Call It a Day ** (1937, Olivia de Havilland, Ian Hunter, Anita Louise, Alice Brady, Roland Young, Frieda Inescort, Bonita Granville) – Classic Movie Review 10,093

Olivia de Havilland, just 21, has her first top billing in a movie in director Archie L Mayo’s frivolous comedy Call It a Day (1937), based on British writer Dodie Smith’s cosy 1935 play about a middle-class English family struggling with the romantic effects of spring fever during the course of one single day. Unluckily, the film was a flop.

Dodie Smith’s cosy play about a well-off English family on an ordinary spring day is an odd choice for Warner Bros in 1937. The halting screenplay by Casey Robinson and Mayo’s nervous handling both lack the required zest that might have made it work properly. Yet the fairly good playing disguises the essential dullness and daftness of the project.

Ian Hunter and Frieda Inescort play the husband and wife, Roger and Dorothy Hilton, both of whom are tempted to be unfaithful, he with actress Beatrice Gwynn (Marcia Ralston), she with smoothie Frank Haines (Roland Young).

Meanwhile, the couple’s daughter Catherine ‘Cath’ Hilton has fallen for the handsome married artist hired to paint her portrait, painter Paul Francis (Walter Woolf King), whom she tries to seduce from his wife Ethel (Peggy Wood). Cath is the oldest of the three Hilton children, the others being Martin Hilton (Peter Willes), who starts paying attention to neighbour Joan Collett (Anita Louise) and Ann Hilton (Bonita Granville), who’s fallen in love with love. But the family’s communal would-be fling in spring is just a storm in a tea-cup and a one-day wonder. Time to call it a day, people.

A misfire, it is screwball comedy largely without the comedy, though Roland Young and Walter Woolf King are both very amusing, and, to be fair, there are some amusing lines and situations. The struggling film did not fare well at the box office and did nothing to advance de Havilland’s career.

Also in the cast are Peggy Wood, Marcia Ralston, Walter Woolf King, Peter Willes, Una O’Connor, Beryl Mercer, Elsa Buchanan, Mary Field, Robert Adair, Jack Richardson and Sidney Bracey.

It was Dodie Smith’s most successful play, first staged in 1935 in London’s West End at the Globe Theatre, running for 509 performances. The original cast included Owen Nares, Fay Compton, Austin Trevor, Muriel George, Patricia Hilliard, Valerie Taylor and Marie Lohr. It transferred to Broadway In 1936 and ran for 194 performances at the Morosco Theatre.

Call it a Day is directed by Archie Mayo, runs 90 minutes, is made by Cosmopolitan Productions and Warner Bros, is released by Warner Bros (1937) (US), is written by Casey Robinson, based on Dodie Smith’s play, is shot in black and white by Ernest Haller, is produced by Jack L. Warner (executive producer), Hal B Wallis (executive producer), Henry Blanke (associate producer) and Harry Joe Brown (associate producer), is scored by Heinz Roemheld, with production designs by John Hughes.

RIP Dame Olivia Mary de Havilland DBE (1 July 1916 – 26 July 2020), one of the leading actresses of her time (1935 to 1988), who appeared in 49 feature films.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,093

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