SimonJack This is one of those movies when one wonders, after watching it, what the title had to do with the film. In this case, it is mentioned once – as the name of a mine that Mrs. Rimplegar (played superbly by Mary Boland) had poured a lot of money into – to the point of bankrupting her family. But, in afterthought, the title could be construed to describe the wacky family and household of the Rimplegars.This isn't quite screwball comedy, but it comes close in places. The script for 'Three-Cornered Moon" isn't very tightly written and organized. But the collection of characters, with their individual pursuits and traits add up to some good laughs. Claudette Colbert here has the look yet of a young starlet. The movie came out before she turned 30. Within the year, she would lose the very youthful look and become the more mature young woman in appearance for which most moviegoers remember her. Her role in this film is more subdued. Richard Arlen is the lead actor, but his role is less than that of most of the young men of the Rimplegar clan. They were played well by Wallace Ford, Tome Brown and William Bakewell. The rest of the supporting case were all quite good. This comedy of frenzy has a nice theme – of the once rich and selfish learning how to work and share for the good of all. That theme should have played very well in 1933. It was right in the middle of the depression and Dust Bowl. America had its highest unemployment ever. Many families were suffering and wanting. Hollywood did a lot to help lift the spirits of America during this time with its many wonderful comedy films and inspirational stories. At least one reviewer noted that there were many movies of this type during that time. True, but this is one of the early ones, and a good warm-up for some much better films that followed. With a little more work on the script and some better direction, "Three-Cornered Moon" could have been a much better film. As it is, it's a fun movie with several good laughs that most viewers should enjoy.

csteidler Claudette Colbert leads a strong cast in this tale of a once-wealthy family adjusting to life after the family fortune has evaporated.Mary Boland is excellent as the widowed mother—not really equipped to manage finances, she put all of their money into a failed mine called the Three Cornered Moon and doesn't quite know how to tell the kids they are broke. Colbert is her daughter, engaged to a rather useless aspiring novelist but not afraid to go out and find a job herself.There are also three grown sons, most notably Wallace Ford in an admirable performance as an earnest go-getter with girl trouble who spouts great lines like, "From now on, I'm gonna be absolutely independent of everybody. That reminds me, I gotta ask Mother for some money." Richard Arlen has a key role as a doctor friend of Colbert. Hearing of the family's troubles, he moves right into their house to help them out by contributing some rent…and also, it seems, to be around Claudette more.It's a mildly silly comedy, for the most part, but has a couple of serious moments, especially the scene where Colbert finally sees through her deadbeat writer boyfriend (Hardie Albright): "You've failed me!" she gasps, devastated, when he returns home late one afternoon having skipped a job interview and bought her flowers instead.Charming rather than side-splitting, it's a very entertaining family comedy, thanks to excellent characterizations from all.

judy t Got this 1933 movie from the library. Colbert is charming as are the rest of her family members. She was not yet a STAR, but her star quality is on display. It's frequently a laugh out loud movie. The story line of a daffy matriarch, Mary Boland, who gets wiped out by the stock market crash of 1929 and her 4 adult children who are still living at home, and what they do to survive the crisis makes for a delightful hour or so. The maid/cook whose English is minimal does not add anything to the comedy, but this is a minor fault. I've never previously seen Richard Arlen, who stands on the sidelines, quietly loving Colbert, and was glad to see how at the ending one obviously wrong suitor was replaced for another.

robert-temple-1 This film is charming largely because of the lead Claudette Colbert, whose elfin presence makes it all come alive. The film itself never wholly overcomes its origins as a play by Gertrude Tonkonogy (died 1989) written for the stage rather than the screen, her play of the same title having opened in March of 1933 and been released in this film version within four months of that. Clearly the producers were looking urgently for a 'feel good' story which drew comfort from a cheerful survival of the hard times. The story features an eccentric family, the father of which is dead, named Rimpelgar, Colbert being the only daughter. The Rimpelgars live in a huge rambling house in Brooklyn, that part of New York which is not Manhattan and is on the wrong side of the river, and which in their day, the 1930s, was a fine place to live. (Today, that can only be said of patches of Brooklyn, though there is an ongoing struggle to make it regain its dignity.) They do not have Brooklyn accents because they are rich people, or were before the father died. Now the dotty mother (played by Mary Boland) has lost everything through being, well, an idiot, and letting a scoundrel take it all and invest it in a worthless phoney mine called Three-Cornered Moon. (This must have been clearer in the play, because in the film the reason for the title is pretty obscure and mentioned only in passing.) So they are all suddenly thrown out of non-work into hard work, the daughter and her three brothers. The eldest brother is played by Wallace Ford, and what a surprise it is to see him as he was before he became the grizzled elderly character actor that he played in so many films decades later. Yes, the times are hard, as it is the Depression. There are many times when they all have nothing to eat and sit at a grand dining table with only a little bread between them. But they 'smile through', and all ends happily, despite a great deal of worry, tension, and stress. There is a side story about Colbert being in love with a self-indulgent would-be writer who is always working on Chapter Fourteen of the great novel which is never finished. She puts up with him for most of the film, to our great disgust, until she finally is freed from her blind love, sees the light, and dumps him. There are a lot of jokes about the Polish maid (Lyda Roberti) who cannot speak English and calls flowers 'George', but although that may all have been funny in the 1930s, it isn't now. The film does not lead to grim fate but smiling through gets them through, and this must have been a tonic for a weary public struggling to emerge from the Depression which was supposed to be over but, like the one now, is not over at all except in theory or because some politician says so. Maybe as things go on getting worse, we can recommend this film to our friends and contemporaries today, and let them remember that in 1932 a great deal of Claudette Colbert and her family 'smiling through' took place, so that we ought to try a little of that ourselves. If we can force the smiles, that is.