really enjoyed it. The plot was intriguing and the acting was surprisingly superb, especially Janet Gaynor, Constance Bennett and Alan Mowbray as the magician. These three actors aren't as well known to modern audiences as Loretta Young, Tyrone Power and Paul Lukas; however, their performances in this film carry the film and give much greater depth and subtlety to the movie.

We couldn't believe we had never heard of this movie before. I've read some of the more negative reviews on this website, and I don't agree with them. I recommend that you give this movie a try. It is most definitely NOT a screwball comedy or lightweight film like "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire." One reviewer mentioned the "European" feel of the film. It is set in Budapest, Hungary and it is true to the mores of the place and time. An excellent movie! If for no other reason, please watch it so that you can better appreciate Alan Mowbray, who is so underused in "My Man Godfrey" and is not remembered much for his great supporting role as the butler in "Merrily We Live."

Although no one on this film got any closer to Budapest than the new 20th Century Fox studio's back lot, Ladies In Love is a nice romantic film about three women who agree to split the costs of an apartment in a swank Budapest neighborhood. The better for them to catch good husbands and the three go about to work.

Janet Gaynor works as a lab assistant to Dr. Don Ameche who basically treats her like a doormat. She must like the idea because she then goes to work for egotistical magician Alan Mowbray as his assistant and general factotum. Mowbray is in a part that later on Clifton Webb would have specialized in.

Loretta Young thinks she's found true love in Tyrone Power. But Power is a heel in this one and he's some kind of minor nobility. He trades up for Virginia Field who not only has title, but money. This was the role that made Darryl Zanuck decide that Power would be the franchise player of his new 20th Century Fox studio. Power would play a hero/heel in many of his films, but here he's a straight heel. Seventh billed in the cast list he got a lot of fan mail from this film that helped Zanuck in his evaluation.

Constance Bennett is the oldest and most experienced of the three. She's got a thing going with another titled gent Paul Lukas. But one fine day a sly little minx from the country shows up in Simone Simon. She's supposed to be a teenager, but this girl is most mature in her wiles. She's got Lukas panting and wanting more.

In the end one girl gets what she wants, the other two have to settle as they leave their apartment in the ritzy part of Budapest. A close call to tragedy also happens to one.

Ladies In Love is a nice romantic film in which a whole cast gave a nice ensemble effort. Some futures were made because of this film.