Hard to Get

Hard To Get casts two of Jack Warner's most unhappy players on his lot in their second film together. Both Dick Powell and Olivia DeHavilland were begging Jack for more dramatic material to do and he was refusing both of them. Powell didn't get his first break in that department until years after he left Warner Brothers. As for Olivia, her salvation was coming next year when she loaned out to David O. Selznick for Gone With The Wind.

Olivia is a rich girl coming from a family that looks suspiciously like the Bullochs from My Man Godfrey with mother Isabel Jeans, younger sister Bonita Granville and father Charles Winninger. Olivia's the rebellious one who just doesn't want to go to Newport again with mom and sis. She takes the car and stops at a gas station owned by Dick Powell and Allen Jenkins. The gas station is also a small motel and when Olivia forgets to bring her purse and Powell doesn't believe she's rich, he forces her to turn down the beds for her gasoline.

That starts the usual sparring between the rich girl and the poor, but ambitious young man who has a plan for a chain of motel/filling station establishments across the country. If he can only get a rich backer.

I think anyone who's seen enough Thirties screwball comedies knows exactly how this is going to end up. The film isn't quite on the level as My Man Godfrey or Libeled Lady, but it certainly is amusing enough. Especially when you consider both the leads were begging their boss not to keep giving them light stuff to do.

Most amusing performance however is that of Penny Singleton as the maid in the Winninger household. Powell's got the idea DeHavilland is the maid there, mainly because she gave it to him and to keep the act up, Singleton impersonates DeHavilland at dinner. She's got the best moments in the film because of that. Second best are Powell trying in various disguises to see Thurston Hall, an associate of Winninger.

The film is best known for Dick Powell introducing You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby on the screen, singing it to Olivia while rowing on Central Park Lake. For reasons unknown Powell never recorded this one. Bing Crosby has a primo version done for Decca in 1938.

Hard To Get today is remembered for the song that came from it and for the fact that two frustrated stars did some pleasant work here.