30's Watch: Merrily We Go To Hell (1932)

Watched:  09/09/2024

Format:  Library Disc

Viewing:  First

Director:  Dorothy Arzner

One nice thing about wandering a shelf of movies is that you may experience "serendipitous discovery" - the thing where you weren't looking for an item, but suddenly you are pretty sure this is what you really needed.  And what I needed was to find out what a movie from 1932 called Merrily We Go To Hell was all about.  

I recognized the male star's name - Frederic March - March was a major star staring at the end of the silent era and continuing for decades.  And the female lead's name rang a bell - Sylvia Sidney - but I couldn't say from where. 

The film was directed by Dorothy Arzner, perhaps the lone female director working in Hollywood during this period.  It was an *incredibly* strange time in the industry as the film business had employed women writers, directors, editors and more for the first twenty years of the industry, but as the Silent Era wrapped, the key roles in film showed women the door, and it's difficult to know what was lost as a result of this change.

Merrily We Go To Hell is a film about two stock 1930's movie characters - a newspaperman with aspirations of writing plays, and a rich society gal - meeting and falling in love.  At first blush, it seems it will be a comedy about heavy drinking in society circles - and it is about drinking.  But it changes tones, becoming very obviously about the evils of spirits and fancy actresses.  And, perhaps more importantly, it's about the "modern" marriage, where women allow their husbands to cheat and carry on, because they're doing so themselves.*

Finding post-marriage success with his play, March, who was on the wagon to marry Sidney, immediately falls off and becomes a partying playboy.  Initially heartbroken enough to head home to Chicago, Sidney decides she will make it work by allowing her husband to run around with other women (in front of her) so long as she can run around with other men (publicly).  And, she gives it a shot, her first conquest being a fresh-faced Cary Grant. 

She eventually falls ill.  Told to rest by her doctor, Sidney realizes all this carrying on is over.  At that same moment, March returns to the apartment with his travelling party of drunks, and Sidney leaves after trying and failing to tell him something very important.

Yeah, she was pregnant.  She returns to Chicago. March, realizing he's been a fool, sobers up.  He goes to her in the hospital but finds out the baby died shortly after birth.  The two embrace going into a pretty dark future together, but back together.

It is @#$%ed up, fam.

This flick is a really good example of what led to the Hayes Code coming down on Hollywood like a ton of bricks.  The movie doesn't hint around about what's happening, they're pretty straightforward about it.  What would become hinted at and cloaked in camera language and "it's there if you squint" in the Hayes Era is just simply on screen here, even in a way few of even the sexy movies of the period portrayed.  For its era, the film pushes some boundaries, and maybe pushed too far, as the doc (on the disc) I watched indicated this was one of the movies that helped build the case for turning the Hayes Office from a toothless political stand-in into a real force.

Luckily, none of the talent seems to have taken a hit for participating in the movie, including director Arzner.  

As a melodrama, it works in part because it moves as fast as a rocket sled and winds up at around 90 minutes or less.   Taking us from scene to scene, it clips along as we initially think "oh, fun.  A drunk comedy" until the same realization hits you here that it may with a pal during your lifetime "oh no.  That dude has a problem." - a message that was in step with many forces during the Prohibition Era (which would be repealed at the end of 1933).

Sylvia Sidney is, flat-out, great in this movie.  I'm aware she was successful in Hollywood thanks to some Googling, but she's sympathetic without being twee or maudlin, and she does so much without a word.  March is a hapless, accidental cad, and playing against the backdrop of the partying, the New York nightlife, etc... Sidney could have disappeared as the virginal good-girl.  But between the excellent direction and Sidney's performance, you're always fully on her side.

Overall, the cast is really pretty solid.  "Skeets" Gallagher as March's enabling pal, Esther Howard as the world-weary Vi, and we're all going to remember Adrianne Allen as the temptress stage-actress who does not give a @#$%.  Lady understood the assignment.  And in a rare turn, the overbearing dad in this movie is totally understandable, as played by George Irving.

Anyway, thanks, Austin Public Library for having this on the shelf!

Okay, here's the part that has less to do with the movie and more with Sidney:  

Remember Grandma in Mars Attacks! or Juno in Beetlejuice?  That's Sylvia Sidney, still on screen in the 1980's and 1990's, still great as hell.  I am now officially a Sylvia Sidney stan.  

Juno from Beetlejuice

was this knock-out in 1932

You always know senior actors didn't fall out of a tree, but it's wild to find out that someone you've known from just a few roles had this rich career and life that you didn't know about.  And I try to pay attention to these things!

Anyway, you find things out every day.  Like: Sylvia Sidney was a biscuit.

*it's always wild to see what was going on during what people always want to point to as "back when we had morals"