Hard to Get

Hard To Get casts two of Jack Warner's most unhappy players on his lot in their second film together. Both Dick Powell and Olivia DeHavilland were begging Jack for more dramatic material to do and he was refusing both of them. Powell didn't get his first break in that department until years after he left Warner Brothers. As for Olivia, her salvation was coming next year when she loaned out to David O. Selznick for Gone With The Wind.

Olivia is a rich girl coming from a family that looks suspiciously like the Bullochs from My Man Godfrey with mother Isabel Jeans, younger sister Bonita Granville and father Charles Winninger. Olivia's the rebellious one who just doesn't want to go to Newport again with mom and sis. She takes the car and stops at a gas station owned by Dick Powell and Allen Jenkins. The gas station is also a small motel and when Olivia forgets to bring her purse and Powell doesn't believe she's rich, he forces her to turn down the beds for her gasoline.

That starts the usual sparring between the rich girl and the poor, but ambitious young man who has a plan for a chain of motel/filling station establishments across the country. If he can only get a rich backer.

I think anyone who's seen enough Thirties screwball comedies knows exactly how this is going to end up. The film isn't quite on the level as My Man Godfrey or Libeled Lady, but it certainly is amusing enough. Especially when you consider both the leads were begging their boss not to keep giving them light stuff to do.

Most amusing performance however is that of Penny Singleton as the maid in the Winninger household. Powell's got the idea DeHavilland is the maid there, mainly because she gave it to him and to keep the act up, Singleton impersonates DeHavilland at dinner. She's got the best moments in the film because of that. Second best are Powell trying in various disguises to see Thurston Hall, an associate of Winninger.

The film is best known for Dick Powell introducing You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby on the screen, singing it to Olivia while rowing on Central Park Lake. For reasons unknown Powell never recorded this one. Bing Crosby has a primo version done for Decca in 1938.

Hard To Get today is remembered for the song that came from it and for the fact that two frustrated stars did some pleasant work here.

A spoiled rich girl wants revenge on the gas station attendant who humiliated her - he wants to sell his idea for auto courts across America; both are about to learn that some things in life are very HARD TO GET.

This is a wonderful, hilarious screwball comedy, boasting good performances, genuine laughs & fine production values. Witty & winning, it is a shame it is so obscure today.

Dick Powell appears to be having a terrific time as the young go-getter with the big ideas. As eager to please as a puppy dog, he enthusiastically hurls himself into the zany plot permutations. Whether impersonating Jolson singing ‘Sonny Boy,' or introducing the song hit ‘You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby,' Powell is never less than entertaining.

Lovely Olivia de Havilland is a pure pleasure to watch as she slowly bends to Powell's winning ways. Considered more of a dramatic actress, her considerable comedic talents are on full display here. The scene where she attempts to serve a fancy dinner while impersonating her maid is a quiet riot.

An unusually large cast of supporting players help move the fun right along: cuddly Charles Winninger as Olivia's physical fitness mad dad; Isabel Jeans & Bonita Granville as his insufferably snooty wife & youngest daughter; Melville Cooper as Winninger's long-suffering valet; Allen Jenkins as Powell's dimwitted buddy; Thurston Hall as a banker with a dangerous love of practical joking; Grady Sutton as Olivia's flaccid suitor; and Penny Singleton as a wonderfully unsophisticated servant.

Movie mavens will recognize Arthur Housman as a polite inebriate, and Arthur Hoyt, Vera Lewis & Jimmy Conlin as attendees at a flower lovers' banquet, all uncredited.

Rear projection screening was the bane of the cinema for years, as its patently fake visuals tended to distract from the action. HARD TO GET, therefore, deserves some credit for its splendidly vertiginous high-rise construction segment, which really does grab hold of the viewer's spine.

HARD TO GET (Warner Brothers, 1938), directed by Ray Enright, is another one of many formula fluff comedies capitalizing on the current trend of spoiled rich girl and the common working man. Not quite Frank Capra material, but something along that line.

