Maybe It's Love (1935)

Hearing about her in connection to auteur James Whale's work,I was intrigued to find that a DVD seller had recently tracked down a rare Rom-Com with Gloria Stuart.With the flick running for just over an hour,I decided to find out if it is love.The plot:Being in love with Rims O'Neil, Bobby Halevy is disappointed to find O'Neil is playing hard to get.Deciding to take matters into her own hands,Halevy pretends to be interested in Adolph Jr.,which leads to O'Neil revealing his true feelings and them getting married! As married life sinks in,O'Neil and Halevy begin to experience financial hardships.View on the film:Rolling out Maxwell Anderson's 1927 play,the screenplay by Jerry Wald/Harry Sauber & Lawrence Hazard is interestingly caught between being of the time and also being surprisingly modern,as Mr. Halevy listens to the wireless on "the Europe problem",which leads to him being mocked for being interested in an event taking place so far away. Vastly changing Anderson's play (from character name changes,to "updating" the setting) the writers give Bobby Halevy a terrific modern edge, highlighted in Halevy cleverly using her own income,and rather uniquely being the women who is after the man.Tragically killing himself after having to keep secret that he was gay and the suicide of his wife Aleta Freel, Ross Alexander gives a dashing performance as Rims O'Neil,whose speedy exchanges with Bobby are delivered by Alexander with a charismatic slickness. Shimmering in the playful back and fourths with Alexander,the elegant Gloria Stuart gives a delightful performance as Bobby,whose light Comedy dialogue Stuart catches with the perfect touch,which is joined by a joyful sass from Stuart displaying Bobby's independent side,as Booby and Rims start to wonder if maybe it's love.

MAYBE IT'S LOVE, a 1935 programmer, was taken from Maxwell Anderson's early success SATURDAY'S CHILDREN which starred Ruth Gordon and (late in the run) Humphrey Bogart at the Booth and Forrest Theatres for 326 performances from 26Jan1927 to April1928. The resemblance of the film's "Rims," Ross Alexander, to the very young Bogart is a delightful plus to a film possibly best remembered today as a vehicle for the young Gloria Stuart - of TITANIC fame late in life as Alexander's love interest.Given the play's success - establishing Maxwell Anderson's reputation on Broadway - it is remarkable that it took this many years into the sound era for Warner Brothers to get around to using it as grist for their mill (changing the title and the character names along the way as if to disguise the origins). For a plot (up and coming boy and boss's handsome son wrangle over the affections of boss's secretary set against the background of the secretary's parents and meddling sister) which remains mild even after the ministrations of the usual crew of three Hollywood screenwriters, there are a bountiful hour (and three minute)'s charm, banter and surprises.Don't expect a 21st Century comedy, but as a fairly honest portrait of a bygone era when Saturday wasn't a day off but a standard half day, with classic performances from the Warner Brothers' stock company (comedians like Frank McHugh and Henry Travers) and the ghost of a pre-Hollywood Bogart performance, MAYBE IT'S LOVE is hard to beat.

One would never suspect that this little domestic comedy comes from the pen of Maxwell Anderson, since it's no more than a typical piece of Depression-era fluff about money and finances being the root of most domestic squabbles.Lovely GLORIA STUART (so beautiful in her prime) and ungainly ROSS Alexander (he never made it to stardom) are the leads and the supporting cast is a pleasant one filled with Warner contract players. But it's PHILLIP REED, as a rich man's playboy son, who should have had the romantic lead opposite Stuart, looking like a Tyrone Power clone, and not a bad actor at all.HENRY TRAVERS, RUTH DONNELLY, FRANK McHUGH and others are well used, with McHugh being much less obnoxious than usual in his more subdued comedy role as Donnelly's husband.It starts out briskly, with a lot of talk about "the situation in Europe" and "how Europe is making out" as part of the breakfast talk, so it seems that it's going to be a better than usual domestic tale that raises some serious issues. But before it's midway through, it gets stuck in a rut as no more than an office romance that ends in marriage but quickly falls into silly lover's spats and quarrels over finances and the inability to "live on a budget".From that midway point on, it descends into a trivial domestic comedy with pat situations complete with a cornball ending that reunites the lovers under trying circumstances.Summing up: Not worth the trouble. I note from another comment that this became a remake called "Saturday's Children" in the '40s with John Garfield, Ann Shirley and Claude Rains.Trivia note: Ross Alexander was an up and coming Warner contract player who appeared the same year in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "Captain Blood" and was being considered for bigger roles, but he committed suicide two years later over problems with his marriage and rumors of his homosexuality which the studio tried to suppress.

Maxwell Anderson's very popular 1927 play, with 3 television productions as well as the three movies versions, has some very funny moments. The top-notch cast has Gloria Stuart, of Titanic (1996) fame, and Ross Alexander as the romantic leads in a seesaw romance. The highlight of the movie is the way Stuart gets Alexander to marry her, as coached by big sister Ruth Donnelly, who supplies cues in shorthand, and accurately predicts Alexander's responses to Stuart's actions and statements. I couldn't stop laughing at the entire sequence, even though I had seen the remake, Saturday's Children (1940). Unfortunately, the second half of the movie doesn't sustain the comedy of the first half, and degenerates into more of a drama about the difficulties in marriage. Still, the movie is a winner.