Men Are Such Fools (1938)

Best movie of this year hands down!

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Directed by Busby Berkeley, it features Priscilla Lane as a secretary in an ad agency that wants to become a successful working woman. Unfortunately, the film gets pretty bogged down in some very dated stereotypes of women in the workplace and, especially, men's attitudes towards it. Linda Lawrence (Lane) shares an apartment with Nancy (Penny Singleton), who - for contrast - plays the more typical secretary who is only working until she can find a husband that will marry her and allow her to stay at home (which of course she does).In any case, Linda is so attractive that every man in the firm is trying to date (but not necessarily marry) her. As secretary to Mr. Bates, played by Hugh Harvey (with a very annoying "whoo hoo" throughout), a rather bumbling "first line manager his entire career" type, Linda quickly advances to a position as his assistant. A career woman named Beatrice Harris, played fairly convincingly by Mona Barrie, is initially reluctant to share her "queen bee" status with Linda. However, once she recognizes the same ambition in Linda as her own, Beatrice instead begins to mentor her, somewhat.Wayne Morris plays an ex-football jock from Princeton named Jimmy Hall; he is also very ambitious, especially in his rather obnoxious pursuit of Linda. In fact, it is his whole attitude and actions towards Ms. Lane's character throughout the film that will be most offensive to anyone (especially female viewers) watching the film these days. He exhibits a very physical "won't take no for an answer" approach to getting Linda to marry him, which she does. This is followed by him insisting she give up her very promising (more so than his?) career to be there for him when he gets home from work, especially after (with Beatrice's assistance) Linda starts working with the "top dog", Harry Galleon played by Humphrey Bogart. Harry, like every other man in the agency, can't resist Linda's looks and starts to intentionally sabotage her 3 month marriage to Jimmy, which precipitates his ultimatum.After six months of staying at home, and dealing with a daily routine which includes picking up her husband at the train station and carpooling home with Bill Dalton (Gene Lockhart plays another very annoying character), Linda decides to work a behind-the-scenes deal to further her husband's career. When he declines the offer, never knowing of her involvement, she walks out, accusing him of being not ambitious enough for her. This leaves room for Harry to get back into the picture. But, of course, everything works out in time (in this less than 70 minute film!) for a happy ending.A most unusual film for Bogart. The title comes from the last line spoken in the film, by Priscilla Lane's character incidentally.

There are a few interesting lines here like "All Men are Poligamists" but this comedy between the sexes never really comes off. This cast is a great cast in the whole but prove it takes a script to make a good movie. This one off the Warner Assembly Line proves how big an accident Casablanca was a few years later.Busby Berkley is know for musicals but directing a comedy does not seem to be his bag. The action is uneven. There is a silent slap stick quality to the car chases and train sequences. One RR crossing even looks like the same set used in Abbott & Costello Meet The Keystone Cops.Bogart really isn't much of a comedian coming off as a straight dull man who is a bit of a cad. Think he walked through this role in his sleep. The main actress, Priscilla Lane is an attractive lead, but her comedy skills are not up to other females doing comedy in this era.Overall, other than if your curious about the cast members, this is a movie to avoid. The best thing about it is it is short, obviously made as a B movie to be paired with an A Picture for Double Features.There is a little surprising grabbing by an actor of Lane's posterior in one scene which considering the codes of this era must have gotten through by accident.

Priscilla Lane begins the film as a secretary but because of her persistence and great ideas, she quickly moves up in the company and is a very well paid executive--something practically unheard of in 1938. However, when she marries Wayne Morris, their marriage is a very bumpy ride.This is a film where most of the actors simply needed a better written script. Now the overall idea of a working woman who has trouble balancing her high-paying job with marriage is very good, the execution looks like it needed an editing--with some dopey performances and logical errors that should have been cleaned up before filming began.One of the biggest problems I noticed was Wayne Morris' character. He wants to capture lovely Priscilla Lane's heart so he goes about it by being totally annoying and harassing the poor lady. Warner Brothers thought this was cute and romantic--to me it felt more like he was a stalker! Now it Lane had played a total ditz, perhaps this might have made some sense--but she was supposed to be a brilliant executive. He just seemed like a boorish jerk--yet she fell for him. So already I found myself hating one of the main characters from the start and having little respect for the other--not a good thing to say the least! In fact, throughout the film BOTH characters are really hard to predict or understand because there is no consistency with either of them. Morris is initially an obnoxious boob, then he is a rather sexist but loving husband with no great ambitions and then he becomes a HUGE high-powered executive. The dumbest part of this was his falling for an ambitious and talented Lane and then insisting, after they are married, that she drop everything to be his stay at home wife. If this is what he wanted, of the millions of women to choose from in America, he probably picked the very worst one!! Lane is a high-powered exec but falls hard to Morris' crude and obnoxious advances. When they marry, she seems pretty happy but then dumps her hubby over practically nothing--as if she were doing this purely as a plot device. It was as if her character couldn't decide if she wanted to be a corporate climber or June Cleaver! Oddly, in this film it seemed that you couldn't be a little of each.As for the supporting cast, most come off pretty well except for Hugh Herbert and Humphrey Bogart. Herbert is a "one trick pony"--a guy whose sole talent in films is giggling and fidgeting with his hands. One-dimensional, of course, but also seeming so stupid that you wonder how he could be such an important and rich man. As for Bogie, unfortunately, this film was made during his "limbo days" at Warner--when he was under contract but they had no idea what to do with him. Here, he seems rather bland and bears no similarity to the rugged character he would be in the 1940s.Overall, the film is mildly interesting in spots. The folks at the studio tried, in their own way, to create a film about women's liberation and equality--though by today's standards it seems incredibly sexist and silly. Also because neither of the leads seemed consistent or believable, the film is more of a curiosity than a good film.

Men Are Such Fools is one of a handful of B pictures that Busby Berkeley directed between his musical extravaganzas. I guess Jack Warner was operating on the theory that if Berkeley was on salary, he'd earn his money one way or another.It's a B picture comedy vaguely reminiscent of the Rock Hudson-Doris Day films a generation later. The leads are Wayne Morris and Priscilla Lane. He's a former star football player, she's a working girl in the advertising game. Priscilla was cute and homespun and was great in stuff like Four Daughters. Here she's all right, nothing more, ditto Morris.THIRD billed in this film is Humphrey Bogart and ironically until he started getting gangster parts, these were the kind of roles he played on Broadway, sophisticated comedies. Bogey shouldn't have tried going back to his roots. His is the kind of role a generation later would have been played by Gig Young or Tony Randall.Nothing spectacular here, it didn't harm the careers of Bogart or Berkeley, but it didn't help either.