So Goes My Love

Since I'm partial to almost any Myrna Loy film, I recorded "So Goes My Love" with the intention that I might watch the first 10 minutes and then hit delete. However, to my delight, this quirky comedy based on the early married life of Hiram Maxim (Don Ameche) turned out to be thoroughly enjoyable.

Loy and Ameche made a wonderful screen pair. Always elegantly coiffed and dressed, they are a very attractive couple with perfect chemistry. They both play the "straight man" which makes the humor very subtle and underplayed. It is the opposite of the screwball comedies that I so dearly love. Its quirkiness makes most every scene tongue in cheek funny more so than laugh out loud funny and it works well. I particularly enjoyed the casting of the extremely talented Loy and Ameche as well as a young Bobby Driscoll who plays their son, Percy, with such a natural talent that even he could underplay the humor appropriately.

The movie is actually based on the 1936 book by Percy called "A Genius in the Family." The book was a series of family anecdotes that Percy recounted from his early life. The plot is actually the tying of each anecdote together to make a precious story. There is little focus on what Hiram was inventing as that was not the point of the film since it is really more of a family film. Further reading (which I easily found on the Internet) is necessary if you really want to learn more of the actual Maxim family history. Meanwhile, if you want to relax and enjoy a cute film that was probably laced with lots of Hollywood glamour and fiction, then I recommend this enjoyable gem.

"So Goes My Love" is a film that one wishes had been better than it is. It's a fictional biopic about Hiram S. Maxim who invented a machine gun, curling iron and other things. The film is based on a story by his son, Hiram Percy Maxim, who was himself a prolific inventor. Maxim's inventions get little attention in this film. Instead, it's more about his personal life, meeting his first wife, and their family. It's supposed to be a comedy, drama and biopic.

However humorless Hiram senior may have been, Hollywood surely could infuse enough energy and humor into his character to make the story more interesting. With Myrna Loy and Don Ameche in the leads, and a good idea for a plot, this film had potential. But, unfortunately, it turns out to be slow and just so-so for entertaining. I think the fault lies in a weak script, poor direction, and a lame acting job by Don Ameche.

Some pep shots of humor in the script would have put life into the screenplay. And, a pep pill for breakfast each day of shooting for Ameche might have brought his character to life. I understand that his Hiram Maxim is supposed to be a deadpan character. But that doesn't mean that he has to move about as though he were a robot with a recorder playing his lines. He underplays the part so much that it stretches the credibility of the audience to think that Loy's character could see anything in the man.

Ameche could act and could do comedy very well. He was absolutely hilarious at Tibor Czerny, a deadpan role opposite Claudette Colbert in "Midnight" of 1939. One can imagine Fred MacMurray in the part of Maxim. He was among the best – if not the number one leading man in deadpan comedy. And, he played a number of roles as a tinkerer.

The only thing that earns this film my six stars is Myrna Loy's Jane Budden Maxim. Her knowing glances, looks of polite shock and other expressions are priceless. These are the things that made her a perfect film companion in so many wonderful comedies with William Powell. The camera catches them here, but unfortunately, the rest of the film is quite flat. It's too bad some of Jane's energy and enthusiasm didn't wear off on Ameche's Hiram.

As a longtime classic film buff, it's great to come across a worthwhile film from Hollywood's golden age that I've never knew existed, yet alone have seen. Doubly nice to find that Don Ameche made a few films in the years immediately following his departure from Fox; I think there was no better light comedian in movies.

This one is an expensively mounted romantic comedy-family comedy, shown in a beautiful new print on TCM. Sets and cinematography are elaborate. It's very much in the idiom of "Life With Father" (Myrna Loy was NOT in that one, despite what another reviewer said here) and Lubitsch's "Heaven Can Wait". And almost as good. Ameche and Loy do a masterful job with their light comedy roles, so much so that I could almost ignore that they were too old for the parts they were playing. Loy easily manged to be sexy, charming and beautiful, despite the handicap of overly heavy make up used for the entire film (obviously to hide that she was probably around 40 at the time).

Myrna Loy and Don Ameche star in this excellent comedy/drama based on stories about real-life inventor Hiram Maxim's life. Episodic storyline has Loy leaving her rural pig farm and heading to the city to marry a rich man. Instead she meets and marries a poor would-be inventor and raises a family.

Loy looks great and is excellent as Jane. She gives a warm and funny performance. Ameche is also good as Maxim, the slightly off-center inventor who marches to his own drummer. His inventions are mentioned in passing but show that he becomes a famous and wealthy man. The real story of Maxim and his legal problems with women and many failed inventions is not told.

Bobby Driscoll gives a solid performance as son Percy (who would eventually write the stories the film is based on), a boy definitely in the mold of his father. Others in the cast are Molly Lamont as the cousin, Richard Gaines as blowhard Josephus, Rhys Williams as the artist, Sara Padden and Renie Riano as maids, and Howard Freeman as the committee chairman.

Excellent period production sets and costumes and two star performances make this one a unknown gem worth looking for.

Ameche and Loy are playing roles not unlike more brilliant performances in more brilliant movies during the 1940's. That doesn't make So Goes My Love any less enjoyable despite the unnecessarily esoteric title. A more appropriate title would have been The Unconventional Hiram Maxim - a British-born inventor who lived in Brooklyn and, according to this movie, was fond of eschewing dignity. Loy is as successful here in engaging her co-star in remarkable chemistry and holding her own on the comic front (her smoking of a cigar is hilarious) as she was to be in her upcoming masterpieces Life with Father and Mr. Blanding Builds His Dream House. Ameche, fresh off Heaven Can Wait - one of my personal all-time favorites - and having perfected the inventor biopic in his essay of Alexander Graham Bell, is ideally cast as Maxim and has excellent chemistry with Loy. Add in highly competent support by Bobby Driscoll as Loy and Rhys WIlliams as an equally eccentric portrait painter and you have a highly amusing if episodic 80 minutes of entertainment.