Reeling Backward: "Libeled Lady" (1936)

A classic screwball comedy featuring a rare love quadrangle, "Libeled Lady" isn't so much about newspapers as presenting a fast-paced, amusing farce for Depression-era audiences.

I sought out this film thinking it was set against the backdrop of frenetic newsrooms a la "His Girl Friday." But the truth is the journalism angle is just a jumping-off point for a whole lot of verbal sparring and pitching of woo. Still, I didn't come away disappointed.

It was the fifth of 14 screen pairings between Myrna Loy and William Powell, most famously for the "Thin Man" films. It was also Powell's second appearance with Jean Harlow, who was his real-life lady love at the time. The following year was a tragic one for the couple, as Harlow died unexpectedly at just 26, while Powell was diagnosed with cancer which, along with his grief for Harlow, resulted in a one-year absence from filmmaking.

His and costar Spencer Tracy's characters quite literally swap wives during the movie, and something like that occurred behind the scenes, too. Harlow wanted to play Powell's romantic counterpart so she could canoodle onscreen with her beau. But the studio, eager for another popular Powell/Loy match, overruled Harlow and stuck her with Tracy who, if rumors are true, was romancing Loy throughout the shoot.

Coupled with the serpentine plot of "Libeled Lady," you practically need a navigation table to plot all the real and fictional love lines.

If there was a sure-fire formula to please Depression audiences, it was movies about rich people falling in and out of love. Loy plays the titular character, Connie Allenbury, international playgirl daughter of tycoon James Allenbury (Walter Connolly). The story opens with The New York Evening Star, edited by Warren Haggerty (Tracy), accidentally running an item accusing Connie of being a husband-stealer.

They retract the story immediately but a few errant newspapers make it to the street, leading Connie to launch a vindictive $5 million slam-dunk libel lawsuit that will surely doom the rag and leave its 500 employees jobless. Among them Warren, who puts off his marriage to Gladys Benton (Harlow) to deal with the blowback. This is not the first time Warren has run from the altar, placing the paper above romance, and Gladys has had her fill.

If you're thinking this is one of those quintessential tales where newspapermen and -women courageously fight for truth and justice -- that's some other movie. Here Warren and his crew immediately launch a scheme to entrap Connie in an actual affair with a married man, splash it across the front page and make her drop the suit.

(That wouldn't actually change the fact the Star libeled Connie, but the rat-a-tat-tat screenplay -- by Maurine Dallas Watkins, Howard Emmett Rogers and George Oppenheimer -- never thinks more than a step or two ahead.)

Warren enlists Bill Chandler (Powell), a ladies' man who used to work for him, to pull off the ruse. To make it legal, Bill gets a quickie marriage to Gladys, much to the latter's consternation, and they set themselves up in the honeymoon suite of a swank hotel. Soon enough, Gladys realizes that Bill is much more charming and attentive than Warren, and thinks about trading in her wayward fiance for her fake husband.

For his part, Bill extracts a contract for $50,000 -- almost $900k in today's dollars -- to save Warren's neck. Did I mention that most of the characters in this story are thoroughly unlikable? Strangely enough, between the foursome's plotting, back-stabbing and pettiness, it's actually Old Man Allenbury who comes off looking the most pure-hearted of the lot.

At first, Connie is thoroughly resistant to Bill's charm, as they sail on the Queen Anne from London to New York. She sees him as just another upjumped suitor looking for a payday from a famously rich family. Bill later tries to ingratiate himself with her father by studying up on his favorite pastime, angling for trout, leading to some amusing physical comedy at a stream.

After a late-night swim and some sharing of personal stories, Connie does fall for Bill, and vice-versa. He tries to convince her to drop the lawsuit without having to resort to Warren's plan to humiliate her. Meanwhile, Gladys' (repeatedly foiled) plan to barge in as the scorned wife takes on all-too-real note as she finds herself genuinely jealous.

Both Tracy Powell cut sharp figures in the double-breasted suits popular in 1930s big cities. Neither actor is what you'd call classically handsome, with Powell coming across as a weak-chinned dandy and Tracy as a striving peasant type.

For that matter, I admit I've never grasped the physical appeal of Harlow or Loy, the blonde and brunette yin and yang of the movie, with the former as the cheap, pushy broad and the latter playing the snooty heiress. Both had bob haircuts and those ferociously plucked eyebrows of the era that rendered them looking perpetually astonished.

(I freely admit I prefer the more hirsute screen damsels of the '40s. Thank God for Rita Hayworth's girly hair flips and Lauren Bacall's brooding brows.)

Directed by journeyman Jack Conway, who made pictures from the 1910s to the late '40s, "Libeled Lady" is a straightforward comedy that isn't about anything or than having a little fun. It's a refreshing piece of pure entertainment from a time when people very much needed such things.

Reeling Backward: "How to Marry a Millionaire" (1953)

I can't quite decide if "How to Marry a Millionaire" is a daringly progressive film or a horribly anachronistic throwback. Probably one for 1953, and another for 2016.

