During the years-long production of Howard Hughes's World War I epic, Hell's Angels, Hughes shot 250 feet of aviation footage for every foot of that footage used in the finished film. His aerial unit shot a LOT of aviation footage. Hughes's particular genius was finding ways to make money--a skill that eventually made him the richest man in the world. It should come as no surprise, then, that the extra footage he shot became a lucrative side-hustle. The World War I dogfights filmed for Hell's Angels show up in dozens of films throughout the 1930s without ever duplicating the footage Hughes actually used. Suzy (1936, directed by George Fitzmaurice), a spy drama set in the early part of the war, is one of the films that makes use of this largess. It also makes use of one of Hell's Angels's major stars in leading lady Jean Harlow, whose time on the stage would run out of road only a short time afterward. If given the choice between Harlow in this film and Harlow in Hell's Angels, an interested viewer should definitely choose the latter. That's none of my concern here, though. She's fine in Suzy, a film built specifically for her, but it's not a film with the same ambition. Her performance was influenced by her declining health--partially the result of multiple studio-enforced abortions--that limited her endurance on set and resulted in a longer than usual production schedule.
This was a consequential film for co-star Cary Grant, who was loaned to MGM for this film against his will to replace Clark Gable. This is absolutely a Gable part, but not a Cary Grant part. Grant came away from the experience hating his part even after it had been extensively rewritten for him at his own request and with his own participation. He hated the lack of control he had over his own career, a lack that had landed him in this particular film in the first place. He hated the finished product. He hated that he was still third-billed after making twenty-five previous films and climbing the cast list to the brink of superstardom. His contract with Paramount, who had loaned him out as a punishment, would run out at the end of 1936. Paramount would loan him out again for his next film after Suzy and then he made one further film for Paramount after that. Then Grant vowed never to sign another exclusive contract again. He would choose his own roles. He would choose his own collaborators. He would have the power to say "no" to projects he didn't like. He also resolved to develop his own brand as a movie star, partly as a defense against more roles like the one he plays in Suzy. He would develop a "persona," if you will, and with that persona, he became the very model of a Hollywood movie star. This is one of the last films in the actor's portfolio in which the persona of "Cary Grant" is mostly still in its infancy. Grant's role here is the most unlikable character he ever played and Grant was absolutely correct when he complained that he had been miscast. But then, he's not the lead, which is a gross waste of available resources. I wonder how this film would have played if Grant and Franchot Tone--who was billed over Grant as the romantic lead--had switched roles. A big "if."
The story here follows Harlow's character. She's the eponymous Suzy--Suzanne Trent is her full name--who is in London on the hunt for a rich husband. The year is 1914. She is smitten with Terry Moore (Tone), who she first meets driving a borrowed Rolls Royce. She mistakes him for a wealthy prospect. She falls for Terry, who is not rich as it so happens. Terry has a respectable middle-class job. He's an engineer. He flies planes as a hobby. He's an inventor. They fall in love and marry. Unfortunately, trouble finds them in the form of foreign agents, who are very interested in the project Terry is working on as an inventor. They shoot Terry and, fearing that she'll be fingered for his murder, Suzy flees to France. There, she meets Andre Charville, the son of a baron and a devil-may-care flying ace who is racking up victories in the air and fame on the ground. She falls in love with him and they marry, much to the consternation of Andre's father, Baron Charville. Suzy wins the old man over in Andre's absence at the front, even reading invented letters from Andre to keep his spirits up. But Andre isn't a man to be tied down. He's a womanizer through and through, and becoming a married man doesn't change that. Unfortunately, Terry shows up in France very much alive and becomes convinced that Suzy's haste to marry Andre means she never loved him. Worse, Andre has attracted the same foreign agents who shot Terry...
Screenwriting in 1930s Hollywood didn't really care about the credibility of coincidences. Grant was in more than one film during this period that an audience today would never believe because the mechanisms of their plots were so nakedly visible. We have lost our appetites for overt melodramas in the age of irony. If you watch enough movies from this era, you get used to this. It is more entertaining to try to glean the lines that were written by Dorothy Parker than it is to follow the plot. Parker was one of this film's six screenwriters and was likely out of her depth. Some of the dialogue in this film sparkles. Some of it does not. I have no idea of whether it's Parker's work that occasionally bobs to the surface or not. There were a lot of pretty talented screenwriters toiling in the studio system in the 1930s, all chasing that Barton Fink touch, if you know what I mean. In spite of his dissatisfaction, Grant benefits the most from the dialogue he's given, perhaps because he made them re-write all of it for him. I think you can see Grant attempting to assert his own ideas about his movie star persona in his early scenes. This Grant is recognizable. He's witty. He's funny. He's charismatic. You don't doubt that Suzy would fall head over heels for him. I would to. So would you. That doesn't last, though, as Andre is revealed as a cad and a rake and a fool.
The impression Grant makes in his early scenes is more likely because Grant as an actor and as a movie star boat-races around his co-stars. Franchot Tone was a fine workhorse of an actor, but he's burdened with delivering his lines in a broad Oirish accent here and has a limited range of emotions, which does him no favors when it comes to subtlety of performance. I do not know if Harlow was a great actress because she was never really challenged to give a performance that was off model. Her performance here is built from the same line delivery and limited expressions one finds in her other films. Mind you, the film is tailored to her limitations and her film persona so it's not as much of an impediment as you might think. In general, Harlow was better suited to comedies than to dramas, so she's an ill fit in this film. I do know that Harlow was one of those people who bounces light in an ineffable way that defines a movie star, however, a fact amplified by costume designer Dolly Tree. One of the pleasures of movies from the studio era is spotting familiar faces in the supporting cast. The stand-outs here are Lewis Stone (more famous, probably, as Andy Hardy's dad) as the Baron, Una O'Connor as Suzy's landlady, Inez Courtney as Suzy's best friend, and Dennis Morgan as Andre's Lieutenant. The film also benefits from MGM's ace production designer, Cedric Gibbons, who gives the film a sense of place wherever the story locates itself. London seems like London, Paris seems like Paris, the Baron's manor seems a palace. I'm sure that much of this was dressed up from standing sets on the back lot, but Gibbons was great at creating unreal-estate from sets you've probably seen in dozens of pictures. Also familiar is the way the film contrives to redeem Andre's honor for his father in a scheme that resembles a similar plot in The Eagle and the Hawk. A lot of studio films rhyme other films in the 1930s, or cannibalize them if you're being ungenerous.
I've described some of Grants other films as being "Not a Cary Grant film, but a film that Cary Grant happens to be in." Suzy is a film he just happens to be in. It represents the actor marking time before he had the clout to show the world just exactly who "Cary Grant" really was.
My other posts on Cary Grant. Only about sixty more films to go:
This is the Night (1932)
The Eagle and the Hawk (1933)
Thirty-Day Princess (1934)
Enter: Madame (1935)
The Last Outpost (1935)
Wings in the Dark (1935)
In Name Only (1939)
Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
Penny Serenade (1941)
Suspicion (1941)
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
To Catch a Thief (1955)
North by Northwest (1959)
Operation: Petticoat (1959)
Charade (1963)
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