Plucky rich daddy's girl Sylvia Sidney falls for charming drunk reporter Frederic March. Enabling, delusion, mutual dive ensues.
Sidney's work is the reason to see this one -- she tirelessly, valiantly tries to breathe life into this otherwise badly-written, badly-directed 'racy' pre-Code weeper. (It pains me to say that: Dorothy Arzner was the only female features director in Hollywood in the 1930s, and reportedly part of Nazimova's crowd of fabulous lesbians).
March's work is general and repetitive -- thoroughly unconvincing. It's an amateur's performance. He got a chance to make amends a few years later as the charming drunk in the superior 'A Star Is Born'.
Newcomer Cary Grant gets a few seconds screen time as a hot side piece in the tawdry perdition sequence. Old vaudevillian 'Skeets' Gallagher keeps threatening to do something as magical as his name, but never gets the chance.
'Merrily We Go to Hell' is a waste of a great title. Pity.
Sidney's work is the reason to see this one -- she tirelessly, valiantly tries to breathe life into this otherwise badly-written, badly-directed 'racy' pre-Code weeper. (It pains me to say that: Dorothy Arzner was the only female features director in Hollywood in the 1930s, and reportedly part of Nazimova's crowd of fabulous lesbians).
March's work is general and repetitive -- thoroughly unconvincing. It's an amateur's performance. He got a chance to make amends a few years later as the charming drunk in the superior 'A Star Is Born'.
Newcomer Cary Grant gets a few seconds screen time as a hot side piece in the tawdry perdition sequence. Old vaudevillian 'Skeets' Gallagher keeps threatening to do something as magical as his name, but never gets the chance.
'Merrily We Go to Hell' is a waste of a great title. Pity.