It's silly to judge the social politics of a 60-odd-year-old movie by today's standards. Back then as women who worked in factories during World War II were pushed back into the home, "marrying well" was not a topic people shied away from talking about openly.

For men, that meant finding a spouse who was pretty, kind and a good mother. For women, it meant marrying a stable guy with a good income.

The problem comes when you put these foremost qualities on a scale, with the assumption that more must be better. If a well-to-do man of prospects is desirable, then why not a fabulously rich fellow? Why settle for next-door beauty when you can get Marilyn Monroe?

Speaking of Monroe, "Millionaire" more or less marked her ascension from breakout star to screen icon. Betty Grable was billed first in the movie, though the blonde WWII pinup girl was closing in on 40 and her legendary duels with the studios meant her career was crumbling. Monroe actually took over her part in "Gentleman Prefer Blondes," which came out a few months earlier and made her a star.

(Though Grable received top billing in the credits, Monroe was usually listed first on the posters and advertising.)

Grable's screen persona was actually somewhat similar to Monroe's, the bubble-headed blonde with hidden qualities beyond a gorgeous face. Their characters in "Millionaire" are rather the same, too; both are sweet and rather dim. They play man-hungry Loco Dempsey (Grable) and nearsighted Pola Debevoise (Monroe), who's constantly bumping into things because she fears to wear her glasses in public.

"Men aren't attentive to girls who wear glasses," Pola says, echoing Dorothy Parker and setting up an inevitable romance with a four-eyed suitor (David Wayne) who appreciates her spectacles.

The funny thing is, the movie really belongs to Lauren Bacall. She plays Schatze Page, the smartest and most outgoing of the trio. She hatches the idea for the girls, all fashion models, to pool their resources and rent out a New York City penthouse as a man-trap for rich men. She's calculating and rather mercenary, but in the end the frozen cockles of her heart melt for a guy she assumes is a gas station jockey (Cameron Mitchell), but is actually worth $200 million.

That's $1.8 billion in today's dollars, folks. Dude even has a city named after his family.

I was pleasantly surprised by the character of J.D. Hanley, a 56-year-old widower played with charm and class by William Powell. He becomes Schatze's main target, but he puts her off due to their age difference. Hanley later changes his mind and agrees to marry her, though she undergoes her own change of heart at the altar.

Hanley is gracious and considerate throughout, even when Schatze breaks his heart. That's the beauty of getting old, he says: you learn how to deal with disappointment.

Probably the most cringe-worthy scene in the movie is when Schatze dreams of how her life will be after she marries Hanley, as she leans over a display of jewelry and points, telling the salesman she would like "That... and that... and that... and that and that and that..." My modern sensibilities recoil at the notion of a woman seeing a man as simply a path to comfort and baubles.

But eventually Schatze evolves from gold-digger to kind heart.

I should point out that models of this era were not the high-paid celebrities we know today. In one of the film's signature scenes, a whole gaggle of women, including our trio, try on clothes and parade around for a client at a snooty retail store, like living, breathing mannequins. (Though how this is less degrading than doing the same thing on a runway for a hundred people escapes me.)

Palo initially falls for a rich Arab oilman, but he turns out to be a conman. She has several unwitting conversations with the man who owns their apartment, who's on the lam with IRS troubles -- he blames them on a crooked accountant -- and sneaks in to retrieve papers from a hidden safe. She doesn't know who he is and assumes it's Hanley because of her poor vision.

They later bump into each other on a plane and share love at first sight -- fuzzy first sight, to be sure, until she dons her glasses.

Loco's story is the most convoluted, and least interesting. She agrees to go up to a lodge in Maine with a crabby millionaire named Brewster (Fred Clark), thinking a "lodge" means a large gathering of men. It actually means his cozy cabin, and she's mortified at the implication.

But then she catches sick and falls into the arms of Eben (Rory Calhoun), a good-looking local bumpkin. She assumes he's rich when he shows her the mountain range and calls it "his" as far as the eye can see, but he's actually a forest ranger talking about his scope of responsibilities. Loco is disappointed when she finds out the truth, and he's disappointed that she's disappointed, but they patch things up in the end.

So when it all shakes out, two of the three women actually do marry millionaires, though Schatze didn't know it at the time and the other fortune is currently in government hock.

It's a beautiful film to look at, with vivid colors and striking costumes (which earned an Oscar nomination.) It was actually the very first film shot in CinemaScope, though "The Robe" beat it to the box office by a few months. Journeyman director Jean Negulesco makes very good use of the widescreen format to show off New York's locales.
Nunnally Johnson produced and wrote the script, which was actually based on two different stage plays, "Loco" and "The Greeks Had a Word For It."

Though it may seem terribly outdated, "How to Marry a Millionaire" is enjoyable as an artifact of a bygone era and (mostly) outgrown attitudes.