User reviews

Stew Smith is a salt of the earth, street smart, cynical wisecracking reporter who's proud of his $75 a week salary. While tracking a story about a rich kid involved in a breach of promise suit, he gets involved with the Schuylers. This group of nitwits is a super-rich family trying desperately to avoid bad publicity. Stew catches the eye of the gorgeous Ann Schuyler, and the two fall madly in love to the absolute horror of Anne's snooty mother (who unfortunately is afflicted with gastritis). Indeed, Stew and Ann actually get married--with predictably catastrophic results. How will the filmmakers deliver Stew out of Ann's arms and into the arms of Gallagher--the equally gorgeous reporter who's madly in love with Stew?

This wonderful Frank Capra comedy must have appealed greatly to the sentiments of the 1931 audience at the very depths of the Depression. The Schuylers (and their idiot lawyer Dexter Grayson) were everything that people loved to hate--snooty, superior, stupid, wholly undeserving of their vast riches. They are mocked ruthlessly, while Stew Smith and Gallagher, as worthy representatives of the working class, are portrayed with understanding and compassion. Stew briefly embraces the idle life of the super-rich (even to wearing garters), but, of course, this doesn't last long.

This is more than just a film for Frank Capra fans--it's a glorious spoof of the old-time newspaper business and a tasty bit of social history.

Robert Williams doesn't even get any billing n the DVD cover or on other promotions of this film, but he IS the star of the film....and he is outstanding.

Williams could have been a major star, a very well-known actor, had he not died four days after this picture was released with a ruptured appendix. The man simply puts on an acting clinic here. I wonder if young aspiring actors are ever shown this film and told to study Williams? If is wasn't for this film, I assume nobody would ever know about this guy.

Anyway, the movie is really dated but its interesting thanks to some great dialog, mainly, once again, by Williams. Jean Harlow gets the billing but a young Loretta Young has the real beauty and charm here. Too bad her role was so minor and bland. She looked absolutely gorgeous.

The storyline is one of Hollywood's favorite themes: the average Joe beating up on the snobby rich people. Harlow's "mother" in here (Louise Closser Hale) plays that snob role perfectly.

Even though I just gave it six stars, there are lots of laughs in this film and it was a lot better than I thought it would be. Watching Williams' acting performance is worth the price of the disc, and then some.

Platinum Blonde launched so many careers - the most infamous being Frank Capra and Jean Harlow. It is not a perfect film by any stretch of the imagination. The sound is bad, Harlow is terribly miscast, and poor Loretta Young struggles valiantly to bring depth to a part that is the filmic equivalent of wallpaper. As many have said before me, she and Harlow would have done well to reverse roles.

But the greatest on screen portrayal of fresh, modern, naturalistic acting (a style that later would be attributed to James Dean) is from the wonderful, refreshingly brilliant young Robert Williams in 1931!!!!! I would never mark this film as a masterpiece, yet I would encourage all struggling male actors to study this man's work as a prime example of how to dominate a scene without any artifice or aggression. Every time he enters a room, the whole film lights up, and every time he leaves, all the other actors seem to lose their purpose and energy.

I have never seen such simple perfection, and I am saddened to no end to learn of his untimely death at thirty-four, just as he was starting to get roles worthy of his genius. I could not get enough of this man's work, and regret having so little of it to view. An absolute must see for Robert Williams alone!

PLATINUM BLONDE marks the start of three careers- First, Frank Capra. He has a natural style of handling actors. There is scene where lovebirds Jean Harlow and Robert Williams mock sing-song to each other. It feels improvised, very natural, unlike the stage learned dialog that infested early talkies. He's experimental with camera angles, and playing with sound (One scene is filmed by a crackling fountain) and he keeps the pace and dialog delivery going at rocket pace. Then you have Jean Harlow. Wow, do you have Jean Harlow! Not only is she stunningly beautiful (even when photographed from behind) but she has a cool, likable wit (She suppose to be a society dame, but she makes the character so likable, you just want to hang around). Thirdly, you have Robert Williams, who was just starting to make a name for himself with this 1931 film. Sadly, this bristling talent died later that year of appendicitis. He's wonderfully energetic, quirky and full of speed (He's so wonderfully jumpy when he feels enclosed in a stuffy mansion you'd think he has Starbucks running through his viens.) PLATINUM BLONDE seems to be dress rehersal for the film Capra would make five years later- MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN (My favorite Capra film) Williams (Like Gary Cooper) is labeled "Cinderella Man", he loves yodelling and getting the servants to yodel in his newfound mansion home. Catch this film if you can.

