Now Playing: "Private Lives" (1931)

As fair warning, spoilers may lay ahead!

Private Lives is one of those Pre-Code films that is often neglected and overlooked, which is a shame.  It defines so much of what Pre-Codes stand for and it absolutely would never be made, at least not in its entirety, after the Hays Code went into effect.

Based on a Noel Coward play, Irving Thalberg - - the film's producer and husband of Norma Shearer - - thought a movie adaptation would be good for MGM and the lead role would suit nicely for his wife.  He sent a camera crew to New York to film the first act of the play (starring Coward and Gertrude Lawrence) so that the cast could see the excellent timing needed for laughs.

Unlucky newlywed #1

Norma was indeed cast and was joined by Robert Montgomery in the lead roles. Shearer and Montgomery had first appeared together in 1929's Their Own Desire. While the film didn't set the world on fire (although it did score Shearer an Academy Award nomination; she lost to herself in The Divorcee), the studio liked the pairing well enough to cast both in The Divorcee and Strangers May Kiss.  Although Montgomery played a supporting role to Shearer in both films, they projected a strong and undeniable chemistry.

In Private Lives, they played former spouses who find themselves remarried to others and at the same Swiss hotel, with new spouses and on their respective honeymoons.  So far, it sounds very much like the plot you'd find in one of the screwball comedies that would become so popular in the mid to late thirties.  Private Lives veers, and veers a lot, from the screwball tract though.

Unlucky newlywed #2

First and foremost is that both Amanda (Shearer) and Elyot (Montgomery), upon meeting each other at the hotel, exchange a few barbs before realizing the flame is still there.  They go in for a passionate kiss and then elect to run off together, abandoning their new marriages.  They also choose not to inform their new spouses.  And run off they do. Although we do see them sharing a room and bed with others, it's not long before Amanda and Elyot are on their own and shacked up in a room with Elyot saying "You know you adore being made love to," to Amanda.  Racy stuff for the time, especially given that both Amanda are Elyot are married to others.

Secondly, Amanda and Elyot both admit to being physically abusive with the other. Amanda tells her husband Victor that yes, Elyot struck her but she hit him back and broke four gramophone records over his head. Elyot admits to having struck Amanda but rather than apologizing, he simply looks sheepish; he also says that certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs.

First it's love 

It's crystal clear that they have a severely dysfunctional and abusive relationship.  Where's a good therapist when you need one?  As expected, they get into it once they are alone together - - Amanda breaks a record over Elyot's head and he slaps her, leading her to scream like mad and throw herself into the sofa and kick her feet. They call each other a "pig," a "bully," a "cad," a "slattern," a "fishwife."  Like I said, after the summer of 1934, you would never see the likes of Private Lives.  Amanda runs off to the bedroom, screaming like a banshee, and Elyot ends up sleeping in a chair.  When morning breaks, we see the damage done to the room - - dawn isn't the only thing that's broken. Romeo and Juliet, these two aren't.

Then it's destruction

My first viewing of Private Lives, I thoroughly disliked the film.  I found both Amanda and Elyot unlikable, a realization that pained me greatly because I adore Shearer and Montgomery.  This is a different role for Shearer; she must have been given a lot of space by director Sidney Franklin because she goes for the scenery like a rabid dog in some scenes. She is normally more subtle and less hammy; if you don't believe me, watch the scene in the hotel room she and Elyot are in, just prior to their fight, when she applies her lipstick.


However, TCM being what it is and my stubborn streak being what it is, I gave the film another chance and upon my second viewing (and those thereafter), I found a certain charm to the movie.  The chemistry between the two leads truly sells it but looking at it as a comedy, a pre-screwball comedy before there was such a thing, shines a new and improved light on it.

Both Reginald Denny, as Amanda's jilted husband Victor and Una Merkel as Elyot's jilted wife Sibyl are perfectly cast in their parts.  Sure, Sibyl's a whiny thing but she's meant to be; the polar opposite of the cool and ready to brawl Amanda, Merkel delivers.


Of course we know from the start that neither Victor and Amanda nor Elyot and Sibyl are right for one another (mainly because Shearer and Montgomery are the stars) but the indicators start at their respective weddings.  Sibyl, in her formal church wedding, looks absolutely terrified.  Victor, in his less formal wedding at the French justice of the peace, is annoyed that children are making a ruckus, while Amanda laughs it off.   In their honeymoon suites, Victor is shocked and embarrassed to find Amanda in her lingerie at the dressing table while Sibyl needs constant kisses and reassurances that Elyot loves her.  Both of them bring up their new spouse's former partner ad nauseum.  Sibyl even asks Elyot if Amanda is prettier than she and Elyot tells Sibyl that Amanda is!   All this is within the first fifteen or so minutes of the movie.

Awkward . . . 

My favorite scene, however, is when all four newlyweds are sitting around the table in the hotel room Elyot and Amanda have battered, having breakfast. That scene alone, with its comedic timing, is worth watching the picture for.

Private Lives would become the seventh most popular movie in the U.S. in 1931.

