Based on a 1930 Broadway play adapted by Anita Loos ("Gentleman Prefer Blondes") for the screen, this MGM film starts off as a delightful satire of Innocents Abroad with snappy dialogue and memorable comic performances by Alice Brady as the socially-ambitious mid-western housewife who aspires for European culture but only ends up with a trio of bohemian phonies, and Guy Kibbee, perfectly cast as her good-hearted but bumbling husband, who finally has enough of the free-loaders sponging at his rented Antibes villa. Unfortunately, the high-jinxs are pulled down by a vapid and predictable love story featuring Betty Furness and Dennis Morgan, then known as Stanley Morner. Only a year after singing "A Pretty Girl Is Like A Melody" uncredited in The Great Ziegfeld, Morgan, groomed for stardom as MGM's answer to Paramount's Bing Crosby, looks wonderful, croons exquisitely in a tenor voice, but acts stiffly and self-consciously. Brady and Kibbee, however, manage to be both absurd and touching in comic character roles they were to repeat in many a film.
Review of Mama Steps Out
