Professor Bertram Potts (Gary Cooper) and his six assorted old oddballs who are trying to put together an encyclopedia are forced by hoodlums (Dana Andrews, Dan Duryea, et al) to take in Sugarpuss O'Shea (Barbara Stanwyck) and hide her from the police. Cooper and Stanwyck fall for each other and wind up getting married, while the hoodlums are swept up by the authorities.
This is a very funny movie with romantic undertones. It's not outrageously funny. It's not the Marx Brothers. The high Amusement Quotient is due mostly to the characters and the relationships between them. The romance lies in the development of characters.
It's unnecessary, and maybe self defeating, to spell out the funny parts and the gags. So let me mention in passing a scene that isn't funny at all but rather touching. The seven dwarfs are sitting around a table, drinking wine after dinner, anticipating Cooper's marriage to Stanwyck tomorrow. Cooper is bemused by his own emotions and by the prospect of physical contact with a woman. Only one of the professors, Robert Haydn, was ever married and is now twenty-four years a widower. He offers Cooper advice from his own marital experiences and, man, it harks back generations. "We went to the Catskills where we did some very pretty watercolors." And: "A wife is like a flower. We must wait for the petals to open. A bee too anxious to pollinate might spoil the bloom." Something like that, anyway. Havelock Ellis was more straightforward than that. So was Tiny Tim.
But after giving Cooper his fatherly advice, Haydn takes out a locket and removes a lock of Genevieve's golden hair, and the others begin to sing "Genevieve," and rather suddenly we realize the film has lost its comic tone and has turned rather effectively sentimenal, as Haydn dabs a handkerchief at his cheek, begs the others to sing it again, and delicately leaves the table. Oh, it's corny alright. ("Corny", means old fashioned, countrified -- but it's not "synonymous with 'baloney'".) But Haydn's sentiment and the sympathy of the other tender-minded old clowns seems genuine enough. We know exactly what Haydn is feeling, although the scene isn't overextended or overwritten. Once Haydn is gone, the others shrug off the hopelessness of their ever having such a relationship, and they lapse into a resigned but robust version of "Gaudeamus Igitur." It may be Barbara Stanwyck's best role. She's unforgettable. In other films she often seems to be made of cast iron, sexless and driven. Here, she's light hearted and saucy. Best shot -- Sugarpuss knocks unexpectedly on Potts' door and when he opens it, she smiles like a T. rex, her head tilted, clicks her tongue and snaps her fingers, and says, "Hi, Pottsy, old boy!", and then tilts her head the other way and sweeps past him in this glittering gown, sparkling with Gustav Klimt designer speckles. (In a few moments she has him feeling her foot and looking down into her open mouth. Watch out, Pottsy, this babe has been known to bite.) She's pretty foxy too, sashaying around, fluffing her long curly locks, swinging her hips, fomenting rebellion among this flock of troglodytic dodos, teaching Cooper what yum-yum is.
A number of Hawks' movies derive their humor, and sometimes their dramatic tension, from the conflict between the cerebral cortex and the reptilian brain. The eggheads versus the naturals. And that's the case here. An ordinary viewer is more likely to cheer Cooper when he throws away his boxing book and tackles Dana Andrews swinging as recklessly as a kid in a schoolyard fight. Well, we're all glad to see it finally happen. Yet I wonder if that's such a good lesson to learn. In addition to its other many functions, the cerebral cortex has a prominent role in damping down the impulses generated by more primitive structures. That's what keeps us from murdering each other. It' nice that Cooper manages to let himself go, but it's important to remember that the chief villain, Dana Andrews, a selfish murderer, has no problem whatever letting himself go. I've always suspected that Hawks spent most of his career getting even with the college professors who gave him poor grades at Cornell, though he spanks them only lightly here. Damned chrome domes. Come to think of it, Hawks may have been a dropout but Dan Duryea managed somehow to graduate from Cornell.
It's a truly funny movie and ought to appeal to people of varying ages, genders, and social strata.
This is a very funny movie with romantic undertones. It's not outrageously funny. It's not the Marx Brothers. The high Amusement Quotient is due mostly to the characters and the relationships between them. The romance lies in the development of characters.
It's unnecessary, and maybe self defeating, to spell out the funny parts and the gags. So let me mention in passing a scene that isn't funny at all but rather touching. The seven dwarfs are sitting around a table, drinking wine after dinner, anticipating Cooper's marriage to Stanwyck tomorrow. Cooper is bemused by his own emotions and by the prospect of physical contact with a woman. Only one of the professors, Robert Haydn, was ever married and is now twenty-four years a widower. He offers Cooper advice from his own marital experiences and, man, it harks back generations. "We went to the Catskills where we did some very pretty watercolors." And: "A wife is like a flower. We must wait for the petals to open. A bee too anxious to pollinate might spoil the bloom." Something like that, anyway. Havelock Ellis was more straightforward than that. So was Tiny Tim.
But after giving Cooper his fatherly advice, Haydn takes out a locket and removes a lock of Genevieve's golden hair, and the others begin to sing "Genevieve," and rather suddenly we realize the film has lost its comic tone and has turned rather effectively sentimenal, as Haydn dabs a handkerchief at his cheek, begs the others to sing it again, and delicately leaves the table. Oh, it's corny alright. ("Corny", means old fashioned, countrified -- but it's not "synonymous with 'baloney'".) But Haydn's sentiment and the sympathy of the other tender-minded old clowns seems genuine enough. We know exactly what Haydn is feeling, although the scene isn't overextended or overwritten. Once Haydn is gone, the others shrug off the hopelessness of their ever having such a relationship, and they lapse into a resigned but robust version of "Gaudeamus Igitur." It may be Barbara Stanwyck's best role. She's unforgettable. In other films she often seems to be made of cast iron, sexless and driven. Here, she's light hearted and saucy. Best shot -- Sugarpuss knocks unexpectedly on Potts' door and when he opens it, she smiles like a T. rex, her head tilted, clicks her tongue and snaps her fingers, and says, "Hi, Pottsy, old boy!", and then tilts her head the other way and sweeps past him in this glittering gown, sparkling with Gustav Klimt designer speckles. (In a few moments she has him feeling her foot and looking down into her open mouth. Watch out, Pottsy, this babe has been known to bite.) She's pretty foxy too, sashaying around, fluffing her long curly locks, swinging her hips, fomenting rebellion among this flock of troglodytic dodos, teaching Cooper what yum-yum is.
A number of Hawks' movies derive their humor, and sometimes their dramatic tension, from the conflict between the cerebral cortex and the reptilian brain. The eggheads versus the naturals. And that's the case here. An ordinary viewer is more likely to cheer Cooper when he throws away his boxing book and tackles Dana Andrews swinging as recklessly as a kid in a schoolyard fight. Well, we're all glad to see it finally happen. Yet I wonder if that's such a good lesson to learn. In addition to its other many functions, the cerebral cortex has a prominent role in damping down the impulses generated by more primitive structures. That's what keeps us from murdering each other. It' nice that Cooper manages to let himself go, but it's important to remember that the chief villain, Dana Andrews, a selfish murderer, has no problem whatever letting himself go. I've always suspected that Hawks spent most of his career getting even with the college professors who gave him poor grades at Cornell, though he spanks them only lightly here. Damned chrome domes. Come to think of it, Hawks may have been a dropout but Dan Duryea managed somehow to graduate from Cornell.
It's a truly funny movie and ought to appeal to people of varying ages, genders, and social strata.