In The Films Of Frank Capra Citadel Film Series and in his memoirs, Frank Capra described Platinum Blonde as a film that Columbia did strictly as a moneymaker, no messages of social significance that would be found in his later classic work, just a nice girl-boy-girl comedy. Still and probably because Robert Riskin did some of the dialog I found plenty of things that would be instantly recognizable in Capra's more well known films.

The Platinum Blonde is of course Jean Harlow and this film title gave her the title she would have the rest of her short life. She's a society girl who sweeps reporter Robert Williams off his feet and into marriage much to the chagrin of her formidable dowager mother Louise Closser Hale.

Someone else is chagrined as well, Loretta Young who was only 18 when she made this film. Loretta and her sisters added a few years onto their ages in order to work back then. Loretta plays one of Williams fellow reporters who is known only by her last name of Gallagher. Just like Jean Arthur was known as Saunders in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. Lots of similarities between the two though Arthur's character was far more sophisticated than Young.

Still Platinum Blonde more closely resembles Mr. Deeds Goes To Town. Williams is like Gary Cooper trapped in that big mansion. Only it was Cooper's own mansion that he inherited. Robert Williams is in on a pass and on a kind of probation so to speak, to see if he can adjust to life among the idle rich. In 1931 lots of people would have liked to have been given the opportunity.

The only one in the household he strikes up some kind of friendship with is butler Halliwell Hobbes. Note the echo business with them, it would be repeated in Mr. Deeds.

The week Platinum Blonde was released with reviews acclaiming Williams as a new star, he died of peritonitis. What an incredible loss, he was an actor with a breezy insouciance just like Robert Montgomery or William Haines over at MGM. He probably could also have done parts at Columbia that James Cagney was doing at Warner Brothers. Williams could have been Harry Cohn's first major star of the sound era. Anyway his comic timing was perfect and he steals the film from those two movie legends who were his leading ladies.

You'll also like Reginald Owen's portrayal as Harlow's family attorney and general busybody. Williams also deals with him in the way Gary Cooper ultimately dealt with his shyster.

Platinum Blonde is one of Frank Capra's best early films and watching it will make you sad though when you see Robert Williams and you will agree that he had a brilliant career ahead of him.

After watching Platinum Blonde, I, like most other viewers, had to look up Robert Williams, wondering whatever happened to him while fearing the worst, the worst being true: he died shortly after he made this film. Tragic! One can wonder endlessly over what might have been. What is clear is that he was a natural for the camera, was highly skilled (years of stage experience behind him), and fit perfectly into the Capra-Riskind universe of tough-but- articulate Everyman up against monied mediocrities. He might well have ended up playing the Clark Gable role in It Happened One Night if he had been around at the time. In fact, the reporter he plays here seems like a first draft for that character. (The plot involves Williams as a reporter falling in love impulsively with the daughter of a wealthy Social Register family only to encounter the usual boobytraps built into such a union.)

The movie itself, though hard to separate from Williams's domination of it, stands up fairly well on its own. There are some imaginative camera movements and setups and intelligent, witty dialogue laced with fizzy Depression-era argot. The story is not very convincing but you suspend disbelief because of the way the actors, dialogue and cinematography bring it to life. The pace is leisurely, sometimes a bit too much so, with many minutes taken up in gentle, playful, ultra-naturalistic banter between Williams and his co-stars. I can't think of another film from that period that detoured so often into that type of throwaway conversational interlude.

Jean Harlow as the heiress and Loretta Young as a newspaper columnist are not ideally cast. Their roles should have been reversed, but it doesn't really matter because both actresses do well. Harlow, who by this time had had relatively little experience in front of a camera, seems right at home about 90% of the time. And it's hard to believe that Loretta Young was only 18 when she made this! But she had already been a veteran of several years standing as a film actress.

I see that I'm in good company here on IMDb in first wondering why on earth I had never heard of Robert Williams before and then in regretting that his career was cut so short after hearing his story.

Williams proves himself to be a winning and engaging comedian in this very funny Frank Capra film about a reporter (Williams) who marries a society dame (Jean Harlow) only to realize that his true love is for the female co-worker (Loretta Young) who's been by his side the whole time. Never mind that Young is one hundred times more feminine and prettier than Harlow -- I just chalk it up to the theory that Harlow had a certain look that was very much in vogue in the 1930s and that made her extremely attractive to people.

