Theodora Goes Wild (1936)
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- Theodora Lynn (Irene Dunne) is secretly the author of a salacious novel written under a pen name. She must hide her identity from the residents of her small, conservative Connecticut town, who disapprove of the book. When Theodora goes to New York to visit her publisher she meets the book's cover artist, Michael Grant (Melvyn Douglas) who tries to convince her to reveal herself as the real author. When Theodora falls for Michael, she soon finds that he has secrets of his own.
- Actors:
- Irene Dunne, Melvyn Douglas, Thomas Mitchell, Thurston Hall, Elisabeth Risdon, Margaret McWade, Spring Byington, Nana Bryant, Henry Kolker, Leona Maricle, Robert Greig, Frederick Burton, Stella Adams, Paul Barrett, Noel Bates, William 'Billy' Benedict, Sven Hugo Borg, Carolyn Lee Bourland, Maurice Brierre, Don Brodie
- Directors:
- Richard Boleslawski
- Writers:
- Sidney Buchman, Mary McCarthy
- Others:
- Otto Meyer
- Studio:
- son
- Genres:
- Classics, Comedy, Romance
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Reviews (1) of Theodora Goes Wild
Comedy Romance. - Theodora Goes Wild review by Steve
The title promises the jazz age hedonism of F. Scott Fitzgerald but this is actually quite a conventional romantic comedy which matches virginal smalltown girl Irene Dunne with metropolitan wolf, Melvyn Douglas. She has anonymously written a racy best seller as escape from her boring life in a rural southern backwater.
Douglas designs her book cover and then has designs on her virtue as he follows her back to Connecticut. He encourages her to shrug off the constraints of convention, and once liberated, she helps him escape from the influence of his wealthy, corrupt family. It's pertinent social history as censorship brought Hollywood under the control of conservative puritanism through the Production Code.
The main interest in the film now is that, at 38, it launched the comedy career of Irene Dunne, who was nominated for an Oscar. Next year she became a comic legend in The Awful Truth. Theodora Goes Wild isn't in that class. The script lacks wit, the direction is flat, and Melvyn Douglas plainly isn't Cary Grant. But there are flashes of her potential.
The support cast is capable rather than inspired. It has merit as a morality tale about the interface between responsibility and freedom. But crucially for a comedy, there are very few laughs. It creates a plausible, even poignant, impression of small town hypocrisy, suppressed emotions and wasted lives, but it is probably mainly of interest to students of screwball comedy.