Starring Carole Lombard, Preston Foster, Cesar Romero, Janet Beecher, Betty Lawford
Directed by Walter Lang
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)
A wealthy magnate sends a woman's fiancee off to a job in Japan, so he can woo her himself, but she angrily rebuffs his advances, although secretly she begins to fall for him.
I'm sure there was a good deal of effort put into trying to make this film another winning picture for Lombard, but there's several strikes against it. They blacken the beautiful actress's eye in a filmed fight, and even incorporate it into the movie poster, a mistake in my mind. Screenwriter Herbert Fields tries to spin comedy scenes out of Foster's failed but persistent attempts to win her heart, but most of these just didn't work for me, and the only real times I laughed were at clever lines in the script given to the supporting characters. Most of all though I think, they make Lombard's Kay Colby as belligerent as possible whenever Foster's Scott Miller shows up, right up to the final fade-out, and these scenes could have used some softening. Lombard has scenes where she cries at the thought of missing out on Miller, but never has a chance to lower her guard down when she's with him. The character's rage is understandable, but I don't think it's what the audience wanted to see.
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