OVP: Vivacious Lady (1938)

Film: Vivacious Lady (1938)

Stars: Ginger Rogers, James Stewart, James Ellison, Beulah Bondi, Charles Coburn, Frances Mercer, Hattie McDaniel

Director: George Stevens

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Cinematography, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Jimmy Stewart: click here to learn more about Mr. Stewart (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We're going to start our look at Jimmy Stewart during the period in the 1930's when he was still starting to make his way up in Hollywood.  During the 1930's, really leading into Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stewart was not thought of as a leading man so much as an actor to put in to prop up more famous, bankable actresses on the lots of major studios (despite being an MGM star at the time, Stewart rarely actually worked for MGM during this time frame).  This included a number of hit movies, including Born to Dance (with Eleanor Powell), You Can't Take It With You (with Jean Arthur), and Destry Rides Again (with Marlene Dietrich), one of his first cowboy roles.  We're going to focus not on Destry today (despite our month-long theme), but instead on Vivacious Lady (don't worry, Jimmy will done a cowboy hat next week), perhaps the best encapsulation of Stewart's pattern at the time-get a big hit where your leading actress gets more of the credit than you do...and also bedding her.  Though he was married to his wife Gloria for 45 years starting in 1949, affable, stuttering Jimmy Stewart was a lothario in his day, dating a variety of actresses, including Ginger Rogers, with whom according to Hollywood legend (how could you ever prove such a thing, but it is apocryphal gossip), he reportedly lost his virginity.  Stewart & Rogers would both move on (with Marlene Dietrich & Howard Hughes, respectively), but we still have Vivacious Lady to judge them by.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Peter Morgan, Jr. (Stewart) a botany professor who is also the son of a prominent university president, Peter Morgan Sr. (Coburn), and thus comes from a "respectable" family who won't like that he's started a romance with a nightclub singer named Francey (Rogers).  This doesn't stop him from eloping with her, though, before she's had a chance to meet her parents or before he's had a chance to break off his engagement to Helen (Mercer).  As a result, they sneak her in as a new botany student he's clearly pursuing, but Peter Sr. doesn't like this, despite the fact that his wife Martha (Bondi) is a fan of the young woman.  Entanglements ensue, including a marvelous little face-off between America's Sweetheart Rogers getting into a hair-pulling fight with Helen, before both Peter Jr. & Sr. have to chase their brides on a train, and win them back (which, of course, they do).

The movie's plot is mildly ridiculous.  Martha likes her daughter-in-law right away, and while Peter Sr. doesn't approve of her, it's clear that he can be won over without much work.  The "family doesn't approve" is a common trope in romantic-comedies, but it's clear in this movie that there's not a lot standing in Peter's way when it comes to getting to marry Francey.  The main reason to watch this is for the cast, which is a delight, but you wish they were in a better movie.  Rogers is not one of my favorites from this era (and Stewart is), but she outdoes him at pretty much every turn.  Romantic comedies were a place that Stewart did well, but when paired with more natural performers in the genre (not just Rogers, but someone like Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story) he occasionally got upstaged.  One of my favorite moments was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo from Hattie McDaniel one year out from her Oscar win for Gone with the Wind, here playing a maid who gets a pretty lascivious comment from Rogers that I'm honestly surprised got past the censors (essentially Rogers hints strongly that a man might be worth giving up smoking for if he's good enough in bed).

The film won two Oscar nominations, neither of which are standouts (and neither is the one night club song that Rogers sings, even though it's the rare song in this era that wasn't a cover in the movie). Cinematography is kind of fun in the close-up shots of Rogers & Stewart teaching, her looking radiant and him clearly smitten (on and off screen) with the actress, but making pretty movie stars look pretty is just as much on the makeup department (and genetics) as it is cinematography, and here there's hardly much else to crow about.  The sound nomination is also odd.  There's only one musical (the aforementioned forgettable tune from Rogers), and the rest of the movie feels like it's just standard-issue sound work.  I'm convinced at this point of profiling dozens of Sound nominations that something changed in the 1960's & later in how this department picked their nominations, as no other category of this era has so many blasé head-scratchers.