Helen makes a bet to seduce a man within 3 days in order to get a lead role in a play.Helen makes a bet to seduce a man within 3 days in order to get a lead role in a play.Helen makes a bet to seduce a man within 3 days in order to get a lead role in a play.
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaParamount closed its studio in Astoria, Queens (in New York City) upon the completion of this film on 1 March 1932.
- Quotes
Helen Steele: I want a part in your new play more than anything in the world.
Sydney Parker: Why you've got everything you need. Why should you want to go on the stage?
Helen Steele: I'm bored. I want to do something worthwhile.
Sydney Parker: Well, I'd like to help you but what can I do?
Helen Steele: You haven't decided on anyone for the lead in The Siren...
Sydney Parker: You could no more play the Siren than I could.
Sydney Parker: Oh, now why would it be so impossible?
Sydney Parker: Well, for one thing, you're not a star. Now if your name were on the front page...
Helen Steele: You mean if I murdered my aunt?
Sydney Parker: That's an idea.
Helen Steele: I haven't any aunt. I have got talent and I could play the Siren.
Sydney Parker: You couldn't even understand her.
Helen Steele: Well, why not?
Sydney Parker: Because she's a woman of experience. Full of animal magnetism.
Helen Steele: Oh, that's just another way of saying she's exciting. I could be exciting.
Sydney Parker: Indeed you could. But you're too nice.
Helen Steele: Oh, I'm not nice.
Sydney Parker: You are! You can't away from the hideous fact that you're a thoroughly nice girl.
Helen Steele: Meaning what?
Sydney Parker: Meaning that when you meet a man, as you've just met our friend Craigen here you don't er...
Helen Steele: Oh, I see.
Sydney Parker: I'm glad you do.
Helen Steele: Alright. Suppose I deliberately make Craigen fall in love with me?
Sydney Parker: Weekend flirtations? Too easy.
Helen Steele: No, no, no, no. I mean desperately in love with me.
- ConnectionsVersion of The Misleading Lady (1916)
Neither gold digger nor vamp, Helen Steele is not particularly interested in landing a man. After all, she got both the finances and the fiancé to be set for life. But what a life! Parties, gossip, and insufferable boredom. It is the chance at reinvention that proves irresistible to her.
Finding it difficult to convince a theatrical producer that she is just right for the part of a siren in a new play he is mounting, Helen vows to give this sceptic a real-life demonstration of her seductive powers. To be considered for the role, she accepts the challenge of getting the thoroughly old-fashioned and downright misogynistic Jack Craigen to propose to her within three days of their first encounter. So, Helen's engagement ring changes fingers and the bet is on. Jack, who has just returned from a jungle expedition, turns out to be surprisingly easy preyuntil he discovers, in a rather humiliating manner, what we know from the start: that Helen has neither been forthright nor free.
Can this modern woman be conquered by brute force? Jack is enamoured enough to give it a shot. This is pre-code romance, so pretty much anything goes as Helen is abducted, trapped, stripped and chained. The farce, which also confronts the increasingly terrified young woman with a lunatic on the run (Stuart Erwin), would have been more enjoyable and less disconcerting in its handling of the conquest had it not been approached like a neo- Gothic melodrama, a genre for which director Stuart Walkerthe most "misleading" person in this productionhad a far greater affinity.
In 1935, Colbert's most memorable shrew-taming co-star, Clark Gable, played the role of Jack in a Lux Radio Theatre adaptation. Yet even though The Misleading Lady does not lack sex, sophistication, and subversionthe key ingredients of the later screwball comediesIt Happened One Night it just ain't.
- broadcastellan
- Jan 12, 2006
Details
- Runtime1 hour 10 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1