I don't think Harlow is at all attractive, but I do see her appeal, and I didn't find her performance to be as bad in this film as the history books have claimed. It's true that the casting should have been reversed, and Young should have played the society belle with Harlow as the working-class girl next door. But never mind. She equips herself pretty well with the material given her, and she manages to be believable in the role.

But in any case, it's neither of the women you'll remember from this movie. It's Williams and his absolutely fantastic way with a funny line. He died of appendicitis at the age of 37, and it's clear that 30s movie audiences lost a potentially major star when they lost him.

Grade: A-

This very early Capra film is a must-see for several reasons. Jean Harlow is unusually cast as a straight society high-brow. Although the role could easily be played as a caricature, she brings to it appealing depth and vulnerability. Loretta Young is radiant. And Robert Williams delivers an eccentric performance that seems far ahead of its time. I had never seen nor heard of him before. Capra's populism here consists mostly of: let the classes stay in their places, they don't mix very well. A surprisingly literate and engaging film.

Jean Harlow is the "Platinum Blonde" a reporter falls for in this 1931 film, directed by Frank Capra and also starring Loretta Young and Robert Williams. The gorgeous 18-year-old Young plays a reporter who hangs with the guys - I think NOT, though she acquits herself well. The story concerns a reporter, Stew Smith (Williams) who goes out to the mansion of the prominent Schuyler family to get a story - the son in the family wrote letters to a chorus girl, and she wants $10,000 for them. Smith falls for the society daughter and they wind up eloping.

I naturally thought Jean Harlow would be the chorus girl. Instead, she's the rich woman Stew Smith falls for, Anne Schuyler! Harlow makes a couple of attempts at sounding sophisticated, something she did in her later films when she was making fun of someone. Doing it here, she can't keep it up. Nevertheless, she's good in this serious role and has wonderful chemistry with Williams. This film really launched both her and Capra.

The supporting cast is wonderful. It's pre-code, and there's a very sexy scene between Williams and Harlow as they stand kissing behind glass as a water fountain flows over the glass. A beautiful shot.

Like everyone else, I was impressed with Williams' performance and wondered what happened to him. He died of appendicitis complications right after the film's release. He was tremendously talented and just wonderful as Stew.

This is the typical class distinction story so common in theater and films back then. Except for the casting, there aren't really any surprises. If you have a chance to see it, do, for the stars and especially for Robert Williams.

Frank Capra created universes and cast actors capable to inhabit them with total, natural ease. Robert Williams in "Platinum Blond" personifies that theory. His performance is as close to perfection as any I have ever seen. Let's remember this is 1931. Great acting was considered the Paul Muni, George Arliss kind of acting. Now, they seem stilted and highly theatrical. Robert Williams's performance seems ahead of its time even today in 2004. "Platinum Blond" offers very many pleasures, but Robert Williams is at it's center, keeping the joy of the movie very much alive.

Brisk social commentary comedy from Capra doesn't have the bite of his later 30's work but is interesting as evidence of it's development. Robert Williams is strong in the lead, it is easy too see him possibly going on to a career similar to Spencer Tracy had he not died just days after the premiere of this film. Loretta Young is beautiful and lively not yet having settled into the great lady mode she adopted a few years later. Jean, early in her career before MGM took her in hand and molded her into a first class comedienne and broad, is cast as the the rich girl and while she isn't terrible she's more at ease in the moments when not trying to play the grand society lady. She does looks sensational in her almost blinding blondeness.

Even though this "Poor-Boy-Meets-Rich-Girl" Screwball comedy from 1931 was given the decidedly misleading title of "Platinum Blonde" - It certainly wasn't Jean Harlow's character who carried this film's story and made it all work. No, it was not.

IMO - Harlow (20 at the time) only served as being mere window-dressing in this picture. That's all.

The actor who was really the focus of "Platinum Blonde" was Robert (never heard of him?) Williams who played Stew Smith, the outrageously bold, wisecracking, womanizing, newspaper reporter who'd do just about anything for a scoop.

I'm someone who usually avoids watching Screwball comedies from Hollywood's heyday - But this early "Frank Capra" production actually did appeal to me on account of Williams, not Harlow.

*Note* - 4 days following this film's initial theatrical release, Robert Williams (34 at the time) died from a burst bladder..... The tragic end to a potentially promising career.

The most notable thing about this movie is Robert Williams unusual performance. I've seen performances like it but none of them were in 1931 and I was surprised I'd never heard of him. Turns out he *died* in 1931, and it's worth watching the movie just to see someone who could have been a star. The movie itself is quite enjoyable, although Harlow makes little impression as a society dame and it's difficult to believe the enticing Loretta Young could be any one's idea of "one of the boys."

