Films that are very old might have difficulties in reaching modern audiences if the important element of their plot is based on the laws that were facts of life in their time, but are hard to understand now. One of such old films is The Gay Divorcee, 1936 musical directed by Mark Sandrich, but, thankfully, in this particular case the plot is actually the least thing the audience would care for.
It is an adaptation of Gay Divorce, 1932 Broadway play written by Cole Porter and Dwight Taylor in which Fred Astaire played the main role. He repeats it here, playing famous American dancer Guy Holden. Plot begins in Paris where Guy hangs out with his friend, English barrister Egbert Fitzgerald (played by Edward Everett Horton). Two of them later travel to London and, on the way, Guy stumbles on Mimi (played by Ginger Rogers), beautiful girl he immediately falls in love with. She initially has nothing to do with him and he spends weeks trying to find her all over London. In the meantime, Mimi has hired Egbert to handle her divorce proceedings without knowing that he is Guy’s friend. In order to obtain divorce according to English laws, Egbert must provide evidence of one of the spouses’ adultery. Mimi agrees to be caught in flagrante delicto with someone who pretends to be her lover. Person Egbert hired for the task is Tonetti (played by Erik Rhodes), Italian gigolo who comes to Brightbourne (fictional version of real life Brighton) to spend the night in Mimi’s hotel room. At the same time Guy accompanies Egbert to the same locations and, during the chance encounter, gets mistaken by Mimi for “professional co-respondent” in divorce case. This leads to rather awkward situation, but Mimi gradually begins to fall in love with Guy.
In 1930s word “gay” had quite different meaning than it has today. Hays Office, which began to strictly enforce MPAA Production Code in mainstream Hollywood films, was more troubled with the word “divorce” and insisted that the title of the film gets changed. Gay Divorce thus became The Gay Divorcee under notion that divorce itself could never be anything happy or cheerful, but people participating in it might be. In any case, divorce actually plays very little or no role in the plot, which is rather weak and is nothing more than an excuse for song and dance numbers. There is plenty of light farcical humour in the film, which include classic “meet cute” scene with Guy and Mimi after the beginning, Egbert as anything but shrewd lawyer, Mimi’s forgetful aunt Hortense (played by Alice Brady) and Erik Rhodes (who, like Astaire, repeated the role from Broadway production) using all kinds of ethnic stereotypes in his portrayal of Italian gigolo. The latter was deemed offensive to Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini who had The Gay Divorcee banned in his country. Some of today’s viewers, on the other hand, might be troubled with Guy’s pursuit of Mimi which looks a little bit like stalking.
At the end, the music is the most important factor in The Gay Divorcee, although, ironically producers used almost none of the material from stage production. The only exception is Cole Porter’s standard “Night and Day” used brilliantly in song and dance number featuring Astaire and Rogers in the middle of the film. Some original material for the film involves “Let’s K-nock K-nees” in which young and scantily clad Betty Grable sings somewhat nonsensical lyrics to Egbert, forcing Edward Everett Horton to later reply with his, significantly less impressive vocal skills. The main music attraction is “Continental”, spectacular dance-and-song number written by Herb Madgison and Con Conrad, which, with 17 minutes in length, represents one of the longest in history of musicals and which later won the very first Oscar for Best Original Song. But the crucial element for the success of this film are Astaire and Rogers. Brought together following success of Flying Down to Rio, where they played supporting characters, they star in this film like it is the most natural thing to do, providing great talents in singing, dance and comedy and establishing themselves as one of the most legendary screen couples in history of cinema. Light but extremely entertaining and likeable, The Gay Divorcee can be recommended even to those viewers who aren’t particularly interested in great achievements of Classic Hollywood.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
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