The spoiled heiress in question is Margaret "Maggie" Richards (Olivia De Havilland), who happens to be young, pretty and bored. She has a sophisticated mother, Henrietta (Isabel Jeans); a business-tycoon father, Ben (Charles Winninger), who spends most of his time doing physical fitness by wrestling with his valet (Melville Cooper) behind office doors and at home; and a bratty kid sister, Connie (Bonita Granville). Because she doesn't want to go to New Port with her family, Maggie storms out of the mansion and takes the convertible. Running low on gasoline, she stops at the Federal Oil and Gas Company, a gas-station motel, to fuel up, where she is served its owner, Bill Davis (Dick Powell), and his partner, Roscoe (Allen Jenkins). Because Maggie accidentally left her purse at home and is unable to pay the $3.48 gas debt, she tells Bill to charge it. Because she's a total stranger, and been duped before, Bill puts this snooty customer to work cleaning out cabins and making the beds. Although Maggie tries sneaking away several times, Bill outsmarts her. After doing her chores, Maggie, resenting Bill's actions, returns home demanding her father to have the gas station attendant fired. Old Man Richards surprises his daughter by agreeing with the young man's actions, and that she is now a young woman who should now look out for herself. This she does, by plotting a vicious scheme getting even with Bill. Returning to the gas station the following morning, she pretends to be sorry, and sweet talks him into taking her out to a dinner date. During those few hours with him, Maggie learns Bill to be an ambitious architect having designed an auto court for a proposed chain of them across the country. What he badly lacks is money and a financier to back him. Maggie suggests Ben Richards (not telling him that he's her father but that of being his maid), and gives him the secret password, "Spouter," so to get past the secretary. Each time Bill goes to the office, he gets thrown out, physically. In spite of everything, Bill is not discouraged, going through extremes (disguising himself as a cleaning lady) to have one of these financial backers examine his blueprints. Once he learns Maggie has played him for a practical joke, he gives up. It's now up to Maggie to amend her ways, and when she does, Bill is gone and nowhere to be found.

Occasionally labeled a musical, HARD TO GET is actually a straight comedy with three (really two) songs inserted, crooned by Dick Powell only so briefly. The first, "There'a a Sunny Side to Every Situation" is heard only through a few verses by Powell minus any underscoring. The second tune , "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby," crooning to De Havilland on a canoe ride in Central Park, is a song standard composed by Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer. What fitting lyrics to proclaim De Havilland's beauty. The third and final is an old one, "Sonny Boy" originally introduced by Al Jolson in THE SINGING FOOL (1928). While Jolson sang it for sentiment, Powell (disguised in black-face passing as a member of a band) sings it for laughs. His rendition almost sounds like Jolson himself, performing it to a point where the guests look on confusingly.

HARD TO GET may not as famous as the other "screwball" comedies from that era, but it does have some bright moments. Penny Singleton as Hattie, a daffy maid, gets one during an amusing dinner sequence. Switching roles with Maggie, pretending to be the débutante, Singleton displays her ability in comic timing where she becomes responsible for making the proposed dinner party a near disaster. Following the dinner, Powell quips, "That dame... she should be parked on Edgar Bergen's other knee." Although some portions of HARD TO GET might be a trifle slow, it's redeemed by a construction site sequence where Old Man Richards and his valet find the only way to get to speak to Davis, working 40 flights up, is by hanging onto a steal beam lifted over the city streets. While this is obviously done with rear projection screen, it get by realistically.

As with most comedies during this period, HARD TO GET gets great support by familiar character actors ranging from Grady Sutton, Granville Bates, Nella Walker and Vera Lewis to Arthur Housman doing one of his many drunk interpretations. Charles Winninger, a Hollywood reliable, gives one of his many business tycoons and lovable father-type performances that has made his famous. Melville Cooper provides some really droll comedy relief with his constant quipping of "Amazing!"

