Midnight (1939) Liesen is among the better screwball comedies from the 1930s and certainly among the most under-appreciated. Claudette Colbert stars and evidenced by her work here and in such films as Palm Beach Story (1942) Sturges and It Happened One Night (1934) Capra, she was a natural comic actress. Colbert plays Eve Peabody who we meet at the beginning of the movie arriving in Paris by train on a rainy night. She just lost everything at a casino in Monte Carlo and has nothing beyond the elegant evening dress she’s wearing and a purse with pawn ticket in it.
Enter Don Ameche as Tibor, a Hungarian-born cabdriver. He takes pity on Eve and drives her gratis to various nightclubs where she unsuccessfully auditions for singing gigs. Tibor is both a world weary cynic and devil-may-care free spirit who's clearly taken a shine to our heroine. When Tibor suggests Eve use his apartment for a good night's sleep (while he works) she feels that her new acquaintance is getting too attached so makes her escape. It won’t be the last they see of one another.
Eve stumbles into a swanky party where she meets the extremely wealthy Georges Flammarion (John Barrymore in a typically brilliant performance) and his wife (the always delightful Mary Astor). This is where the story begins to, shall we say, get really screwball. No spoilers from me but I will say that Eve has a second suitor as she finds herself hobnobbing with the upper crust of pre war Parisian society who believe that she is a baroness.
The movie ends pretty much as one would expect (comedies, screwball and otherwise, will do that) but the surprising twists and turns it takes getting there are great fun.
The brilliant team of Billy Wilder (in his pre-directing days) and Charles Brackett wrote the screenplay which explains why it’s so bloody good. Legend has it that the studio wanted re-writes to their original script and uknowingly gave it to the original authors to polish. They did nothing, handed it back and studio heads were reportedly well pleased with the "changes."
Mitchell Leisen directed Midnight. Little remembered today he directed other crackerjack films including Easy Living (1937) (another brilliant and underrated screwball comedy) Death Takes a Holiday (1934) and Remember the Night (1940). Leisen was one of three gay men involved in the film. Monty Woolley (best known for The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942) Keighley) appears as an irascible judge and Rex O’Malley plays an effeminate male friend of the Flammarions. I must say that Rex O’Malley is hardly the name one would associate with a gay man — he looks more like a Lawrence Chitwell or Gregory Vandover. According to the website, Queerplaces, O’Malley was “an effeminate stage actor known for playing parts of 'the suave, sophisticated Noel Coward type.'"
More from Queerplaces: "Leisen remembered: 'I made him play his part in Midnight as straight as he could; it's about the straightest part he ever did.' But his queerness came through nonetheless. When Leisen attempted to use O'Malley as a model for other players, one actor balked because 'he didn't want to get established as that kind of faggoty character.'
Playing a smaller role in the film was Elaine Barrie. I found her IMDb biography fascinating. Her it is in toto:
Elaine Jacobs was a 16-year-old high school student in New York in 1931 when she went to see the John Barrymore film Svengali (1931). From that moment, she later said, she fell in love with Barrymore and vowed that one day she would marry him, even going so far as to change her name to Elaine Barrie. A few years later she read in the newspaper that Barrymore was in a New York hospital due to an "illness" (he was actually undergoing one of his periodic "cures" for his severe alcoholism). She sent him an adoring fan letter asking for an interview, and Barrymore wrote back and granted her one. After that first interview she returned to see him every day for more "interviews", and when Barrymore was finally discharged from the hospital he moved into the Jacobs' family apartment in New York City. Barrymore's divorce from actress Dolores Costello was still not final, and Elaine was 30 years younger than Barrymore, and when the press discovered the situation, they had a field day. Barrymore took Elaine and her mother out to nightclubs, parties and theaters all over the city, with reporters and photographers in hot pursuit. The coverage of the pair was so extensive that in 1935 the Associated Press named Elaine (along with presidential candidate Alf Landon) as one of the people who made that year most interesting.
Barrie and Barrymore were finally married in 1936, and it turned out to be a stormy one. She appeared in one of his films and made two shorts (one of which, How to Undress in Front of Your Husband (1937), was made by low-rent exploitation legend Dwain Esper) capitalizing on her status as Barrymore's wife. She also co-starred with him on Broadway and in several radio dramas. However, Barrymore's heavy drinking and serial infidelity resulted in several trial separations, and they finally divorced in 1940.
After the divorce Barrie wrote a book about her life with Barrymore, "All My Sins Remembered", and took a job at a New York brokerage firm. In the early 1950s she and her mother went to Haiti for a vacation, and they wound up staying there for nine years, developing a successful business exporting straw hats and handbags to high-end retail stores in the US. However, the worsening and dangerous political climate in Haiti resulted in their returning to New York in 1963. A few years later she and her mother moved the business and their residence to Trinidad. After her mother died, Elaine returned to the US.
Midnight has everything going for it: screenplay, direction, cast, art direction and editing. It might be selling the film short to call it a terrific screwball comedy, it’s a terrific film, period.
Could it have been better?
Perhaps.
Originally cast to play Eve was Barbara Stanwyck who had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts. Make no mistake about it, Colbert was excellent but Stanwyck was in another league (for more on her comedy bona fides see The Lady Eve (1941) Sturges, Ball of Fire (1941) Hawks and Christmas in Connecticut (1945) Godfrey, to name a few).
But Midnight it too good to indulge in what-might-have-beens. In the tradition of the best screwballs it manages to be both smart and silly with a surprisingly sophisticated screenplay and a wonderful cast that can demonstrate acting chops while being a little bit wacky. A redoubtable supporting cast also features.
Barrymore steals every scene he’s in, but then he is Barrymore so what do you expect? Colbert is no Stanwyck but then who is and she is after all, not exactly chopped liver. Ameche proves to be charming, handsome and possessive of deft comic timing.
The city of Paris is also a co-star and here is further evidence of the magic of Hollywood for, of course Midnight was filmed at Paramount Studios though some actual (and occasionally delicious) shots of the real city of light are interspersed.
Midnight was released in the United States in March, 1939. Tensions were raising in Europe but there were faint hopes that war could be avoided, and a strong belief that the U.S. would stay out of the next conflagration. Midnight thus very much captures the late period between the wars when one could still try to convince oneself that all the nastiness would remain confined to Germany and even there might soon die out.
Midnight was a film of its time but one that is just as funny today. Damn good fun.
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