oscaralbert Review of The Lady and the Lug

The Lady and the Lug (1941)

When women want to enter the Rough and Tumble ring of this . . .

[7/10 · 28 January 2020]

. . . Man's World, they've got to be willing to put up their dukes and roll with the punches, warns the always eponymous Warner Bros. with THE LADY AND THE LUG. Anticipating "I'm-with-Her-s" Real Life run for the White House a mere 75 years later, the always prophetically prognosticating Warner Boys try to alert the future former First Lady that any wench trying to move back into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will need to have more going for her than just a secretarial background. THE LADY AND THE LUG shows Oval Office aspirants of the Feminine Persuasion that they must be in the race for the long run, starting with ten-mile jaunts. Warner casts "Elsa" here as the prototypical princess pol, clairvoyantly picturing her in the same weight class as "Hill." The latter's refusal to strip down in the public arena, take a punch and actually get her hands dirty (like Elsa) shows where Life would have been better off imitating Art. (In a dream sequence, Warner predicts that if the first female POTUS nominee tries to stay above the fray up on her High Horse like a prissy Juliet, then some groping Romeo with roving hands surely will bring her down--balcony and all!) As Elsa concludes here, "You can't make a silk purse out of a cauliflower ear."