HARD TO GET is further evidence of the Warner Brothers musical with lavish dance numbers by Busby Berkeley and Warren and Dubin tunes becoming a thing of the past. Powell continues to sing a song or two, but by 1938 was concentrated more as a light comedy actor in routine assignments. De Havilland, best known for her numerous adventure films opposite Errol Flynn, would appear in more comedies of this sort, but like Powell, she proved her ability in assuming dramatic roles in the changing times of the 1940s.

The 80 minute presentation of HARD TO GET can be seen whenever presented on Turner Classic Movies. Amazing! (**1/2)

"Hard to Get" is what you might call a low-key comedy. There are some pratfalls, but the action is mostly at a relaxed pace, not frantic or riotous. Olivia de Havilland (as Margaret) and Dick Powell (as Bill) are delightful as the couple who find romance in a most unexpected (to them) way. She tears out of the house in a pique of rebelliousness but finds that the car's fuel tank is low. When she stops to get gas at a combination garage/motor court, she tries to charge the expense, but the attendant--who does not know her--refuses to extend her credit.

She's actually from a wealthy family, but Bill doesn't know that and he forces her to work for the cost of the gasoline by making beds and dusting in the motor court's bungalows. She concocts a scheme for getting even, which involves her father, Charles Winninger (Ben Richards).

If you believe the film, CEOs--like Mr. Winninger--spend their days wasting time or indulging in whimsical activities, like wrestling with their butlers, but it makes for a funny story.

The cast is excellent. Together they create a light-hearted comedy that revolves around a growing romance.

When spoiled young heiress Maggie Richards (Olivia de Havilland) tries to charge some gasoline at an auto camp run by Bill Davis (Dick Powell), Gas station attendant Dick Powell punishes cash-less rich girl Olivia de Havilland, forcing her to scrub floors of the adjoining motel ! De Havillandshe seeks the plot's revenge, pretending to be her rich dad's maid instead of daughter ; and Powell's more than a poor man's dreamer, holding a grand idea for a "modernized" gas station...Long story short, Olivia falls in love after Powell croons "You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby" by moonlight, and then has to get out of the hole she's dug herself involving that lie...

D: Ray Enright. Dick Powell, Olivia de Havilland, Charles Winninger, Allen Jenkins, Bonita Granville, Penny Singleton. Good variation on spoiled-rich-girl-meets-poor-but- hardworking-boy idea.

I found this firecracker of a movie on TCM and fell in love with it! There's lots of crazy slapstick, clever & snappy dialogue, tender moments, good music and all-around great, lively performances. . Olivia is a blast as a spoiled little rich girl - she was spunky and absolutely radiant. Pleasant romantic comedy .

I really liked de Havilland in comedy !! Particularly liked Olivia in the light romantic comedy PRINCESS O'ROURKE (1943)

Dame (in the UK) the title given to a woman equivalent to the rank of knight) Olivia de Havilland is an iconic British-American actress who starred in some of the greatest movies of all time. She made her movie debut in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' (1935).

The actress gained fame playing the lead in box office blockbusters like 'The Great Garrick' (1937), 'It's Love I'm After' (1937), 'The Adventures of Robin Hood' (1938), 'Hard to Get' (1938), 'Dodge City' (1939), and 'Santa Fe Trail' (1940). She found herself being cast in one of the most iconic movies of all time 'Gone with the Wind' (1939), in which she played the 'Oscar' nominated role of Melanie Hamilton Wilkes. She earned two more nominations for 'Hold Back the Dawn' (1941), and 'The Snake Pit' (1948). Olivia de Havilland won her first 'Academy Award' for playing Jody Norris in 'To Each his Own' (1946) and her second one for 'The Heiress' (1949).

Some of the best movies of Olivia de Havilland's career include Gone with the Wind' (1939)'Hold Back the Dawn' (1941), Princess O'Rourke (1943) 'My Cousin Rachel' (1952), 'Light in the Piazza' (1962), 'Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna' (1986), and 'Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte' (1964). Olivia de Havilland passed away in July 2020 at the age of 104.