Much Pleasant Ado About Nothing

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 24, 25 November 1938, Page 16

Much Pleasant Ado About Nothing

[The First 100 Years." M.G.M. Directed by Richard Thorpe. Stare ring Robert Montgomery, Virginia Bruce. First release: Wellington, November 25.] N gratifying the current taste for happy endings involving the stork, M-G-M make Virginia Bruce, the heroine of ‘‘The First 100 Years,’? so ignorant of tha facts of life that the news of her approaching motherhood is the common property of most characters in the story before she even suspects it herself! And yet I"‘ss Bruce is no innocent miss but a married woman-of-the-world, so emancipated in her views on sex equality that she not -only works for a living and earns far more than her husband (Robert Montgomery), but she also refuses to give up her career ‘and make home for him when he lands a lucrative job which makes him financially indesendent. So they decide to part-though in ordinary life probably all that would have been needed +» solve the whole problem was for huspand and wife to have five minutes’ frank discussion. But if they’d done that there wouldn’t have been any story at all,

Civilised People

TMPROBABILITIES such as these cloud but by no means extinguish the light entertainment of "ne First Hundred Years." The picture has a surface sparkle which makes up a lot for the lack of depth, and the witty dialogue is well spoken. Also, there is to be noted a welcome departure from the prevailing craziness of screen comedy. When husband and wife have their big bust-up, they don’t bite bits out of the furniture or go paddling round bare-footed in the rain. Apart from their refusal to talk things over sensibly and the herojne’s lack of obstetrical knowledge, they behave more or less like polite, civilised human beings.

Should Wives Work?

HE acung of Robert -Montgomery, Virginia Bruce, Warren William, Allen Dinehart and Binnie Barnes helps immeasurably to make much amusing ado about nothing. It is quite a pleasant change also to find Robert. Montgomery appearing as a nice young man who wants to put his feet up on 1.8 own mantelpiece, ins‘tcad of , in his familiar role of the caddish, " though charming, home-wrecker who only settles down to domesticity under protest in the last reel, I still can’t quite understand what it is M.G.M. see in Miss Bruce to make them give her so many choice roles; but I’m ready to admit she’s attractive and competent enough as the self-willed ambitious wife, in spitc of her being so obviously in the wrong over this marriage-versus-a-career business. — That last opinion, you’ll understand, is the dominant male in m:speaking. The producers obviously weren’t prepared to commit themselves to a definite answer on the burning question of "should wives work?" So they wriggled out of it by presenting the heroine with an unexpected baby. But. unless the stork was prepared to be more or tess constantly on the scene at the MontgomeryBruce menage, ’m afraid the prob1 was likely to crop up again.