Frank Fay is horribly miscast in this film, which is about a lothario who falls in love with a sweet young woman (Laura LaPlante). He has absolutely zero screen presence, so making him a descendant of Don Juan who is "god's gift to women" is laughable, and he exacerbates things with a dopey performance, slurred lines, and mispronunciations of names like Monet, Rodin, and Paleozoic. (And I say this not biased over the person he was in real life, the reading of which made me feel bad for Barbara Stanwyck). The film alludes to adultery with several married women carrying on flings with his character without being weirdly punished or judged, nice fodder for a pre-Code film, but it doesn't do nearly enough with this.
To be honest, it's only watchable for the brief appearances of Louise Brooks and Joan Blondell, who liven things up considerably just after the 40 minute mark. You see, Fay's character has been told he must avoid women because of a heart condition, and that if he wants to live, he "must follow the tranquil existence of an oyster." Blondell shows up in a tight dress to nurse him back to health. As she's changing into something more comfortable in the next room (cut to a long shot of her in long black lingerie), Louise Brooks shows up to do the same (and yes, cut, to her flaunting her legs while changing). Blondell climbs on top of him to get him to stay down in a bed a couple of times, a third girlfriend (Yola d'Avril) enters, and eventually the three women get into a giant catfight on the bed, legs a-flailing. It's damn silly but of course the best part of the film - and I say that with no offense to LaPlante, who looks cute in her smart haircut and does what she can opposite Fay, who's a limp noodle.
While Blondell was just about to go on a tear in the early 1930's, the film was made at a sad point in Brooks' career. As Kenneth Tynan described it in "Lulu in Hollywood," in 1930 Brooks had gone back to Hollywood, but when she met with Columbia executive Harry Cohn, each time he appeared naked from the waist up. He writes, "Always a plain speaker, he left her in no doubt that good parts would come her way if she responded to his advances. She rebuffed them, and the proffered contract was withdrawn." If you look at the steep dropoff in Brooks' filmography, with this dog of a film one of only three she made in 1931 (and one of the other two a short), it's clear why she went back to New York and almost completely dropped out of the business. Enjoy seeing her here, in a talkie - and notice that while some of the other women in the cast have the hairstyle she made famous, she sports a different look. Otherwise, if you're not a fan of Brooks or Blondell, this is one to skip.
