TAKE A LETTER, DARLING!

New Zealand Listener, Volume 8, Issue 192, 26 February 1943, Page 23

TAKE A LETTER, DARLING!

C Paramount)

OH, a wicked, wicked film. Well, Rosalind Russell’s there, you may say, so what did I expect? But don’t take me up that way; I’m not talk-

ing about bedroom scenes, seen or implied, or near-precipitous back-chat; I’m talking about still one more film that’s blatantly not about the ordinary lives of ordinary people and yet cannot be described as fantasy, pure or impure. Take a Letter Darling is wicked because it looks real, and between strictly silklined limits probably is real, and because it doesn’t strike me as the kind of reality to be encouraged. Which doesn’t mean that it isn’t amusing. Mr. F. MacMurray, who once had an income and "did what he wanted," is seen applying for a job at an advertising office, a big and swingy-doored one; he finds that he is to become, at fifty bucks a week, the phoney secretary of MacGregor (Miss R. Russell), partner in the firm. The other partner in the firm is Mr. R. Benchley, who seems to be awfully busy most of the time playing something that looks like either billiards or scallywag; and I was glad to notice that they had let him get away with that charming little rubber toy horse from The Reluctant Dragon set. The idea was that the phoney secretary was to tag along and be MacGregor’s fiancé so that, whenever a client had a wife, MacGregor would be covered by a sort of third-party risk (because she always explained to the client that it was really O.K., and it was only a phoney engagement). And the phoney secretary meanwhile danced with the wife to dispel her far from phoney jealousy. "J don’t like it," said Mr, MacMurray. "It isn’t honest." (He really

wanted to be a painter. He hadn’t made up his mind yet whether he was a good one or not, he told MacGregor when she asked). That was at fifty bucks a week. But when they were working to pull off a plum of a tobacco contract it was less distasteful; for one thing, he’d been raised to 100 a week with a promise of 10,000 out of the profits on the deal; and for another thing, it was a sister he had to deal with instead of a wife, and this sister was some sister, a blonde one (Constance Moore); and for another thing it would mean he could go to Mexico in a caravan and Paint. It was a bit awkward when MacGregor and Sec. went to MacGregor’s mountain hide-out to work on the new campaign, but talked about What They Really Wanted to Do with their lives instead, and MacGregor admitted that she wrote Poetry in Secret. Well, he kissed her then, and after a bit of walking up and down (caged animals, you know), in their respective bedrooms, MacGregor ordered the whole outfit back to town, It was Safer that Way. And anyway, that deal had to be pulled off. So it was some considerable time before Mr. MacMurray could afford to stop being phoney and go to Mexico in a caravan to Paint. MacGregor at that stage decided to stop being phoney about not be in love and go along, too. I suppose Mr. Benchley had to stop playing billiards or whatever it was and start looking after the firm.