This film would seem to have very little to recommend it except for the sparkling energetic performance by Jeanette MacDonald. But that is enough. If you only remember MacDonald from the sometimes stultifying MGM musicals with Nelson Eddy, you are in for a surprise. Jeanette is alive and bright and rather seductive in the peignoirs, flimsy negligees and low cut gowns she wears and she no longer has the slightly zaftig European look that Lubitsch preferred at Paramount. She has a very natural sexiness that comes through even though the print I viewed on youtube is of very poor quality. I'm sure she was a turn-on for male viewers in 1930 which is what Fox wanted when they signed her. Remember this was the "pre-code" era which she as much as anyone else was responsible for (she was already tagged "the lingerie queen") so this is what audiences expected and this is what they got.
As a result of the Paramount musicals she previously appeared in, MacDonald was typed as singer so in this she is cast as an opera singer and opens the film singing "The Liebestod" from Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde" and later on she sings once more. But this not a musical; it is strictly light comedy held together by MacDonald. The plot can only be called ridiculous. She (inexplicably) falls in love with a burglar (Reginald Denny ) and convinces him to marry her but he agrees only on the condition that she will give up her career. Soon he tires of the arrangement and leaves her and (apparently) goes back to being a burglar while she resumes her career as an opera singer. But of course it is not over. It ends as viewers probably already imagined it will.
MacDonald did three films at Fox between her two stints at Paramount that preceded her eventual stardom at MGM. These three are largely forgotten now but were well received and were money makers at the time for Fox. It was the depth of the depression and all the studios but MGM were effectively bankrupt. Seen in this context, films like "Oh, for a Man" were what Fox needed, what MacDonald needed to prolong her career and what the country needed. And viewed today, it is surprisingly refreshing and shows what MacDonald was capable of.