A Divorce Attorney seeks matrimony as legal tender, a contractual investment against his aggressively enticing married mistress who wants him at all cost. Constance Bennett is Sylvia the plain-Jane secretary who agrees to her boss Gaylord’s offer but she’s too inscrutable to earn our sympathies. Kenneth MacKenna as Gaylord Stanton, Esq. is a good-natured Playboy and remains so even though the story wants us to believe he has finally fallen in love. I don’t buy it and neither should Sylvia.
So the film wants us to believe that Sylvia is a poor and practically destitute young lady barely meeting the cost of living, a woman who is invisible to the men around her. Yet even “dressed down” in common clothes for the first act she is beautiful yet shy. She is secretly in love with Gaylord so when he offers her marriage so he can get out of a tricky situation with his mistress, she hesitantly accepts. Her roommate Zasu Pitts thinks it’s the best thing since sliced bread; the film would have benefited with more Zasu! So she takes a months long trip alone and meets Gaylord’s buddy Reggie on the cruise to Europe, a slick and charming womanizer played by Basil Rathbone. Reggie is not a total jerk but fails to convince in his sudden and desperate love for Sylvia. Pictured together in gossip magazines, Gaylord knows of their gallivanting yet seems unconcerned: after all, he’s not even infatuated with his ex-secretary. Upon return, Gaylord needs Sylvia to act like she loves him so he can dump the ambitious paramour and in doing so he falls in love with his own wife! Sylvia is now dressed in expensive gowns, her makeup and hair perfect, seemingly another woman entirely. So this superficial change is all Gaylord needs to find her enticing and sexually attractive: his change of heart (or other part of his anatomy) is facile and unconvincing. Reggie takes it like a champ and moves on to his next conquest.
The Direction is lackluster though the editing has a few sublime match-cuts in the Paris montage but the score is a bit too strident for the atmosphere of the film. The film even ends with an outré after the final credit. Overall, the title of the film is much more exciting than the product, like Champagne without the fizzes, warm and flat.
Final Grade: (C-)
