L'école des secrétaires

Jean Arthur is a secretarial teacher who becomes "More Than a Secretary," a 1936 comedy also starring George Brent, Lionel Stander, Ruth Donnelly, Reginald Denny and Dorothea Kent. Arthur and Donnelly run a secretarial school for dizzy young women who plan on using their skills to nab husbands in corporate America. One gal in particular, Maizie (Kent) is a total dropout but seems to have the man magnet technique down, to the disgust of the bespectacled Carol, who hasn't given up on love. When a client fires another secretary, Carol decides to replace her and goes to work for a health magazine run by Fred Gilbert (Brent). Carol falls for him...and then complications arise in the form of the aforementioned Maizie.

This is a very dated, slow, and ultimately boring comedy that fails to hold interest. Brent is actually quite good as a passionate health nut. Comedy is a departure for him, and he's successful at it. Arthur is very good, but it's not a role with the type of range one is used to seeing her do. And it's hard to get past the extremely dated notion of women going to work only to meet men and then quitting their jobs, their goal accomplished. But the typewriters are a hoot as are the phrases being dictated. If you're old enough to remember Peter Piper picked a peck etc., standard manual typewriters and manual returns, you'll have a good laugh.

GEORGE BRENT, editor of a fitness magazine dedicated to diet and exercise, takes JEAN ARTHUR as a secretary--a woman who quits her job as a typing instructor to find out if she can find romance with a handsome and very particular employer if she pretends to be his full-time secretary. Seems that he's been unimpressed with all of the less skillful applicants.

RUTH DONNELLY, LIONEL STANDER and REGINALD DENNY have fun with subordinate roles in this wacky ode to screwball comedy. The fun comes in wondering just how Arthur is going to change his staid ways and overly dedicated devotion to exercise and body building. Of course what Brent needs is a fresh viewpoint on selling points for his dignified magazine and Arthur is just the gal to give it to him.

It's the sort of run-of-the-mill, breezy comedy that studios churned out for Depression weary audiences--so don't look for realism here. But JEAN ARTHUR is at her perky best and GEORGE BRENT manages to unbend a little in a role with comic overtones. DOROTHEA KENT tries hard, but manages not to steal scenes in a ditsy dumb blonde role that would have been perfect for either Jean Harlow or Judy Holliday (at a later time).

Trivia note: As surprising as it seems, this trifle of a comedy played at Radio City Music Hall on its original release.

I'd never heard of this film until recently it was recommended to me as a pleasant but easily overlooked Jean Arthur film

Jean Arthur's range is hardly tested in this one - she plays Carole a nice girl next-door type with the typical Arthur intelligence but without any of the more complex qualities, which in certain of her films drew such memorable performances.

George Brent, as Fred Gilbert, is similarly untested in this film (as in most of his films) but is in the additionally unfortunate position of providing the comedy in the romance, initially through his health regime obsession and then his superficial attraction to Maizie (Dorothea Kent), (the latter also being the means by which an essentially simple story is sufficiently prolonged to allow a feature length gap between the boy meets girl beginning and the inevitable - this is 1930's romantic comedy - boy gets girl ending).

A modern audience may not react too well to Fred's comments about a woman's role in business or his attempt at ruthlessly (in intent if not in effect) resolving his `Maizie situation' once the attraction has palled. However the main problem with this film is not that the women's movement has moved on 70 years since the film was made - 1930's comedies are after all, remembered for the strong and independent heroines and Fred is of course made to regret and reconsider his words and actions. It is simply that you do wonder a little just what Carole sees in him. Fortunately this film is saved from the romance being completely unbelievable by Carole's obvious recognition (and Jean Arthur's ability to convey) that she loves Fred regardless of his faults.

What is slightly harder to accept is Fred's overlooking Carole for so long (at least once she is out of the rather scary suit and spectacles she wears in the film's opening scene). Even allowing for the fact that anyone can make a fool of him/herself when it comes to love, Fred's abrupt changes of heart, especially the first volt face when he decides to employ Maizie, left me a little puzzled. A nice clue is given in the scene where Fred follows Carole to the secretarial school and in response to he snappish `I'm busy' he sharply retorts, `I never saw you when you weren't'. However this is not explored fully nor given elsewhere as an explanation for his foolishness (at just 80 minutes long, an additional 2-3 minutes to deepen this rather more satisfactory explanation for Fred's behaviour would not exactly have overdone things).

In addition to the main cast there is the usual nice support from Lionel Stander and Ruth Donnelly, Columbia contract actors, as likely as not to be in any Jean Arthur film of this time. I'm not sure why but Lionel Stander saying the word `bellicose' just cracks me up. There are some nice scenes between Ruth Donnelly and Jean Arthur, which are a rarity in a film genre where scenes between 2 women are usually about romantic rivalry and bitchy exchanges. This element is of course present in the scenes between Carole and Maizie, the latter being as unpleasant and manipulative as the audience needs her to be in order that we do not need to worry about her (or Fred's treatment of her) when she is ultimately dispatched (landing on her feet in any event).

If you like 1930's Hollywood romantic comedy then this is a sweet, unassuming film, which, while not as memorable as many other films of Hollywood's golden age, is still worth a look.

Did anyone wonder why the trailer had no door? Must have been a creation of the prop department. Why in the world would anyone want the guy after fooling around with Mazie. The guy seems like a real jerk rather than a leading man. And that mustache does not help George Brent either. I thought it was real weak acting from pros than sure can do better. Stander and Donnely really stand out, and The girl that plays Mazie isn't too bad either. There are so many loose plot lines in this that it's hard to accept any of them. I like comedies from this period, but this one is a waste of time unless you are a BIG Jean Arthur fan. Columbia should have thrown the Three Stooges in for some serious plot twist.

Romantic comedies aren't supposed to tax the brain, and so they tend to have weak plots. This one is far weaker than most romantic comedies.

That's not to say that the characters aren't pleasant. Dorothea Kent as Maizie is an especially fun character, but the rest of the cast is certainly competent as well. If only they'd had a decent script, the resources put into this film could have resulted in a really nice movie.

This movie was released on Christmas Eve 1936, but it would have fared better had it been released in late summer. In that era, movie theaters were among the few facilities that were air conditioned. Spending the day in a blast-furnace of a workplace, and sleeping in a bed soaked with sweat was miserable, so movie houses didn't need much in the way of entertainment to sell tickets; the cold air was sufficient for that.