Biography of a Bachelor Girl

Robert Montgomery is helping a free-thinking artist, played by Ann Harding, write "Biography of a Bachelor Girl," a 1935 film.

Harding plays a famous artist, Marion Forsythe, who's been around (as bluntly as it could be said after the code went into effect), and Montgomery is Richard Kurt, a magazine editor, who wants her to write her biography. She has painted the portraits and heaven knows what else of some of the most famous people in the world.

Marion agrees, but an old beau of hers, Bunny (Edward Everett Horton) shows up and tries to discourage her from publishing her story. He is a chapter, and he's running for the Senate and presently engaged to the daughter of an influential publisher. This could ruin him.

Nice story with a fine performance by Harding, and a departure from the films of hers I've seen. She is usually a very serious, proper woman. Here she is flirtatious, comfortable, and disarming. Every man she meets succumbs to her gentle charm. This includes Kurt, whose name she never remembers and who is becoming increasingly frustrated, particularly when she begins to second-guess the biography.

Edward Everett Horton is very funny as Bunny (whom she doesn't remember when she first meets him), and Montgomery is good as Kurt. He, like Melvin Douglas and some other actors, was much better than his material and really didn't have a chance to show what he could do until, at his insistence, he did "Night Must Fall." Later on, he became a successful director.

Worth seeing for Harding's performance.

Ann Harding plays the role of Marion Forsythe who is an artist and looks absolutely beautiful in her role. Marion wears very little makeup and at times looks likes a ghost. Robert Montgomery,(RIchard Kurt) seeks out Marion and tries to get a biography of her along with many other men who have had relationships with her in the past. Edward Everett Horton, (Leander Nolan) claims to have been romantically involved with her and Edward Arnold, (Mre. Feydak) gives a great supporting role. There is plenty of funny scenes and lots of slapstick comedy which went along with most films from 1935. This is truly a great film Classic of Ann Hareding who was a great film star along with all the other actors in this great film Classic. Enjoy.

This for me very unsatisfying movie seemed to change viewpoints half-way through. Most of it is just tepid fluff, but on occasion in the first part the magazine editor, played by Montgomery, makes a few short speeches about bringing down vapid politicians like the would-be one played by E E Horton, and big money, like Horton's soon-to-be father-in-law, Kennicutt. In that sense he sounds like a humorless version of Clark Gable's newspaper reporter in "It Happened One Night", which had been released just the year before. Most Americans were suffering through the Depression by 1935, when this picture came out, so there was a ready market for criticism of the wealthy, who continued to enjoy life while the rest struggled to keep their heads above water.

But as the picture goes on, Montgomery's character sounds angrier and angrier about this. And our way of viewing his anger is changed by Harding's character, who tells him that, while she originally saw him as a crusader, she now sees him as wanting to persecute the wealthy.

From that point on, Montgomery's character is presented as some sort of closet Communist because his father was killed by strike-breakers during a coal miners' labor unrest. And Harding's character, who has lived among the wealthy, does not want anything to do with that. The very ambiguous final scene leaves us up in the air on whether she will accept him as she has grown to see him - and told us to see him.

But how many in the audience would care? There is absolutely NO chemistry between Harding and Montgomery, none whatsoever. It does not help that she is made up to look much older than he, whereas in fact Harding only had two years on her costar.

In the same respect, she comes off as so understated in this movie that we cannot believe she had torrid affairs with many famous men. She really seems almost sexless.

There are minor faults as well, such as the Tennessee accents. The leads, except for Montgomery, are all supposed to be from the Volunteer State, and on occasion each attempts a slight Southern accent. But then it vanishes completely.

I got nothing out of this movie other than the occasional pleasure of Harding's voice when she spoke softly. That was really very beautiful.

The rest just became aggravating.

Ann Harding is about to have ghost written her Biography Of A Bachelor Girl. She's a portrait painter, but in a part years before such a thing was an occurrence she's more of a professional celebrity. She paints famous and near famous people's portraits and gets involved with them. She's even got a ghostwriter, the iconoclastic Robert Montgomery who hates even the very idea of her.

One person who is very concerned is Edward Everett Horton who knew her back when and he doesn't want Ann writing about him. He's marrying Una Merkel and her father Charles Richman is Horton's chief backer in the Red state he would be representing.

Montgomery may quit the project anyway because he's getting angrier and angrier about someone he's developing feelings for.

Biography Of A Bachelor Girl is something a decade later Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn might have done. Surely it would be better know if they had. But that's not taking anything away from Montgomery and Harding.

In the supporting cast you'll like Edward Arnold who is a foreign born composer of uncertain nationality. Arnold he's kind of fallen for Harding himself, but he has a sort of bemused tolerance for all that's going on around him. Charles Richman is one tyrannical tyrant, thinking he has the right to tell everyone else how to live. He gets a lot of rebellion in his close circle for his trouble.

Montgomery and Harding are surely not as well known to today's audience. But Biography Of A Bachelor Girl should be better known. This one's a sleeper and a keeper.

Robert Montgomery is the editor of a muckraking magazine. He wants Ann Harding to write her memoirs. She is a painter who has gained a notorious reputation on two continents. She returns to the US broke, and accepts the offer. As she works with Montgomery on the book, she grows kinder and Montgomery grouchier. Also old boyfriend, Edward Everett Horton shows up with fiancée Una Merkel and her father, Charles Richman, who fear for Horton's political future if all is known.

There are hints that the S. N. Behrman play this was based on had been hot stuff, and had it been released a couple of years earlier, it would have been very funny, particularly given the farceurs in its cast. I can see the ghosts of many opportunities for exits with slammed doors and circumlocutious language. However, in those two years, the production code had passed, and not only might no one even discuss what Miss Harding had done - not that it was necessary- but no one gets angry enough to slam a door. Montgomery expends all his energy in angry speeches, Miss Harding is too much the lady, and Horton more childlike.

It's probably all that MGM figures they could get past the Hays office. Too bad.