Geraldine
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
morrison-dylan-fan
After having a bad week I decided to try get back into movie viewing. Taking a look at BBC iPlayer,I found a sweet-sounding RKO title about to leave the site,which led to me meeting the vivacious lady.The plot:Going to pick up his partying cousin Keith, botany professor Peter Morgan, Jr. catches a glimpse of nightclub dancer Francey. After knowing each other for just one day,the couple get married. Returning to his upper-class family home,Peter finds Francey to receive a less than warm reception. View on the film:Gliding across the screen, Ginger Rogers gives a bubbly performance as Francey,who is given a smooth Screwball Comedy sass in the snappy dialogue by Rogers. Causing months of delay just four days into shooting, (and Donald Crisp and Fay Bainter being replaced by the very good Charles Coburn and Beulah Bondi.) James Stewart (who got the role thanks to his girlfriend Rogers) gives a breezy performance as Peter Morgan,with Stewart's real-life romance with Rogers coming across in the comedic playful interplay between the couple.Encouraging the care-free atmosphere, director George Stevens & cinematographer Robert De Grasse keep things stylishly glossy,with elegant whip-pans going behind the closed doors of Francey's and Morgan's romance. Playing to the differences in class between the upper-crust Morgan's and the rough & tumble Francey, the screenplay by Ernest Pagano/I.A.R. Wylie/Anne Morrison Chapin and P.J. Wolfson spins easy-going Screwball Comedy one liners with a sweet threading of the romance between Morgan and the vivacious lady.
Martin Bradley
The brightest comedienne of the 1930's and the greatest actor who ever worked in any genre working together at the top of their game in a film directed by one of Hollywood's finest directors, at least until he started to take himself seriously as 'an artist'. Yes it's Ginger Rogers and Jimmy Stewart in George Steven's comedy "Vivacious Lady". It should be a classic but actually it's not that well-known, more's the pity. He's the professor and she's the showgirl he marries after just meeting her, (the way they do in the movies). The fun starts when he brings her home to the small college town where he works, all the while finding himself unable to tell his folks they're married. Beulah Bondi is the mother, Charles Coburn is the father and James Ellison is the cousin whose girl she was until she married Stewart. If it's not quite great screwball it is still very funny and is ripe for rediscovery. Check this one out.
mark.waltz
Ginger Rogers was one tough cookie in the 1930's. Prior to "Kitty Foyle", most of her characters were hard-knock life women of the streets, not hookers, but just tough broads who knew how to survive without giving up their dignity, and they didn't take crap from anybody. When they met a man they liked, they didn't care what they had to do, they went after them. Certainly, these were single men. For the most part, Ginger didn't play home-wreckers, and here, she has no idea that the seemingly meek college professor that she meets in the Manhattan night club she works at is (against his will) engaged to a snooty goody-two-shoes who isn't above using her palms when she thinks she's losing her man to someone she considers beneath her.In this case, the uppity snob is Frances Mercer, promised to James Stewart by his college president father, Charles Coburn. They all think that Stewart's mild-mannered mother (Beulah Bondi) is suffering from a heart ailment. But all it takes is the presence of Ginger in the midst of this babbity community to raise her out of a sick bed, even if to ask for a cigarette. This is a battle of small town bigots against the worldly big city folk, and the big city folk are determined to prove that they are just as good as the others, even if it takes giving Mercer a licking she'll never forget and give her new husband a bit of moxie to stand up to his imperious father.Snappy from start to finish, this starts off with Stewart in New York simply to get fellow professor James Ellison away from the big, bad nightclubs and back into boring old small town U.S.A. Of course, it is at papa Coburn's orders, so when Rogers spots Stewart in the audience and sparks fly, the marriage bug is soon to hit. Stewart can't bring himself to break the news to his parents or the stuffy Mercer, so everybody around thinks that Rogers is trouble. Of course she is, especially if you slap her without provocation. Maybe she deserved it with Mercer, responding to her declaration of "Must I give you a piece of my mind" with "Oh, I couldn't take the last piece!". This leads to a great cat-fight, only topped in a few other instances, most notably in the following year's "The Women". This comedy teaches small town folk that the big city bad guys are just as noble as they are, but with perhaps maybe a bigger appetite for life.When Ellison and Rogers break down and start to do "The Big Apple", Beaulah Bondi gets one of her great moments to let loose on film, but not without consequences. Having played Stewart's mother on film (and later on T.V.) many times, Bondi remains one of the great "motherly" figures on screen, and here, she's a bit sly, too. There's a wonderful moment with Rogers and Bondi as they do indeed bond over half a cigarette, and later on, a wonderful moment on a train where porter Willie Best gets teary-eyed while waiting on both of them in different cars as they both try to hold back their own tears to no avail. Stewart has some great moments of comedy, including a wonderful drunk scene, and even when imperious, Coburn can't help but be lovable. Grady Sutton is also very funny as Stewart's assistant, while other favorites including Jack Carson and Hattie McDaniel, show up in small roles.Probably one of the most forgotten of the great screwball comedies, this remains totally enjoyable from start to finish. Every aspect of it is outstanding from its snappy screenplay to every single performance to its breathtaking art direction and truly fast-moving photography. Like "Stage Door" and "Bachelor Mother", this aided Ginger in moving past the Fred Astaire musicals into better parts, but once she went into mostly dramas, the world lost the opportunity to see one of its true great glamorous clowns at work. Only with "Tom, Dick and Harry", "The Major and the Minor" and "Roxie Hart" would she truly be at her meddle. For me, a snappy Ginger really makes the best cookie in the jar, and when she adds singing and dancing to it, no milk is needed.