Interestingly and yet not surprisingly, Noel Coward disliked this film (as he disliked all Hollywood films adapted from his plays.)  Also of interest is that Robert Montgomery claimed that Norma Shearer had one heck of a left hook and knocked him out cold during the fight scene.  Don't mess with Norma!

Would I recommend Private Lives to viewers?  Absolutely.  It's heavier on the fighting than on the romance but you'll not see another Pre-Code like it.  Heck, you may not see another film like it.

Warner Archives has Private Lives available; the film shows up on occasion on TCM's rotation.

"The Women" and Norma Shearer's Legacy

A little while back I reviewed one of Norma Shearer's last movies, We Were Dancing, a relatively inferior film for the former queen of MGM and yet still a fun little romp. I mentioned in my review that history has not been kind to We Were Dancing.

Until recently, the same could be said about Norma Shearer.

Despite being an Academy Award winning actress (for 1930's The Divorcee) and the star of many MGM and Pre-Code classics, Norma was best remembered for being the wife of Irving Thalberg . . . if she was remembered at all.  Before Turner Classic Movies and DVDs getting a wider release, The Women was her only film that could be easily viewed and the one that gave people the briefest of insight into Norma.

The Women is a masterful cinematic work, with an ensemble cast to die for, sparkling and biting dialogue, insanely awesome costumes and sets and all brilliantly helmed by the great George Cukor.  And while Norma turns in an honest and sweet performance as the devoted and betrayed wife Mary Haines, it is not her best performance nor does it exemplify her body of work.

Not sexy, eh? 

Sadly, many movie watchers believed that she was Mary Haines and Mary Haines very adequately summed up Norma Shearer's career and alleged talent in one fell swoop.  Long rumored to have enjoyed a serious case of nepotism, thanks to being married to MGM head of production Irving Thalberg (Joan Crawford famously complained about not getting choice roles because Norma "sleeps with the boss!"), her part in The Women appeared to give merit to the claims that what Norma lacked in talent and ability, she gained tenfold in marriage.

Of course it couldn't be further from the truth.

Had The Women been made a decade earlier, Norma Shearer could very handily have played the part of homewrecking Crystal Allen (a part that ironically went to Joan Crawford.)  In her early career, she specialized in racier roles, that of modern women who believed in taking the man (or men, as it were) for a test drive before buckling down to wedded bliss.

It wasn't an easy road for her in the beginning.  She lobbied for the part of Jerry in The Divorcee, a role she desperately wanted and what would be a breakout part for her.  Her own husband not only refused her but told her exactly the reason why - - Jerry had to be sexy and seductive and Norma simply didn't fit the bill.  Ouch. Mary Haines would have cried over this but not Norma Shearer.  She promptly rang up George Hurrell and had some seriously sexy photos taken of herself to show Thalberg that she not only could be a sexy seductress, she damn well was.

The ploy worked and Thalberg capitulated to her demands. She played Jerry - -the wronged wife who told her cheating husband that she had "balanced our accounts" (i.e., slept with his friend) - - to massive critical and public success.  She was bestowed with an Academy Award for her acting efforts (defeating herself in 1929's Their Own Desire, of all things) and a plethora of like pictures followed.

In Let Us Be Gay, she was a dowdy housewife who, after throwing her cheating husband out, transforms herself into a sleek and much desired by every man (including her now ex-husband) woman of the world.  In Strangers May Kiss, she was a modern young woman who, embroiled in a passionate affair with a reporter, felt no need to muddle things with matrimony.  In A Free Soul, she cheated on her decent boyfriend with a dangerous mobster who not only slapped her around but was acquitted of a murder charge by her attorney father.  In Private Lives, she played a woman who had recently remarried but on her honeymoon ran into her first husband, with his new wife, also honeymooning, and unable to resist, runs off with him.

In every one of these roles, Norma is delightful, full of energy and bursting with sex appeal.   She is about as far away from Mary Haines as imagineable.  She proclaims she's "in an orgy, wallowing, and I love it!" That "three years in Paris ought to improve any woman" and "I've been amusing myself with anything and everything that came my way. I know how a man feels about those things now." "To the devil with love," she said and then to a murderous mobster "You're just a new kind of man in a new kind of world."

Work it, girl

This was heady stuff in 1930/1931 and it's still heady stuff today.  I dare you to watch one of these films and believe that Norma Shearer had no talent, that she got these roles thanks to being Mrs. Thalberg.  And I defy you to not fall in love with her, even just a little.

This is the Norma Shearer that reigned over MGM.  The one that set her cap on Irving Thalberg. The one that battled a lazy eye to learn the best angles and makeup tricks to hide the deficiency.  The one that had Chester Morris, Rod La Roque, Neil Hamilton, Clark Gable and Robert Montgomery lusting after her on screen, and who knows how many others sitting in theaters?  This Norma made men mad with desire.

This woman was a trailblazer; a trailblazer attired in slinky gowns, furs and gazing longingly and languidly from a divan.

If you have only viewed Norma Shearer in action by way of The Women, please do yourself a favor and head to Turner Classic Movies and/or online to pick up one of her Pre-Code classics.

Once you do, or if you have seen Norma in some of the movies I mentioned, give me a comment and let me know which is your favorite and why.