Cary Grant simply isn't good at silly. Maybe I have too many images of him being the lead man in dramas, so to see him playing in bad comedies like "Kiss and Make-Up" and "Ladies Should Listen" is off putting. With a title like "Ladies Should Listen" you have to expect it to not be good.
The is the second movie in which Cary Grant's character steals the significant other of Edward Everett Horton. Horton can't get a break. Whatever movie he plays in he's the square, the nerd, the geek there to play off of the leading man.
Cary Grant plays Julian De Lussac, a French inventor and ladies' man. He was interested in Marguerite Cintos (Rosita Moreno) while Susie Flamberg (Nydia Westman) and another woman was interested in him. All Julian wanted was Marguerite and he had to have her.
Marguerite had called Julian to end their relationship. In a ploy to keep her, Julian pretended to commit suicide while on the phone with her. Within the next minute a distraught woman ran into his room openly mourning his death like she was mourning a lost lover. When Julian got up from playing dead he found that the woman was not Marguerite but Anna Mirelle (Frances Drake), the switchboard operator for the building.
Here's one for you. Through overhearing just about all of Julian's telephone conversations (probably prompted by seeing him and being hopelessly attracted), Anna had come to know and love Julian. She was eavesdropping at the time he pretended to kill himself and was so overcome with grief that she ran up to his apartment to have a moment with him instead of calling emergency services.
She was an obsessed stalker, but she was pretty so it was OK. Right? Plus, this was a comedy so normal rules don't apply. Even still, she was like many women in films who fall for the philanderer. They know he's just looking to conquer one woman after the other, yet they believe that they'll be that woman that he'll settle down with. They do everything they can to gain his attention and prove that they are a better option than all the other hussies he sleeps with while he overlooks her until she does something so outstanding he finally sees her with a romantic eye.
Groan.
The title "Ladies Should Listen" didn't mean what I thought it meant; that ladies should heed their man. In this case it meant that they should listen in or even eavesdrop in order to uncover nefarious plots or be well-informed.
Anna listened and listened. She bent over backwards to protect her crush. Her job and her dignity were both worth sacrificing to give her unsolicited assistance to Julian. It was embarrassing and worse, it wasn't funny.
Free on Odnoklassniki.
