Private Affairs (1940) Poster

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6/10
Forgotten screwball comedy, like TRADING PLACES still funny after all these years!
larry41onEbay17 January 2004
Roland Young and Hugh Herbert make an amusing comedy team in this Universal classic `B' film. With humorous antics of the main characters your laughter will keep you chuckling along a well weaved wacky plot, which has Herbert as a cab driver and Young as a chalkboard operator on Wall Street.

Disowned by his wealthy family, Amos Bullerton (Young) ekes out a living as a chalk-board proprietor in a Wall Street brokerage. With the help of his erstwhile friend, cab-driver Angus McPherson (Herbert), Bullerton tries to smooth the path of romance for his daughter Jane (Nancy Kelly). Though engaged to snobbish Herbert Stanley (G. P. Huntley Jr.), Jane is really in love with Jimmy Nolan (Robert Cummings) who like Bullerton himself is on the outs with his well-to-do family. Given its Wall Street background, there's a stock-manipulation scheme at the heart of Young manages to straighten out his daughter's romances as well as prevent a gang of crooks from turning the stock market upside-down. Herbert plays a more straight-comedy role and dispenses with most of his usual slapstick antics. Private Affairs, which in its own way is as intricately funny as the Bull-and-Bear shenanigans in 1982's Trading Places.
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7/10
Make it 7.5!
JohnHowardReid30 June 2015
Warning: Spoilers
Halfway through filming, associate producer Glenn Tryon must have realized that the screenplay was not all that amusing, so he called in either Leonard Spigelgass or Charles Grayson to jazz up the other's script. For suddenly, without any warning at all, the actors start sending up the dialogue. Admittedly, this is done in a somewhat offhand manner. In fact, I didn't even notice some of the clichés until Robert Cummings drew attention to them on screen. I also applaud the way director Albert S. Rogell has toned down the usually irrepressible Hugh Herbert, who actually comes over as quite an acceptable comedian when he is not over-acting and attempting to steal everyone else's lines. The rest of the players are similarly top-drawer, and after that slow First Act, it all comes to quite an amusing climax. Production values are top-drawer, and I would like to especially applaud Gladys Parker's costumes for Nancy Kelly.
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