Sometimes I think movies do a little too much to make their plots work. I believe that was the case in "Notorious But Nice" starring Marian Marsh.
Marian Marsh played Jenny Jones (not the talk show host), a secretary who was in love with Richard 'Dick' Hamilton (Don Dillaway). For some unstated reason John J. Martin (John St. Polis) wanted desperately to prevent Dick from marrying Jenny. Ostensibly, it would seem that he wanted to prevent it so that his daughter Connie (Rochelle Hudson) could marry Dick--whether it was for love or for money.
John J. Martin was in charge of Richard Hamilton's late father's estate, which Richard would eventually inherit. When he would inherit it was unknown, considering Richard was already a grown man.
John Martin succeeded in preventing the marriage of Dick and Jenny through extreme and implausible tactics which included her being spied upon, him sending Richard out of state for mundane tasks, and even having Jenny's neighbor Millie (Betty Compson) steal her mail. He was even able to orchestrate a scene by which Richard saw Jenny with another man-and you know how that goes in most movies. Before she could state her case of why she was there Dick was already out of the door and on his way sailing (the escape of choice for the rich in the 30s).
It was another case of misunderstanding or miscommunication which separates lovers for an undetermined length of time until they find their way back to one another to reunite at the end. Things only got stickier for Jenny when she decided to marry Joe Charney (J. Carrol Naish), a gangster, without giving it careful consideration.
I would've liked "Notorious But Nice" more had not so many different situations been contrived. As a viewer, I want to be able to suspend disbelief, but I need help from the writers and the director. When writers have, what seems to be, too much of an interfering hand it takes away from the enjoyment of it all. We want to believe that the events that happen on screen are more than simply plausible, but somewhat realistic. The only time we will accept implausible events is if it's a true story, or the movie is clearly being absurd.
Every major event that happened in this movie seemed artificial and too convenient for the plot, up to and including the murder charge against Jenny Jones. I can accept one, maybe even two plot devices to move the story forward, but it looked like just about everything done in this movie was a well placed plot device for the purposes of the story moving forward.
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