Love Before Breakfast (1936)

User Rating:

6.6/10   

Director:

Walter Lang

Writers:

Faith Baldwin (novel)
Herbert Fields (screenplay)

Release Date:

9 March 1936 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy

Plot Keywords:

Dog | Secretary | Slot Machine | Businessman | Engagement

Cast

Carole Lombard	...	Kay Colby
Preston Foster	...	Scott Miller
Cesar Romero	...	Bill Wadsworth
Janet Beecher	...	Mrs. Colby
Betty Lawford	...	Countess Jane Campanella
Richard Carle	...	'Brinky' Brinkerhoff
Forrester Harvey	...	Chief Steward
Joyce Compton	...	Mary Lee
Bert Roach	...	The Host (scenes deleted)
Diana Gibson	...	The Secretary (as Diane Gibson)

Runtime:

70 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Noiseless Recording)

Certification:

USA:Approved (PCA #2006) | USA:TV-G (TV rating)

Company:

Universal Pictures

Trivia:

Although Faith Baldwin is credited onscreen as writer of a novel, it was actually just a short story in a magazine. No novel was ever published.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Wanderlust (2006) (TV)

Soundtrack:

The Old Gray Mare

Not a classic, but Lombard is terrific.

The film's premise is straightforward: Lombard plays Kay Colby, a young socialite convinced she's in love with Bill Wadsworth (Cesar Romero), a fellow quickly identified as the douche who is all wrong for her. Her Mr. Right is Preston Foster's Scott Miller, who happens to own the oil company Wadsworth works for.

We quickly discover Miller is in love with Colby. He's also manipulative and sneaky, for as the film opens we find Miller is purposefully sending her rather self-centred beau away on assignment on a ship to Japan . And he manages to finagle it so that his own Ms. Wrong, a yappy countess with an entourage of similarly disposed dogs, is going on the same ship. Colby and Wadsworth bump into him (more accurately, they bump into his parked car and then him) at the dock.

So the stage is set for an epic 2nd act featuring the screwball comedy battle of wills, which will steadily escalate in madness and will only let up in the last minute.

The film is not as wicked as 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith', which has very similar sort of screwball formula (sneaky guy pursuing girl as opposed to sneaky girl pursuing guy ala 'Bringing up Baby'), but like that film, this one features Lombard doing what she does best: make you want to kiss and kill her at the same time. She's so good that it makes up for the inadequacies of the leading man, Preston Foster, who is not a good enough listener as an actor to create the sort of chemistry a William Powell or Cary Grant could form with an ugly lamp (see Powell's work in 'My Man Godfrey' opposite Lombard, whom he had not too long before filming divorced!). Foster's all right when we don't have to watch him react to Lombard, but his comic timing and general shtick is uneven. I suspect the director must have figured this out, as the camera is kind in allowing her to create the illusion of a relationship twixt the two a fair amount of the time.

Another interesting phenomenon is the visceral similarity in appearance of the two men (they look alike and both have dark hair with trimmed mustaches) vying for Lombard's Colby, which was aesthetically dissonant for me. I think at the very least one of the staches could have gone, just so douche-bag and good guy don't become perceptually associated in our minds.

The indulgence of quibbles aside, the film's moments of charm and Lombard's mastery of screwball comedy's delectable form of erotica make it well worth seeing if you're fond of the genre.