Maybe It's Love (1935)

User Rating:

6.0/10   

Director:

William C. McGann

Writers:

Maxwell Anderson (play)
Lawrence Hazard (adaptation)

Release Date:

12 January 1935 (USA)

Genre:

Romance | Comedy

Plot Keywords:

Marital Separation | Automobile | Landlady | Family Relationships | Employment Dismissal

Cast

Gloria Stuart	...	Bobby Halevy
Ross Alexander	...	Rims O'Neil
Frank McHugh	...	Willie Sands
Ruth Donnelly	...	Florrie Sands
Helen Lowell	...	Mrs. Halevy
Henry Travers	...	Mr. Woodrow Halevy
Joseph Cawthorn	...	Adolph J. Mengle Sr.
Phillip Reed	...	Adolph J. Mengle Jr.
Dorothy Dare	...	Lila
J. Farrell MacDonald	...	The Cop
Maude Eburne	...	Landlady

Runtime:

63 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Vitaphone)

Certification:

USA:Approved (PCA #381)

Company:

First National Pictures

Trivia:

The original play, Saturday's Children, opened 26 January 1927 in New York.

Movie Connections:

Version of "Golden Showcase: Saturday's Children" (1962)

Soundtrack:

Let It Be Me

Mixed results in so-so romantic comedy during Depression era...

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.