The Next Time We Love ***(1936, Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Ray Milland) – Classic Movie Review 7947

Margaret Sullavan stars in director Edward H Griffith’s 1936 romance drama The Next Time We Love [Next Time We Live in GB] as an actress called Cicely Hunt Tyler who has to decide between her career as a stage star and her husband Christopher ‘Chris’ Tyler (James Stewart), who is sent overseas to Rome as a foreign correspondent.

Although Sullavan receives top billing, it is Stewart’s early role as her eager-beaver news-reporter husband that most holds the attention in this well-played, sympathetic if sentimental romantic tearjerker, based on the story Say Goodbye Again by Ursula Parrott.

Stewart and Sullavan, though, make a very well-paired team and give attractive performances. Ray Milland also acquits himself honourably as Chris’s best friend Tommy Abbott, a rich man in love with Sullavan, and introduces her to a producer, who promptly hires her.

Also in the cast are Grant Mitchell, Robert McWade, Anna Demetrio, Ronnie Cosbie, Florence Roberts, Christian Rub, Charles Fallon and Nat Carr.

The Next Time We Love [Next Time We Live in GB] is directed by Edward H Griffith, runs 87 minutes, is made and released by Universal, is written by Melville Baker and Preston Sturges, based on the story Say Goodbye Again by Ursula Parrott, is shot in black and white by Joseph Valentine, is produced by Paul Kohner, is scored by Franz Waxman and is designed by Charles D Hall.

The two stars proved popular together and re-teamed for The Shopworn Angel (1938) and The Shop Around the Corner (1940).

Forgotten star Margaret Sullavan (1909–1960) made only 16 films between 1933 and 1943, including The Good Fairy (1935), Three Comrades (1938), The Shopworn Angel (1938) ), The Shop Around the Corner (1940) and Back Street (1941), with one final movie in 1950, No Sad Songs for Me. Her Christmas Day marriage in 1931 to Henry Fonda lasted only 15 months. He described her as ‘cream and sugar on a dish of hot ashes’.

 © Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7947

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