With America just entering WWI, Bill Gordon (William Powell) joins the army as a lieutenant, ready to deploy to France and fight. Right before he deploys he "meets cute" a girl at a cocktail party, Joel Carter (Rosalind Russell). They have a bit of a whirlwind courtship, and Joel begs him to stay. Gordon refuses, but along with that refusal admits to Joel a secret about himself - He wrote the ultimate book on cracking codes under a pen name, and the War Department has been moving heaven and earth trying to find out who the author really is. The next morning, getting ready to board his boat, he is ordered to a desk job. Apparently, Joel is the niece of the assistant head of the War Department, and she has ratted him out as an ace code cracker in order to keep him around Washington. Complications ensue.
This was Rosalind Russell's first starring role, so she doesn't really have her screen persona down which she finally develops in "The Women" four years later. So MGM has her playing this annoying creature who causes trouble for Gordon every time she appears. No way do I believe he'd want her around after all of her frustrating antics.
This is almost like a movie actually made in 1917 - it is such an anachronism. First off, by 1935 when this was made, WWI was considered a waste of blood and treasure, and here Europe was feauding with Germany AGAIN. That is why Congress passed some laws to keep us out of any potential war there. Yet Gordon is practically George M. Cohen here, he is just so anxious to land in a trench in France. Then there are the German spies. Remember these are NOT the Nazis and the Nazis won't be taken seriously for another three years or so. But MGM has them acting exactly like Nazis - ready to turn on each other, ready to kill to save their spy ring.
Finally there is the cryptography issue. There were no computers in WWI, and so I'm sure standard blackboards and cryptography wheels were used as shown to crack codes, but the method that Gordon uses to crack the code - mainly a variation on the primitive Vigenère cipher - would be cracked relatively quickly and it would not take an ace cryptographer to do so. Forgive that digression into geekdom.
This is very much worth your time with great performance by William Powell as always and a look at Rosalind Russell in the beginning.
