THE LADY IS WILLING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 165, 21 August 1942, Page 16

THE LADY IS WILLING

| (Columbia)

HEN Marlene Dietrich slipped badly downhill as a dramatic actress (did she fall or was she pushed by

incompetent directors?), it looked as if her days as a front-rank star were ended. But then she wisely changed her course to comedy, and since Destry Rides Again and The Flame of New Orleans, she has been on the up-grade again. In The Lady is Willing she just about reaches the top. Indeed, she probably would have reached it, and our little man would probably be standing up to acclaim the achievement, were it not for the fact that about 15 minutes before the end of the film she disconcertingly changes her tack to tragedy once morepresumably just to show us that she hasn’t forgotten how. She: ~° wet some handkerchiefs in the audience, but I think most of us would have preferred to go on laughing the whole way through. Still, it’s not difficult for me to overlook that rather lachrymose quarterhour in view of the very good fun which she provides in the other three-quarters.

Here we have Miss Dietrich letting her hair down as a _ scatter-brained, softhearted actress-a creature of impulse who, in the words of her harassed manager, "never does anything the simple way." Her crowning eccentricity is to kidnap a small baby for no other reason than that she takes a fancy to it, and that nobody appears to be looking after it. When she gets it back to her apartment, of course, her mother’s instinct is so much aroused that nothing will persuade her to part with it- and in her defence it must be admitted that th. baby is attractive enough almost to justify kidnapping. The baby is dressed in pink, therefore she christens it Anna, or. something equally feminine, and is prepared to argue the point with the doctor whom she summons to look at the foundling until he caustically points out that science many years ago discovered a much more reliable method than. pink and blue of distinguishing between the sexes. This problem is comparatively easily solved by renaming the boy Cory, after the doctor: more difficult is the problem raised by the Child Welfare authorities-that the actress is not a fit person to retain the child since she isn’t even married. However, when she discovers that the doctor has a secret ambition to carry out research work in relation to rabbits and has only taken to attending babies because they pay better, a solution to this problem is also in sight. By providing the doctor with all the rabbits and microscopes he requires, she is able, in her own slightly mixed metaphor, to kill two birds with one marriage ceremony. But since the film is still only about half-way through, and since somehow there must be opportunity provided for the inevitable Hollywood misunderstandings and makingsup, it is a marriage of convenience only, with locked doors between the separate apartments of the actress-wife and the doctor-husband, for which true love is the only key. After a good deal of hopeful and amusing searching by both parties, that key is found, the doors are opened, and then closed again or what I felt, as I reached for my hat, was a most satisfactory finale for all concerned. Unfortunately, in the cause of tragic art and Miss Dietrich’s reputation as a serious actress, the producer or somebody then decided that another misunderstanding should arise and that the unfortunate baby should get sick unto death with a mgstoid. So my hat had to go back under the seat until the doctor-husband had cleared up both the marital misunderstanding and the mastoid. All things considered, however -including the lost finale and. the fact that much of the story is not merely threadbare but worn to tatters-I would advise you to see this film if you want some bright entertainment. This, I think, is one of those rare cases mentioned in the article by A. E. Wilson on this page last week where the charm and brilliance of the artist almost wholly atones for the monotony of the theme. And in this case not only the central artist, Miss Dietrich. It is perhaps her bright-

est film to date; but there is also good acting from that normally insufferable fellow, Fred MacMurray (he’s the doctor), as well as from a hand-picked supporting cast. Best wisecrack: " Are you English?" "No, why?" "Well, you keep on understating things."