Ladies' Man

I like Francis. I especially like her in the films she made when she was a little star, before she went to Warner Bros and became a big star. And I like Powell. Their film One Way Passage is perfect and they were perfection in it. But not so in this film, primarily because their romance is unbelievable. They meet and over a period of 24 hours one seamy incident after another takes place and Francis reaction is to fall deeper in love. The problem is not in the casting of Powell as a cad, but in the story, which, it seems to me, had the makings of a sophisticated comedy with a happy ending. Unhappily, the movie sinks. Happily, Powell and Francis, and Lombard too, survived this mess and went on their merry way to become Super Stars.

"I'm with you, and yet it seems as though you are alone." "I'm always alone."

William Powell plays a guy who is having an affair with both a married woman (Olive Tell) and her daughter at the same time (Carole Lombard), and yet he's given the appearance of being gentlemanly rather than lecherous, even after he meets and falls for yet another woman (Kay Francis). With the former two women he seems to have a resigned sense of calm, but with Francis's character, he truly lights up, excitedly telling her "I'm the little man who can show you this big city," and that they can spend the night together on the town:

"Dance a little. Drop in a musical piece. Catch an act at the opera. And then a midnight flight above the city. We could turn the plane over and over. The town would go round like a wheel with you sitting on the hub. You'll never know New York until you see it as the moon sees it. Then a nightclub or two and out in time to catch the sunrise somewhere along the Hudson. Ah, the sun does some of its very nicest rising around here."

He's nonplussed when with this potential new love interest he runs into the mother in one restaurant, and then the daughter, who is intoxicated, at another. Lombard is hilarious playing a miserable drunk, and it's probably the highlight of the film. As she goes on and on, embarrassing him, he asks "Rachel, will you do me a big favor?" to which she slurs "Do you any flavor, honey." I also loved how she delivered her last line at the restaurant, "Never mind, I'll handle it," which seemed so modern. She then shows up at Powell's apartment, and in a very nice bit of acting, threatens to kill herself if he doesn't marry her. To her brother who turns up and wants to get out of there she says "Home? Let you make you make an entrance with the erring sister and a couple hallelujahs? Ha ha, and ha," emphasizing the ha's. It was in all of these moments where the film had the most life.

That's not to say that Francis and Powell didn't have chemistry; just look at the way she looks at him when they plan to get married. The trouble is it doesn't go very far before everything crashes down around him when the husband finds out he's been cuckolded. The pacing in the film doesn't help either, as most of it seems to be moving slowly, dampening any sense of passion.

The film takes its most unfortunate turn when it spends energy justifying Powell's character. First we have Lombard's character saying that any woman who gets used by him only has herself to blame, which is soon followed by Powell defending himself to Francis, saying he's a moral as anyone else because he's honest about what he does, and that ever since he was young, he simply discovered he could make money through the attention of women. He's lonely despite all the attention he gets and knows he's "low and unspeakable" for his actions, and is thus portrayed as a reluctant, honorable gigolo of sorts.

It's remarkable how much he's allowed to be the good guy here, to appear like a dignified gentleman for being a "kept man," when we know how women would be portrayed in the reverse case, and certainly not allowed to eloquently justify themselves. On the other hand, in a similar way to the fate of many such women in film, Powell's character does pay a price for his "sinful" life. The film would have been better had he had at least a bit of rascal in him, but it seemed like it wanted to neutralize as many aspects of what was a sordid concept as possible. That's true all the way up to that nauseating final line from Francis, trying to put some kind of happy face on the ending.

This is precode, which I find interesting at the movies moved from silent to talkie/precode and then talkies with ratings/warnings.

I liked this movie, and would watch it once.

Powell always holds his own, and he didn't want to do this movie. Still, it is solid, and when you have these three actors, they will deliver compelling performances. It also approaches tough topics; it is almost a classy soap opera. This film features some pretty sordid choices as to what someone has decided to do with their lives.

The downside is that the love interests some times fall in love within a day, which makes it not so plausible. It weakens the viewer's investment in the characters. It's just not as believable.

I still enjoyed it and Powell commits; Lombard plays a very believable drunk at times; Kay Francis facial expressions and commitment are in depth. I enjoyed seeing these wonderful actors.

William Powell is a ladies' man. He moves through New York upper crust, a regular at the parties of the 400, a resident at a hotel. Where does his money come from? The ladies, whom he charms. They give him the jewelry their husbands buy them, and he sells them to pawnbroker Clarence Williams. One woman who gives him her jewelry is Olive Tell. Another, who want to marry him, is her daughter, Carole Lombard. Then he meets Kay Francis.

Powell gives a performance that is a model of diffidence verging in contempt, not just for the women, for himself. Miss Lombard gives one of her society deb performances, with a drunk scene of the type that she would come to play for comedy. It's not a terribly interesting movie for me, because there's no one to really feel sorry for. Powell's performance is spot on, of course, but he recognizes his own unworthiness, and Miss Francis falls too easily for his charms, setting up an ending that comes as little surprise. There's little of the chemistry in this Paramount movie that would make their work together at Warner Brothers so romantic. Perhaps Herman Mankiewicz lacked the powers to adapt the Rupert Hughes novel it is based on, or perhaps Hughes' novel was too mechanical. Perhaps director Lothar Mendes was simply one of those directors whose strengths lay in the mechanics of film construction. Or perhaps it was all three of them.

Most viewers associate William Powell with roles that are charming, often humorous, light and debonair. However, in his early Paramount pre-code career period, he occasionally ventured into uncharacteristic parts. This one from Ladies' Man (LM) is certainly in that category. Yes, while he was interesting, suave and stylish as usual, he was also somewhat unsympathetic, weak, self-absorbed and not particularly nice as a human being. That he was such catnip to so many women in LM----including both a mother AND her daughter (Olive Tell and Carole Lombard) is evidence that the suspension of disbelief was definitely required to accept this kind of story as resembling a slice of reality.

What makes LM well worth viewing by a modern audience is the opportunity to see William Powell, Kay Francis and Carole Lombard at the dawn of the sound era, when all were relatively young, fresh and not yet type cast in roles that later would make them more celebrated and famous. It should also be noted that Powell and Lombard were married within six weeks of LM's official release. No doubt their off-screen relationship helped Lombard to become a better actress, and critics also commented on her delightful performance in LM as well as her growing confidence and glamour. While Powell and Francis would conclude their six film partnership with a celebrated pairing one year later in the classic One Way Passage, they made their romantic roles in LM touching, appealing and believable.

It is difficult to like watching the repetitious adventures of a professional gigolo, but Powell obviously put a great deal of his personal charm into the part. It may also be hard to view the idle rich as a particularly interesting group of people upon whom to invest your time. This is especially true when adultery is treated with such remarkable pre-code indifference, and where a mother and daughter are both knowingly being bedded down by the same man! But Powell, Francis and Lombard were all so personally appealing in LM that we can and should be forgiven for enjoying the movie---with its warts and all.

Lothar Mendes by this time was something of an expert in directing such cinematic stories. And particular mention should be made of the screenplay contribution of Herman J. Mankiewicz, who of course would later gain immortality for his script collaboration with Orson Welles on Citizen Kane.

Powell was only three years away from making his career-changing role of Nick Charles in the The Thin Man at MGM. And in that same year (1934), Lombard scored big in her breakthrough screwball comedy Twentieth Century with John Barrymore for Columbia Studio and directed by Howard Hawks. Finally, Francis made her classic Ernst Lubitsch romantic comedy Trouble in Paradise at Paramount in 1932--just one year after completing this film. LM may not have achieved the success of these later cinematic efforts, but it does have its own rewards!