Platinum Blonde (1931)

A pre-code romantic comedy with the deliberately ditzy Jean Harlow playing a rich girl and more classy Loretta Young playing the girl who lost her guy to Harlow. Both are sharp, convincing, and well cast. The leading man is a slightly affected, overacting, but charming Robert Williams, a type I associate with the early 1930s (a similar character was Lee Tracy who plays the movie agent in the 1932 "Dinner at Eight").

The director is none other than Frank Capra, who has yet to make his stellar films (including the 1934 breakout, "It Happened One Night"). But you can feel his tendencies at work, including a couple who love each other in an ordinary way but who have things come between them. This is part of the formula for what would be called screwball comedy, but "Platinum Blonde" isn't zany enough for that, and in fact it might be part of its problem historically. What makes it take off is Harlow and Williams being both willing to make their romance real, from joking to kissing to just hanging out in a normal way.

And the other thing that works is that it's just plain funny. Williams has an easy way of taking an off kilter world in stride which is great. And things do go wrong in the most charming ways sometimes. It isn't overly clever or original, but it's natural enough even old gags are legit. The central gag gets played out in the usual ways--a man in love with girls from two different social classes (a real Depression theme) has to figure out what to do. It would help that he notices he's actually still in love with the Loretta Young character.

'Platinum Blonde' doesn't showcase fully the good-time girl with the baby voice groomed by MGM shortly afterwards; this was Jean Harlow post-Howard Hughes, a year after 'Hell's Angels' and cutting her teeth on roles that weren't quite right at Columbia.

Still, she gets a chance to be flirty and shirty throughout this film, and it's always good to see her on the screen. Loretta Young is first billed lady in the cast but her character, Gallagher the newspaper woman, is strictly second banana. But she looks glamorous when attending a ball, and she's memorable.

The male lead is Robert Williams, rarely seen or remembered nowadays, having made only a handful of films before his early death shortly after the release of his best role in this. As newspaperman Stew Smith he is boisterous, chirpy, and reminded me of both Lee Tracy and Cary Grant (both of who also appeared on screen with Harlow). In this tale of a Cinderella man made good, he is just perfect.

'Platinum Blonde' is also an early outing for director Frank Capra, and if it doesn't stand up as well as his later work ('Mr Deeds Goes To Town', 'Mr Smith Goes To Washington', 'It's A Wonderful Life'), it sparkles as one of the best films of the first few years of the talkies.

There are two main things going against "Platinum Blonde": it's drearily predictable and simplistic (how long will it take Williams to realize that Young is the right gal for him, and that he prefers his old lifestyle?), and apart from a few shots that take advantage of the rich family's huge house, it has no cinematic (visual) interest. What it does have is a lot of snappy dialogue, some funny moments ("Your mother wants to kiss me? Give me back my letters!") and a wonderful cast - especially the women: Jean Harlow really is the kind of woman that could seduce you and make you do crazy things, and Loretta Young really is the kind of girl you'd want to spend the rest of your life with. But even in the supporting cast (the butler, the mother-in-law, the newspaper boss), everyone fits his or her role perfectly. (**1/2)

Platinum Blonde is directed by Frank Capra and written by Jo Swerling. It stars Robert Williams, Loretta Young and Jean Harlow. Plot finds Harlow as rich heiress Ann Schuyler, who seduces down to earth reporter Stew Smith (Williams) into marriage. It's a union that causes chagrin to many around them…….

Not quite a screwball comedy as some folk have called it, Platinum Blonde is more a comedy drama that's laced with some tasty satire involving the gap between the classes. The lady actors are oddly cast, but remarkably this does not hurt the movie too much. This mainly comes down to fact that the wonderful performance of Williams dominates the picture. Williams would sadly pass away within a month of Platinum Blonde's release, a victim of complications caused by a ruptured appendix, Platinum Blonde shows that a great career was in the making. With an unassuming face and smooth and correct delivery of comedy set-ups, Williams adds meat to the skeleton script whilst creating a working-class guy we can really root for. Not that the rich are constantly bludgeoned here, story does have Harlow's Ann as sympathetic and capable of loyalty to her husband when her parents frown and look down their noses at Stew.

