User Reviews

This is an odd film. It's a biopic of a real inventor, though in the film we learn nothing about his inventions. Instead, we learn about his family life. There's almost no real plot. Just a series of portraits of three lives -- Hiram Maxim (very nicely portrayed by Don Amece), his wife (Myrna Loy, who also is wonderful here), and their son (the tragic Bobby Driscoll). I wish I could tell you what the plot was...but I can't. It's just a very charming, nicely acted, somewhat lavishly set period piece. There is a bit more humor than would be realistic, but the movie is more about relationships.

I guess what makes this film so appealing is the acting. I always felt that Don Ameche had a very strong and likable screen personality, and that is very evident here. The same can be said of Myrna Loy.

I feel at a loss to describe why you should watch this film...yet I recommend you watch it.

In the mid-late 1800's, a young lady from a farm near Boston decides to move far away and get as far away from pigs as possible. Her destination? A city named Brooklyn. Her goal? To find a rich man, hopefully fall in love with him, and marry him. Her reality? Sorry, maa'm. Ain't gonna happen. Your destiny is to end up with somebody as nutty as you are and live a very unconventional life.

She's Myrna Loy. He's Don Ameche. They share a buggy ride from the carriage station she has just arrived in. He rushes off the buggy to throw rise at some newlyweds he's never met before. Ironically, she is going to the same street he is, and he graciously offers to carry his bag. Also ironically, he happens to live right next door to her cousin, and she interrupts his cousin's wife's tea party where she explains her reasons for moving to the very exclusive Brooklyn neighborhood. Ameche's landlady (Clara Blandick) rushes back and warns him about the social-climbing Loy, so what does Ameche do? He pays a visit on Loy and tells her that if she intends to go after somebody just because they are rich, then he is not her man. Her reaction? Tossing the bouquet of flowers he brought her.

Between wearing a curly wig he's just styled with his new invention (the curling iron) on the balcony for Loy to spot then practically setting Blandick's house on fire with the smoking invention, it is only a matter of time before Ameche and Loy fall in love. She becomes engaged to the prominent Richard Gaines only to find out that he intends to become a hog farmer. Watch as Loy rushes out to reveal her true feelings to Ameche then Gaines' confrontation of the two whom he finds kissing. Period comedy has never been as funny or irreverent, but when you've got comic legends like Ameche and Loy paired together for the only time, what else can you expect? Their marriage is an unconventional one too with an equally unconventional young son (Bobby Driscoll) who is due for a date with the switch when he plants a yarn ball with protruding knitting needles on a visitor's chair. Ameche and Driscoll pick out switches from the tree outside and Ameche strikes fear into the loving mother Loy as he sets to teach Driscoll a lesson which he'll never forget. Punishment with a true moral lesson which goes against "Spare the rod. Spoil the child" and will have you both laughing and possibly crying at the same time.

Then there's the presence of eccentric artist Rhys Williams who is interrupted by every possible interruption as he prepares to paint the portrait of the annoyed Ameche. Pickle-pussed maid Renie Riano offers her two cents, then Driscoll comes in, and finally the family pooch. Poor Williams is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. This documents the episodic nature of the structure of this film, somewhat plot less, but never boring. Each segment provides a lesson as well as laughs, sort of a variation of "Life With Father" as told from the point of view of the couple as newly married. The film's last few minutes take more of a serious turn, but that too has a twist. This is totally enjoyable on every level, a nice obscure comedy about a real life inventor that doesn't profess to be anything close to accuracy, but as fiction, it is a ton of fun.

For the first hour of this film, I couldn't understand the generally unenthusiastic IMDb reviews. It was 60 minutes of a good, well acted, fast-paced boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl story, with a few twists and surprises. Then ... uh oh ... it was as if the film makers discovered, to their horror, that they had wrapped up the plot after the first hour was over, yet had another hour to fill.

