When You’re in Love *** (1937, Grace Moore, Cary Grant, Aline MacMahon) – Classic Movie Review 7182

Writer-director Robert Riskin’s 1937 black and white romance When You’re In Love stars opera star Grace Moore as Louise Fuller, an Australian diva who weds artist Jimmy Hudson (Cary Grant) for her American visa when they are both stranded in Mexico. She pays him $2,000, which allows him to pay his hotel bill, and she gets her American visa, which allows her to return to New York. And then they are supposed to divorce quietly but of course they fall in love for real.

The Green Card-style script, based on a story by Ethel Hll and Cedric Worth, provides an amusing, tuneful and entertaining old-style romantic comedy musical, purpose built as a vehicle for the two popular stars, with seven songs, two of them by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields (including the showstopper ‘One Song’). Moore also bashes out the fun Cab Calloway number ‘Minnie the Moocher’ with a five-piece band.

Writer Riskin took a risk and directs purposefully too – his only time – and his brother Everett Riskin provides the plush production for Columbia Pictures.

When You’re In Love runs 108 minutes but the TV version is cut to 98 minutes.

Also in the cast are Aline MacMahon, Henry Stephenson, Thomas Mitchell, Catherine Doucet, Emma Dunn, Luis Alberni, Gerald Oliver Smith, George C Pearce, Frank Puglia, Burnett Parker, Marcelle Corday, William Pawley, Arthur Hoyt, Jean De Briac and Otto Fries.

Riskin was the principal writer for most of Frank Capra’s best films.

Louise Brooks was cast in a supporting role but she was fired after angering Columbia Pictures chief Harry Cohn and most of her scenes were deleted. But she can still be glimpsed (uncredited) as a specialty ballerina in the chorus of one of the musical numbers.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7182

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