The Awful Truth

No, nothing on a very personal level to be seen here nor is the title of this post a reference to the short-lived t.v. show of Michael Moore's with the same name. Rather, "The Awful Truth" is a 1937 film starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne that I happened to catch last week. This probably would've been posted last week had the stripper at the kindergarten musical not been more interesting fare to write about.

Grant and Dunne play a couple whose marriage is heading for divorce. He doesn't trust her, and there's a strong implication (though never explicitly mentioned) that he cheated on her. While they're waiting for the sixty-day period to expire before their divorce is final, they each take turns trying to disrupt the other's attempts at getting re-married. For the better part of the first hour Grant manages to break up a blossoming romance between Dunne and a young Ralph Bellamy. If you're used to Cary Grant in later roles, such as North by Northwest or Operation Petticoat, he comes off pretty swarmy and not very likeable in his role of Jerry Warriner. It's not the type of character that I'd become used to seeing Grant play, even with 29 movies to his credit in the five years leading up to this one. At one point my daughter pointed to the screen and said, "That's George Kaplan!" I didn't get the reference at first, but then realized that Kaplan is the non-existent American agent that Grant is mistaken for in North by Northwest.

After breaking up Dunne's romance, Grant gets his comeuppance during the later part of the movie. He's dating again and engaged to a woman who's active in society. When Dunne shows up at Grant's apartment on the day their decree becomes final and accidently answers a phone call from his new fiance, he concocts a story that she's his sister, which just creates more problems as his fiance's family now wants to meet her. At the apartment of the fiance's parents later that evening, Dunne shows up acting the part of a ditsy woman with a drinking problem, much to Grant's dismay.

An excellent film I hope to record sometime in the future. The director, Leo McCarey, earned a Best Director Oscar for this film. McCarey is also responsible to creating the team of Laurel & Hardy while working with Hal Roach, and for directing such films as the Marx Brothers' "Duck Soup" in 1933, "The Bells of St. Mary's," and "An Affair to Remember."