No More Ladies

A solid romantic comedy, script by Donald Ogden Stewart so depend upon it to be high-society comedy straight from the theater. If you go for the sort of thing, you can also depend upon it to be very funny, if certainly no Philadelphia Story. It only feels a bit stale, sluggish, with nothing out of the ordinary to recommend it: here Robert Montgomery is an inveterate womanizer Joan Crawford accepts at face value but attempts to reform. Montgomery’s always wonderful in these roles, playing playboy charm with a sort of above-it-all smirk, never taking himself or indeed the caliber of film too seriously. I never get tired of watching him do it, but I can certainly appreciate how tired he became of it, by this time fighting MGM for more interesting and challenging work. Crawford is typically good although comedy is not where she shines, save her great role in The Women; it’s strange to think such a star factory would fail to see this and not use her to her best advantage. Most of the praise must be reserved for the supporting cast, particularly Edna May Oliver whose blunt and world-wise grandmother gets all the laugh-out-loud lines and Charlie Ruggles hamming it up as the perpetual drunk. You’ve seen it before, but this is a good battle-of-the-sexes comedy where love wins in the end, though not before both sides are made to look quite caddish and ridiculous.