Margaret Lindsay was ubiquitous throughout the 1930s and pretty busy until at least the late 1950s, and therefore taken for granted, but if one watches her in this film and in the HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES, both released in 1940, you will see an actress run damn near the gamut of acting we usually associate with Bette Davis (except that Davis wasn't nearly as good a semi-farceur as was Lindsay). Lindsay played so many B-film love interests, bright and bushy-tailed secretaries, second leads, etc., that one tended to take her for granted. I find her absolutely hilarious in this film, although she is basically doing a kind of Torchy Blane role; her delivery of lines, especially throw-away funny ones, is on a par with anybody's, and her speaking voice is richer than that of most other actresses of the period. But when you see her as this ditzy character, and then go over to the SEVEN GABLES film, the difference is startling. There, she plays a young and innocent 19th century love interest who, over the course of two decades while her lover is in prison for a murder she knows he didn't commit, turns from an eager young maiden into an embittered middle-aged woman, and does things with her speaking voice that are quite astounding. Then you go back to this film and say, "Nah, it can't be the same actress". But it is. She was so very underrated, and I recall James Cagney, in his autobiography, fairly hating her guts, she was so lah-de-dah uppity he claimed. I think maybe he just didn't like her cultured speaking voice and, more likely, her lifestyle (she was supposedly a totally open lesbian at a time when people strove to hide such things). But you'd never know that from either of these films; she is about as feminine as they come, as funny as they come, as ditzy as they come, and (where appropriate) as tragic as they come. This film really has nothing much going for it except its attitude, and the three leads - Lindsay, Ralph Bellamy and Allen Jenkins - are responsible for that attitude. A truly good natured sixty minutes or so, with occasional laugh-out-loud lines, almost always delivered by Lindsay. Even Frank Puglia's police inspector is funny, and I have NEVER seen Frank Puglia being funny before. Joseph Schildkraut must have wondered what he was doing in the same film with these people, except even Joe is (ominously) funny.
Review of Meet the Wildcat
