Michael Curtiz's God's Gift to Women, 1931

Those of us who have read Victoria Wilson's biography of Barbara Stanwyck (see my post of March 3, 2014) know that Frank Fay, star of God's Gift to Women, was married to Stanwyck for seven years and was a notorious dipsomaniac, spouse abuser (Stanwyck was his fourth wife), anti-Semite and fascist sympathizer.  The film title God's Gift to Women was perhaps meant ironically (the play by Jane Hinton that was the source for the film was "The Devil is Sick"), as Parisian womanizer Fay (named Toto in the film) has to fight off women until he meets the one he truly loves, played by Laura LaPlante, whose father objects to Fay.  Fay says to LaPlante's father, played by Charles Winninger, that he loves Laura more than life itself, kissing her even though his doctor says a kiss would destroy his aorta and kill him.  It turns out that the doctor was fake, hired by Winninger to see if Fay was telling the truth.  Fay's funeral, which he had arranged himself, was turned into a wedding.

I was slightly disappointed that the doctor was not named Dr. Krankheit, but perhaps that would have made the film's indebtedness to vaudeville, where Fay had been a considerable star, too obvious.  Curtiz had been a successful director of silent films and this 1931 film both looks backward to the time before sound -- Laura LaPlante and Louise Brooks, one of Toto's mistresses, had been silent film stars whose careers faltered in the sound era -- and forward, as Joan Blondell's (she played another mistress) career was just beginning and Curtiz's camera was quite mobile within the limited sets.  The film had originally been a musical but the songs (there were two) were cut out of the American version, though they stayed in other countries (Americans were tired of all the recent musicals, most of them none-too-good).  As a pre-code film, i.e., before the production code was enforced, the film is rather racy, with three women (all three also had husbands!) in bed with Fay at the same time and plenty of sexual innuendo; it is occasionally even somewhat amusing.   Fay himself comes across as rather effeminate and made only a handful of films, largely because he was annoying, arrogant, misanthropic, and, oh yes, his films did not make money.