William Keighley's Easy to Love (1934)

Easy to Love  comes at the end of the pre-Code era and is considered by some as a "screwball comedy", a term which I, as a splitter rather than a lumper, do not much care for; the idea that one can lump together films by Howard Hawks, Ernst Lubitsch, Leo McCarey, and Gregory La Cava just because they are comedies I find absurd.  Unlike film noir "screwball comedy" is not a genre that can transcend directors and writers, as we can see in Easy to Love, a comedy in search of a better director than William Keighley, whose first film this is (after co-directing two movies) and who spent most of his career directing gangster and adventure films.

The screenplay -- by Carl Erikson, Manuel Seff, David Boehm -- is clever in its pre- Code way ("funny how marriage is; you start in a double bed, move to twin beds and end up in separate rooms") and some of the casting is okay, especially Genevieve Tobin as Carol, who tries to win her husband John back by "accidentally" dropping the soap on the bathroom floor when taking a bath so John (Adolphe Menjou) can see her naked when he hands it back to her; John is carrying on an affair with Charlotte (Mary Astor) every afternoon when he tells Carol that he is playing polo, but Keighley's direction is somewhat slack, depending as it does on slamming doors and hiding in closets. Eric (Edward Everett Horton) has been romancing Carol but ends up with Charlotte when Carol and John become reunited in their outrage at their daughter Janet pretending she is moving in with her lover Paul (Paul Kaye) without benefit of marriage.

There is at least one amusing scene when Eric and Carol visit Charlotte and John one afternoon (Carol had hired a private detective); while John hides in the closet Charlotte hides John's hat and pretends to be smoking the cigar John leaves out.  Eric then takes John's hat when he leaves (it's too small) and John ends up with Eric's hat (it's too big).  I don't know if Leo McCarey ever saw Easy to Love but he directs a similar scene of switched hats in The Awful Truth (1937) that's much funnier than Keighley's scene.  Of course McCarey had Cary Grant in his film; whenever I see Adolph Menjou I'm reminded of what Jack Webb says to William Holden in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard when Webb sees Holden after Gloria Swanson has given him some clothes, "Where did you get that suit, from Adolphe Menjou?"