Edith Kingdon Movies

Starving artist Robert Montgomery could care less if his paintings sell, so long as he's happy. Montgomery falls in love with Rosalind Russell, an heiress who's gone "slumming" in Greenwich Village. Russell becomes Montgomery's patroness as well as his wife, urging him to make his paintings more commercial. He becomes a success following her advice, but popularity goes to his head and soon Russell realizes she's created a monster. She walks out, he gets his act together, she comes back, and they return to their blissful hand-to-mouth existence. Live, Love and Learn scores its biggest laughs unintentionally with MGM's prettified concept of what a "run down" Greenwich village apartment looks like. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When he's shipped off to prison on a tax-evasion charge, millionaire Van Dyke (Walter Connolly) breathes a sigh of relief: at least he'll be free of his dizzy, spendthrift wife (Billie Burke) and spoiled-rotten daughter Carol (Joan Bennett). Once behind bars, Van Dyke strikes up a friendship with amiable reformed bootlegger Ricardi (George Raft). Since Ricardi is to be sprung first, Van Dyke suggests that the ex-crook take on the task of "taming" the incorrigible Carol. Unwilling to be stifled by a former jailbird (even a good-looking one), Carol decides to get even by persuading one of Ricardi's former cohorts, a shady character named Tex (Lloyd Nolan) to stage a fake kidnapping. Trouble is, Tex kidnaps the girl for real, obliging Ricardi to race to her rescue -- but only after deliberately breaking every traffic law known to man, so that he'll be pursued by a veritable battalion of motorcycle cops (this hilarious finale was later re-used in the 1941 Buster Keaton two-reeler So You Won't Squawk). A heady blend of screwball comedy and crime melodrama, She Couldn't Take It is one of the fastest and funniest films of 1935. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

W.C. Fields is in fine fettle as small-town grocer Harold Bissonette (pronounced Biss-o-NAY). Harold dreams of becoming a California orange farmer, but his gorgon wife (Kathleen Howard) will have none of it. After a grueling day at the store, during which his electric light stock is destroyed by a cane-wielding blind man (Charles Sellon), and his floor is flooded with molasses by the impish Baby LeRoy, Harold announces that he's sold the store and bought an orange grove. Seeking to escape his wife's nagging, Harold tries to sleep on his porch, which proves impossible thanks to innumerable interruptions--not least of which is an insurance salesman (T. Roy Barnes) loudly asking for Karl LaFong ("capital L, small A, capital F, small O, small N, small G!") The next day, Harold packs his family into the car and heads off for California. Once there, the little band of pilgrims drives onto the property of a wealthy man, assuming that it's a public park. They make a shambles of the grounds while trying to have a picnic, whereupon they are chased off the land by the scowling owner (Guy Usher). Finally, Harold arrives at his "vast" orange grove--consisting of a tumbledown shack and one scrawny tree. Harold sits silently ruminating over his bad luck until his new neighbor informs him that a wealthy land developer wishes to buy Harold's property to build a stadium. "Don't let them bluff you," advises the neighbor. "You can get any price." The potential buyer turns out to be the same fellow whose property had been invaded by Bissonette the day before, but business is business. The buyer offers several insulting sums, but Harold, fortified by a flask of gin, holds firm. "You're drunk!" the buyer shouts. "And you're crazy," responds Harold. "But tomorrow I'll be sober, and you'll always be crazy." Harold's stubbornness saves the day, and we fade on the satisfying sight of the Bissonette family living in luxury on the huge orange grove of Harold's dreams. A remake of Fields' silent It's the Old Army Game, It's a Gift was written by J.P. McEvoy and one Charles Bogle--and there isn't a Fields fancier alive who doesn't know who Charles Bogle really is. Downplayed by detractors as being merely three two-reelers strung together, It's a Gift has survived such piddling criticism to emerge as one of W.C. Fields' funniest efforts, as well as a comedy classic by any standards. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this drama, set in 1929 when the stock market crashed, a selfish, money-grubbing wife ruins her husband, an accountant after she feeds him a fake stock market tip. Prior to that, she had been having an affair with a wealthy fellow. She destroys her husband because she is bored with her lover and wants to start fresh in Bermuda. On the island, she meets a wealthy Australian who wants to get married. Her husband wants his fortune back. To get it, he blackmail's his wife's former lover. The capricious woman soon tires of the Australian and returns to her spouse. She then tears up the blackmail check. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide