Vivacious Lady (1938)

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.

I mostly enjoyed this golden-era Hollywood comedy, directed by George Stevens and starring Ginger Rogers and James Stewart. They play the star-crossed lovers, she the sassy street-smart singer, he the wealthy aspiring university don, who marry almost the night they meet but who have to then break the news to his crusty old college principal father and apparently meek, ailing mother.That's pretty much the whole plot folks but for 90 entertaining minutes, we get to see Stewart and Rogers play out a series of scenes as they seek to consummate their marriage, bat away a snobbish old girl-friend of Stewart's and of course win over ma and pa in the process.There are several amusing scenes, including one where Stewart tries to encourage down a folding bed from its wall in Rogers' sorority-room, a doozy of a cat-fight between Rogers and her rival, played by Frances Mercer and when Rogers and her free-spirited former boyfriend, Stewart's cousin, played by James Ellison entertainingly win the old mother (Beulah Bondi) round and incidentally discover the truth about her supposed heart condition.At the climax, both Rogers and Bondi surprisingly seem to strike a feminist note by leaving their men, but of course this is 30's Hollywood and they're both brought to heel rather easily by their men for the expected happy ending. It also seems that Rogers can't walk past any man without attracting leery wolf-whistles. I especially didn't enjoy either the stereotypical treatment of the two black characters, naturally all subservient and cringing, one a housemaid, the other a train porter, with poor Hattie McDaniels having to roll her eyes to the heavens for comic-effect in time-dishonoured "Mammy" fashion.Both the main stars are in good form, Rogers a winning combination of love-struck and feisty, Stewart bookish but amorous. Charles Coburn as the domineering dad seems too old to be Stewart's father but Bondi, Mercer and Ellison are all better in their supporting roles. I've read that Rogers and Stewart were actually dating at the time of the shoot and the frisson between them certainly appears to show.So, with some caveats on the treatment of certain of the characters this was a rollicking, fast-moving comedy, if not quite in the top-tier of those of this era I've seen.

Injecting more romance into its 90 minutes than your typical screwball comedy would, VIVACIOUS LADY also injects considerably more laughter than is the norm, a very happy combination. It's not perfect by any means, falling too clearly into the 'one joke comedy' syndrome, awkwardly stretching its excuses for Jimmy Stewart's hesitations to simply come out and say that he's married the girl (Ginger Rogers), and the almost inevitable George Stevens failing of flaccid pacing from time to time. However, the inherent strength and decency of Stewart as an actor work to alleviate any inherent weaknesses of his character, and anytime momentum flags the movie is quickly rejuvenated by individual set-pieces that are nothing short of hilarious. Add in generally exceptional performances from its well-known cast and it's hard to understand why VIVACIOUS LADY isn't far better known than it is.Make no mistake, this is Ginger Rogers' film all the way. Her character of Francie Brent is central to its proceedings, she gets most of the best lines ("Oh, I couldn't take the last piece"), wears the best clothes, receives the most flattering closeups, etc. This is the kind of Star Treatment that Ginger had rarely received in the past (by my count only PROFESSIONAL SWEETHEART and IN PERSON were really built around her), but in the future it would become the norm. She was more than ready for such attention.Jimmy Stewart got this job at Ginger's request. If I have the time-line right, they'd dated a couple of years earlier (around the time of TOP HAT), dated again a couple of years later before the Second World War, and remained lifelong friends. He hadn't really done comedy before and VIVACIOUS LADY was the most important role he'd had to date, though YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU and MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON would soon follow. Rogers was right: Stewart's natural modesty and intelligence served him well in the role, and this is probably the first appearance of his permanent cinematic persona. Indeed, the whole cast seems far more prestigious to us than it must have to RKO at the time. Charles Coburn, though 60, was just getting started in the film business, and Beulah Bondi, like Stewart, had yet to do much comedy. No one familiar with Old Hollywood will be surprised at the excellence of their performances, but I must bring attention to James Ellison as Stewart's cousin and semi-rival for Ginger's affections. He gives us a delightfully quirky and good-humored performance in what is usually a thankless, 'Ralph Bellamy' type role. Director Stevens had a reputation as an 'actor's director', and it seems with some justice.VIVACIOUS LADY is very much a film of wonderful scenes patched together. It begins with a beautiful series of romantic vignettes between Rogers and Stewart, then takes a hard comedy turn with the first frustration of marital consummation between them as they get train compartment tickets mixed up with those of a battling middle-aged couple who represent a more jaundiced view of the marital state. The cat fight and the Big Apple scenes seem universally loved, but to me the whole rigmarole over the 'Walter' bed is just as admirable (and are there any scenes between, oh, say 1930 and 1964 that so overtly feature two characters with nothing on their minds other than getting into bed with one another?). Also featuring nice comic turns from Franklin Pangborn and Willie Best (the latter overcoming rather weak material), VIVACIOUS LADY may flag at times, but few films recover as completely as does this one. And that last shot is a doozy!

Botany professor James Stewart (as Peter Morgan) arrives in Manhattan to retrieve handsome cousin James Ellison (as Keith Morgan) from a partying binge, then marries mutually admired nightclub singer Ginger Rogers (as Francey Brent). At his "Old Sharon" college town home, Mr. Stewart must introduce beautiful but lower class Ms. Rogers to conservative parents Charles Coburn and Beulah Bondi (as Peter and Martha Morgan). Believe it or not, Stewart and Rogers also have trouble finding a place to be consummate the marriage. "Vivacious Lady" is stereotypical without the satirical wit in either script or performance to make it a classic, but it has producer/director George Stevens and a good cast. Co-stars Rogers and Stewart are an especially dynamic team, and this is unfortunately their only feature together.***** Vivacious Lady (5/10/38) George Stevens ~ Ginger Rogers, James Stewart, James Ellison, Beulah Bondi