HENRY HATHAWAY

Bil’s rating (out of 5):  BB.5. 

USA, 1936.  Emanuel Cohen Productions.  Screenplay by Mae West, based on the play by Lawrence Riley.  Cinematography by Karl Struss.  Produced by Emanuel Cohen.  Music by George Stoll, Herbert Taylor.  Production Design by Wiard Ihnen.  Costume Design by Irene Jones.  Film Editing by Ray Curtiss.  

Mae West is in fine form but the movie disappoints this time; the censors took a razor blade to her humorous one-liners and left her with a cleverly constructed but rather limp romantic comedy. She plays a world-famous movie star whose car breaks down during a publicity tour, forcing her and her guard dog press agent (Warren William) to shack up in a quaint boarding house in a tiny dust mite of a town. While there she finds herself getting sweet on hunky mechanic Randolph Scott, much to the chagrin of his girlfriend. The great dame is terrific (just watch the moment where she checks out Scott’s ass), and she does a pretty good job with the script, but without her devilish innuendos (it’s actually adapted from someone else’s play and she doesn’t fully succeed in fitting it to her style) there isn’t much point in watching it.