Made for Each Other (1939)

The Worst Film Ever

Don't listen to the negative reviews

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Everyone knows It's a Wonderful LIfe (1946) , but fewer know Made for Each Other (1939). If you are a film fan, you know Carole Lombard was Clark Gable's wife, and died in an airplane crash in Jan 16, 1942, while helping the war effort. Enjoy this as the first film with It's a Wonderful Life. This film may be an unexpected mix of plot devices, but anyone who enjoys classic Hollywood drama and stars will enjoy the fine cast and human story that makes this a fine Hollywood movie. Beginning with the classic Shop Around the Corner (1940), this film might be considered a early classic for Jimmy Stewart, and a lovely tribute for Lombard. She will be remembered as a fine and beautiful screen star whose career and life were tragically cut short. Made for Each Other movingly tell a story of love and devotion to both family and job frustrations that even the most modern viewer can relate to. Also, this was made in 1939 as were so many great films. It's a movie that were made to tug at your heart strings rather than overwhelm you with explosions and loud music.

I'm giving this one a 4 out of 10, I guess mostly for the star quality of James Stewart, Carole Lombard and Charles Coburn.A brief review of the plot: Young New York City lawyer, John Mason (Stewart) returns from weekend business trip to his office where everyone except the boss, Judge Doolittle (Coburn)already knows that in Boston he met and married a woman, Jane (Lombard). It seems like this will be a bit of a comedy, when they have a scene with the couple telling John's mother how they got married without knowing each other more than one day.Almost everything else is drama or melodrama. The couple has little money, even though they rented a small apartment to house them and John's mother. Perhaps if they didn't insist on having a cook/maid all the time they wouldn't have fallen so far behind in their bills, as depicted.Mostly because of money, partly because of the mother too-often criticizing Jane, they mostly endure life instead of enjoy it, even when blessed with a new baby, who seems to have never been given a name as he is always referred to as "the baby." On New Year's Eve as they ring in 1939, mostly because John feels depressed over a salary cut right when he was seeking a raise, they talk about getting divorced. But they learn that the baby is now seriously ill.At St. Vincent's Hospital, they learn that the baby will soon die from pneumonia unless they can obtain a special serum. Phone calls all over the country teach that the only serum available is in Salt Lake City, Utah. Thanks to Judge Doolittle's generous offer to pay $5,000, they can have it flown, only a raging blizzard that appears to range from Utah to New Jersey, makes flying extremely dangerous. But a pilot is willing, for half of the $5,000 fee, so he borrows the plane and takes off.After much flying difficulty in his bi-plane, he later encounters engine trouble and bails out, later crawls to a farmhouse said to be about 35 miles from New York City where his package is found and the baby is miraculously saved, apparently with almost no time to spare. The couple now smile, knowing their problems in life are over.Most of this film really seems to show how even a young lawyer in NYC who has a beautiful wife and a baby can be most unhappy with his life if he doesn't earn enough money to pay the maid, or anyone else for that matter.This film was mostly lacking in any joyful scenes of life. I truly could not understand why this tiny apartment with two fully-able-bodied, healthy women needed to have a maid/cook around. It would be one thing if John was supposed to be earning lots of money, but it was made clear throughout that he wasn't. The mother complained of having little to do--maybe she could have cooked or done the laundry? Jane felt bad that she didn't know how to cook or maintain the house--maybe the know-it-all mother-in-law could have showed her? Since John's mother felt like she was in the way and was unhappy there, it really would have made sense to find a small apartment for her, especially when her bedroom was needed for the baby.The whole business of the serum only available in one place in the country, then being flown in a slow bi-plane was ridiculous, to say the least. The many stops the plane would have needed to make would have meant it took a couple of days to get there, while the film made it appear to be just an overnight flight. The pilot risking his life was foolish because of the danger of his flight and the fact that if he crashed, nobody would get the serum and he would probably be dead as well as the baby.We all know that young couples without enough money often quarrel about money and feel miserable. I don't think this film shed any light on this subject in 1939 or today. It was truly not a comedy in any way with almost no comedic scenes, especially after the first few minutes.There is one scene where the couple's last maid, a black woman, Louise Beavers, cheers up Jane with a pithy saying, "Never let the seeds stop you from enjoying the watermelon." Someone said this scene made them cringe because it came from a black woman.I vigorously disagree. I understand the old stereotype about blacks eating watermelon. But surely we haven't gotten to where we now have to pretend that black people never eat watermelon and that it is wrong to ever have a black person just mention that delicious fruit that most people love to eat. There was not a single stereotype in this film connected with this matter. The black maid was the only maid who did anything likable.In fact, Jane spent almost the whole film being terribly annoyed at her mother-in-law, but refused until almost the end to speak up for herself. She had to push John to speak up for himself at work because he was too wimpy. That maid, who had three or four big scenes, could well be said to be the most likable person in the film and was portrayed as intelligent and charitable.If you love to see any old film with any of the three stars, you might want to watch this, just to see what it was like. Otherwise, I would think you will find it quite boring, not funny, and not worth watching.

Newlywed couple (James Stewart, Carole Lombard) struggle to make it work despite financial problems, a meddling mother-in-law, and a sick baby. Interesting but flawed movie. It's a bit muddled with an "everything but the kitchen sink" approach to storytelling. Starts off like a romantic comedy but morphs into a melodramatic tearjerker. Lombard and Stewart rise above the material and have good chemistry. Lucille Watson is the mother-in-law from hell. Louise Beavers is great as an understanding maid with words of wisdom for Lombard. Well-photographed by Leon Shamroy. Climax is exciting stuff, if a bit far-fetched.

Your enjoyment of "Made For Each Other" is entirely dependent on your appreciation for Jimmy Stewart. If you're a big fan of his, you should find this movie mildly entertaining. If, however, you find Jimmy Stewart vastly overrated as an actor, like I do, then you're in for a painful slog.All of Stewart's quirks, gimmicks, affectations, and stammers are fully on view here. In this movie, he plays a wimpy lawyer who lets everyone and everything in his life overwhelm him. That would be fine if the movie gave us any kind of story to attach to the character he plays. It doesn't. There's a co-worker at the law firm where Stewart works who seems to be the film's villain early on. They're competing for a firm partnership, so it seems like we might get some heated office politics. We don't. Stewart had been dating the boss' daughter before meeting his wife, so it seems like we might get some interesting romantic rivalry sparks in the movie. We don't. Stewart's boss (Charles Coburn) pushes Stewart around, possibly because Stewart ditched his daughter, so we might get some "boss vs. employee" friction. We don't. Stewart's new wife and his mom rub each other the wrong way, so we might get some interesting family in-fighting. We don't. In fact, not much really happens in this movie at all.After about an hour of listlessness, Stewart and Lombard decide to get a divorce. At this point, I thought, "Well, maybe their baby will get sick and die and that'll end this dreary movie." Shazam! The next scene, that very thing started to happen! All of a sudden Stewart is sobbing on the phone, demanding help from his boss, praying for help, all in the most melodramatic way possible. Some random pilot decides to fly from Salt Lake City to New York during a raging blizzard (in an open air bi-plane!!!) in order to save the day. Why couldn't the movie be about THAT guy? Stewart's character is such a mama's boy that its hard to root for him at all. I could never see what Lombard's character saw in him in the first place. Charles Coburn's character started off as really irritating, with the old "hard-of-hearing" schtick that seems to be prevalent in so many old movies. He really takes control of the situation (and the movie) by becoming a man of action once the baby gets sick. His role became the most interesting part of the movie at that point.If you want to see Jimmy Stewart at his best (in 1939), stick with "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington".