Private Number

Private Number starts off strong and interesting and remains so until the near ending. It's one of those stories where all kinds of hubris, angst, and courtroom drama unfold simply because the two leads refuse to have a simple 10 minute conversation that could easily and readily clear things up. Yes, I know that is a device to create drama and tension but here it only served to annoy me. Especially when having that very brief conversation could improve your life so completely. Anyway, Young and Taylor are very good as the young lovers and Rathbone is excellent as the bad guy. Despite my issues with the near ending of Private Number it's still fairly entertaining and one worth checking out.

Although Private Number is nowhere near as gritty as Midnight Mary, it is beautifully photographed (Fox Movie Channel's print is lovely), and Loretta Young is almost as gorgeous here as she was in that awesome precode classic, certainly more beautiful than she was in the 1940's favorites The Bishop's Wife and The Farmer's Daughter.

Loretta looks especially beautiful with Robert Taylor in Private Number; they make a gorgeous couple. Did they ever have a romance off screen? They looked perfectly suited to one another physically.

Favorite scenes take place up at a lake in Maine, although I can't understand why Loretta's character leaves her friend the maid's character (played with pizazz by Patsy Kelly) alone naked on the shore (friend had lost bathing suit in the water). Loretta, instead of helping her, takes off with Robert Taylor's character on his boat, abandoning her friend. I'd never do that to my friend!. In fact that was the most annoying thing to me about the film: Patsy Kelly was always supporting Loretta and Loretta never did anything to repay her.

Basil Rathbone was downright scary as the butler. He was colder and more frightening here than he was with Greta Garbo in Anna Karenina, and that's saying a lot! I like the way Loretta shudders in the beginning after she first meets the butler. It made me laugh. Listen to your instincts, girl, leave! But no, she's coaxed into staying by Patsy Kelly's character, Gracie.

Monroe Owsley has a small but impressive role as James Coakley, a weak scoundrel on the make. He was to die only a year later after a car crash. Jane Darwell and Billy Bevan put in appearances as servants. Marjorie Gateson did well in the role of Robert Taylor's mother. Also worthy of note is the beautiful large dog, Prince, played by "Hamlet". I would love to have an affectionate dog like that! I wonder who his trainer was? He was adorable. When he puts his paw up on Loretta at one point to comfort her, I sighed "Awwwwww!" 8 out of 10 stars.

In a film that was primarily a vehicle for Loretta Young, I'm guessing that Darryl Zanuck did not want to use his favorite leading man Tyrone Power in this remake of Common Clay. Power and Young did do several films together in the Thirties, but they were either equal vehicles or Power predominated. So Zanuck got the services of Robert Taylor who was the MGM equivalent of Power for Private Number.

Or it's possible that Power also took a look at the script and realized that the part Basil Rathbone had would be a show stealer. Or that Basil Rathbone would make it one as the villainous and lecherous butler is the kind of role Rathbone could really sink his teeth into.

Certainly the part is out of the Snidely Whiplash tradition of villains. Rathbone is the tyrannical butler who rules the house servants with an iron hand including 20% kickbacks on their salaries of which the clueless masters Paul Harvey and Marjorie Gateson know nothing and for reasons I can't figure out no one is telling them or complaining. The only who raises her voice to Rathbone is cook Jane Darwell.

When Loretta Young arrives looking for work, Rathbone in true stage villain tradition is willing to forget the kickback for other considerations. But Young catches the eye of Robert Taylor as Harvey's and Gateson's son. They marry in secret and Young keeps her pregnancy a secret for as long as she can.

With Rathbone playing Iago as well as Snidely Whiplash to the parents they move for an annulment. It all gets rather messy in court, but of course it all works out for the course of true love.

Young is certainly beautiful and who wouldn't fall for her. Only toward the end is Taylor given anything to do that requires any real acting on his part. Patsy Kelly playing Patsy Kelly is also fine as Young's best friend. But the one you will really remember from Private Number is Basil Rathbone.

"Private Number" is a most enjoyable film that may be largely unknown among most buffs of older films today. But it has a very pleasing cast , good dialog, beautiful sets and costuming, a dastardly Basil Rathbone, the beautiful voice of a young Robert Taylor, and the gloriously glistening eyes of Miss Loretta Young. How did they do that with her eyes? She was such a fine and watchable actress, her performance here nuanced and anticipatory in her give and take with the troupe, even though the production was likely on a conveyor-belt schedule. It isn't one of the all-time great films, but it is a very good and worthwhile one. The film's subject matter may have even made a lot of those in the 1936 movie audiences a bit uncomfortable.

Down on her luck "Ellen" (Loretta Young) arrives at "Winfield Manor" seeking a position. She's completely unqualified, but butler "Wroxton" (Basil Rathbone) takes a bit of a shine to her and so she gets a job anyway. Indeed, fairly swiftly she is the personal maid to the lady of the house - but it's the son "Richard" (Robert Taylor) who really catches her eye, and she his. What can they do though - she's a mere servant and he is from the bluest of New York blood? Well they pretend it's Elizabethan times and marry in secret, but that's not their biggest one of those and when the intensely jealous "Wroxton"" finds out, he proceeds to make things distinctly awkward for the couple and for his family. With the odds stacked against them, and misunderstandings galore going on, it's going to be tough for them to remember that they were/are/might still be in love! It's all a bit predicable as far as the story goes, but there's quite an effective on-screen malevolence from an on-form Rathbone, there's also an amiable chemistry between Young and a Taylor who looks much younger than his actual 25 years, and we've even a tiny slice of courtroom duplicity at the end to round things off. Never mind a woman scorned, worry about the butler...!