Lovers Courageous

I have been a Madge Evans fan for 55 years, and I believe this movie is among her best. Not only is she at her most beautiful, her acting is extremely touching because she is at her most vulnerable. Madge Evans is the wealthy daughter of an English man who falls in love with a poor playwright. (Robert Montgomery).

Madge Evans had a contract at MGM for 5 years before they dropped her. Irving Thalberg was a genius, but he missed the chance to make Madge Evans a huge star. She does comedy and drama equally well.

This movie is truly a little gem that you will treasure. Unfortunately, it is not available on DVD, but you can catch it on TCM. Enjoy!

English boy Willie Smith (Robert Montgomery) refuses to be only a clerk in the post office. He becomes a globetrotting nomad. He gets various odd jobs like a bell boy in Toronto and a Canadian cowboy. He ends up in South Africa where he meets Mary Blayne (Madge Evans), the daughter of a British admiral. She is left to choose between an unpleasant engagement and Willie on his unlikely playwright dream.

This pre-Code romance is rather straight. The pairing doesn't have the most heated chemistry. As far as I can tell, she falls for him for being a former Canadian cowboy. Maybe it's more than that, but they do need to work on that meet-cute. As for the melodrama, it gets rather boring especially since the couple is apart. I never got that taken with this relationship.

ROBERT MONTGOMERY is a wastrel who goes from job to job, finally landing in South Africa where he falls in love with an Admiral's daughter (MADGE EVANS). They meet casually in the shop where he works and for him it's love at first sight. In no time at all they become starry-eyed lovers forced to separate when her wealthy family decides he's the wrong material for a suitor, a struggling playwright who's never had a success.

But they do get together again when she ditches her fiancé (REGINALD OWEN) and returns to Montgomery, offering to marry him. For awhile, it's rough going with no money for food or rent and Evans' father forces Montgomery to give her up and let his daughter return home.

Of course, it all leads toward a happy ending when Montgomery's play based on his real life affair with a wealthy woman becomes a tremendous hit. The dialog is not always as sophisticated as one would like. Evans' last line is: "Let's stay home and have a baby." MADGE EVANS was one of the most attractive blondes of the '30s and gives a sincere performance. Montgomery is first rate as her troubled husband.

Summing up: The material has been done before, over and over again, and more successfully than here where it gets the cornball treatment.

This screen adaptation of a play by Frederick Lonsdale about a young man who has spent his life wandering about the globe, collecting experience so he can become a playwright -- Robert Montgomery -- and the young aristocrat who marries him and is disinherited for her taking up with a wastrel - Madge Evans -- creaks pretty badly as it goes through its predictable plot twists. Director Robert Z. Leonard and the unnamed screenwriters make some effort at opening up the script, but still wind up having the leads conduct most of their earnest dialogue in two-shots. Also, frankly, Robert Montgomery is miscast. He never quite managed to do accents convincingly and he seems overwhelmed, although he carries out his self-effacing courtship of Miss Evans most charmingly.

Nor do most of the other actors manage to be more than straw men. The two exceptions are -- unsurprisingly -- Beryl Mercer, who made a specialty in kindly, clueless mothers -- her best known role was Lew Ayres' mother in ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT -- and the always delightful Roland Young, who gets to play someone with brains and heart, who comes up with most of the plot twists here.

All in all, not a movie to search out unless you are a fanatic for any of the personnel involved.

Other internet sources state this is a rare direct-to-screen original by Frederick Lonsdale, the playwright responsible for such drawing-room comedies as THE LAST OF MRS. CHEYNEY and like the two versions of that film (1929 & 1937), this one bubbles and sparkles with great lines. From Robert Montgomery's first scene, he delivers clever observations with the clipped wit of an intelligent philosopher filled with the wonder of discovering something better in life. Lots of short funny scenes as he wanders the globe drifting from job to job, gathering experiences to enrich his writing. Lovely Madge Evans (better known for DINNER AT EIGHT & David COPPERFIELD) plays the pretty and pampered daughter of a high society stalwart member, an admiral with plans for her to marry "well." Fate introduces these two idealistic lovers in a lowly tobacconist shop and their perceptive exchange quickly shoots arrows through their hearts. They are fated to love forever before the scene ends. Starting with humor, gracefully slipping into romance, spiking with the passions of obsessive love, dipping down into harsh realities only to be tried and tested… the ending comes as only a playwrights guilty pleasure could imagine.

Bottom line, I loved it and fans of smart precode love stories will relish in this forgotten little gem! 8 out of 10!