Honor Among Lovers

Julia Taylor (Claudette Colbert) is a crackerjack Girl Friday for focused businessman Jerry Stafford ( a mustachioed Fredric March) who is impressed by more than her efficient and invaluable assistance to him. When she informs him she is to marry another he has to fire her due to his romantic feelings regarding her. Reluctant to make his romantic intentions known, she commits to a reckless financier (Monroe Owsley in a typical unctuous turn), a smug adulterer who eventually goes bust. To save him she offers herself to the ever noble Stafford who responds by bailing him out no strings attached. Colbert and March always paired well together and in "Honor" they do so again but Dorothy Arzner's direction lacks passion as the couple find their way into each other's arms eventually in what is mostly a dull affair that relies on more reason than raciness.

"I've been taking care of myself. Trying to recapture my lost youth. Exercise, you know? Seven beautiful thoughts before breakfast, bursting into song at unexpected moments. I'm a changed man." Claudette Colbert is absolutely gorgeous and she plays her scenes of emotional conflict well, but the story has too many unpleasant aspects to truly like this film. Frederic March is an alpha businessman carrying on with a lot of women with no intentions of marrying (he calls the institution "bunk"). He puts the moves on his secretary (Colbert) and when she resists, he goes off to screw someone else for hours, missing an entire football game in the process. He can't stop thinking about his secretary, however, so Monday morning he says he'll marry her if it means that much to her, but when she informs him that she just got married (to a stock broker played by Monroe Owsley), he fires her on the spot despite her stellar performance in the office. And this, naturally, is ultimately going go to be the protagonist, helped along by his impossible-to-believe transformation and an all-too-convenient implosion from the stock broker. Had it gone in a different direction at a few moments in the story, including late when a somewhat surprising event occurs, it could have been brilliant, but the film plays it safe, and didn't really feel pre-Code. The virtuous woman never gives in to premarital sex, the womanizing alpha male should have been her choice all along because he's successful and can be trusted to do the right thing (ha!), and divorce is justified by an avalanche of reprehensible things the husband does. These are cartoon characters. On top of it, the small part of a dimwitted woman (Ginger Rogers, argh) is spoken to like a child each time she's on the screen. But hey, it's worth seeing for Colbert.

Fredric March is an important businessman with a beautiful secretary (Claudette Colbert) whom he depends on for practically everything to make a perfect business. Sick of the usual women in his life, he asks her out on a date, and she accepts...reluctantly. He may be handsome but she has a promising young stockbroker (Monroe Owsley) in her life and when March suddenly proposes, she announces to him that she just married Owsley that very morning! So what does a rejected boss do? Fire her, of course, and she doesn't bat an eyelash. March then takes it upon himself to hire Owsley to handle his own investments, and it is pretty obvious that his intentions are not honorable. Made back in the day when a secretary could be a toy and sexual harassment wasn't a phrase used by H.R. directors, this is surprisingly bold not only for its subject matter but for the fact that it had a female director, the now legendary Dorothy Arzner who played in "the boy's club" of Hollywood long before women began to take an interest in doing more than either editing movies, creating costumes or climbing onto the casting couch in order to get ahead. March plays a very amoral character, one so determined to get what he wants that he's not afraid of losing his shirt if that's what it takes. Colbert is lovely and sensible, but the man she marries instead of March is far too weak to stand up to what is obviously a trap. This makes the marriage difficult to root for even though you certainly don't want to see March win, either. Charlie Ruggles is hysterically funny as March's pal who complains about his brain barking like a dog after a night of carousing and drinking. His love interest is none other than a very young Ginger Rogers who gets to play a Gracie Allen type character here, commenting on the origins of her family name: Mother's name Smythe and father's name Smith, so she chose to go by the shorter first name: Hemingway! The film is pretty fast moving for an early talkie so it never becomes dull, but the subject matter is one that many today might find distasteful.

"Honor Among Lovers" is a film that is rarely shown on TV and it just happens that the Criterion Channel currently has the film. It stars Claudette Colbert and Frederic March...which is more than enough reason to see the movie! Julia (Colbert) is the private secretary for Jerry (March), a very successful businessman. They get along great and she doesn't realize he's smitten on her. Eventually, he gets up the nerve to tell her his feelings...though he does it very poorly. Instead of sounding like a proposal for marriage, it sounds more like a proposition...and she naturally refuses. Unfortunately, instead she decides to marry her boyfriend, Philip (Monroe Owsley). I say unfortunately because Philip turns out to be a major pusillanimous rat...and treats Julia contemptibly. What's next? See the film and learn for yourself. The morals in this story are much what you'd expect from many pre-code films. After all, Jerry seems to be asking Julia to become his mistress (he soon asks her to be his wife), Philip is an adulterer and films of the Production Code era clearly would NOT endorse divorce and remarriage! But it still is a most enjoyable story...well worth seeing and featuring some really nice performances by March, Colbert and Owsley. Overall, a very good film that has one minor problem.... Jerry's behaviors late in the movie are just too nice to be realistic. Seriously! But in spite of this it's a most enjoyable movie and well worth your time.

Directed by Dorothy Arzner, Honor Among Lovers concerns a smart and efficient secretary, Julia (Claudette Colbert) to mogul Jeffy Stafford (Fredric March) who is in love with her. Knowing that she can't fit in with Stafford's wealthy friends, Julia marries Philip Craig (Monroe Owsley), who turns to be a weak loser and winds up putting both of them in a terrible situation. Colbert is absolutely wonderful in this -- natural, charming, and relaxed. Charlie Ruggles is a riot as a stockbroker, and watch for Ginger Rogers in a small role. Nothing special except for the performances. And, we get a chance to see Claudette Colbert's right side.

