It's Love I'm After (1937)
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- Synopsis:
Renowned stage actors Basil Underwood (Leslie Howard) and Joyce Arden (Bette Davis) are partners on and off the stage. An occupational hazard for Basil is that women often fall in love with what they see of him on the stage, he who sometimes indulges that adoration. Basil and Joyce's personal life is passionate and tempestuous characterized by constant fighting and making up, which is often continued on-stage under their breaths. After their latest fight and reconciliation, they decide to get married...for the twelfth time. They are determined to make it to the altar this time. But Basil feels he needs to wipe clean the slate first by doing a favor for a stranger, Henry Grant (Patric Knowles), whose fiancée has fallen in love with him. With his latest script in hand, Basil vows to make Henry's fiancée fall out of love with him by playing the cad. He finds that it may be more difficult than he first imagined when he finds out that the woman in question is Marcia West (Olivia de Havilland), the young woman who professed her love to him earlier in the evening and whose fawning he was thinking about indulging. As Basil is at the West mansion thinking if he should play this latest role as cad or romantic leading man, Digges (Eric Blore), Basil's faithful dresser who is along for the ride, thinks that there is a missing female role in this play, one that would be played perfectly by Joyce. When Joyce arrives on the scene, the question becomes what is acting and what is real life. - Actors:
- Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, Olivia De Havilland, Patric Knowles, Eric Blore, George Barbier, Bonita Granville, Spring Byington, Georgia Caine, Veda Ann Borg, E.E. Clive, Valerie Bergere, Sarah Edwards, Thomas Pogue, Grace Field, Harvey Clark, Edmund Mortimer, Thomas R. Mills, Herbert Ashley, Irving Bacon
- Directors:
- Archie Mayo
- Producers:
- Harry Joe Brown, Hal B. Wallis
- Writers:
- Casey Robinson, Maurice Hanline
- Aka:
- A Gentleman After Midnight
- Genres:
- Classics, Comedy, Romance
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Reviews (1) of It's Love I'm After
Classic Screwball - It's Love I'm After review by Steve
The third time Leslie Howard and Bette Davis starred together for Warner Brothers (after Of Human Bondage and The Petrified Forest) is a change of genre but a similar level of quality. It's a screwball comedy about an egotistical, philandering Shakespearian actor who tries to shake off the attentions of a teenage fan under the close scrutiny of his on-off fiancée.
It's so funny thanks to a witty script and a flamboyant performance from Howard as the pompous thespian. Olivia de Havilland is young and pretty enough as the besotted adolescent. Her own suitor asks Howard to visit her father's country house and make himself as unpleasant as possible, to break her infatuation.
Which is a decent premise, because we are never sure if he is faking or really is that awful! Davis is fine as the bride-to-be, but screwball isn't her speciality. The central relationship is between the actor and his devoted dresser/finagler (Eric Blore). And that is a lot of lively fun as they seamlessly slip between roles the star has played on the stage.
It's a pacy farce set among the upper classes, with a lot of genuine laughs. It’s likely everyone involved has seen John Barrymore in Twentieth Century (1934). It's not as good as that, but should be better known. And it's a fine opportunity for Howard to overact with theatrical abandon.