richard-1787 I have never seen Norma Shearer look more beautiful than she does in this picture - and that's saying a lot. Nor is she as mannered as in some of her better-known pictures, like *The Women*. Melvyn Douglas, one of my favorite actors, also looks great here. Unfortunately, there isn't anything to the script. They and the rest of the cast, some of them very fine actors, are left with nothing to work with. There is no pacing here either. We just go from one scene to the next with no sense of forward motion. Compare it to *The Women*, for example, which builds to the great final scene where all the women come together and destroy Joan Crawford's character. Or better yet, compare it to another film directed by Robert Z. Leonard just two years before, *Pride and Prejudice*, which is one of the most perfectly paced movies I have ever seen. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that this 95 minute movie was based on a one-act play, and had to be padded. Perhaps the play on which is it based, Noel Coward's one-acter of the same name, just isn't very good. The best of Coward is fun when done well by any cast, but I've encountered some Coward plays, like *Conversation Piece*, that only seem to work when he's in them. He was a very good actor in his own way, and could make uninteresting dialogue sound very clever just by the way he delivered it. Coward premiered this play with himself and Gertrude Lawrence, one of his great partners, in the leads in both London and New York. Their way of working with dialogue together may well have had a lot to do with the play's initial success, more than the play itself.I wasn't bored. Shearer was so beautiful, I spent much of the time just looking at her face. The lead characters have no real depth, so it took no great acting to portray them. Nor are they particularly interesting or attractive. They are leaches who live off the nouveau riche, whom they disdain, so they really aren't particularly likable. You can imagine some of the dialogue appealing to New York theater goers in the 1930s when it was still fashionable to make fun of people simply because they came from Des Moines or Buffalo or Ashtabula or ..... I can't imagine this movie having a lot of success outside a few big cities, though. It's sophistication is pretty thin.

wes-connors Though she's promised her hand in marriage to a handsome lawyer, frivolous Polish princess Norma Shearer (as Victoria "Vicki" Wilomirska) falls in love with poor noble Melvyn Douglas (as Nicholas "Nikki" Prax) - while "We Were Dancing," according to Ms. Shearer. Although her societal friends suggest otherwise, Shearer breaks up with rich young Lee Bowman (as Hubert Tyler) and marries Mr. Douglas. Shearer and Douglas try to "live on love" with some difficulty. Also, Mr. Bowman and Douglas' former girlfriend Gail Patrick (as Linda Wayne) won't stay out of the picture.This was the first Shearer film after an absence of over a year. Some of the roles the actress reportedly turned down were more publicity than actual fact; but, apparently, she could have done "Mrs. Miniver" (1942) instead of this - and one other film role ("Her Cardboard Lover"), before retiring from the screen. Although it can be defended as having some appeal - on paper - "We Were Dancing" was a wrong turn. Shearer's desire to seem younger than her characters is strained to the brink, affecting both her acting and appearance. Shearer's lightened hair looks more gray than blonde.*** We Were Dancing (4/30/42) Robert Z. Leonard ~ Norma Shearer, Melvyn Douglas, Gail Patrick, Lee Bowman

nycritic There isn't much to say about WE WERE DANCING except that it was the second of Norma Shearer's career blunders in 1942 which she should not have taken and instead chosen the better roles of Charlotte Vale in NOW VOYAGER or the title role in MRS MINIVER which would have suited her fine, allowing her to wield her own mannered style of dramatic emotion with ease and would have quite definitely secured her Oscar pull. Based, albeit loosely, on two Noel Coward plays, this is the story of Vicki Wilmoriska who falls into romance with Nicki Prax, but events conspire against them. She catches Nicki with former squeeze Linda Wayne (the always aloof Gail Patrick), and decides to go into the arms of Hubert Taylor, but just as she is ready to marry Hubert, guess who pops back into her life?Such is the stuff of this by-the-numbers fluff that holds little water or interest in a time when war dramas were the norm and eccentric socialites were dead and buried as Hollywood was concerned. Norma and the cast seem like they belong in the early 30s, not its time, and no one rises above this bad material, effectively teetering Norma's career right over the edge of the abyss, to which she would fall come the release of her next movie HER CARDBOARD LOVER. It just shows what happens when an actress refuses to age gracefully and begin to play parts more appropriate her age (she was forty). She refused to play a mother (odd, considering she played one in THE WOMEN) and was reputedly disinterested in acting altogether, which is probably why she decided to make this forgettable film, but then again, other actresses have ended their careers in worse films than this. Only for die-hard fans of her filmography, and part of a retrospective shown on August 25 on TCM as its salute to her body of work.

Pat-54 In 1936, MGM Producer, Irving Thalberg died, leaving his widow, Norma Shearer, to pick her own scripts. An example of Miss Shearer's lack of good judgment is her appearance in this dud that she chose to do rather than play Kay Miniver in "Mrs. Miniver," which won Greer Garson an Academy Award. Based on Noel Coward's "Tonight at 8:30," critics called this comedy as sparking as "flat champagne." Norma Shearer made only one more film after this and retired from the screen at age 40.