So the second hour is filled with a lot of pointless and illogical I Love Lucy-type pranks and pitfalls. There is even one comic scene, with Myrna Loy smoking a cigar, that made me feel that I was watching Lucille Ball herself. The resemblance was uncanny! But they even ran out of those "loony family" ideas, so they wrapped up the movie with a tacked-on, maudlin, sappy, but ultimately upbeat ending.

It's worth watching, though. Myrna Loy is absolutely beautiful, and at the top of her game. It's fun to watch the normally blustery Don Ameche tone himself down a few notches to play a quiet but eccentric inventor. And Bobby Driscoll sure knew how to chew up the scenery, even as a child. The supporting cast was strong. It won't be the most memorable movie experience you've ever had, but it'll be a fun way to spend a couple of hours.

Remember in Ball Of Fire, when Barbara Stanwyck was asking Gary Cooper if he knew what the slang term "I'll get you on the Ameche?" meant? In her explanation, she details how they say that on account of he invented it- Don Ameche played Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, in another movie (forget the name). Well, in this film, So Goes My Love, he plays another inventor.

Perhaps Myrna Loy was a smidge too old for her character of Jane Budden, but you'd never guess it. The hair and makeup department at Universal styled her nicely in this picture- her aging is convincing, even if it is just them changing her hairstyle.

Her character goes to the city as a gold-digger, wanting to find a rich man to marry so she'll never to go back to farming. She meets Don Ameche's inventor (of what), and he initially annoys her, poking fun at her hair with a curling iron he invented and having the fire department come to his house after someone spots smoke coming out of his windows (it turns out to be a false alarm). Jane also finds a rich man to marry, much to her delight, but all this changes when a) she and Hiram (Ameche) fall for each other and b) she finds out that the man she is going to marry plans to farm hogs.

So, she and Ameche marry, and from then on, it turns into a sort of pleasant I Love Lucy before I Love Lucy domestic comedy, as Loy and Ameche start to raise a family. The child actor who plays their son Hiram Percy seems to have taken his acting lessons from Bette Davis is her "Of Human Bondage" mode- he chews scenery like cows chew cud. It's not entirely his fault, as the character he's playing is supposed to be a charming little tyke with a mischievous streak and ends up coming across as annoying and unlikable, but not all of the jokes fall flat.

After a pleasant first hour, the film grinds to a jarring halt and a mess of implausible things happen. Loy tries to get an eccentric French (?) painter to try and paint Ameche's portrait, and she goes to the doctor and finds out that she's having a baby again- okay. So she doesn't look pregnant, but maybe there'll be a time-skip. That afternoon, Hiram Percy is being exceptionally annoying, and he puts a baby cap on the dog, and Myrna gets mad, and they chase the dog around the room, and then Myrna goes into labor?

What? She only just found out that she was pregnant that day! Excuse me? Then they have to tack on a happy-sappy ending where they all think Myrna's going to die in childbirth, and it looks like she might die in childbirth, and the kid thinks it's all his fault...but it's okay. Loy does not die. And the French painter paints a pretty little family portrait. The end. 🤔

Loy and Ameche are good in their respective roles- like I mentioned above, she's been made very attractive by the hair and makeup department, and Ameche was pretty handsome himself, in sort of a dog-like way (I do not mean that offensively). In the first half hour, Loy's character seems overly fickle and a bit snobbish, but once she gets going, she's good. And as was her usual, Loy is best playing someone's wife, and someone's mother. She'll never be a favourite of mine, but I do like her.

Nearly all of the humor stands up well today- oddly, because it is a period picture. Not a lot of contemporary (for that time) references or slang are featured in this film, if any at all, so you won't have to look up any of the terms if you need to. The first thirty minutes are mostly comedy, the next thirty are docile and family-oriented, and the last twenty minutes are sappy and saccharine. It's okay, because it works out to be a pretty good ratio. This film may well be nothing special, especially if you've seen anything else with Myrna Loy, but it's a nice kind-of nothing special.

I'd give the first two thirds of the film a solid eight and the last third a rather paltry four, but I've evened out my rating to a seven, because I was rather amused by the first two thirds.