Springtime for Henry

Otto Kruger is trying to carry on an affair with Nancy Carroll, while her husband, Nigel Bruce, is trying to use it to blackmail Kruger into buying his carburetors for Kruger's auto company. In comes Heather Angel, who entrances Kruger. She is a proponent of the noble things in life, which inspires Kruger to give up conquest for virtue, and champagne for Postum.

It's one of the ambitious and symbol-infested movies that Jesse L. Lasky produced for Fox after he had been thrown out of Paramount. It's directed by Frank Tuttle as a pseudo-Lubitsch affair. As such, it is arch, coy, witty and frequently amusing. What it lacks, alas, is any depth or moments of inspired insanity. Kruger begins as an aging Lothario, calculating his campaign of seduction; his attempted reformation sounds childish, more than smitten. This seems to me to be a miscalculation that results in a close miss, rather than an accurate hit. It's not helped much by the dialogue and its direction, in which everyone sounds much alike and speaks in the same measured tone.

The two women are quite believable in their roles, as is Bruce, playing the same pompous nitwit that he specialized in. Kruger, however, is miscast. This was a problem with many of Lasky's productions during this period. He tried to use his leading men in roles that lay outside their usual range, and clearly demonstrated their abilities as actors, but also demonstrated they could not play these roles convincingly.

These miscalculations of production and casting keeps this from being a great movie. Despite these issues, it is filled with enough silly situations to keep it engaging throughout.