God's Gift to Women

God's Gift to Women_720p(480P)

source: God's Gift to Women

Trailer—God's Gift to Women

God's Gift to Women

I initially began watching this film with the preconceived notion that Louise Brooks had more of a major role. In which she had just a minor one. And so I was disappointed because of it. After having owned this video I can say that I have only seen it once, and that I remain neutral on the movie itself aside from the Louise Brooks issue. I have seen better old films though it did have it's more comical points that I did enjoy.

This rather silly comedy is one of the few screen appearances of Frank Fay who was a major star on stage and in vaudeville in the teens and twenties. He had recently married Barbara Stanwyck and was on the decline as she was rising. Fay is an American playboy in Paris who is a legendary womanizer and the casting was impeccable. Fay however says visiting American Laura LaPlante is the real deal, but her father Charles Winninger puts hm to the test. Joan Blondell is in the cast asone of Fay's conquests and she scores in her small role. Big things were in store for her no doubt. Like Wallace Beery, Fay was one of those few peformers of whom no one had a good word to say. God's Gift To Women remains a curioudity to those interested in rescuing Frank Fay from obscurity.

Having read the 700-page biography of Barbara Stanwyck, which only goes up to 1941, I'm not inclined toward sympathy for her first husband Frank Fay, who stars in this Warners bedroom farce. He was arrogant and possibly abusive, and you can see his career in free- fall here. But he's not bad. As an irresistible Don Juan in Paris, which is itself a bit of a stretch, he has a good way with a comic line and is expert at physical comedy. You don't know why Laura La Plante, Joan Blondell, and Louise Brooks, among others, are all fighting over him, but director Michael Curtiz sustains the action nicely, and the Deco costumes and sets are a treat. There's also the nice additional pleasure of a "Show Boat" connection: Leading lady La Plante, who's charming, had recently been Magnolia in the first film version, and Charles Winninger, the stage Captain Andy who repeated his role in the 1936 version, is her dad. He's quite different here, and good.

Frank Fay is in much better form than his rather poor Show of Shows showing in Michael Curtiz's God's Gift to Women (1931). True, the director is obviously battling to keep the loquacious Fay the center of attention when he is so obviously outclassed not only by the women of the title (led by the lovely Laura La Plante, assisted by - in order of importance - Joan Blondell, Yola d'Avril, Margaret Livingston and Louise Brooks) but by most of the men (Alan Mowbray, Charles Winninger, Arthur Edmund Carewe, Billy House and even Charles Judels)! One wonders why the studio persevered with Fay, when he was obviously so heavily outclassed by just about everyone else on the lot! (Available on a nice public domain DVD)