Someone recently remarked that I always find some sort of "message" in movies, which is a filthy lie.
The message behind this story of flirtation, misinterpretation, unrequited love, and a spoiled girl's marriage to the rich and unutterably handsome Cary Grant is that gossip is always treated as a bad thing. Old ladies whispering behind curtains, and all that. It's not true that gossip is always a bad thing. It's a means of social control. In the small, stable communities of yesteryear, gossip was a far more effective instrument of social control than the police ever were. Everybody watches everybody else, especially the Argus-eyed children. You can't get away with a damned thing. If you try, you get caught.
The Old Order Amish have brought this form of punishment to a state of near perfection. Ever hear of an Old Order Amish cop? No. They don't need any. The miscreant is simply "shunned", as would be a cheater at West Point.
In this case, a cute but flirtatious Nancy Carroll works at a bank. (This is in the depths of the depression.) All the boys try to date her, but she's a lady and given to teasing and bamboozling the local goons. One of them is the cocky Ed Woods; you might remember him as Jimmy Cagney's buddy in "Public Enemy."
The youngsters from the bank, the soda shop, and other institutions of the young are invited to a party at the house of the immensely rich Cary Grant, who shows an interest in Carroll, and she him. But Woods is her date and he takes her for a rowboat ride and is all over her like an aardvark in heat until prim Carroll is forced to abandon the boat and walk around the lake to the nearest house, which is Grant's mansion. He's polite, cheerful but thoughtful, and sends her home in his car.
But that rotten Edward Woods begins spreading the rumor that she spent the whole NIGHT at Grant's palace, and I guess we all know what THAT means. Nobody will talk to her, her mother scolds her, her friends desert her, and she's fired from her job at the bank. What's worst, the man who has loved her from afar, as they say, for seven years, has just returned from college That would be Randolph Scott, a geologist, and the rumor leaves him shaken and angry.
The ending implodes. Carroll runs away, back to Grant's estate, and actually DOES spend hours alone with him. I dread to think what went on. Then she and Grant run away together in Grant's glass and enamel circus wagon. It's unfair. Scott has shown himself to be a nice guy, morally upright and devoted to Carroll. Yet she throws her licentiousness in his face after he's come to apologize, and without giving him a chance to speak, she takes off.
The corollary message is this: Girls, always marry a terribly rich man who looks exactly like Cary Grant and forget about all that baloney about "faithfulness" and "love." After you're married for a proper period, you can divorce the rich guy and clean his clock.
The message behind this story of flirtation, misinterpretation, unrequited love, and a spoiled girl's marriage to the rich and unutterably handsome Cary Grant is that gossip is always treated as a bad thing. Old ladies whispering behind curtains, and all that. It's not true that gossip is always a bad thing. It's a means of social control. In the small, stable communities of yesteryear, gossip was a far more effective instrument of social control than the police ever were. Everybody watches everybody else, especially the Argus-eyed children. You can't get away with a damned thing. If you try, you get caught.
The Old Order Amish have brought this form of punishment to a state of near perfection. Ever hear of an Old Order Amish cop? No. They don't need any. The miscreant is simply "shunned", as would be a cheater at West Point.
In this case, a cute but flirtatious Nancy Carroll works at a bank. (This is in the depths of the depression.) All the boys try to date her, but she's a lady and given to teasing and bamboozling the local goons. One of them is the cocky Ed Woods; you might remember him as Jimmy Cagney's buddy in "Public Enemy."
The youngsters from the bank, the soda shop, and other institutions of the young are invited to a party at the house of the immensely rich Cary Grant, who shows an interest in Carroll, and she him. But Woods is her date and he takes her for a rowboat ride and is all over her like an aardvark in heat until prim Carroll is forced to abandon the boat and walk around the lake to the nearest house, which is Grant's mansion. He's polite, cheerful but thoughtful, and sends her home in his car.
But that rotten Edward Woods begins spreading the rumor that she spent the whole NIGHT at Grant's palace, and I guess we all know what THAT means. Nobody will talk to her, her mother scolds her, her friends desert her, and she's fired from her job at the bank. What's worst, the man who has loved her from afar, as they say, for seven years, has just returned from college That would be Randolph Scott, a geologist, and the rumor leaves him shaken and angry.
The ending implodes. Carroll runs away, back to Grant's estate, and actually DOES spend hours alone with him. I dread to think what went on. Then she and Grant run away together in Grant's glass and enamel circus wagon. It's unfair. Scott has shown himself to be a nice guy, morally upright and devoted to Carroll. Yet she throws her licentiousness in his face after he's come to apologize, and without giving him a chance to speak, she takes off.
The corollary message is this: Girls, always marry a terribly rich man who looks exactly like Cary Grant and forget about all that baloney about "faithfulness" and "love." After you're married for a proper period, you can divorce the rich guy and clean his clock.