Three Cornered Moon **** (1933, Claudette Colbert, Richard Arlen, Mary Boland, Wallace Ford) – Classic Movie Review 11,361

Three Cornered Moon (1933): ‘There are five kinds of saps on the Remplegar family tree and every branch grows a nut! Just One Big Sappy Family AS NUTTY AS A FRUIT CAKE!’

Director Elliott Nugent’s 1933 comedy Three Cornered Moon is an early but typical Thirties scatterbrained farce, with what became a typical theme of a zany household at odds with the adverse economic climate.

This one is about a crazy, once-rich family who desperately have to look for jobs after they been wiped out financially in the 1929 Stock Market Great Crash.

This too little-known film is consistently amusing and the performances are as engaging as the script by S K Lauren and Ray Harris, based on a play by by the incredibly named Gertrude Tonkonogy. Claudette Colbert is super, as always, as pretty Elizabeth Rimplegar, though she gets stiff competition from Mary Boland as mother, Mrs Nellie Rimplegar.

Richard Arlen plays family friend doctor, Dr Alan Stevens, who rents a room in their house both to to help their finances and to be near Elizabeth. Hardie Albright plays his competitor, Elizabeth’s free-loading writer beau Ronald. The director Elliott Nugent plays Stock Broker (uncredited).

Also in the cast are Wallace Ford, Lyda Roberti, Hardie Albright, Joan Marsh, Tom Brown, William Bakewell, Sam Hardy, Joe Sawyer, Fred Santley, Margaret Armstrong, Charlotte Merriam, John Kelly and Clara Blandick.

It is based on Gertrude Tonkonogy’s play that ran at Broadway’s Cort Theatre from March to May 1933, with the 36 year-old Ruth Gordon as Elizabeth Rimplegar.

Three Cornered Moon is directed by Elliott Nugent, runs 77 minutes, is made and released by Paramount Pictures, is written by S K Lauren and Ray Harris, is shot in black and white by Leon Shamroy, is produced by B P Schulberg and is scored by John Leipold and Ralph Rainger.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,361

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