The Golden Arrow ** (1936, Bette Davis, George Brent, Eugene Pallette, Dick Foran, Carol Hughes, Catherine Doucet, Craig Reynolds, Hobart Cavanaugh, Henry O’Neill, Ivan Lebedeff) – Classic Movie Review 10,095

Director Alfred E Green’s 1936 The Golden Arrow finds Bette Davis cast once again opposite George Brent, this time in a would-be frothy screwball comedy as a restaurant cafeteria cashier hired by a cosmetics firm’s PR people to impersonate an heiress, the New York face cream heiress Daisy Appleby.

Brent plays penniless Florida Star newspaper reporter Johnny Jones, the journalist assigned to interview the heiress to the Appleby Facial Creams fortune.

Daisy persuades Johnny into marrying her in a marriage of convenience so she can keep away fortune hunting suitors while she searches for true love, while he can have time and money to write his novel. But Johnny starts dating oil heiress Hortense Burke-Meyers (Carol Hughes), while the gossip on the grapevine is that heiress Davis is planning to wed count Count Giulliano (Ivan Lebedeff).

Realising that she actually loves Johnny, Daisy tries to win him back by having her brother-in-law Alfred Parker (Earle Foxe) impersonate an old beau to make Johnny jealous, while Hortense informs Johnny that Daisy is not who she seems.

The sluggish, brainless screenplay by Charles Kenyon (adapted from Michael Arlen’s story The Golden Arrow) and an air of contrivance and tiredness over the proceedings hold back even the irrepressible Davis, though not entirely, obviously, and there is still easy-going escapist fun to be found here.

The Golden Arrow is frustratingly minor stuff for Davis in her prime, especially after just winning an Oscar for Dangerous (1935).

It is one of 11 films pairing Davis and Brent at Warner Bros.

Also in the cast are Eugene Pallette, Dick Foran, Carol Hughes, Catherine Doucet, Craig Reynolds, Hobart Cavanaugh, Henry O’Neill, Ivan Lebedeff, G P Huntley Jr, Rafael Storm [Rafael Alcayde], E E Clive, Eddie Acuff, Earle A Foxe, Sarah Edwards, Mary Treen, Eddie Shubert, Edward Keane, Bess Flowers, Selmer Jackson, Don Brodie and Rudolph Anders.

The Golden Arrow is directed by Alfred E Green, runs 68 minutes, is made by First National, is released by Warner Bros, is written by Charles Kenyon, based on Michael Arlen’s story The Golden Arrow, is shot in black and white by Arthur Edeson, is produced by Jack L Warner (executive producer), Hal B. Wallis (executive producer) and Samuel Bischoff, is scored by Heinz Roemheld, W Franke Harling (composer: theme music) and Leo F. Forbstein (conductor: Vitaphone Orchestra), with production designs by Anton Grot.

The story by Michael Arlen was first published in the 14 September 1935 issue of Liberty weekly general-interest magazine.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,095

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