It has been suggested that Harlow and Young perhaps should have switched roles? There's some decent logic behind that working far better for the movie. Both ladies have different sexual dynamism, Harlow walks like a panther and carries a man eater aura, Young is gorgeous, prim and looks bred into money. Both of which are at odds with the characters they are playing! In the support slots are three fine performances: Halliwell Hobbes as Butler Smythe, Louise Closser Hale as Mother Schuyler and Reginald Owen as the Schuyler's lawyer Dexter Grayson. The ending holds no surprises, but this is exactly the type of thing that Depression Era audiences lapped up in spades. The format and thematics of Capra's movie would become a staple of many more movies from the classic era, this is a good place to start, with some sharp dialogue, the tongue in cheek satire and a lead male performance of some quality. 7/10

The early 30s were a trying time for actors. There were silent stars who disappeared into obscurity, stage veterans ill at ease with the medium, and genuine talents slumming it in bit parts and B-movies who would wait years for superstardom. Amongst all this was the tragically meteoric career of one Robert Williams, who dropped dead of appendicitis days after the opening of his sensational first leading role in Platinum Blonde.

The most popular stars of this period were warm, earthy types, most at home in gentle comedies - people like Will Rogers, Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery. But a breed of younger, sophisticated wise-crackers such as Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy were starting to emerge, and it with this new generation whom Williams could have belonged. He is quite astonishingly good here, bringing out his character with every gesture and movement he makes, continually using his hat and tie as expressive props. He delivers dialogue in a naturalistic comical style, one that makes you feel as if he is actually thinking the lines as he goes along.

Platinum Blonde is among the first really mature pictures from Frank Capra, whose earliest directorial efforts had been egotistically showy. He now demonstrates the sensitivity to romantic situations with which he would make his name. In the scene where Williams first meets the Schuylers everything is filmed in mid-shot, and Jean Harlow - who has no dialogue for the most of the scene - has her back to the camera. However when Harlow does get up and speak, Capra gives significance to the moment by showing her in close-up, and in opposing angles with Williams. In their scene in the garden at the party he frames them softly behind the fountain, while the voice of the opera singer is heard offscreen - a manner of shooting love scenes that is something of a Capra trademark. Meanwhile he keeps the alternate romance with Loretta Young bubbling away by focusing on her reactions while Williams is shot in profile.

Also worth noting is Capra's camera placement. Early cinema was presentational, like watching a show in a theatre. Then the point-of-view shot allowed us to "become" a character by seeing what they see. Capra however often picks a third way, placing his camera passively amongst the action in group scenes, not taking the place of an actual character, but nonetheless as if it were a person on the set. This is very obvious in the opening scene, when the camera is right among those desks and reporters, but also subtly in the aforementioned first meeting with the Schuylers. You have Harlow and two other Schuylers seated on chairs around the room. The camera is placed at waist height between Harlow and her brother, as if it occupied an imaginary fourth chair. This technique, which does not demand we become one with the characters, but still makes us feel like we are there with them, can be seen in almost all Capra features, and contributes greatly to the feeling of warmth and humanism with which he is most associated.

An even bigger contributing factor to Capra's reputation is his long association with screenwriter Robert Riskin. Capra and Riskin had first worked together on The Miracle Woman. This was their second collaboration, and Riskin was at this point only writing the dialogue. However Riskin's dialogue is bigger than the admittedly trite storyline of Platinum Blonde, just as Robert Williams's performance is bigger than the character of Stew Smith. Riskin's crackling lines tread the border between realism and outrageous wit, as does Williams's performance, and the two of them are the X-Factor in what would otherwise be a rather routine romantic comedy. Williams's death would be a great loss, and we can only imagine what he would have gone on to achieve had he lived. Riskin on the other hand would rise to the top as writer of many of Frank Capra's greatest pictures.

Stew Smith (Robert Williams) is an ace reporter. Gallagher (Loretta Young) is his Girl Friday. He is assigned to do a story on rich playboy Michael Schuyler. The wealthy family tries and fails to buy him off for $50. Michael's sister Ann Schuyler (Jean Harlow) tries to use her charms. It's love at first bribe.

It's director Frank Capra and the legendary Jean Harlow. Too bad for this movie, their successes would come later after this. Nevertheless, it's a fine stepping stone for many here. This is a good screwball rom-com. Broadway actor Robert Williams had one busy year in the movies before quickly dying. He seems like a better actor than everybody else in the cast, but he's not the handsome romantic leading man type. If he lived, he could have been a great thespian on the big screen. This is a bigger deal for the title and Jean Harlow and the cross-pollination imagery between the two. She is the Platinum Blonde and Frank Capra's name puts it over the top as this movie gets a second life in the modern era.

