Easy to Love *** (1934, Genevieve Tobin, Adolphe Menjou, Mary Astor, Edward Everett Horton, Guy Kibbee, Patricia Ellis, Hugh Herbert) – Classic Movie Review 9897

Director William Keighley’s 1934 Warner Bros Pre-Code black and white film Easy to Love is an easy-going, skatty romantic comedy, in which a suspicious wife Carol (Genevieve Tobin) pretends that she is having an affair with long-time suitor Eric (Edward Everett Horton) and catches her husband John (Adolphe Menjou) with Carol’s pretty brunette best friend Charlotte (Mary Astor).

Easy to Love is a mundane screwball yarn, based on a play by Thompson Buchanan, and as a movie is no more than a filmed stage play. Yet the stylish acting, confident scripting and pacy handling make it quite palatable – and there is a whole lot of plot in just around an hour of screen time (65 minutes). With Astor, Horton, Guy Kibbee, Patricia Ellis and Hugh Herbert in support, you certainly get your money’s worth.

Director William Keighley married the star Genevieve Tobin four years later on 20 September 1938, and they remained married till his death on 24 June 1984, aged 94. Genevieve Tobin died on 21 July 1995, aged 95.

It is William Keighley’s solo directorial debut. He co-directed two earlier films with Howard Bretherton, The Match King (1932) and Ladies They Talk About (1933). His most famous film is The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), though Warner Bros replaced him half way through filming with Michael Curtiz.

Also in the cast are Paul Kaye, Hobart Cavanaugh, Robert Greig, Harold Waldridge, Leila Bennett, Symone Boniface, William B Davidson and Miki Morita, with Leila Bennett, Virginia Dabney, Ann Hovey, Harold Miller, and Donna Mae Roberts.

Thompson Buchanan’s play As Good as New opened on Broadway with Marjorie Gateson, Otto Kruger and Vivienne Osborne on 3 November 1930 and closed in December 1930 after 56 performances.

The music ‘Easy to Love’ (1933) is written by Sammy Fain and played during the opening credits and often in the score.

Menjou was a leading member of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a group formed to oppose communist influence in Hollywood, whose other members included John Wayne, Barbara Stanwyck and her husband Robert Taylor.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9897

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