She's a clown....that Sally Brown!
Tired of living with her two stuffy old maid aunts, 18 year old Sally (Joan Bennett) decides to utilize her inheritance and take a luxury liner over to Paris to hobnob with the upper crust, posing as "Mrs. Stephen Illington", an estranged wife, and taking up with a few gigolos along the way until all of a sudden. "Mr. Stephen Illington" (John Boles) shows up and decides to go along with her hoax to teach her a lesson. By chance, their staterooms are right next to each other, so the romantically inclined Parisian hotel maid and bellboy make sure that their rooms are accessible (only made aware to Bennett when Boles' funny looking pooch visits her in the bathtub) and that all of their needs are met.
As things begin to get romantic between the two (especially after Boles rescues Bennett from one of the rather lascivious gigolos), Bennett sneaks out on him, and in a very funny sequence, a singing Boles is confronted by a beautiful singing voice he assumes is Bennett's, only to be greeted by a enormously large chambermaid on the other side of the door. Back in her hometown with aunts Josephine Hull (of "Arsenic and Old Lace" and "Harvey" fame) and Martha Mattox (deliciously deaf as a post) throwing a party for her, Bennett is introduced to "Mr. Brown" who turns out to be none other than her phony husband, now determined to have a real marriage! Town gossip spreads, with some delightful malapropisms from Ms. Mattox making the last reel of the film quite funny.
Over the past ten years, I have studied quite a bit about the varied career of Joan Bennett, not quite the legend she deserves to be, but certainly worth a second thought thanks to her early ingenue years, her film noir vixen years, the decade of devoted wife and mother roles, and of course, the icing on the cake of her career, her matriarchal role as the sometimes gloomy Elizabeth Stoddard on "Dark Shadows". Bennett's early years range from bland to lightly humorous, and this fortunately, is one of her better early roles, a forgotten light romantic comedy from Fox Studios, with Boles very good as her phony love interest who may become the real thing thanks to her ridiculous hoax. Unbelievable plot? Certainly! But well done in spite of all that? Definitely!
Tired of living with her two stuffy old maid aunts, 18 year old Sally (Joan Bennett) decides to utilize her inheritance and take a luxury liner over to Paris to hobnob with the upper crust, posing as "Mrs. Stephen Illington", an estranged wife, and taking up with a few gigolos along the way until all of a sudden. "Mr. Stephen Illington" (John Boles) shows up and decides to go along with her hoax to teach her a lesson. By chance, their staterooms are right next to each other, so the romantically inclined Parisian hotel maid and bellboy make sure that their rooms are accessible (only made aware to Bennett when Boles' funny looking pooch visits her in the bathtub) and that all of their needs are met.
As things begin to get romantic between the two (especially after Boles rescues Bennett from one of the rather lascivious gigolos), Bennett sneaks out on him, and in a very funny sequence, a singing Boles is confronted by a beautiful singing voice he assumes is Bennett's, only to be greeted by a enormously large chambermaid on the other side of the door. Back in her hometown with aunts Josephine Hull (of "Arsenic and Old Lace" and "Harvey" fame) and Martha Mattox (deliciously deaf as a post) throwing a party for her, Bennett is introduced to "Mr. Brown" who turns out to be none other than her phony husband, now determined to have a real marriage! Town gossip spreads, with some delightful malapropisms from Ms. Mattox making the last reel of the film quite funny.
Over the past ten years, I have studied quite a bit about the varied career of Joan Bennett, not quite the legend she deserves to be, but certainly worth a second thought thanks to her early ingenue years, her film noir vixen years, the decade of devoted wife and mother roles, and of course, the icing on the cake of her career, her matriarchal role as the sometimes gloomy Elizabeth Stoddard on "Dark Shadows". Bennett's early years range from bland to lightly humorous, and this fortunately, is one of her better early roles, a forgotten light romantic comedy from Fox Studios, with Boles very good as her phony love interest who may become the real thing thanks to her ridiculous hoax. Unbelievable plot? Certainly! But well done in spite of all that? Definitely!