HONOR AMONG LOVERS was shot at Paramount's Astoria Studios in New York. This was a relatively primitive setup where low budget pictures were shot using the young talent so plentiful on the Broadway stage. The Marx Brothers first two films, THE COCONUTS and ANIMAL CRACKERS, were shot there, but I'm not sure there are any other Astoria efforts that are widely known today. In a few years the cast of HONOR AMONG LOVERS (Claudette Colbert, Frederic March, Ginger Rogers, Charles Ruggles) would have been an all star lineup, but in 1931 they were a collection of young actors (though Ruggles wasn't all that young) trying to get somewhere. HONOR AMONG LOVERS probably didn't help all that much. Colbert is a super-efficient secretary whose boss (March) has the hots for her. Instead of the boss, she marries a weaselly stockbroker, leaving sexually harassing March to pine away for her while her husband gets into all kinds of trouble. Affairs end happily if not particularly plausibly. Claudette plays a character who is pretty much perfect all the way through and never loses her temper no matter how badly the boss harasses her. March's character seems to learn his lesson somewhere along the way, remaining scrupulously faithful to his ideal love no matter how out of character that seems, and the actor is smoothly convincing both as a scoundrel and as a saint, not an easy accomplishment. Rogers and Ruggles have little to do but do it amusingly, Ginger playing a 'dumb blonde' (actually more of a dumb redhead) role for I believe the only time in her career. She's in the movie early, disappears through most of it, and pops up again near the end, the smallest role of her career. She would leave for Hollywood soon thereafter. Directed by Dorothy Arzner, the only woman regularly working as a director in Hollywood at the time, HONOR AMONG LOVERS is a pretty bland picture, notable for historical reasons only.

We've all had to sit through those tedious sexual harassment videos at work – bland, patronizing productions that are required viewing for all new employees. Companies could make the experience a whole lot more fun if they just showed this film instead. Moustache-sporting Fredric March is wealthy CEO Jerry Stafford, a debonair gadabout who secretly pines for his cute and unattached secretary Julie Traynor (Claudette Colbert). Not so secretly, actually – within the first ten minutes Stafford hits on Julie with abandon and then steals a kiss which leaves her flustered. He brushes it off with a "I was surprised just as much as you were" (though a careful reviewing of the scene confirms that he wasn't surprised at all), then pops open the wine – they're having lunch in his office, natch – and asks her to go on a cruise around the world with him. Safe to say, this guy would be in white collar prison these days. Even better, a few scenes later Julie marries her low-incomed broker of a fiancé (Philip Craig, as played by the Pee Wee Herman-looking Monroe Owsley); she reports to work the following Monday to tell Stafford she won't go on that cruise with him after all, on account of marriage. Stafford's response? He fires her! I should mention here that Jerry Stafford is the hero of this film. Yes, we're certainly in the world of 1930s cinema. Stafford doesn't turn out to be the biggest cad. That would be Craig, who by his and Julie's first anniversary has become wealthy, due mostly to the money Stafford has given his brokerage firm. Craig loses all of his newfound wealth on a silk deal Stafford cautioned against. Only problem is, Craig used some of Stafford's money as well…without telling him. Destitute, Julie goes to Stafford and asks for money, offering herself in exchange. Here the movie becomes like the 1930 version of "The Cheat" (available on the Pre-Code Hollywood DVD set), with foul play, accidental shootings, and exonerations. Only in this movie no one gets branded. This was the second of four on screen pairings for Colbert and March. The following year they reunited for DeMille's "Sign of the Cross" and, a month after that, for Mitchell Leisen's "Tonight Is Ours" (filmed in late '32 but released in January '33 – and ostensibly credited to director Stuart Walker, who according to all and sundry did nothing). I enjoy these two together, though apparently Colbert didn't; March was notorious for getting a bit too "familiar" with his leading ladies. Colbert reportedly disliked the man – there are stories of March wandering around "in a daze" on the set of "Sign of the Cross," he was so nuts about her. Overall, a predictable melodrama that's most memorable for its (nowadays) jawdropping displays of sexual harassment in the workplace and the fact that it features three celebrities (Colbert, March, and a twenty one year-old Ginger Rogers) on the brink of their still-enduring fame. Dorothy Arzner's directorial work is okay, but nothing incredible -- the camera's static most times and, other than a solemn scene of Claudette walking up a hauntingly-lit staircase toward the end of the film, there aren't many novel shots. Arzner's work was much better in her subsequent film with March, "Merrily We Go To Hell" (also included on the Pre-Code Hollywood DVD set).

Another ponderous example of Arzner's apparent disdain for men and marriage. (Either good men turn bad or bad men reform only through the love of a good woman.) The film does contain a few, as Billy Wilder would say, "drop the popcorn bag" moments, to its credit; but overall, it's a dark, unimaginative story, painted with the very broad strokes and heavy hand of the director. A virtue, since Pre-Code, it treats illicit love and extra-marital affairs with a refreshing boldness; yet pre-1960s, it manages to retain that "Golden Era" emphasis on romance to the extent that its plot allows. But the acting here is the redeeming feature. Claudette Colbert, true to form, quietly smolders as a private secretary-*-wife caught between the romantic propositions of two businessmen. Fredric March is surprisingly convincing as both a jilted playboy and the turned-better hero. One of the most fantastic pieces of acting I've seen involves a scene between them, where married Colbert again rejects -- though with great desire to do otherwise -- his now-honorable, but extra-marital advances. The film is worth seeing just for this scene. The supporting cast ranges widely. Owsley delivers a snicker-worthy portrayal of the "other man", but Charlie Ruggles and Ginger Rogers take in his supporting slack with hilarious style.

Moviecut—Honor Among Lovers

source: Honor Among Lovers