Love and Manicures
HANDS ACROSS THE TABLE (Paramount, 1935), directed by Mitchell Neisen, marks the initial screen teaming of Carole Lombard and Fred MacMurray. With title referencing to manicurist working on customer's fingernails over a table, the comedy, taken from the story by Vina Delmar, doesn't deal with the job profession exclusively, but on one particular manicurist whose goal in life is to marry for money rather than true love.The story starts on a routinely day as New York City friends and co-workers, Regi Allen (Carole Lombard) and Nina (Marie Provost) exit Grand Central Station headed for their jobs at the Loycott Barber Shop where they work as manicurists. Nina is introduced as a daffy girl who studies astrology, while Regi gets her character development being a cynical young girl who hopes to someday meet and marry a rich man. Her day has come when Laura (Ruth Donnelly), her supervisor, assigns her to her next customer, Allen MacKlyn (Ralph Bellamy), a wealthy bachelor in a luxurious apartment with Peter (Joseph Tozer) as his personal butler. MacKlyn, it turns out, is wheelchair bound due to an aviation accident. His self-pity soon changes after taking a good look at Regi. He takes an immediate liking towards her, especially after she honestly tells him that his handicap doesn't have her feel sorry for him at all. As their friendship develops to what might lead to love and marriage, Regi comes across Theodore Drew III (Fred MacMurray) playing hopscotch on the tile floor in the hallway outside MacKlyn's door. Even though Regi gives this young man the "brush off," Drew arranges an appointment to have her manicure his fingernails. After finding out he's a rich young playboy, Regi nervously accepts the job and invitation to dinner. After their evening together, the intoxicated Drew passes out in their cab, forcing Regi with no other choice but have him taken up to her apartment where he spends the night. The following morning, Drew, having missed his boat to Bermuda, tells Regi he's not rich at all, but only living off the allowance of his fiancée, Vivian (Astrid Allwyn), the rich daughter of pineapple king, Amos Snowden. As Regi and Drew discover they're two of a kind, the problem is what are they going to do about it.
Typical Depression era comedy whether to marry for love or money is its basic theme. Regardless of its familiarity material that might have well served such gold-digger movie types as Jean Harlow, Joan Blondell or Ginger Rogers, HANDS ACROSS THE TABLE succeeds quite well under Carole Lombard and her male co-stars, Fred MacMurray, Ralph Bellamy and Mitchell Neisen's breezy direction. Overlooking how this comedy somewhat echoes in spots to Frank Capra's comedy, IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, with MacMurray and Lombard being Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert counterparts in reverse or visa versa, aside from its fine scripting credited to Norman Krasna, Vincent Lawrence and Herbert Fields, the film's most amusing moments go to Lombard and MacMurray starting with their first meeting; her nervously manicuring his fingernails; MacMurray's method of stopping hick-ups; Lombard pretending to be an switchboard operator for a long distance telephone call; MacMurray playing a jealous husband to scare off a suitor, and so forth. There's also a somber moment from Lombard's point of view as camera captures her facial moods with extreme close-up where scenes like this tells more than any use of dialogue. MacMurray even takes time to sing "The Morning After." Astrid Allwyn, a brunette rather than her usual blonde hairstyle, makes a satisfactory heiress with a hold on her man, while Bellamy's joy of laughter is reminiscent to Ronald Reagan climatic moment from KING'S ROW (Warner Brothers, 1941).
What makes films like this of greater interest is the uncredited support of familiar faces as Edward Gargan ("Pinky" Kelly, Nina's boyfriend); Marcella Corday (Celeste, Vivian's Maid); Ferdinand Munier (Miles, Vivian's Butler) and Frederick "Snowflake" Toone ("Snowflake," the Porter). Viewers familiar with the long running television series of "My Three Sons" (1960-1972) would be interested in seeing its stars, MacMurray some thirty years earlier, opposite William "Uncle Charlie" Demarest, with an amusing scene together.
Unlike SWING HIGH, SWING LOW (1937) and TRUE CONFESSION (1937), which have become unavailable for television broadcasts until the 1980s, HANDS ACROSS THE TABLE and THE PRINCESS COMES ACOSS (1936) were the most televised of the Lombard and MacMurray collaborations. In later years both being available on both video cassette and DVD formats, with cable television broadcasts on American Movie Classics (1993-1994) and Turner Classic Movies (TCM premiere: October 6, 2008).
As much as the movie and its title may have faded through the passage of time, it's still a worthy discovery and curio for those who've never seen nor heard of either the movie or its leading players before. (***)
score 8/10
lugonian 21 August 2016
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3529698/35636
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