... as he did in "Power of the Press" (1928), "It Happened One Night" (1934), and this 1931 film.

The very wealthy Schuyler family is embroiled in a scandal with a chorus girl who holds six embarrassing love letters from the son of the family and is holding out for big bucks to release them. Enter reporter Stew Smith (Robert Williams) to get the story for his paper. This is how he meets the Schuyler daughter (Jean Harlow as Ann). The two begin to see each other, fall in love, and elope. Smith's friends (and his employer) make cracks about how he'll become a kept man. Ann's family is apoplectic because they see all unmoneyed outsiders as leeches and mercenaries.

Smith says that he and his wife will live on his salary in his apartment, but Ann turns out to be more controlling than he bargained on, right down to his garters, which he never wore until he married Ann and she insisted. Complications ensue.

This film continues the strange practice of 30s films of having men and women in their 20s appear to have mothers in their 60s. Louise Closser Hale, who plays Ann's snobby mother, is 40 years older than Jean Harlow and looks it. Loretta Young plays Gallagher, the girl reporter who loves Smith from afar and is heartbroken when he marries, yet the guy is clueless.

This is a somewhat forgotten entry in Frank Capra's catalog, perhaps because leading man Robert Williams died from peritonitis and a burst appendix days after the film opened. He's hard to describe, but he has the looks of Wallace Ford, the cheek of Robert Montgomery, and a bit of the good natured growl of Gable. This was easy target shooting for Capra in 1931. During the depths of the Great Depression, I'm sure audiences were more than happy to have the very rich painted as shallow and paranoid control freaks, unaware of their own privilege. And although Capra's working man in the person of Stew Smith is humorous and good natured, he's hardly painted as the courageous go-getter, preferring drinking with his reporter friends and goofing off to putting in a hard day's work.

I'd recommend this one. It doesn't boil down to anything unique, but it is a very fun watch.

I give this a 6 largely because of the presence of the never-boring Jean Harlow. Otherwise, I don't see what everyone else seems to see in the scenery-chewing Robert Williams (I'm sorry he died so young, but that has nothing to do with how i feel about his performance or the film itself). As for Loretta Young, she is a pretty piece of fluff with no character development at all. Some have said that Young and Harlow should have been cast in each other's roles; I don't know if that would have helped. At root this is a Frank Capra gig, or "joint" to use the Spike Lee expression, and we know what to expect from a Capra film- right-wing propaganda masquerading as "man of the people" straight-shooting, complete with macho-male posturing (the list of Capra films where his male protagonists sucker-punch anyone and everyone Capra himself doesn't like- liberal newspaper reporters ("Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"), New York literati ("Mr. Deeds Goes To Town"), the turgid film I am currently reviewing, in which the "hero" punches out a high-society swell unprovoked for the sin of existing - is longer than my arm. Capra believed a little fisticuffs (with the recipient unwarned and unprepared), far from being an avatar of his own quasi-fascist political leanings, were simply what a "man's man" did any time anyone ticked him off). I found the supposedly sympathetic journalist pair for whom Capra wants us to root to be thoroughly off-putting- Robert Williams especially. I found myself pulling for the high-society swells- but then I've always had a thing for Jean Harlow, who could make reading the phone book captivating. Kudos also to Louise Closser Hale, who provided so much wit in her small role two years later in "Dinner at Eight" (also featuring Harlow- terrific as always). THAT film sent up New York high society with wit and subtlety. This was ham-handed Capra-corn at its near-worst.

One more word about Robert Williams, the male lead: what, what, is so great about a guy who squawks and yammers for 1 1/2 hours about having to live among the rich, then punches out an unsuspecting man who came to him in good faith? Robert Williams? All you Robert Williams lovers- you can have him. And take Frank Capra and his phony grandstanding with you while you're at it.

3 Years before 'It Happened One Night' came this little Capra comedy in which a reporter gets married to a young and rich high-society girl. He is forced to take her lifestyle and forget about his freedom, to live in a golden cage so to speak. It comes as no surprise our protagonist in the end rejects this life and is taking back his freedom. As it is a Capra movie, there is another girl involved as well...

Neat little Capra movie, but from minute 1 you kinda know where things are going and how it's going to end. Furthermore, Robert Williams (who died tragically the year this came out) isn't too convincing as Stew Smith. He's even kinda annoying.

A must-see for Capra fans but not that much to enjoy for anyone else. It's good to remember Capra was only 34 when this came out and his best things were yet to come... 5/10.