I know it is the job of a reviewer to review the art that exists, not the art the reviewer would personally have preferred, but I like the protagonists of Gallant Lady (1934) so much, I wish I could offer them asylum into a plot that makes one damn lick of sense.
The premise is a pre-Code crackerjack: after her secret fiancé of an aviator dies in a fiery crash before her eyes, grief-stunned Sally Wyndham (Ann Harding) meets cute with struck-off doctor Dan Pritchard (Clive Brook) when he rescues her from being run in for solicitation in a public park, hustling her out of the self-righteous reach of the police with the gallantly brazen icebreaker of "There you are, honey! Sorry I'm late." Over a cup of coffee on her side and a bottle of gin on his, we learn that he's fresh out of prison for assisting the suicide of a terminal patient and she's pregnant with the child she never told her lover about, not wanting to hold him with anything but his own feelings. "You're a pretty swell fellow," Dan tells her without a hint of his usual irony, gently closing the door before this sad, straightforward girl can vanish into the night and her own destruction. More than a little chokily to her scruffy Samaritan, Sally returns, "Shouldn't be surprised if you're pretty swell yourself." Eight months later in the maternity ward, they make an adorable nativity, at least if the viewer ignores the anguished intensity of Sally's mother love and the concern hovering underneath Dan's heartiness. An adoption has been arranged with a trustworthy, well-heeled couple, but Sally desperately doesn't want to lose her son, she just can't see any other way not to "let him pay all his life for something that happened to [her]." Watching Dan's face as his friend mourns over her child, I wondered for a serious second if he was just going to propose last-minute for the sake of the baby and we'd get one of those complicated marriage-of-convenience romances, which I have been known to enjoy. Instead, the adoption goes forward despite Sally's heartbreak and a neat little montage highlights us through the first five years in the life of Deedy Lawrence (Dickie Moore) and by the time we catch up with Sally as a rising interior decorator and Dan as a drifting tramp sailor, Gallant Lady is ready to launch itself into the outer reaches of disbelief with a melodrama of mother coincidentally reunited with child and determined to remain in his life at all costs, even if that means seducing now-widowed Phil Lawrence (Otto Kruger) away from his self-centered fiancée Cynthia Haddon (Betty Lawford), keeping her maternal identity under wraps all the while, of course. Dan's skepticism on hearing this plan may be permitted to stand in for the audience's: "He hasn't proposed to you, you don't love him, and you're going to marry him. That'll be something."
I appreciate narrative subversion as much as the next person, but there's subversion and then there's silliness and everything about this amorally soaped-up plot would work so much better if the film weren't scrambling overtime through its own twists to keep the obvious pairing of Dan and Sally apart. ( Social outcasts should stick together. )
And yes, it's wonderful—and echt pre-Code—to see a woman get pregnant out of wedlock and end the movie with everything she ever longed for, her own child and a husband who loves her and whom she even loves, but I am left feeling as though in order to achieve its scripted end, the plot steamrolled the much wider field of possibilities it started with. It's not as though it just improvised itself into a corner. The titles credit a screenplay to Sam Mintz and a story to Gilbert Emery and Franc Rhodes; it was directed for Twentieth Century by Gregory La Cava, who may have encouraged his actors to ad-lib as on the sets of My Man Godfrey (1936) and Stage Door (1937), but then somebody had to cut the thing together and surely continuity has a narrative as well as a visual component? The final effect is so confused, I couldn't even tell if the ending was supposed to be bittersweet. I still don't regret seeing it for Harding and Brook, but you understand my desire for some kind of AU. It exists on DVD if anyone wishes to make the attempt or just commiserate. If nothing else, I feel confident stating that Dan will win any modern viewer's heart the moment he disclaims his original kindness to Sally, "There's nothing personal in my attitude, I merely hate policemen." This something brought to you by my sensical backers at Patreon.
The premise is a pre-Code crackerjack: after her secret fiancé of an aviator dies in a fiery crash before her eyes, grief-stunned Sally Wyndham (Ann Harding) meets cute with struck-off doctor Dan Pritchard (Clive Brook) when he rescues her from being run in for solicitation in a public park, hustling her out of the self-righteous reach of the police with the gallantly brazen icebreaker of "There you are, honey! Sorry I'm late." Over a cup of coffee on her side and a bottle of gin on his, we learn that he's fresh out of prison for assisting the suicide of a terminal patient and she's pregnant with the child she never told her lover about, not wanting to hold him with anything but his own feelings. "You're a pretty swell fellow," Dan tells her without a hint of his usual irony, gently closing the door before this sad, straightforward girl can vanish into the night and her own destruction. More than a little chokily to her scruffy Samaritan, Sally returns, "Shouldn't be surprised if you're pretty swell yourself." Eight months later in the maternity ward, they make an adorable nativity, at least if the viewer ignores the anguished intensity of Sally's mother love and the concern hovering underneath Dan's heartiness. An adoption has been arranged with a trustworthy, well-heeled couple, but Sally desperately doesn't want to lose her son, she just can't see any other way not to "let him pay all his life for something that happened to [her]." Watching Dan's face as his friend mourns over her child, I wondered for a serious second if he was just going to propose last-minute for the sake of the baby and we'd get one of those complicated marriage-of-convenience romances, which I have been known to enjoy. Instead, the adoption goes forward despite Sally's heartbreak and a neat little montage highlights us through the first five years in the life of Deedy Lawrence (Dickie Moore) and by the time we catch up with Sally as a rising interior decorator and Dan as a drifting tramp sailor, Gallant Lady is ready to launch itself into the outer reaches of disbelief with a melodrama of mother coincidentally reunited with child and determined to remain in his life at all costs, even if that means seducing now-widowed Phil Lawrence (Otto Kruger) away from his self-centered fiancée Cynthia Haddon (Betty Lawford), keeping her maternal identity under wraps all the while, of course. Dan's skepticism on hearing this plan may be permitted to stand in for the audience's: "He hasn't proposed to you, you don't love him, and you're going to marry him. That'll be something."
I appreciate narrative subversion as much as the next person, but there's subversion and then there's silliness and everything about this amorally soaped-up plot would work so much better if the film weren't scrambling overtime through its own twists to keep the obvious pairing of Dan and Sally apart. ( Social outcasts should stick together. )
And yes, it's wonderful—and echt pre-Code—to see a woman get pregnant out of wedlock and end the movie with everything she ever longed for, her own child and a husband who loves her and whom she even loves, but I am left feeling as though in order to achieve its scripted end, the plot steamrolled the much wider field of possibilities it started with. It's not as though it just improvised itself into a corner. The titles credit a screenplay to Sam Mintz and a story to Gilbert Emery and Franc Rhodes; it was directed for Twentieth Century by Gregory La Cava, who may have encouraged his actors to ad-lib as on the sets of My Man Godfrey (1936) and Stage Door (1937), but then somebody had to cut the thing together and surely continuity has a narrative as well as a visual component? The final effect is so confused, I couldn't even tell if the ending was supposed to be bittersweet. I still don't regret seeing it for Harding and Brook, but you understand my desire for some kind of AU. It exists on DVD if anyone wishes to make the attempt or just commiserate. If nothing else, I feel confident stating that Dan will win any modern viewer's heart the moment he disclaims his original kindness to Sally, "There's nothing personal in my attitude, I merely hate policemen." This something brought to you by my sensical backers at Patreon.
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