In The 1930-1940s Golden Age Of Screwball Comedy-With A Twist-Rosalind Russell’s “She Wouldn’t Say Yes” (1945)-A Film Review

In The 1930-1940s Golden Age Of Screwball Comedy-With A Twist-Rosalind Russell’s “She Wouldn’t Say Yes” (1945)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Laura Perkins

She Wouldn’t Say Yes, starring Rosalind Russell, Lee Bowman, directed by classic screwball comedy director Alexander Hall, 1945

Recently I reviewed another one of these Rosalind Russell- starring and Alexander Hall-directing golden age of screwball comedy films from 1942 My Sister Eileen where I made an observation based on my longtime companion and fellow reviewer Sam Lowell’s insight on “the hook.” “The hook” being the tag line you want to spin the review around. I was at something like wits’ end trying to salvage something from that screwball comedy which would be understood by today’s audiences. That is where Sam, who has had a long history of reviewing many films from the black and white film era kindled by spending many a sullen Saturday afternoon double film matinee in his youth, came to the rescue by telling me that many of these films can be profitably looked at as “slice of life” vehicles.

That is the same hook I will use to review this film She Wouldn’t Say Yes (can’t say much for the nondescript title which could mean anything from in the romance department from solicited John sex to marriage)-what a young professional woman had to go through in her profession in an age when even professional women were expected to get marriage and perform wifely and motherly duties and sent the career to the attic in the days of one breadwinner-the husband-families. Doctor Susan Lane, a rich and successful psychiatrist, Rosalind Russell’s role, is moving ahead just fine alone and single like many women today but back then a bit of an oddity even for professional women. All around her men, from her father to a fellow psychiatrist, are bothering her about marriage and motherhood to complete herself. Balderdash says she-until.      

The “until” is a cartoonist Michael Kent who is travelling west as the good Doctor is she to home and he to deployment in the Pacific as World War II nears its end. He is smitten from minute one despite a series of pratfalls which wouldn’t draw a titter from an eight year old today. She is totally non-plussed and rather annoyed by his advances (and maybe today he would face a serious case of sexual harassment charges despite his grinning ways if she pressed the issue and she very well might have) on the train all the way to Chicago. In Chi town he still won’t give up even while a legitimate blonde vixen makes a big play for him-with and without the good Doctor’s advice. Naturally, 1940s naturally, even for a strong women’s role as this is even as a foil for a screwball comedy, the good Doctor’s heart slowly melts under the barrage of pratfall attacks including a falsely arranged marriage between the two. So you know damn well what happened as the sun faded in the west. Yeah, let’s chalk this one up to a slice of life-and a lesser screwball comedy than the movie recently reviewed. And a mile behind Ms. Russell’s classic performance as Hildy in His Girl Friday with Cary Grant.    

From The 1930s-1940s Golden Age Of Screwball Comedy-Rosalind Russell’s My Sister Eileen” (1942)- A Film Review

From The 1930s-1940s Golden Age Of Screwball Comedy-Rosalind Russell’s My Sister Eileen” (1942)- A Film Review

DVD Review

By Laura Perkins

My Sister Eileen, starring Rosalind Russell, Janet Blair, 1942

I like to listen to my own drummer when I am thinking through “the hook” for any film review I do (probably with any piece of public writing come to think of it). But once in a while some advice my long-time companion and now occasional writer since his retirement in this publication Sam Lowell filters through. Sam who over a long career made something of a specialty out of reviewing black and white films from the 1930s and 1940s (as a result of a youth spent watching this fare in a local retrospective theater in his hometown on angry Saturday afternoons) has always worked under the principal that even the flimsiest production from this era can produce at least a “slice of life” highlighting the times angle when all else fails. Good advice even for the better productions as here with this film under review directed by Alexander Hall and starring Rosalind Russell as Ruth one of the two leading characters in this classic golden age screwball comedy My Sister Eileen.     

So here’s the slice of life of the times angle. Two sisters, the aforementioned Ruth and the Eileen of the title, played by Janet Blair, are for their own reasons ready to break out of some Podunk small town a too small for big dreams town out in the heartland, out in Ohio. The first “hook” is that we are dealing with two women seeking professional careers the former as a writer the later as stage actress. That in itself is worthy of comment in marriage and little white house with picket fence women big dreams times (and maybe a fair part of the female audiences which Sam told me one time made up the majority of the movie population especially during World War II).

The more interesting part though is a look at the dynamics between the two sisters, especially how they will navigate in the world. Ruth, although hardly an ugly duckling is the serious intellectual type (if ironically funny as befits a screwball comedy) is not the kind of gal a whole bunch of guys then, maybe now too, would do a double take over. Eileen is the flirtatious, naïve, beauty of the family who guys will trip over themselves to check out and give it a shot. My wonder is off of this form beyond the entertainment value of the screwball comedy aspect whether such a film could be produced with that stark contrast and feminine competition in mind.

The two sisters in any case see eye to eye that they need to blow that small town and head well where else would budding writers and actresses head but New York City then and still the cultural heart and soul of America. While Ruth may be a step-up over Sis in the naïveté contest and more of a pure go-getting on the merits of her skills she has plenty of hayseed around the edges. The whole caper depends on the place in the big city given their cash flow where they land an apartment, which turns out to be a basement apartment which today might be seen as a golden dream but then was strictly from nowhere which a holy goof of a landlord cons them into renting (“holy goof” Frank Jackman’s term via Jack Kerouac which I feel free to steal every once in a while where it applies). The place winds up being a waystation for a rogue’s gallery of guys and other strays (the guys mostly courtesy of Eileen and her beauty/gullibility) with a whole rafter of slapstick some of it still funny but the rest a relic of the period.

Not to worry, remember this is a comedy, a slightly romantic comedy where even Ruth catches a guy, a magazine editor to boot, as the pair of sisters go through their paces adjusting to New York and working their ways up their respective food chains. But the whole caper was a close thing since their father rushing to the city to save his woe begotten daughters almost forces them to go back to small dream Ohio. The saving grace is that Ruth gets her short stories published in that magazine the editor works for and Eileen well she will work her charms with the publisher of that magazine who has a ton of contacts on old Broadway. Yeah, now that I think about it they couldn’t make one like this now but that’s my “hook” anyway.