Il piacere dello scandalo

Carole Lombard plays a famous American actress staying in Paris; she encounters handsome but broke Fernand Gravet, who spends the first part of the film trying to rescue various items from the pawn shop, and then ends up as Lombard's chef—whether she wants him or not. It's all mildly amusing.

Allen Jenkins does his best as Gravet's sidekick but is hampered by lack of strong dialog. Isabel Jeans gives a deliciously gossipy performance as "Lady Malverton," a pillar of society who knows a good scandal when she smells one.

Ralph Bellamy is good as always, playing his usual chump in love with easily-distracted Lombard. One of the picture's few highlights is when Bellamy tries to tell a joke about a man ordering a steak—it's a really crummy joke made worse by Bellamy's chuckling as he tells it. (That this is a highlight unfortunately says a lot about the rest of the picture.)

The story is okay, the production slick, the dialog decent….but it's all just a little slow, or flat, or too predictable. Lombard is beautiful and frenetic as always—but there's just not much to her character, and certainly nothing memorable or unique from her other similar roles. And Fernand Gravet? Whether he was miscast or mismatched, I don't know—but he's just not very appealing.

Overall, a nice try but pretty forgettable. Too bad.