Wife vs. Secretary 1936

     This film is based on a 1935 magazine article written by Faith Baldwin and published in Cosmopolitan.  Van Stanhope is married to Linda and his secretary is Whitey.  Van is a magazine publisher and he is hard working.  Whitey is a very good secretary, she’s beautiful and she helps with the paperwork and details.  Her boyfriend is Dave.  Linda trusts Van but her friends think Whitey is extremely sexy for a secretary.  This idea plants a seed of suspicion in Linda’s mind.  Van and Linda go to an ice skating rink and Whitey is there with Dave.  Linda has a cold and she doesn’t skate.  Dave doesn’t want to skate and they begin to talk about Van and Whitey.  Linda wants to travel with Van to Havana but Van says he will be too busy with the current business deal.  Whitey will go with Van to help him but Dave and Whitey already had a fight because of the skating rink.  Linda goes to talk to Van’s mother about what has been going on.

     This film includes three of the studio’s biggest and most endearing stars.  Dave wants Whitey to give up her career and marry him but she doesn’t want to, at least for now.  Van and Linda are very happy in their marriage but a few rumors turn it upside down for Linda.  She doesn’t want to listen to anything Van has to say about Whitey.  3 ½* (I liked this movie)

88 min, Drama directed by Clarence Brown with Clark Cable, Jean Harlow, Myrna Loy, May Robson, George Barbier, James Stewart, Hobart Cavanaugh, Tom Dugan, Gilbert Emery, Marjorie Gateson, Gloria Holden.

Note:  Imdb 7.1 out of 10, Rotten Tomatoes 70% audience, Three Movie Buffs Average review 3 ½* out of 4*, Blu-ray.com 6.84 and 75% like it, Amazon 4.3* out of 5* with 51 reviews, TCM Leonard Maltin 2.5* out of 4*, user ratings 4* out of 5*, Letterboxd 3.3* out of 5*.

Special Note:  Filmed in MGM Studios, Culver City, California.  The setting is supposed to be New York City.  The sets of Van’s office were also used in the anti-crime short The Public Pays 1936.  This is the fifth of six films paring Gable and Harlow, the fourth picture Gable and Loy starring together.  The first film with Loy and Harlow together but they would be together again for Libeled Lady 1936.  This film was a huge success for MGM, a profit of $876,000 ($15.2M in 2016 dollars).  The amphibious airplane Whitey takes to Cuba is a Sikorsky S042.  It was ordered by Pan Am and introduced in 1934.  Only ten were built, it carried 32 passengers in four compartments and 4 or 5 crew members at a cruising speed of 150-160 mph with a range of 1,200 to 1,900 miles.  The mileage depended on the version and there were three.  Dave gets a raise to $75 a week and this would equate to $1,341 a week in 2017.

Makeup Note:  In the 30’s the trend for women’s eyebrows was thin with a U-shaped style.  It was modeled after Greta Garbo as the eyebrow model of the day.  Eyebrow pencils and other commercial makeup became more available and affordable.  Practically everyone and not just the rich shaved, plucked and redrew their brows.  In the 40’s, the style changed and Joan Crawford had drawn in bigger, bolder and more dramatic brows.  They were plucked so the arch was higher and placed right in the center.