I was curious to see this early talkie by dint of recently watching Douglas Sirk's 1955 remake with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck in the two lead roles taken here by Frank Morgan and Binnie Barnes.
Morgan is the seemingly happily married, prosperous family man Joseph White, father to five mostly grown up children, the oldest of whom is Robert Taylor in his first major role. We're immediately made aware that he's the forgotten man in his own family with everyone from his wife on down taking him for granted. Hoping to take his wife out on their anniversary, he returns home to find his house given over to a party for the children, leaving him banished to his perennial duty it seems of symbolically stoking the furnace which heats the property to keep his family comfortable. With nowhere inside to go to read his paper he's reduced to sitting on the outside porch when along comes his old flame from before he was married, the stylish and attractive Barnes who's passing through town and couldn't resist looking him up.
He immediately responds to her and it's not long before he's secretly visiting her at her place on Thursday nights when he's meant to be at his club, until one night all his grown-up children, plus Taylor's long-standing girlfriend, accidentally catch him out.
This is a pleasant enough if hardly gripping film directed in the old fashioned manner with fairly static camera work, long takes, lots of interior set-ups and my biggest bug-bear, pointless incidental music playing in the background of almost every scene. The acting is a little mannered too with everyone talking very prim and proper and of course the drama is handled very chastely with no suggestion about what Morgan and Barnes might be getting up to at her place.
It all ends happily of course, if a little too easily, with Barnes making the grand sacrifice and Morgan's family, his wife included, finally coming round to appreciating him again. The big anticipated scene between the scandalised oldest son Taylor and his errant dad never happens and it's surprising to see Barnes pretty much confess her life story and past love for the children's father when she takes them into her house after their car breaks down outside while they're snooping on dad.
Morgan seems a little too bumptious as the invisible dad and you can't really imagine him and Barnes ever having the hots for one another although Barnes is better in the slightly meatier part but is given overly prosaic dialogue to spout, while Taylor doesn't get to do much other than to project his petted lip in indignation over the looming scandal. It was interesting to see Morgan's later Wizard Of Oz co-star Margaret Hamilton in a supporting role as a lippy maid.
Sirk's remake ups the ante considerably in playing up the sexual tension between MacMurray and Stanwyck and making you almost will him to go ahead and get a better life away from his undeserving family but here there's never much doubt about what the outcome will be which weakens the drama considerably.
If you can only watch one telling of this story, certainly go to the Sirk version, but this mildly diverting earlier version is still worth viewing even if only for comparative reasons.
