Drôle de mariage

"A Lady To Love" (1930) with some key differences.

Tony (Charles Laughton) is a simple yet successful Italian immigrant who owns a large grape farm in California. After he sees beautiful waitress Amy (Carole Lombard) during a trip to the city, Tony falls hopelessly in love, and he enlists his best friend and foreman Joe (William Gargan) in composing love letters to Amy to convince her to marry Tony. They succeed, but when Tony sends a picture of Joe instead of himself to Amy, things get complicated, as she arrives already in love with the image of Joe to only be told that the real Tony is something altogether different

I recently watched A Lady to Love from 1930, the earlier screen version of this story starring Edward G. Robinson, Vilma Banky and Robert Ames in the lead roles, so I spent a lot of time watching this version and comparing the two. This later version is better, but there are several changes to story points: in the early version, Amy marries Tony immediately upon arrival, while in this version they never actually get around to it. Tony gets injured in both versions, but the circumstances and outcomes are much different. And one very pertinent plot point which I won't spoil was absent in the early version, but very much a factor in this later one.

Lombard is very good in a serious role, and while Laughton is very broad, his role calls for it and his scenery chewing is acceptable, and not nearly as bad as Robinson's was. William Gargan earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, although his role is really a lead, and he even has more screentime than Laughton. Gargan is good, but not in a flashy way, and his role is one that seems like an odd choice for a nomination. It may have been a career acknowledgment, as he'd been a popular B-level leading man since the late 1920's. He was the real deal, too, when it came to tough guy roles, as he'd been both a bootlegger and a detective before he started in pictures. His movie career ran out of steam by the late 1940's, when he moved to radio and had a big hit with Martin Kane, Private Eye, a role that he also played on TV in the late 50's. A battle with throat cancer left him without a voice by 1960, although he lived until 1979.

even taking into account the context of its time, this is incredibly dated, morals-wise. also, it strains credibility that the female protagonist (amy) would stay initially, stay later, stay longer, proclaim her love for (the wrong guy), and then leave w/o getting together w/who she wanted all along. just seems really dopily contrived. "she DIDN'T know what she wanted" would be a more apt title. also, the whole plot revolving about her pregnancy just comes from out of nowhere and dominates the proceedings as if it was 1750 in puritan new england. i really wanted to like this film; i'd heard it was good - - but it's really pretty hard to take. as for tony; he's similarly unbelievable, a 1-dimensional character, until he explodes, and then he becomes 2-dimensional (still 1 short). OK i'm done

For some reasons all three of the big screen versions of Sidney Howard's Pulitzer Prize winning play They Knew What They Wanted have been unavailable for years. Not seen on television and not out in any form, it certainly was lucky that someone put this out on YouTube. Also unusual in that the only Oscar recognition this film got was William Gargan's nomination for Best Supporting Actor as the Christian role in Sidney Howard's twist on the Cyrano DeBergerac story.

Charles Laughton is a lusty Italian immigrant who's got the biggest ranch in the Napa Valley in California and he's the richest guy around. Laughton with his Italian accent gives a Mediterranean flavor to his own Oscar winning role that of Henry VIII. That scene at the feast where he shows off his strength and vitality reminded so much of the wrestling scene in The Private Life Of Henry VIII.

But unlike a king who can just command a marriage to his royal person, Laughton for all his wealth and power is not the handsomest fellow around. So when he decides to marry waitress Carole Lombard, Laughton sends a picture of that handsome devil William Gargan who's known to be a devil with all the local women.

Lombard is cast against type, she's usually an urban girl of some means. She sees no future just slinging hash and snappy dialog in her hash house job and she accepts the Laughton/Gargan proposal. She even agrees to go through with it after meeting Laughton. But afterward the story takes a different turn as Laughton is injured and in a long convalescence of his 'tibia and fibula' Lombard starts looking at Gargan and Gargan starts looking back.

I won't go any further except to say that the ending here is not what Sidney Howard originally wrote. But the Code was in place and Howard having died the year before was in no position to complain. It ruins the film though, but the Code had to be served. Great performances by Laughton and Lombard are wasted. Gargan who usually played all kinds of police roles in and out of uniform was also good in a role that was against type for him as well.

Still a chance to see legends Lombard and Laughton together is worth it. They were together in a bad film years earlier when both were under contract to Paramount called White Woman. They Knew What They Wanted is so much better.

Charles Laughton goes sort of over the top in this little movie. The plot is reminiscent of "Postman Always Rings Twice", i.e. sweet lil' immigrant meets girl & loses girl to employee, but without James M Cain's violence. Laughton's Tony really is a most happy fella, & Lombard is as usual, steamy. Totally by chance, I happened to do a double bill of this and the 1935 Mutiny On The Bounty. I should have added Ruggles Of Red Gap, Hunchback, Hobson's Choice, and Witness For The Prosecution for a total Laughton immersion. This was filmed on location in an incredibly rural Napa Valley, and if you're familiar with Napa Valley, you may recognize what is now the Calistoga Inn/Napa Valley Brewing as Tony's local cantina/bar. I'd like to see a cleaned up version of this, as the print I saw was verrry dark. Good little movie.

I can only assume that before he started out in the role he asked the RKO excutives to run "Room Service" so that he could perfect his Chico Marx impression for this film.He wears a black curly wig not unsimilar to Marx,and apart from the fact that he does not play the piano he does everything else.So little wonder that this film had a very tortured production costing over $850000 and posting a loss of over $200000.It is difficult to understand why Laughton did these sort of films.He made some great films in the 1930s however he went to Hollywood more or less for good in 1939 and almost ruined his career in the 1940s withs some awful films.Lombard is fine but unbelievable as the waitress and Fay dreadful as the priest.