When it comes to the old films, I tend to gravitate toward the romantic comedies. I'm not sure why; maybe it's just that I have a soft spot for budding love. Or maybe it's the short attention span that makes me reluctant to dive too hard into something heavy. Either way, I'm a romantic at heart, and this sort of fluff suits me.
The moral of this movie could be "Don't drink and marry." We begin by witnessing a superannuated teenager (actually somewhere in her early 20s) waltzing home following a night of drunken revelry, and she manages to slur out that she's married a man she just met. To make things worse, she already has a husband she hasn't gotten around to divorcing yet. With the responsible self-sacrifice of an older sibling, her sister undertakes to keep her out of prison by impersonating the fritterheaded baggage and taking up residence as the stranger's wife. To her surprise (but not ours, natch), the new husband turns out to be a fairly nice chap. He's been kind of distant from his two kids (yes, kids!) since his wife died, but there's nothing wrong with him that a good bucket of cold water to the brain stem wouldn't cure. Alas, he also is well-to-do, so his kids naturally figure their new mama is a gold-digger, and set out to get rid of her.
The cast in this one is pretty good, considering that none of them were particularly big names. Sally Eilers is pretty good as the competent-but-overwhelmed "wife," and Neil Hamilton (remember him as Commissioner Gordon?) is the oblivious lug that falls in love with the woman he thinks he married but didn't. The kids are show-stealers to the max: George Ernest as the sort of surly little pissant every parent dreads crossing, and Marcia Mae Jones (who just passed away last fall) as the less histile but equally protective little girl. Jones is so sweet here you'll want to hug her and never let go. Oh, and Joseph Schildkraut is gloriously sleazy as the soon-to-be-ex-husband of the younger sister. (You may remember him as the despicable shop salesman in The Shop Around the Corner or much later as Anne Frank's father.) His accent lends itself perfectly to the creepy role, but I can't understand why they gave him such an un-foreign-sounding name as "Michael Andrews." That's a minor blip, though, in an otherwise believably horrid character.
Lady Behave may be fluffy, but it's not hokey. With relatively few changes, you could recycle the plot into a remake today. My teenagers have little patience with any film older than themselves, and even they liked it. The situations may be dependent on the time period, but the humor isn't.
Remember, kids, if you're going out drinking, leave the marriage license at home!
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