Remember, costume parties always lead to unwanted marriages!
Lady Behave! (1938) is a farcical bit of a comedy that left me a little flat. A little too much partying leaves Clarice with not one, but two husbands. This is an era in which such a drunken mistake like this can lead to serious legal consequences, so older sister Paula, the responsible one, sends Clarice off on an overseas trip, and conspires with her lawyer to make this all work out by pretending to be her young sister. A little pretending, a flourish or two, a minor divorce, and all should be well.
But she finds herself tangling with a very, very rich man, Stephen Cormack, his butler, and his two precocious children. The kids hate her; the butler isn’t quite sure what’s going on. And the would-be husband? Distracted by work and bemused at his own unwise behavior – apparently, he’s a repeat offender, at least since his first wife passed away – he has to admit that Paula has her own set of charms.
Throw in Clarice’s real husband, who is a hustler of dubious ethics as well as a fancier of the horses, and this all should be fun. But there’s not enough background to Clarice and Paula, and, for that matter, Stephen, to really feel a connection. The kids are surprisingly interesting and charming, but even they feel a bit more arbitrary than they should, perhaps playing to the stereotypes of the era. But it’s not enough, and the butler and the rest of Stephen’s staff is hardly more than cardboard cutout.
You may enjoy this more than I, but I found it a bit of a struggle to get through.
