Private Number

Loretta Young stars with Robert Taylor in "Private Number" from 1936, also featuring Basil Rathbone, Patsy Kelly, Marjorie Gateson, Paul Harvey, Monroe Owsley, and Jane Darwell.

Young plays Ellen, a new employee at the fabulous Winfield mansion, working as a personal maid to Mrs. Winfield (Gateson). She immediately catches the eye of the cruel, lecherous butler Wroxton (Rathbone) who tells her that things will go well for her if she cooperates and is accommodating.

One night, there's a big party going on when who should sweep in but the young man of the house, Richard (Taylor). Hmm...Loretta Young...Robert Taylor. I wonder what happens.

Ellen's best friend on the staff is Gracie (Patsy Kelly). The two of them go out one evening, but Ellen loses all of her money. A man (Owsley) offers her a ride home. He takes her instead to an illegal gambling parlor which is raided. Ellen, who never entered the gambling part, hides behind a door and is caught and arrested. She has to call Wroxton to bail her out. He files that away for future use.

Ellen and Richard find their mutual attraction too strong and start to see one another on the sly. He proposes marriage before he goes away to finish college. She feels him marrying beneath his station is a big mistake for him, and his family will not approve.

Taylor, an MGM actor, must have been on loan to 20th Century Fox. At that point, the studio was still in its infancy - Tyrone Power wouldn't come along until 1936, Richard Greene until 1938, and John Payne even later. I always felt they put too much makeup on Taylor, and he didn't need it. He and Young make a beautiful and sympathetic couple.

Young was simply gorgeous, about 22 years old then. Patsy Kelly to me always yelled her lines. Rathbone was terrific, absolutely hateful, as Wroxton.

Enjoyable.

Ellen (Loretta Young) arrives at a mansion seeking work as a domestic. Although she has no previous experience and normally wouldn't have been hired, the cruel head butler (Basil Rathbone) thinks she's a hot tomato and hires her--presumably so he can one day have his way with her. However, the unexpected happens...the son of the family she now works for soon falls for her. Richard (Robert Taylor) is very persistent and eventually they begin seeing each other on the sly. It becomes serious...so serious that he wants to marry her. But if she does, will the family accept her? And what about the cruel head butler? He's not the sort to just give up...especially when he has something he can blackmail her with should he choose to do so.

This is a very interesting film when you realize how tall Basil Rathbone was in real life. He wasn't a small guy...but here the director must be manipulating perspective to make him look much taller and more menacing. So, while he's only less than two inches taller than Robert Taylor, he towers over him...and everyone else. This was actually a smart move and really made him seem all the more awful!

So is this any good? Well, considering the actors, it couldn't help but be very good. Young and Taylor are very good but Rathbone steals the show with his shear awfulness...he really was a terrific villain. Also, in a small role, Monroe Owsley was AMAZING as a pusilanimous jerk...and his courtroom scene is one of the best I've seen in some time. Too bad Owsley died the following year. Well worth seeing and satisfying all around.

This movie has its charms, but it cannot be a "Pre-Code gem," since it came out two years after the Code clampdown kicked in.

It's a little sappy, actually -- it'd have been much better if it HAD been made during the Pre-Code era.

But I do agree that Loretta Young's delightful in it.

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.

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.