Good-bye Love

There are a lot of movies from the '30's that I don't like, but I could see how they would've been popular back then. Somehow, I think "Good-bye Love" (GBL) was a stinker even in 1933. The real purpose of the movie seems to be to malign women.

Wait.

Then maybe it was a hit in 1933.

Just about every woman in GBL was a gold digger and every man an innocent victim. Per GBL the men only married for love and were unsuspecting victims to cold-hearted women who wanted them for their money.

The two main male characters, Oswald Groggs (Charles Ruggles) and Chester Hamilton (Sidney Blackmer), went to jail for failing to pay alimony. Alimony jail was something of a party for the men, but it was still jail. Oswald was married to an overweight woman who was already dating another man--the only dishonest man in the film. He was looking forward to Oswald's alimony as much as his ex-wife was.

Chester Hamilton (Sidney Blackmer), Oswald's boss, was married to an unyielding vamp. She wanted her full alimony and not a penny less.

The only decent woman in this dreck was Dorothy Blaine (Phyllis Barry), Chester's secretary. And wouldn't you know it, she was in love with Chester.

That was a common fantasy (and theme) back then; the idea of secretaries falling in love with their bosses. For reference see "Baby Face" (1933), "Beauty and the Boss" (1932), "Skyscraper Souls" (1932), "The Office Wife" (1930), "Morning Glory" (1933), "Jennie Gerhardt" (1933), "Behind Office Doors" (1931), "Lawyer Man" (1933), and countless others. We're to believe that female employees fell in love with their bosses back then and not that they felt compelled to be romantically involved with them to keep their jobs.

Dorothy (Sidney Blackmer) had to sit idly by while her foolish boss exited one failed marriage to a gold digger and entered another to Phyllis Van Kamp aka Fanny Malone (Verree Teasdale), a professional man-swindler. Dorothy was hopelessly in love with the man that said to her, "You're not like a woman at all Dorothy. I mean you're... you're dependable and reliable like a man. No feminine nonsense."

Yeah, that's the vibe of this movie.

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