La peur du scandale

Kay Winters (Carole Lombard) is vacationing in Europe under the name Kay Summers; she is a famous movie star from Hollywood but wants to avoid crowds. She runs into an attractive young man named Rene (Fernand Gravet) who is on route to a party of a mutual friend, but neither know of this connection. They decide to skip the party altogether and spend the evening dining out. After a delightful night, the two decide to see each other again, but Kay is all set to return to the states. Her love keeps her, though, and she and Rene meet. Soon, love turns sour for the couple and Rene does all he can to create a scandal for Kay. He takes a job as the cook in her home and before long the whole town is swarming with rumors about Kay's new beau.

This film starts out strong, wanes a bit in the middle, and then ends in a fit of laughter. Of course Lombard is best known for her ability with a comedic story, and this film is no exception. Gravet is quite impressive too. He is hysterical in the dinner scene where he does all he can to break up Kay and her fiancée (Ralph Bellamy).

An enjoyable character-driven romantic comedy, and a delight it was. Don't expect the best thing since sliced bread, but for a genre which I don't particularly find to be my cup of tea, this made me smile a bit.

Most of the smiling due to Fernand Gravet's performance, slick, charming, funny and clever, as well as the chemistry between he and Lombarde. The supporting roles filled by Bellamy and Jeans were also spot on, creating a great comedic environment.

I don't put much stock into plot when it comes to romantic comedies, regardless of whether it was made yesterday or 60 years ago, so if you can get past that, then you'll truly enjoy yourself.

7/10

and it was largely because of the Lombard/Gable ''scandal''. Their affair had become very public by 1938 and was probably not greeted with open arms by the American filmgoing audience at the time, considering that Gable was already ''respectably'' married. Lombard did not then endear herself to her public and why should she have? Gable was the idol of millions of women and Lombard was an unwelcome bubble burster. Look at the box office performance of this and her subsequent films, they were virtually all flops until her fortunes began to revive, slightly, with Mr and Mrs Smith. By this time the burning jealousy of those millions of women had softened somewhat. It's kind of fascinating. Fools For Scandal was an expensive and derisive echo of My Man Godfrey, and nowhere near as good. But it was by no means the worst film of the year. A misfire, no doubt. But one with a certain amount of cache. One thing's for sure, it did not result in any kind of a contract for Lombard at Warner Brothers, under the helm of the miserly Jack Warner.

Fernand Gravey is a Marquis in Paris, but he has no money. He runs into movie star Carole Lombard and follows her back to London. What with one thing and another, he and pals Allen Jenkins and Marie Wilson wind up as servants in her household, much to the discomfiture of Miss Lombard's would-be fiance, Ralph Bellamy and the gossipy delight of all London.

There are problems with the production, chief among them the discarding of most of a Richard Rogers-Lorenz Hart set of songs and the rushing of the ending. Yet there are some perfect comedy set pieces, particularly the scene in which Gravey, Jenkins and Miss Wilson serve dinner to Bellamy and Miss Lombard.

It was the last movie that Mervyn Leroy directed at Warner Brothers before he jumped to MGM. He had entered Hollywood as a relative of Jesse Lasky. After a series of back lot jobs, he directed his first movie in 1928 and was off and running. He died in 1987, aged 86.

Carole Lombard plays a famous American actress staying in Paris; she encounters handsome but broke Fernand Gravet, who spends the first part of the film trying to rescue various items from the pawn shop, and then ends up as Lombard's chef—whether she wants him or not. It's all mildly amusing.

Allen Jenkins does his best as Gravet's sidekick but is hampered by lack of strong dialog. Isabel Jeans gives a deliciously gossipy performance as "Lady Malverton," a pillar of society who knows a good scandal when she smells one.

Ralph Bellamy is good as always, playing his usual chump in love with easily-distracted Lombard. One of the picture's few highlights is when Bellamy tries to tell a joke about a man ordering a steak—it's a really crummy joke made worse by Bellamy's chuckling as he tells it. (That this is a highlight unfortunately says a lot about the rest of the picture.)

The story is okay, the production slick, the dialog decent….but it's all just a little slow, or flat, or too predictable. Lombard is beautiful and frenetic as always—but there's just not much to her character, and certainly nothing memorable or unique from her other similar roles. And Fernand Gravet? Whether he was miscast or mismatched, I don't know—but he's just not very appealing.

Overall, a nice try but pretty forgettable. Too bad.