When Ladies Meet **** (1933, Ann Harding, Robert Montgomery, Myrna Loy, Alice Brady, Frank Morgan) – Classic Movie Review 7505

Director Harry Beaumont’s crackling 1933 MGM classic romantic comedy drama When Ladies Meet is the first of two film versions of Rachel Crothers’s sophisticated 1932 play, smartly shot in black and white by Ray June with stylish Oscar-nominated art direction by Cedric Gibbons. Arguably, it is the better of the two versions, though both are most enjoyable.

Myrna Loy stars as writer Mary Howard who falls for married publisher Rogers Woodruff (Frank Morgan) but her loving friend Jimmie Lee (Robert Montgomery) wants her for himself and then, to try to break them up, introduces her to Rogers Woodruff’s wife Clare (Ann Harding) without telling Mary who she is.

When Ladies Meet is stagey and talky, but it is still fast paced and very enjoyable. There is sharp writing from John Meehan and Leon Gordon, adapting Crothers’s play, and there are even sharper performances, particularly from Alice Brady and Morgan as the sassy society matron Bridgie [Bridget] Drake and the philandering old Rogers Woodruff, who even tend to upstage the three excellent principals.

Also in the cast are Martin Burton as Walter, Luis Alberni as Pierre, David Newell as Freddie, and Sterling Holloway as Jerome the caddy.

It was remade again as When Ladies Meet by MGM in 1941, with Joan Crawford, Robert Taylor, Greer Garson, Herbert Marshall and Spring Byington.

Cedric Gibbons was also nominated for the Art Direction Academy Award for When Ladies Meet (1941).

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7505

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