Con artists Lily (Miriam Hopkins) and Gaston (Herbert Marshall) cross paths and fall in love. They team up to swindle air-head perfume heiress Madame Colet (Kay Francis), but things become shaky when Gaston crosses paths with a previous mark and starts to get a little too close to his current one.
Miriam Hopkins was TCM’s star of the month, and the least I could do would be to see one of her films. I knew nothing about her but discovered she was the hottie in the good version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Here she was quite quirky and adorable. Herbert Marshall and Kay Francis too.
Marshall had but one leg, lost in the Great War, and you wouldn’t know it. They used a stand-in when he needed to run up stairs. Clever and charming, he and his growing relationship with Madame Colet is the primary focus of the film. Miriam’s Lily has a secondary but still important role in the scam. It was probably Kay’s performance that stood out the most for me. Between the three actors, they had fourteen spouses. Hollywood, am I right?
Veteran character actors Edward Everett Horton and Charles Ruggles play as an unlikely comedy team, two men vying unsuccessfully for Colet’s affection. Friends, but not really. They both have appeared in a ton of films and always stand out.
Funny, charming, and clever, Ernst Lubitsch lives up to his reputation. AMRU 3.5.
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