Review of Double Wedding (1937) by Jeff Z — 09 Apr 2011

More a Cynic Than a Bohemian.

This seems to be a continuation of the theme of "some people just need their lives managed for them." Oh, no one here will self-destruct in quite the spectacular fashion of Bing Crosby in [i]The Country Girl[/i], but at least one character in this movie leaves me wondering how he survived before he ended up in another character's orbit and what he'll do if he's ever out of it. He's just going to be lost. The world is not kind to some people, and this guy simply doesn't have the gumption needed to live in the real world. He still doesn't, at the end of the story, have anything like the coping skills he's going to need, especially if the planned trip to Hollywood is made. Still, he's probably not going to hurt himself or anyone else. I also rather suspect that the character he's running off to Hollywood with will blossom out there in ways the other characters wouldn't expect.

William Powell and Myrna Loy are together again as Charles Lodge and Margit Agnew. She is probably upper middle class, a businesswoman with her own clothes shop and a radio show about fashion. And a younger sister, Irene (Florence Rice). Irene is engaged to Waldo Beaver (John Beal), because their mother picked him out for Irene. Margit has decided that the time has come for them to get married; they've been engaged for four years. Irene, on the other hand, wants to run off to Hollywood and become an actress. She's encouraged in this by Charlie, an artistic sort himself who lives out of a trailer because it's more interesting than a house. Margit distrusts him as soon as she finds out he exists, and she goes to tell him to leave her sister alone. Especially because Irene decides she's not going to marry Waldo, because she's in love with Charlie. Only Charlie knows she isn't, and he knows he's in love with Margit. He is not the only person who knows this, but he is the only person who both knows it and is in a position to do anything about it.

This being a William Powell and Myrna Loy movie, there's no suspense about whether they'll get together or not. There is merely the anticipation of how it's going to happen. There are various stumbling-blocks over the course of the movie, but even if the poster didn't show them together, they're William Powell and Myrna Loy. It's always kind of odd to me when they're in movies wherein they're romantically involved with other people. I mean, I know they weren't ever remotely romantically involved in real life, but they just fit so well onscreen. It's kind of helped here by the fact that I don't think either character is really taking life seriously. He's got his plan for how to sort the sisters out, which is the sort of thing which belongs on a wacky '70s sitcom, but it doesn't really matter. It's just a cheap way to find a path through the subplots to the resolution. I'm not even sure there's a plot. Just two characters on their way to the end.

I will say, though, that Charlie doesn't feel bohemian, and that's because he's played by William Powell. It isn't that he was well over forty at the time. It's possible to be older and bohemian at the same time. It's also true that the moustache could be seen as the kind of thing you got at the time. It isn't even that he's pretty clean, even when he claims he's dirty. It's that he doesn't seem to be actually interested in the lifestyle he talks up. It's hard to believe he left his first wife, Claire (Katharine Alexander), out of any kind of desire to live a life on the road instead of one of comfort. On the other hand, it's also hard to believe that she ever slept under the stars in Burma. So. Still, he supposedly wrote a screenplay which might just launch Irene to stardom, assuming her costar is someone less wooden than Waldo. He's also supposedly painting a portrait of Margit which will be his masterpiece. And he's able to make a decent living selling paintings. And I don't buy it.

Still, there are moments where it doesn't matter that Charlie seems as much an itinerant artist as Godfrey did a Forgotten Man in [i]My Man Godfrey[/i]. He knows that Irene and Waldo may have gotten together because her family decided it was right for both of them, but they're still better off with each other than either would be with anyone else. He knows what it will take to make everyone concerned happy, though I do find myself wondering exactly how happy he and Margit are going to be after their honeymoon is over. Really, what's happened here is that we've hit a stopping place in the story, not an ending. Waldo is still going to have his inherent doormat nature once he sobers up. Margit is not going to be much inclined toward roaming the country in a tiny, battered trailer, but Charlie isn't going to want to move in with Margit and her servants. We're never going to see how they learn to compromise, and we just take it for granted that they will. But Charlie already left one wife.