Since I first saw "The Awful Truth," Irene Dunne has been one of the few performers whose presence in a movie will make me watch it. No matter what.
This one is a real case of no matter what.
(For the record, the others include Jean Harlow, Jean Arthur, and Constance Bennett.)
This is a women's picture, directed at a snail's pace.
In it, Ms. Dunne sports an exceptionally unflattering hair design, which makes her virtually unrecognizable as the star of such classics as the above-mentioned "Awful Truth," Theodora Goes Wild," and "Showboat."
She looks like Edna May Oliver. She looks like Eleanor Roosevelt (my greatest heroine of the past two or three hundred years but hardly a beauty.)
In this poky tale, Dunne actually leaves her child briefly. The child is indeed pudgy and very unappealing but women must have stalked out of theaters at that point.
She and Pat O'Brien are not the most likely of couples but they are meant in the plot not to be. They are certainly more believable than Dunne and Spencer Tracy in unendurable "A Guy Named Joe."
This one is a real case of no matter what.
(For the record, the others include Jean Harlow, Jean Arthur, and Constance Bennett.)
This is a women's picture, directed at a snail's pace.
In it, Ms. Dunne sports an exceptionally unflattering hair design, which makes her virtually unrecognizable as the star of such classics as the above-mentioned "Awful Truth," Theodora Goes Wild," and "Showboat."
She looks like Edna May Oliver. She looks like Eleanor Roosevelt (my greatest heroine of the past two or three hundred years but hardly a beauty.)
In this poky tale, Dunne actually leaves her child briefly. The child is indeed pudgy and very unappealing but women must have stalked out of theaters at that point.
She and Pat O'Brien are not the most likely of couples but they are meant in the plot not to be. They are certainly more believable than Dunne and Spencer Tracy in unendurable "A Guy Named Joe."