"Kept Husbands" from 1931 predates the emergence of the Catholic Legion of Decency and its strangulating code of social correctness. Still, it's hard to imagine the censors would have had much trouble with this morality play of virtue tempted and temptation rejected.
A very young Joel McCrea is Dick, a former collegiate football hero now working as a "steel boss" for the Parker Steel Company. Having saved several workers from death, he's invited by the company's president, Arthur Parker, to dinner at a mansion replete with fawning servants and a guest list that reflects the idle rich class that Parker's daughter, Dot, worships.
Fear that Dick wouldn't know how to use dinner utensils fades as his sports past is revealed. Dot resolves to get him to propose within four weeks and her dad shakes hands with her, sealing both her resolve and his grudging acquiescence to his beloved daughter's whim.
Actually Dot proposes to Dick, he accepts and he's then co-opted into her world of aimless affluence, expensive purchases and vapid friends. And globetrotting with dad's seagoing yacht as transport.
Dick is, later rather than sooner, a man of steel and he rebels. Dot skirts with but clearly doesn't succumb to the seductive and booze-driven blandishments of an old friend, a moth-eaten roue in a tux. That's important: other films of the time frankly show or strongly imply adultery but at the starting gate Dot bolts from the race and runs back to a suspicious and now rejecting hubby.
As with many films from a much earlier Hollywood, there is an angelic mom, here Dick's, and she gives the now conscience-stricken Dot some sage advice: "All husbands are kept." Go forth, she gently intones, and redeem your marriage.
Guess the ending.
"Kept Husbands" is a period piece. But aren't there still marriages based on one spouse's financial dominance over the other? Joel McCrea is a young and convincing fellow determined to make his way in the world without unearned advantages. And little known today Dorothy Mackaill is very effective as an empty pleasure seeker who awakens to the hope of a deeper future based on love than her fur and jewel bedecked younger life has given her.
The film's class issues seem comical and are familiar to us today. I wonder how Depression-era moviegoers reacted to the display of unearned conspicuous consumption.
If early Hollywood social attitudes interest you, see this film (available now on DVD).
7/10.
A very young Joel McCrea is Dick, a former collegiate football hero now working as a "steel boss" for the Parker Steel Company. Having saved several workers from death, he's invited by the company's president, Arthur Parker, to dinner at a mansion replete with fawning servants and a guest list that reflects the idle rich class that Parker's daughter, Dot, worships.
Fear that Dick wouldn't know how to use dinner utensils fades as his sports past is revealed. Dot resolves to get him to propose within four weeks and her dad shakes hands with her, sealing both her resolve and his grudging acquiescence to his beloved daughter's whim.
Actually Dot proposes to Dick, he accepts and he's then co-opted into her world of aimless affluence, expensive purchases and vapid friends. And globetrotting with dad's seagoing yacht as transport.
Dick is, later rather than sooner, a man of steel and he rebels. Dot skirts with but clearly doesn't succumb to the seductive and booze-driven blandishments of an old friend, a moth-eaten roue in a tux. That's important: other films of the time frankly show or strongly imply adultery but at the starting gate Dot bolts from the race and runs back to a suspicious and now rejecting hubby.
As with many films from a much earlier Hollywood, there is an angelic mom, here Dick's, and she gives the now conscience-stricken Dot some sage advice: "All husbands are kept." Go forth, she gently intones, and redeem your marriage.
Guess the ending.
"Kept Husbands" is a period piece. But aren't there still marriages based on one spouse's financial dominance over the other? Joel McCrea is a young and convincing fellow determined to make his way in the world without unearned advantages. And little known today Dorothy Mackaill is very effective as an empty pleasure seeker who awakens to the hope of a deeper future based on love than her fur and jewel bedecked younger life has given her.
The film's class issues seem comical and are familiar to us today. I wonder how Depression-era moviegoers reacted to the display of unearned conspicuous consumption.
If early Hollywood social attitudes interest you, see this film (available now on DVD).
7/10.