Merrily We Go to Hell [Merrily We Go to ____] *** (1932, Sylvia Sidney, Fredric March, Adrianne Allen, Skeets Gallagher, Cary Grant) – Classic Movie Review 11,279

Director Dorothy Arzner’s 1932 Paramount Pictures black and white pre-Code era comedy drama Merrily We Go To Hell stars Sylvia Sidney, Fredric March, Adrianne Allen, Skeets Gallagher, Florence Burton, Esther Howard, Kent Taylor and Cary Grant.

Socialite heiress Joan Prentice (Sidney) and alcoholic Chicago reporter and playwright Jerry Corbett (March) find their marriage going to hell over his drinking and partying. Joan begins an affair with another man, Charlie Baxter (Cary Grant), when she discovers Jerry’s adultery with his former actress girlfriend Claire Hempstead (Adrianne Allen). Jerry sells a play and he and Joan go to New York to watch the production, starring Claire.

Director Arzner does her best with an undernourished script, saved by some witty dialogue and the stars’ sterling work under difficult circumstances, with Sylvia suffering and March battling an unsympathetic one-note intoxicated character role. Cary Grant enjoys his early co-starring cameo role as the stage play leading man.

[Spoiler alert] Despite its sensationalist title, it is quite moralistic, with its anti-drink, pro-fidelity and marriage messages and its cosy happy ending, though there is a feisty, independent heroine for Sidney to play, along with a rare female director at the helm.

Edwin Justin Mayer’s screenplay is based on Cleo Lucas’s novel, I Jerry, Take Thee, Joan.

The British censor wouldn’t allow the last word of the title so it was replaced with a dash! [Merrily We Go to ____]. The title is a line March’s character says while making a toast but many newspapers refused to publicise the film because of its racy title. The Los Angeles Times, for example, refused to print the title of the film in its advertisements but did print the title in its review.

Also in the cast are Richard ‘Skeets’ Gallagher as Buck, George Irving as Mr Prentice, Esther Howard as Vi, Florence Britton as Charlcie, Charles Coleman as Richard Damery, Kent Taylor as Greg Boleslavsky, Robert Greig as Baritone Bartender, Theresa Harris as Bathroom Attendant at Nightclub, Leonard Carey, Milla Davenport, Neal Dodd, Mildred Boyd, Gordon Westcott, Jay Eaton, Pat Somerset, LeRoy Mason, Dennis O’Keefe, Tom Ricketts, Edwin Maxwell, Bill Elliott, and Ernie S Adams.

Runtime: 83 minutes.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,279

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