JohnHowardReid Copyright 9 July 1936 by RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. New York opening at the Radio City Music Hall: 9 July 1936 (ran one week). Australian release (as a "B" feature): 7 October 1936. 75 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Working-class couple separate when wife has a yen for clothes and luxuries that husband cannot afford.COMMENT: The film has its moments, thanks to an agreeable cast, fighting their way through a script that is not nearly as amusing or scintillating as it obviously thinks it is, plus some very attractive photography (e.g. the scene in the lightless apartment) - though Miss Stanwyck is not lit all that flatteringly. Willie Best is prominently featured in the credits, though his part has been removed and is now limited to a two-shot of him entering the marriage bureau and a long shot of him in the background of same! Unfortunately, the cast is also saddled with Ned Sparks, whose monotonous cigar-faced delivery of quite ordinary lines makes them seem even slower and less funny. This character just doesn't belong in what was doubtless conceived as a light comedy of manners. Gene Raymond is more animated than usual and Robert Young is very effective as a pestiferous playboy.

csteidler Fashion model Barbara Stanwyck is making $50 a week. Aspiring but as-yet-unsuccessful engineer Gene Raymond is only making $25 but wants her to marry him and quit her job and stay at home. Like a dummy, she lets herself be talked into it. Presumably in 1936 some viewers would have been sympathetic to Raymond's insistence that "No wife of mine is going to work." That's not the problem with this movie. The problem is that Raymond's character is pushy and arrogant and we just don't see any sparks between him and Stanwyck that would make us believe that she could find him tolerable, much less irresistible. Anyway, Stanwyck stays home and keeps house, eventually getting behind on the bills to the point where she secretly goes out and starts modeling again. The bills are getting paid now and she can even afford to hire Hattie McDaniel to come in and cook.... But what will happen if Raymond finds out that she's working? Oh my. Solid supporting actors do their best to cheer things up but they don't have much to work with. Ned Sparks and Helen Broderick play the wisecrack-spouting old married couple who hang out with Stanwyck and Raymond. Robert Young is a rich drunken playboy who hangs around trying to help. Unfortunately, the strong cast and decent production values just can't keep this picture moving...it's one of those that seems longer than its 81 minutes.

James Hitchcock Although this film was made before the television era, in some ways it resembles an extended episode of a TV sitcom. The main characters are Michael and Carolyn Martin, a young newlywed couple from New York. The plot centres upon the disharmony caused in their marriage by their financial difficulties. Michael is an engineer earning $35 per week. In the Depression era of the thirties this would probably have been regarded by most Americans as a good living wage, but it is not enough to keep Carolyn in the middle-class style to which she has become accustomed. Before her marriage she worked as a model earning $50 per week, but Michael has old-fashioned views about married women working (old-fashioned by today's standards if not those of the thirties) and refuses to let her go out to work. Carolyn, however, is unable to limit her spending (she impulsively buys a dress costing over $40) and soon the couple are in financial difficulties and their furniture is repossessed. An added complication is that Carolyn has a wealthy admirer in the shape of Hugh, the foppish son of a department-store owner. (At least, he is a fop some of the time. His character seems to veer between a drunken playboy and a perfect gentlemen). The film resembles a sitcom in that the humour arises out of the situations in which the characters find themselves rather than from any particularly witty dialogue. As another reviewer has pointed out, the main comic relief is provided by Billy Gilbert as the repo man and Ned Sparks as Michael's colleague Paul, but as Gilbert's party piece seems to be pretending to sneeze (in which he is joined in a duet by Barbara Stanwyck) and Sparks's speciality is talking out of the side of his mouth while holding a cigar firmly clamped between his jaws, I can only think that audiences of the thirties were more easily pleased than those of today would be. The main problem with this film for a modern audience, however, is its outdated social attitudes. The jocular references to wife-beating, for example, do not seem tasteful or funny today. Although the film is fairly sympathetic to Carolyn's desire to work, a woman's job is seen not in terms of a fulfilling career but in terms of a way of providing pocket-money to keep herself in luxuries. There is also a racist joke when Carolyn's maid (about the only role open to black actresses in the thirties) remarks that black men are too idle to support themselves and prefer to live off their wives. The film as a whole seems very dated today. "Halliwell's Film Guide" describes it as "thin" but "pleasing". The first adjective may be apt; the second certainly is not. 4/10

tjimba Pure romantic comedy that doesn't hit every mark, but is well worth it. If you loved Palm Beach Story, you'll at least like this.Story of fashion-model married to $35/week surveyor, failing to make ends meet. He won't let her work, but she does anyway. She's tempted by rich playboy Robert Young. He's egged on by wife-hating Ned Sparks. Sparks, who delivers every line around a cigar stub, and Billy Gilbert, the repo man, steal every scene they are in.Husband's refusal to see wife's point of view makes him look stupid, which was not the intent. Guess how it turns out? True lovers of this period have to learn to overlook this kind of sexism, I'm afraid.